A promise is a promise. Too many people think it’s the only way anymore. Unless one of you is so abusive it’s putting the other’s life in danger, divorce is a selfish bail out that affects everyone else’s lives around you (especially your kids).
A promise is a promise. Too many people think it’s the only way anymore. Unless one of you is so abusive it’s putting the other’s life in danger, divorce is a selfish bail out that affects everyone else’s lives around you (especially your kids).
12345654321 wrote:
my parents got divorced when I was 6 and neither moved out. I spent at least 5 yrs of my life thinking that they would get back together and it absolutely broke my heart that it didn't work. Whatever you do, make it clear that the relationship is over.
I never realized living together after a divorce was so common. It makes no sense to me. Don't people divorce because they don't want to share a life together? After the divorce do they just live as roommates? That sounds like a miserable situation.
It makes more sense to separate before a divorce. A trial separation provides some distance and perspective to make a life-changing decision.
Yeah, I mean I guess you could do the old Bill n Hilary thing and have "an agreement" but that just seems really messy. Why do that if you aren't public figures?
What other person would want to get involved with that situation? What woman is OK being the gf to a married guy? There is NO upside to that long term.
I went through something like this ten years with my two oldest kid's mother. Took seven years to finally get the courts to put her in her place.
1) Do not concede anything at the beginning. Fight for full custody of the kids. Fight foe the house, cars, other major assets. Go after her for child support. Once you start conceding things, it will go downhill very fast. Get more than 50/50 custody so you will get 100% of your tax return for claiming the kids.
2) The family courts are biased towards the mother. You will feel like a second class human being in front of the family court judge. Get a good lawyer and push for the win. Dont concede anything.
3) Save all text messages, emails, etc from your ex. Anytime she skips out on taking her time with the kids, the courts need to know.
4) Move on with your life. Set up your personal life to evolve around the kids - put them in a good school district, get a job to work around their schedules, etc.
I won in family court. I essentially have 100% custody of my kids now. I didnt lose a house, car or ever pay a cent in child support. I have a house, a wife with a couple more kids, a job that has easy hours, get a huge tax refund, kids go to the best school in the area, and the kids run and do their other sports without any issues.
Going thru this sorta..
1. Gold standards: don't move out, don't hide money, don't burn money, you will get screwed.
2. Spend time and money on getting advice for legal stuff, divorce laws, and tax laws. Stuff like community property, separate property, alimony, custody, investments, retirement all come into play. For example, the house being in your name does not matter in a community property state. You needed to buy the house as separate property before the marriage. But even then , if marital assets went into paying a mortgage, she is then entitled to a small amount of equity . Mind boggling stuff...
I spent several hundred getting good estimates from these type of professionals. Think of it as doing your homework before the show down.
3. Protect yourself. Life will get petty and emotional. Don't get physically or verbally or emotionally abusive or make her feel threatened. A restraining order means you loose the house. A police call means you loose your job or need to step away from your company..
4. Keep running. It will keep you grounded.
sleepy peeper wrote:
I never realized living together after a divorce was so common. It makes no sense to me. Don't people divorce because they don't want to share a life together? After the divorce do they just live as roommates? That sounds like a miserable situation.
My now ex-wife actually proposed this..and we didn't even have kids together!
Yung Buck wrote:
Wow, this thread is eye opening. I just finished school last year, I’m pretty young, (23) so I can’t really give advice to the OP but as a young non married person I can say that I’m using this as a cautionary tale. Dating wise and Marriage wise I guess people really surprise you. I had a few friends get cheated on and their girlfriends seemed so innocent and I honestly didn’t even see them as the type to hook up with a lot of guys. I guess you really don’t know people, Dating wise I like many others struggle with putting people on a pedestal, when you’re very attracted to someone you often imagine themselves as a better version of a person then they actually are.
