Right. My ex and I get along fine now. We basically grew up together and have two kids together with joint custody. I am having Thanksgiving with her and her family this year like I always have. It is just that marriage can go really, really wrong sometimes even for good people. The legally binding part is meant to be a strength but it can be a cage that you are desperate to get out of and make you think insane things. People with sense never act on them but the death throes of a marriage are not a pretty thing to be part of or watch. Lots of people think bad things in separate situations. The good people just let it pass and don’t end up on the news.
We realized that what we had become was best friends/roommates/family and that we had long since stopped being lovers or having romantic feelings for each other. We both wanted to be with other people romantically and realized that we could have the same relationship we already had with each other without being married, so we decided to get divorced. We’re still really good friends. In fact, he’s coming to stay with us (my new husband, my son, and I) for Christmas.
This. I got a phone call once from a police detective asking all kinds of questions about if and how I knew my son’s father and blahblah. I got so EXCITED because I just knew this guy was calling to tell me that there had been a horrible accident and he was dead. I don’t think I’m a bad person for that.
Instead, the police detective was calling regarding a false complaint he made against me* that, even if it had been true, was a civil matter rather than a criminal matter so I’m not sure why the cop was wasting my time and getting my hopes up like that in the first place.
*In anticipation of the custody suit he surprised me with about a week later. I guess he thought if he could get me into some trouble it would benefit him in court later? I don’t know. It didn’t work in any case.
It was one more fight, but this time he kicked in the bedroom door where I was breast feeding our six month old son.
It was just one more fight like other times, but somehow the cops showed up and I went to my parents’s place.
It was one more fight, but the harrassing phone calls started when he got out of the drunk tank and back to our place.
I was still planning to go back but he showed up at my parents, dropped his pants and waved his penis at the house while demanding to see his son.
He still hasn’t and that was over six years ago. I probably would have gone back… but he whipped out his dick and waved it at my dad. Fortunately he also left town a few days later.
Yeah. I love my boyfriend and he’s a good dad to my son, but I am completely done with the idea of marriage. At least for me, I guess its ok for other people though.
I didn’t mention it the first time:
my aunt got divorced because divorce was made legal. For the last two-three years since Mommy’sBoy’s dad died, they had been fighting real bad (top of their lungs screams, heavy objects thrown, stitches on boycousin’s head from being hit by a vase that missed its intended target, accusations that the later-miscarried third pregnancy was from the butane guy), but the notion of going their separate ways had never occurred to them.
I’ve heard my aunt say that, when she heard of the new law, she was surprised the ceiling did not open, displaying a dove on a beam of light to a soundtrack of angels singing “Hallellujah”. She’d been raised to Obey Authority, and now the country’s highest authorities were saying “that doesn’t mean letting your husband call you a whore.”
Being with my wife was an overwhelmingly negative experience and life was too short to live like that.
The first one was just two people moving in different directions. Although it wasn’t happy fun time divorce, we did just pretty much split up the stuff and go our own ways.
The second was because I got tired of waking up every morning hoping (in vain) that today would be the day I’d get hit by a bus. It could have been the huge debt she concealed until after we were married that, together with her spending habits, pulled us down into bankruptcy. It could have been the working two full time jobs and a part time one because she decided to take unpaid maternity leave without consulting me first. (See bankruptcy previously cited) It could have been her OCD-level cleanliness that would cause her to throw hour-long screaming fits if an object was out of its “proper place.” It could have been her horrific temper. Or her jealousy. There were just so many things…and the buses wouldn’t cooperate.
She had this annoying thing of saying, “Well why don’t we just get a divorce?” when we would argue. Also she would call her mom during an argument and bitch at her mom about me in front of me.
Six months into the marriage we were going to counseling. A few months into that an argument we had was brought up and we talked about it and the counselor said something that I had said during the argument. ( I was trying to end the argument.) She said that what the counselor had said would have made things better and probably ended the argument. I said, “I said the same thing to you and you kept the argument going.” She said, “Well of course I’m not going to listen to you you’re my husband.” At that moment I thought,“Wow, I don’t think we are going to make it through one year.”
A couple of months later we had another fight, we never yelled at each other, and she said her divorce line again and I responded with, “I think we should.” She said that she didn’t mean it and I said I did. We filed for divorce two weeks before our first anniversary. That was ten years ago and I’ve been single ever since.
The first one–well, we never should have gotten married. We were both 22 and just not ready for that, but we did it anyway, because we were religious and would have felt guilty–at least he would have–living together. After a few years, he and a friend of mine ran away together. Thanks to Google, I see that they are still together today.
The second one–he had an affair. With my friend. But we stayed together, went to counseling, etc. Nonetheless, I couldn’t look at him the same way after that, and then he got a job that required at least 50% travel. I found that I didn’t miss him when he was gone and in fact enjoyed being by myself. When he would come home, he wouldn’t ask me how my week was, wouldn’t ask about our family or friends–just talked about himself or hid in the garage fixing something. Sex was also infrequent. When his job required him to move to another state, I told him I would prefer to stay here but that he could go. I was surprised that he was shocked and that he claimed that he loved me so much and how could I do this. From his behavior in the two or three years leading up to our separation, I was pretty sure that he did not love me. At all. In fact, he seemed only to find fault with me or ignore me.
It turned out to be a good decision on my part. As we went through the separation and into the divorce, I realized that I hadn’t really been myself or living my own life for years. My eyes were opened and I began to slowly rebuild my life. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than it ever was with him. I realized how emotionally and verbally abused I’d been for years, how he’d beaten me down. And later, I discovered that he’d been deceiving me financially, and that he is now in big, big trouble with the federal government. I have had to deal with some of that on my own, and it’s hurt me financially, but I’m glad to be apart from him. He has a new wife now–number 3. He started seeing her, I found out later, about a month after we separated, while we were still talking about the possibility of getting back together.
So when I say men confuse me–yeah, this is probably why.
Married young (20 for both of us). I suffered from depression (still do, but it is managed). Infidelity on both sides. Lack of communication. Difficult job (military). The funny thing is, we never fought. After 14 years and an early mid-life crisis I asked for a divorce. I missed my kids and my best friend, so 2 years later we were re-married and couldn’t be happier.
We grew up a lot in those two years…
What led to our divorce? Complete inability to come to a comprimize. I was depressed for 6-7 years because I was unhappy and I could not fix the marriage. My wife refused to go to marriage counseling.
The two key events.
- My therapist said I was unhappy due to my relationship with my wife.
- My best friend help build up my self-esteem of being a father and a partner. I am unsure if I could have proceeded without that.
Before I had met Mrs. Magill, I’d had a “starter marriage.” (No property - no kids.) Basically, my ex-wife and I should have never gotten married in the first place. We just brought out the worst in each other.
I decided to break it off after my best friend (a devout catholic) told me I needed to get a divorce.