Well I’m talking about the emotional contract. Once that’s completly broken I’d say he was divorced. There could be entanglments. Legally. But in my case he was very forthright about the whole thing.
And legal is not love. So proceed with caution. But it can work.
And like I said, some of the best married couples I know have no legal foundation so I have a bit less interest in it.
Read my ( first page) post. There are reasons for not getting divorced immediately.
I don’t want another fish. And I believe in the sanctity of marriage but I believe that’s based on commitment and love not if you’ve signed some papers or not.
Maybe so, but IMO, if the papers were important enough to the couple to be signed in the first place, then they are important enough to dissolve before moving on.
Well ok, but as I said, she wanted a no fault divorce. He respected her wishes. Does that mean he has to go around twiddling his thumbs for 18 months?
And I say again, I know enough couples…many of whom choose not to get legally married, many of whom can’t…to say marriage is not about the paper.
Absolutely not.
Sorry, I’ve done it twice and both times ‘separated’ meant something very different to them than to me.
Those lying scumbags have ruined your chances, go on, hunt them down and make them pay!!
Seriously, no. It’s not worth the emotional devastation if you suddenly decide to reconcile.
ETA: sorry, late reply to OP, didn’t mean to interrupt the current conversation.
Based on the majority of comments in this thread, apparently so.
To me, that’s an awfully slippery slope. What about a man who no longer loves his wife, but stays married to her for the sake of the kids? Is he divorced, in your opinion?
Not if he can find someone who doesn’t mind dating married men.
Yes, I believe it does.
The commitment he made was not only emotional, but legal. Until both are disengaged, he is not free of his commitment, and behaving as though he is free of the commitment is dishonest in my personal view. What if he changes his mind at month 15? What if she does?
If he’s that stupendous a guy that I can’t wait until he’s single to date him, then he’s worth waiting for, isn’t he?
But then, one of the things I value in a partner is that they take their commitments and promises seriously. If you promise something, it is your duty to perform to the best of your ability. Saying “close enough” somewhere in during the dissolution process and starting to date again doesn’t rise to the level of performing to the best of your ability in my view.
Back in college, I dated a man who told me he was separated. After a few months, I got suspicious that he was lying, but he assured me that a divorce was imminent. I essentially ended both relationships when I showed up on their doorstep to confirm his story. Guess what? She had no idea that they were supposedly separated nor that he was freely dating other women.
So I wouldn’t trust a “separated” man with my life, let alone my heart. If you want to get divorced, in most states it’s as easy as filing a piece of paper.
Alrighty. For me, marriage is a sacrament. It is, if not a sin, then something damn close, to muck with someone else’s marriage. HE may feel “emotionally” divorced or whatever the hell else, but that doesn’t mean that his WIFE does.
Marriage is a complete personal entanglement – emotional, financial, physical, logistical. All of those attachments need to be severed before a person is IMO “available” for someone else – unless you, as the someone else, have the patience to wait while the other person extricates himself from the previous entanglement. Some people have that sort of patience and are interested in that sort of messy, complicated relationship. I don’t, and I’m not.
To me, being married is like being pregnant: You is, or you isn’t. I am not interested in anyone who is. AND I am not interested in anyone who thinks that they can be both available AND married, because that indicates they do not consider marriage in the same terms as I do anyway.
(guy posting in - please excuse this intrustion of my unsolicited view from the other side)
just last week I responed to an ad on Craig’s from a woman who e-mailed me back; then back and forth a few times with the typical exchanges. She said that she had something that I might not be comfortable knowing, but would have to think about if & how to tell me.
OK. Everyone has things that are difficult to tell but which have to come out eventually, so I didn’t press. Probably a mastectomy or a diabled child or one of those things in life. When she finally did spill, of course it was that she was married.
But oh, the extenuating circumstances… he’s a drunk, but a highly-functioning one with a prominent place in the community; all the divorce lawyers said he might get custody of the kids, and then he’s kill them while driving drunk. And they haven’t had sex in ten years, and live in different apartment in the same building, etc, etc. etc.