Women in their peak SMV years just slay guys that end up being emotionally attached to them. I think any man who marries needs to be at peace that the average woman can and will torpedo the relationship at any time while ensuring the marriage arrangement leads to a minimally painful exit during the divorce proceedings and division of assets. In other words, make sure your female partner works and is comparably positioned financially going into the marriage contract.
sleepy peeper wrote:
12345654321 wrote:
my parents got divorced when I was 6 and neither moved out. I spent at least 5 yrs of my life thinking that they would get back together and it absolutely broke my heart that it didn't work. Whatever you do, make it clear that the relationship is over.
I never realized living together after a divorce was so common. It makes no sense to me. Don't people divorce because they don't want to share a life together? After the divorce do they just live as roommates? That sounds like a miserable situation.
It makes more sense to separate before a divorce. A trial separation provides some distance and perspective to make a life-changing decision.
80% of divorces between college educated couples are initiated by women. I think women go through a fairly common life experience up until and through their mid to late 30s which prompts a lot of divorces and destabilizes families. They hit their sexual peak at around 18-20 and are inundated with male and even female attention for the next decade before usually settling down with a guy who checks enough provider check boxes. However, I think these women, especially if they have high notch counts from their young, beautiful, carefree days, do not gracefully handle the transition into family life and the lack of sexually charged excitement. Plus, they're usually older, chubbier, and less satisfied with themselves by this point. I think at this point it is all too easy for these women to blame their partner for their unhappiness and it is at this point they begin to look for a way to exit the relationship.
As for men, the peak years don't come until around 30 because no one cares about young men traditionally. It is only after experience, and by virtue of that, wisdom and competency are gained that people care about men. Too many men marry the first kind of cute girl who returns their texts during their early to mid twenties only to have the rug pulled out from under them 5-10 years later.
IAgravelrunner wrote:
A promise is a promise. Too many people think it’s the only way anymore. Unless one of you is so abusive it’s putting the other’s life in danger, divorce is a selfish bail out that affects everyone else’s lives around you (especially your kids).
I HIGHLY HIGHLY disagree with this answer.
Do not make any attempts to stay married to someone who does not want to be with you.
My parents stayed together ‘for the kids.’ It taught me that relationships are normally filled with resentment, arguments, belittling, fights, and basically hating one another. It took years of therapy to understand that that wasn’t a healthy relationship.
Children model their behaviors on their parents. Being in a house with two parental units who do not want to be together is NOT beneficial to them.
red pill truth bombs wrote:
Yung Buck wrote:
Wow, this thread is eye opening. I just finished school last year, I’m pretty young, (23) so I can’t really give advice to the OP but as a young non married person I can say that I’m using this as a cautionary tale. Dating wise and Marriage wise I guess people really surprise you. I had a few friends get cheated on and their girlfriends seemed so innocent and I honestly didn’t even see them as the type to hook up with a lot of guys. I guess you really don’t know people, Dating wise I like many others struggle with putting people on a pedestal, when you’re very attracted to someone you often imagine themselves as a better version of a person then they actually are.
Women in their peak SMV years just slay guys that end up being emotionally attached to them. I think any man who marries needs to be at peace that the average woman can and will torpedo the relationship at any time while ensuring the marriage arrangement leads to a minimally painful exit during the divorce proceedings and division of assets. In other words, make sure your female partner works and is comparably positioned financially going into the marriage contract.
So why even get married then lol
You shouldn't. Marriage in its current legal format should die. I'm married and love my wife but I know the rug can be pulled at anytime. What I'm struggling with is how I can convey to my boys that marriage is an unnecessary risk to take in life.
As long as you can f*ck her anytime ya want. If not then hell no. Honestly this is stupid af. Use one of your brains at least. The kids will not benefit this I promise you. Parents that just act like roommates is no good.
Family life! I think marriage is still important for family life. Having a stable house, having a dad to guide me into manhood. A mom to teach me about love and all the gooey stuff. It's worth it.
Modern living makes it so hard to have a successful marriage.
Income disparity between spouses make one pretty vulnerable for financial losses. But then again, if you intended to support that person. They are just taking that "support money" with them. Unfortunately, divorcing is not all or nothing. Some states are...
