a divorce thread

yeah I dunno what's really meant by personal growth either

ps I am a man

btw I'm male

I've seen people take on more responsibility, or become better at negotiating relationships, and I guess that's personal growth of a kind...

this is def what I was getting at fwiw

also a male

i figured shakey was just talking about a mismatch of ambition. like one person hit 35 or whatever and was like, this is cool, and the other person was like, i want more of [x]

in both cases I was talking about yeah it seemed like the wife wanted to keep living (or revert back to?) their fun/glamorous/dynamic 20s or something. which seems like the opposite of growth to me but what do I know I'm just some asshole guy thinkin baout stuff

I guess I know only a few of divorced/divorcing couples.

In one, they married too young, the guy became more of an asshole than he already was, and the guy joined the navy after they got married, which she never really supported, and she hated the life (he chose to be on a sub so he was really away a lot, plus she had to live wherever). I didn't blame her at all - navy submariner wife is kind of a special situation and not what she signed up for at all, and the guy was a real dick.

In another, guy is a really good guy in a lot of ways and a stay at home dad who does an amazing job of it. But he's also failed to really look hard enough for work since he lost his job and is devoting himself to somewhat pipe dreamy projects that never go anywhere (and she doesn't really make enough money to make this work). He also got all weird while she was pregnant and started going out with women "friends", one of whom was clearly interested in him -- I don't know whether anything actually happened. OTOH since I've known them she has been a perpetually dissatisfied person about pretty much everything, and whenever I was around them she was constantly hard on him and he just took it from her. So harder to take a side there.

Neither of those fit the "coasting" narrative fwiw. In one it was the guy who drastically changed, and in the other the guy has ambition but it's somewhat unrealistic ambition.

My first divorce was because the guy spent 10 hours working with his buddies at the tv station, then would get home at 11:30 pm with all his friends/co-workers and they'd hang until 4 am, sometimes 6am. Any projects, parties, nights out, dinner, movies always involved him bringing along two or all of these guys. I felt I was married to five guys. They were at the table for Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday., his birthday...more reasons but that aspect is what sort of cracks me up now.

But my feeling is that wanting the person you're with to want to take your life together to new places can conflict with how you want your life to be. I.e. if you want the person you're with to change and grow and have ambitions and take their life new places, you also have to be prepared for the fact that those newnesses might fuck up your own plans.

that sounds bonkers tera

yeah that is

I mean did the guy refuse to stop doing this when confronted?

Because honestly I've never had any friend, male or female, who I thought got more interesting or cultivated over time.

Yeah I'm doing a terrible job of defining that, sorry. Maybe...you get interested in things that you didn't know about before, and from those new hobbies or interests you learn stuff that makes you more complex, makes more opportunities for future mental connections. Or you meet new people and from those people learn about new ways to be, that makes you more flexible or nuanced in relationships and in understanding others. Or...you realize that all your life you've had a mental or emotional block that has hurt your relationships to people or to creativity or something, so you spend some time thinking about the cause and how to grow past it or heal or w/e. You contemplate how far you've come and where you're going and adjust your mental state to strive for a healthier um attitude to the world? Just...living with an eye to these things and not to, like, what's on tv and doing the same thing tomorrow that you did today.

UGH SORRY is that vague enough?

sorry I was drinking beer and watching TV, did you say something?

I can laugh now. I had my own friends and interests and spent time with both as much as I could but that made for a roomie situation. Then I stopped hanging and was waking up when he was going to bed.

Basically you look at the pressure-points in your life where things go badly for you, sources of anger and frustration, and you either smooth them out or figure out whether they're non-negotiable and then make them the start of a new outlook on that thing.

ilx is a weird place to have this convo b/c almost everyone here is self-selecting for having a variety of interests and verbal skills and a desire to communicate & share ideas w others and all that.

He never thought he was doing anything wrong. At the time I wasn't sure he was doing anything wrong. I finally decided to stop trying to live a life together and got a 2nd job working at a thrift store on the weekends. That is how I met husband #2.