I offered to escort her to an Alanon meeting, which she declined because of her prominent place in the community. Again I didn’t press - that’s not how Alanon works; I just wanted to put that on her plate, and in light of the fact that she’s married, it’s the only thing on my menu. I finally blcoker her e-mails.
But, since I can be honest with you Dopers and won’t claim to be a saint, in my darkest heart of hearts, I’m glad I’m a guy dealing with this situation. See, most us guys don’t have to go through all the inner discussion & emotional taffy-pulling about general morality vs situational allowances. Nope, we just get an image of ourselves being shot in the back of the head while having sex, and that’s that!
Agreed. Until a divorce is a done deal, there’s always the possibility of the couple changing their minds, IME. Then where would I be? I have actually been attracted to a man who was not divorced yet. I let him be. Wasn’t willing to take that chance.
For me, it’s not wanting to be involved with someone who is still obviously invested with someone else.
I’m one of the few women I know over the age of 30 (I’m 32) who doesn’t really have any interest in marriage, so it isn’t because he wouldn’t want to marry me. It’s just that relationships can be challenging enough without adding in a wife.
Still being legally married is a pretty big loose end. With all due respect, if someone can’t follow through with ending that period of their life, for whatever reason, then they’re not someone I wish to date.
Of course, I can only speak for myself.
I’m probably not the guy to jump into this, but I think there’s a wide range of possibile definitions of “separated.” A man might use that to mean that he and his wife have agreed to divorce, and he’s sleeping on the couch, to someone who is divorced in everything but name. Assuming that, unlike Jodi, your concern is that the man is still in some way in a relationship with his wife and not an objection on principle, it would be more useful to look at whether the man has his own household, if he’s actually living his own life rather than living a sort of temporary life that he could abandon if he needed to.
I’m confused by the “divorce is too expensive” meme. It strikes me as a cop-out, but my ignorance is pretty huge. I’d appreciate it if anyone could take the time to fight it.
When you get divorced, you split your common assets into two. That usually means that you have to sell the house, etc. And you have to maintain two separate households on two salaries vs. one household on two salaries.
It’s too expensive for men who have to support wives, who have to support two households (in the case of children) and who have to sell the house and live in a home that’s worth half of what they used to live in.
Some divorces are very cheap. My husband’s was only a few thousand bucks out of his pocket. Done deal.
I am posting again to clarify some points: Where I live, you have to be separated for over 12 months before you can file for divorce. My ex and I have no chance whatsoever of reconciling and we’d have divorced manymanymany months ago if it was possible. We’re not holding out for any reason other than we’re legally compelled to do so. It’s been 10 months since I set up my own home and 8 months since we completed the financial division of our marital assets and now we only communicate when we absolutely have to. I drove past him about a month ago; that was the first time I’d laid eyes on him in several months. We are divorced in every sense of the word other than the legal one.
This affects my point of view, as obviously some of the separated men I could meet may have been physically and emotionally separated from their wife for the better part of a year and still not be legally allowed to divorce yet. They are the people who (on a case by case basis) I’d consider dating. People freshly separated or people who still seem to be maintaining close links to their ex would be a different matter altogether. Children further muddy the waters.
It pains me to see some people citing the sanctity of marriage as their reason for not dating someone who is separated - I didn’t chose to end my marriage, he left me, and considering he couldn’t stay faithful to me while we were together, I don’t see why I should stay faithful to him for a year after we separated just because the law won’t allow us to divorce sooner.
I wouldn’t date the person in the OP because it’s too soon. If there was any chance that he and his wife could reconcile, I wouldn’t want to be the thing that prevented it happening. They have a family to consider, and they need to make sure they are making the right decision. That’s hard to do when someone else is in the picture. Also, they both have a lot of crazy emotions to work through and I wouldn’t want to be along for that ride.