Just recognize that making up with her is a better solution all around than living in the same house while divorcing or splitting for good, because it is affordable and the long run consequences for the kids will be much, much better than the other two alternatives. It is possible. But you'll have to determine whether she has been having an affair or has one in the works. My assumption is that that is the case, because women generally speaking do not leave without an iron in the fire. The usual short-term consequences in the children are anger, depression, bad behavior at home and at school, poor grades, fights, earlier sex and drug use, and poverty--kids after divorce are 5 times more likely to live in poverty. There are lifelong emotional scars.
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Here are other long term effects:
"1. Enduring Consequences
Unlike the experience of divorced former spouses, a child’s suffering does not reach its peak at the divorce and then level off. Rather, the effect of the parents’ divorce can affect children for years to come. 1) For instance, an Australian parliamentary study tracked children whose parents divorced in 1946, and tested them two and three decades later. Even 30 years after the divorce, negative long-term repercussions still clearly affected the income, health, and behavior of many of the grown children, and increased their risk for depression.2) As Paul Amato writes, “Though some adults and children adjust relatively quickly to divorce…others exhibit long-term deficits in functioning.”3) Children’s well-being over the long term is determined by circumstances both prior to and after their parents’ divorce.4)
1.1 Intergenerational Effects
Divorce has a profound intergenerational effect. One study showed that “ever-divorced grandparents live significantly farther away from the parent and grandchild…report a weaker relationship with the parent…and are more likely to be part of a family system where both generations have divorced (13 [percent] vs. 3 [percent]).”5)
Paul Amato and Jacob Cheadle studied the long-reaching effects of divorce across three generations and found that “[d]ivorce in the first generation (G1) was associated with lower education, more marital discord, weaker ties with mothers, and weaker ties with fathers in the third generation (G3). These associations were mediated by family characteristics in the middle generation (G2), including lower education, more marital discord, more divorce, and greater tension in the early parent-child relationships.”6) This study demonstrates that parental divorce has consequences for children and subsequent generations. Amato and Cheadle also reported in this study that “[p]arental divorce doubled the odds of divorce” in the child’s own life.7)"
Had a good friend in a similar situation who did something he called nesting. It was very positive for both he and his wife and more importantly their two elementary-aged kids.
He rented a townhome and he and his ex-wife would rotate from the condo to the house every week so that the kids' home and schedule never changed and the parents took on that burden. Parents were able to live their private lives. Kids kept some resemblance of a home life and stability/predictability. Kids weren't confused on the arrangement nor future. A couple key things I remember from their arrangement:
1) They had a very amicable break up. Both were prepared to do anything to lessen the impact on the kids.
2) He was the main breadwinner and thus paid most of the expenses to pull this off. He said it was well worth the sacrifice but he struggled financially through it.
3) They had a transition date arranged where he would take full ownership of the house, wife would move out. Transition date was when both kids were through with elementary school (about 2 years).
4) They set ground rules. Not sure of all of them but definitely remember any outside relationships occurred during townhouse time.
5) They still did agreed upon things as a family. Like Sunday dinners every once in a while. Husband/wife were never really close again and both remarried. But they kept this going well into their kids' high school.
6) All of the above was agreed upon and in writing via a divorce attorney and (I'm assuming) part of their divorce arrangement.
x1M
...been through this. Know you will heal and find happiness again.
Why in the hell any sane man would marry nowadays is beyond me. You basically let society guilt you into signing a contract where you can lose your life. No different than the white feather campaign during WW1.
She is with someone new, and keeping you around as a backup plan.
Make sures she pays rent
StevePrefonDead wrote:
Consult an attorney immediately.
Do not move out. You will lose leverage with the judge in regards to custody and asset disbursement. She can move out if she is that miserable.
Do not engage in arguments with her. Assume you are being recorded at all times. Do not post anything about this on social media and block her for your own mental well-being.
This will be the most critical period of your life. Run more, eat well, drink less. Stay alert and motivated. You are playing chess now.
This is absolutely fabulous advice; keep your emotions in check and think hard about any moves you make. How this is resolved will impact your life for nearly two decades at a bare minimum.