2nd divorce the guy just asked for it out of the blue after 5 years. I just bought a new chicken coop, planted a garden, a fig tree and an oak started for me by my granddad. Thought I was settled, never saw it coming. He went off his meds, was having serious issues at work...broke up the band he started, became obsessed with trying to get a new a new co-worker fired. His schemes kept blowing up in his face at work and I thought he was headed for a breakdown but not divorce.

His mother had been having "private" meetings with him and stopped talking to me a month before he asked for one. I always thought that had something to do with it. His parents lived in town and every Sunday we had to go over at 11am and would stay until 10pm. Then mid-week there was always a play or restaurant outing with them. They called him daily. ICK! This all just sickens me just recalling that time. Weird how you think you are happy in a situation like that only to realize you were just nuts.

Geeez how many times did I use "just" in that post?!

oof parent-thing is def weird

fwiw Jacob seems like an all-right dude :)

YES!

My divorce was relatively painless. We get along better now than we ever did.

Because honestly I've never had any friend, male or female, who I thought got more interesting or cultivated over time.

Yeah I'm doing a terrible job of defining that, sorry. Maybe...you get interested in things that you didn't know about before, and from those new hobbies or interests you learn stuff that makes you more complex, makes more opportunities for future mental connections. Or you meet new people and from those people learn about new ways to be, that makes you more flexible or nuanced in relationships and in understanding others. Or...you realize that all your life you've had a mental or emotional block that has hurt your relationships to people or to creativity or something, so you spend some time thinking about the cause and how to grow past it or heal or w/e. You contemplate how far you've come and where you're going and adjust your mental state to strive for a healthier um attitude to the world? Just...living with an eye to these things and not to, like, what's on tv and doing the same thing tomorrow that you did today.

UGH SORRY is that vague enough?

― check the name, no caps, boom, i'm (Laurel), Friday, 27 July 2012 22:24 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is all otm! & not super hard to get i don't think? a relationship takes more work, to be healthy, than just coexisting next to one another. & there's no reason that someone you meet when you're twenty would be someone you click with when you're thirty, because people cycle through changes for all that time. but still being curious, & still trying to evaluate what makes you happy, and whether another person is happy, and how practising what makes you happy fits with your ability to effectively relate to another person, and what would be best for a relationship directionally are all really important. this isn't an eyeroll at schlumpy guys who sit on the couch all day & let things pass by; i think it's just as easy to keep things as they are out of a deep contentment, not out of fear - out of a recognition that the status quo of a relationship is still superior to whatever you had as a single person (i remember vertiginously realising that i liked snuggling way more than i liked a bunch of the intellectual pursuits with which i'd previously filled my time), out of satisfaction. but it seems like a sensible & minimal goal to make sure that something that could ebb is nurtured, & that an affection and magnetism towards one another, an ability to relate to, & feeling of kinship & attunement towards, a partner is sustained, not just counted on. i know this sounds lecturey & this is not the secrets of my thirty-five year constant backmassaging marriage, it's from a history of a comfortable inertia that screwed things up. i just think there is a way you can be better than yourself as part of a pair, spend all your time trying harder, giving more. & some of that has to be in staying vaguely aware of the distance between working out what you need & what your relationship needs.

seems weird to marry someone with the expectation that they will later be a different person from the one you married, i dunno

― 40oz of tears (Jordan), Friday, 27 July 2012 20:43 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like this is weird to me: obviously the person will later be a different person, because you are not the same person when you are 25 as when you are 45 or 65 or whatever. even if you think that we have an immutable human core or w/e, your priorities change so much & there's no reason to assume that that's going to just naturally be in sync with a partner's development. i am sure people grow in different directions & grow apart, but wrt one person changing & the other just not, i feel like some of that rests on their inertia (whether romantically governed or w/e).

I married a divorced woman whose previous marriage had lasted ten years. Ours has now lasted 28 years. She appears to have no regrets in either case.

I was wondering what happened there, thebingo. Glad things are ok now.

I feel like I'll never get over my divorce. Barely talk to my ex now as she remarried and has a child and one on the way and is mostly living the life she wanted so it turned out ok for her. I miss her everyday. We've been apart 9 years.

