I divorced because I realized that my alcoholic husband would never hit bottom as long as I was holding him afloat. And I wasn’t about to let everything I’d worked for go down with him. He completely owns up to his responsibility for the death of our marriage.
In retrospect, I should have seen that coming before we were married. But, in the honeymoon period, I believed him when he said he would change. Once I could see a bit clearer, I knew he wasn’t capable of changing regardless of how much he may want it.
I assure it is quite possible to date successfully without drinking.
I suspect my ex does blame me for not being his soulmate - more critically, for not letting him be who he was.
He and his soulmate have been married fifteen years or better. They have (or have had at times) an open relationship which appears to work for both of them better than a traditional marriage. And, to be fair, I was offered part in a group marriage rather than divorce. And I’m the one who hired the attorney and filed. So it is my fault and I’ll take all the blame for my marriage ending.
Another one for never should have married him in the first place. I was young and stupid. I take total blame and in fact I felt so guilty that I left only after he gave me permission to go. I also left him with all of our marital assets. Didn’t feel right taking anything.
First husband was a four month mistake. I knew it almost immediately but it took him cheating on me with a 14 year old to send me back home to mama.
Second husband. . . we hadn’t had many good years of the seven we were together but it was getting comfortable. We were just so incompatible we never really did anything together and we constantly bickered about every little thing. It’s how we communicated. When we first got together we worked together and it seemed good enough. I don’t ask for much. I probably would have stayed like this forever. But then one night my best friend and I went to see a movie called American Beauty. I realized I felt an affinity for the father. When I got home we argued because I was running late. He was extremely suspicious and constantly accused me of cheating (it was the furthest thing from my mind actually) and I just kept thinking of how crappy our life was together and how I just didn’t want to be this bored with life anymore. By morning I realized it was divorce or suicide, and he was gone by that afternoon. And that was that.
I wonder if, in the future, lifelong fidelity might be a ridiculous notion from the past?
No, hear me out.
Life expectancies are decades longer than they once were. People don’t live simply to procreate and hand off to the next generation. Our notions of gay relationships have changed. I seriously wonder if, in say 50 years or 100 years, the notion of life-long commitment won’t be challenged.
I wonder if in 100 years we’ll be shaking our heads about people promising to stay with each other FOREVER! Personally, I think the idea is noble. But the divorce rate would indicate that, really, we’re not hard-wired for such an existence.
I think raising the kids is more a collaborative effort; you’re both doing things for them. I was in college in LA for 2 years and so I spent some time with them, they were both extremely dedicated parents. It was something I really noticed. But I think retirement is about what they each want to do, so in a way it’s about much *more *negotiation than ever before because it’s that much more subjective.
My aunt, from what I can tell from my cousins, is somewhat unhappy. The 3 kids are still living at home (2 in college 1 in grad school) though they sold the house during the divorce and are renting. The divorce I know for sure was her idea. So it’s like she has 1/2 the money without any concept of how to manage it (the kids have free college thru her). I can’t say for sure they’d get back together; my uncle, while totally and undoubtedly faithful during their marriage, obviously fucked a lot of women immediately afterwards and there are all these botoxed 50ish divorcees posting on his Facebook wall. I think he mostly regrets not having his former role as a father in the same house, if that makes sense. I think she regrets the looming truth of not being able to afford LA but very much so being enamored with the lifestyle, and didn’t realize all that he “took care of” for them.
My friends’ parents are a lot older like mine are and are somewhat well off so a handful of them are planning to retire soon (before 60) or are slowing down their businesses/practices/etc. A few of my friends confessed the troubles in their parents’ marriages because of the kids leaving the nest and impending retirement. (Usually the woman wants to travel/stop working/do something else and the guy wants to keep working. Even if they make the same amount of $). It’s like the early years of your marriage/cohabitation all over again, but with much more money and far more options. It seems a lot tougher than raising kids to me; there is no wrong answer.
ETA: Leaffan, I think in the future if there are no tax breaks/health insurance benefits for married couples that people will just marry to have kids (gay couples included, though I imagine many will still marry to solidify their bond) and then part ways post kids but pair up with other people down the road.
Red Stilettos, I’m sorry if I offended you. I have maybe 2 drinks every 2 weeks, so I’m not even qualified as a “light” drinker by my doctor. I just know that so many dates start with dinner/drinks that it must be tough (as he’s confirmed) to date without drinking. I didn’t mean to insinuate it wasn’t possible, just harder.
I don’t think so. But I do think that people are cut out for different things - some for fairly lifelong monogamy, some for serial monogamy, some for a period of “sowing their oats” following which they settle down. Some for no monogamy at all. I suspect that what will happen is that the age of first marriage will get pushed out (its been happening) and the promiscuity of youth will become accepted (I think it is - especially in your twenties - we don’t approve of promiscuous fifteen year olds, but unmarried 23 year olds are assumed to be sexually active.) As you push marriage out, I think you gain more grown up notions of what a marriage partnership will be like.
I’m divorced, but I’m cut out for a lifelong marriage. But it takes two people to do that. You can’t only have one person committed to the idea. It pretty much took him moving in with his girlfriend before I filed for divorce. And then - he was shocked. He assumed that I really was in it 'til death do us part…even if he was living with someone else (and charging up my credit cards). I still remember the hurt call I got when he was served with divorce papers. (His reality was at a slight angle to consensus reality - picture a Venn diagram with enough overlap that you aren’t insane, but enough separation that you think living with your girlfriend will be hunky dory with your wife).