Schlump and laurel otm

^^

Man, so we have our first friends who are getting divorced with child. Guy was a good stay-at-home dad but a terrible husband (got them into debt, may have cheated, failed to look for a job even though she didn't earn enough to support them, comes from a bad home, etc.), woman contributed to the problems somewhat by not wanting to make an effort to fix problems early on before they got worse, but she's doing the right thing by leaving him afaot.

But we just visited them for the first time and she has this new boyfriend (divorce hasn't even gone through yet) who is EXACTLY LIKE HER HUSBAND -- looks like him (tbh a much less good looking version) and is the same dreamy childish charmer type that will cause them the exact same problems. It was actually uncanny and creepy -- the guy has some very striking and specific similarities to her husband. The whole thing is sad and painful to see, and I feel for their three year old more than anyone, because as bad as the marriage was this guy was great with his son and in any case its his father.

One of my favorite law professors, an old guy who had been married to the same woman since he was 20, told me "A lot of people who divorce really shouldn't bother, because when they remarry they just marry their exes again."

My sis never got divorced but she was with someone long enough it might as well have been -- and her ex ended up marrying someone who looked a LOT like her.

painful subject

We were kind of debating whether to give her a "what the hell are you doing?" talk. BF was a nice enough guy (although he was so obviously on his best behavior to impress his divorcing gf's old friends that it was hard to tell), but he was basically a jobless artsy dreamer type with probably a lot of the same personality flaws as the husband. Like, if money and responsibility were huge problems in your marriage WHY ARE YOU DATING SOMEONE WITH THE SAME PROBLEMS BEFORE EVEN FINISHING THE DIVORCE? If not for there being a toddler in the picture I'd probaby leave it alone but.

that sucks, hurting. i'd do the talk, but that's me as an outside observer.

Guy was a good stay-at-home dad but a terrible husband (got them into debt, may have cheated, failed to look for a job even though she didn't earn enough to support them, comes from a bad home, etc.)

First three i understand, but "comes from a bad home"? Please tell me you don't hold that against him.

I come from a bad home too. Good thing I'm not married since I'd make a shit husband evidently....

yeah I think my wife said something gentle along the lines of "take it slow."

Sorry about the "bad home" comment, didn't come out right. My dad came from a difficult family situation too and he's a great dad and husband. With this guy it's a little more complicated -- it's not just that he has bad male role models but that his crazy family is still around and messing with things and causing her problems.

no prob, i understand. It's just that if you've grown up in a dysfunctional family (or are close to someone who has), it stings when i hear or read things like that. I've had employers, potential dates, and others not want anything to do with me because they were skittish about my background, things that were done by other people and were completely out of my control.

Isn't dating similar people fairly common?

A friend of mine came back into town once after breaking up with his girlfriend. He came up to my apartment with this girl and I had to take him aside and say, "I thought you broke up with so-and-so." And he says, "I did. That's not her!" They looked and talked almost identically.

I'll cop to dating the same kind of girl over and over. Sunny's the only one who's not like the others and that's likely the reason we've stuck together.

One of my favorite law professors, an old guy who had been married to the same woman since he was 20, told me "A lot of people who divorce really shouldn't bother, because when they remarry they just marry their exes again."

― bert yansh (Hurting 2), Monday, August 20, 2012 2:47 PM (4 hours ago)

i know someone who is currently doing that exactly

my best friend called a couple weeks ago, i knew she had some news, was super anxious all day that she was gonna tell me she was pregnant - but it turned out she had finally left her awful husband! so happy for her. unfortunately, it happened the same week a v v close relative died, she is having a rough time of it. probably didn't help that one of the last things her childless aunt said to her was basically "my dying wish is that you hurry up and have a baby".

i am sorry that her aunt died, but ugh that is a bullshit thing to say

yeah i had to refrain from commenting on that - they were v close, esp because her family life has/is pretty fucked up, her aunt was like a mother to her. but that kind of pressure is bullshit. idk i think the net result was good - my friend's marriage had been fucked for a long time, but she wasn't able to make a decision and the husb was pressuring her for babies so she'd gone off the pill as was counting days in her cycle and avoiding sex when necessary (so crazy!!!) - but when her aunt said the above, it made her realise that for real she had to get out bc she did not want this man's kids, ever.