If anything, the divorce rate proves that some people are willing to stick with their spouse forever - not everyone, but enough people. We went to the 50th wedding anniversary of my husband’s aunt and uncle two years ago.
The only divorced relative of mine is my mother’s sister, who shouldn’t have married that dude in the first place: we can come up with 3 reasons it’s null under RCC rules without even cracking the Catechism open. I’m glad I got to have the cousins she got from that first marriage, but seriously… the trigger for the divorce was basically the approval of the new civil code allowing it: at that point, Auntie was still unable to “defy authority”, so she would never have considered those options available pre-divorce-law, such as “fuck off, I’m moving out”. As soon as divorce got approved, the lightbulb went on and boy did it shine brightly.
during the divorce proceedings, my aunt’s first husband claimed that he’d been forced to marry her. So, we know he blames her for the marriage.
Our family and his sisters:
His mom: beaming.
Yes, he’d been forced to marry her because she wouldn’t put out otherwise, you see. In 1966 in Barcelona, oh my gosh, this chick wouldn’t put out! (Neither she nor the immense majority, ok? It’s like complaining that you’re in a mid-western town in 1959 and this chick wears ankle socks)
I understand that detail is what led the judge to grant her clean title on the flat.
Several years after the divorce, my cousin ran into him: she’d been idealizing him since the divorce (aunt had had a string of boyfriends, then found one who was father material like I’m a brahma bull), thought the reason they never got to see him was that aunt wouldn’t let him (no, he’d specifically chosen no visitation and tried to use that as an excuse to avoid child support… the judge gave him the metaphorical finger) - she was SO happy to see him! He pushed her back, claimed he didn’t have any daughters. “Aren’t you ?” “Yes. And neither you nor that other brat of hers are mine.” (The boy looks exactly like Daddy Dearest… well, buffer, he rows).
Such a lovely, lovely guy. Auntie is no jewel, but her taste in men blows.
Leaffan, I’ve heard similar ideas (a return to handfasting? We’re already returning to “old-style” marriages, where everybody knows those two are a couple but they don’t have papers) from quite a few people - most are practicing Catholics, most with at least 50 years’ worth of marriage on their backs.
My ex was a whackjob. I once bought her a dozen roses for Valentines Day, and she flew into a rage because they had no smell, as if somehow that was my fault. When she left the room, I snipped the blooms off and ground them up in the garbage disposal, leaving the stems in a vase of water. Those thorny, flowerless stems were emblematic of our marriage.
Would it be against the spirit of this thread to ask for more details? I really don’t want to pick at a scab, but this piques my curiosity. In particular, I want to know if this all occurred after the marriage, or if there was foreshadowing prior to the marriage.
My husband’s first wife didn’t want to marry him (she was going to jilt him but her mother talked her into going through with the wedding, the night before) and spent the whole marriage trying to get him to file for divorce by cheating, quitting jobs, spending a lot of money on crazy stuff without telling him, and being plain mean. He finally told her that they were going to have to get divorced when she announced that from that point onward she was going to actively seek out other sexual partners, instead of just cheating on the sly.
Faults on my husband’s side probably include an unwillingness to file for divorce earlier and set them both free (due to his perception of family and community pressure to stay married no matter what), falling too easily into a caretaker/forgiver/martyr role, and having a thin skin. Of course, I wasn’t there, these are my guesses based on what he’s said and what I know about him. Mutual friends of theirs who I know now say that she was a very messed up person. Probably she didn’t file for divorce earlier because he was so good at taking care of life’s mundane details, which she was very bad at handling.
The future is now. I, however, am a bit of an anachronism. My marriage could have worked if the central vow of our ceremony had been observed: Mutual Respect. I refused to get divorced just because of the infidelity. The lack of respect that allowed the infidelity, I tried to endure that, too. But the everyday nagging, and picking and tearing me down finally made it impossible for me to uphold my vow of respect and I took the marriage out back and put a bullet in its head. In retrospect, she never respected me as a person so in my mind it was a marriage of 1 for nearly 16 years.
Current marriage? We’ve both been around the block a few times so we know who and what each other are. No surprises in the 2 1/2 years we’ve been together.
But I agree with you. People grow and change even after they get married. If people would drop the notion of “Til Death Do Us Part” then divorce wouldn’t have to be so traumatic in so many cases. Misbehaving spouses, however, will always be a hurtful problem.
We met and dated in college (and were both older students). He proposed, and we discussed our plans for the future. They involved working hard and buying a house…pretty standard stuff.
What I didn’t realize until after the wedding was that he had no intention of working hard, or at all. He quit or was fired from every job he had after a few weeks or months. Then he’d spend months not even looking for work. He got fired from a civil service job. Fired. Not even transferred to the parking authority, fired.
I believe there is unrecognized and therefore untreated mental illness there. When I was going through the divorce I expressed that to a friend saying, “but he’s sick. I wouldn’t divorce him if he had cancer.” She said , “You would if he wouldn’t get help.”
I have no idea what he actually blieves. I know he told his parents and anyone else who would listen that I was having a variety of affairs, including one with my boss, and that I was leaving him to be with another man.
In truth, when I said “If you don’t get a job and stop spending money we don’t have I can’t stay with you” I had hoped he would “see the light”, get a job and stop spending money we didn’t have so we could live happily ever after, buy a house, have another kid and get a dog. Didn’t happen that way.