First three i understand, but "comes from a bad home"?

Sadly, he's on target. There are exceptions (my dad) but having to carry that background, it is very difficult to shake it off. Even my dad is still suffering from it. And even though he's a really great dad (and I guess husband, though my mom would sometimes vehemently disagree), there are influences from the past that trickle through.

I hope I never divorce, I really have a great husband. Sure we sometimes have problems. But I guess one thing I learned from my parents: even having terrible periods, sticking together is the best.

One sad thing is seeing how many people divorce these days and so quickly. Yikes. My kids are (or rather were) in kindergarten and there already you have so many parents who are divorced. I mean, shit, that is so sad. Some kids really suffer immensely from it. :-(

i hope i never get divorced either but not so sure sticking together is always best. our parents had a long happy marriage but both my siblings got divorced. my sister and her husband split up acrimoniously, were divorced for five years, and then got back together! they now seem happier than they ever were before, like they worked out whatever had plagued them during the first 15 years of marriage. their kids, early teens then college now, seemed bemused by the split but they've always been reserved/quiet types. my brother otoh got married young and divorced after 13 years. he and his wife seemed miserable during the last few years of their marriage and instantly became easier to deal with, like a weight had been lifted. their kids were younger and the split affected them negatively afaict, even though their parents remained a united front and didn't put their 2 daughters between them. both are in their 20s now, doing well, maintaining healthy relationships w/both parents. my brother's ex re-married (to an old hippie-totally out of character) while he remains single and seems to have given up on dating. but he's not pining away, that's for sure.

bottom line is they were both lucky, cause divorce is devastating and should be avoided but it doesn't have to be a death sentence

I hate to sound all family-first conservative, but I think a lot of people don't take the vows of marriage seriously enough -- there's this tendency to constantly happiness-check and love-check -- "Do I still feel it? Am I satisfied? Am I getting what I want?" that I think pushes people apart more quickly. IMO a lot of the POINT of marriage is that you agree to stick out bad periods and down periods and periods where you're not head-over-heels and periods where you're not 100% satisfied (not to mention periods of financial difficulty, stress, illness, etc.) -- that's what commitment means. You agree to do that because it strengthens both of you and your children as well. Of course there are toxic situations that don't strengthen people at all, and there are problems that don't deserve working through, and there are scenarios where one partner doesn't even want to TRY to work out problems. But there are also ways in which bad feelings about a marriage can be reflexive -- the more you think about what you're not getting, the more dissatisfied you get, the more resentful you become, the less willing you become to try to work with your partner to find solutions, etc.

I think a lot of people don't take the vows of marriage seriously enough

i agree - my friend mentioned above should never have gotten married in the first place but
1. her husband made a really elaborate proposal that she later admitted she wanted to say no to but didn't have the guts
2. there was a major incident of his assholery about a month before their wedding, but she refused to call it off because it was her "only chance" at a "fairy tale wedding".

dear god

yeah i love my friend, she is one of the best ppl i know, but when she told me all this stuff i was like.... WHAT ARE YOU DOING. but there were some other factors at play, too.

but she also pulled some asshole moves of her own, in order to engineer this final separation - she couldn't pull the trigger on making a final decision about staying with him or leaving, so she did some pretty dickish stuff so ensure it would happen.

that's really sad, must be a lot harder to watch when it's a close friend

Most "fairy tale weddings" in my experience are indeed a fairy tale, but in the wrong sense

I think a lot of people don't take the vows of marriage seriously enough

For sure. Just about every married couple in my family has separated or divorced in the last couple years (and most of the rest have ended because of death). Between that and having a relationship that seemed headed towards marriage blow up in my own face...well, 'gunshy' is too weak a word. People just don't seem inclined to stick it out anymore. Probably part of the fallout of living in a society that promotes an illusion of infinite options.