Someone else on the boards mentioned this recently, but I just can't believe how easy it can be to get divorced! I want to recap the process:
Saturday, 3/13 - Mr. A told me he was seeing a lawyer on Monday.
Monday, 3/15 - Mr. A met with his lawyer for the first time and his petition for divorce was filed on that day.
Wednesday, 3/24 - I went into Mr. A's L's office to sign that I had received the petition. Otherwise I would have been served somewhere else. Had I not submitted an answer to the petition, that could have been the very last of it for me and we would have been D'd on 5/15 or the soonest available court date thereafter.
I did submit an answer, so we were ordered for a pretrial conference.
Wednesday, 5/12 - Mr. A, Mr. A's L and I met with the judicial attorney (Juliet). She scheduled our final divorce decree for 6/23 and told us to get mediation in the interim. We went to the Dispute Resolution Center, which is a local nonprofit mediation place that gets tons of referrals from that court, and put our names on the waiting list. BUT - it's a long waiting list and so we didn't get mediation (or even get scheduled for mediation) before 6/23.
Wednesday, 6/23 - We went to court for our final hearing and met again with Juliet. She was irritated that we hadn't gotten mediation. She gave us the choice of working it out right then and there in a conference room down the hall or scheduling mediation asap and coming back once more to finalize. We opted for the latter. She scheduled mediation for us (because they actually take her calls!).
FUTURE:
Monday, 7/12 - Mr. A and I will go to mediation and work out a separation agreement and both sign it.
Friday, 7/28 - We will bring our separation agreement to court and our divorce will be finalized.
UGH! It's hard enough for my brain to keep up with all this, let alone my emotions!!
Gardener, you're very wise. I'm stuck right now! I'm having a really hard time being all business. I see Mr. A and I get all mushy instead! I am a glutton for punishment.
All I'll say right now about our meeting in court is that I gave a LOT more emotionally to Mr. A than he gave to me.
But thank goodness I didn't give a THING financially!
Mrs. A--are you disappointed that it was postponed?
Hi NM,
Truth be told, I was incredibly relieved that it was postponed. I know we're just putting off the inevitable, but I was really happy about it. But I sure didn't let that on to Mr. A!!!
Remember the part in DR when they tell you to keep a solutions journal? They say to write down your immediate reaction and then write down your reaction a few days later.
Well, it's so funny how that works. The day that this all happened, I was feeling like Mr. A was so stoic and blocked. And in a way that made it easier to feel like we need to break apart. Like totally implode or explode, whatever.
But now that a couple of days have gone by, I remember another part. Before Mr. A's L got there and we all went in to see the judicial attorney, it was just Mr. A and me. He was sitting and I was standing in front of him, facing him. Normally in a situation like that, we probably would have been holding each others' hands. Obviously we weren't.
But still, Mr. A gave me this look that I love. It's a look I've seen a thousand times. It's the "I'm leaning on you" look.
Rationally, I know Mr. A can't lean on me anymore. But he has the most beautiful watery blue eyes. When I think about that look - just a couple of days ago now - I think this is all so WRONG!!!
I've read a lot about detachment, but how do you detach from THAT????
It just seems like you shouldn't get D'd unless the connection is gone - and for us, it's not.
Mrs. A....... you have another month before it is all done?
Other than the look you received from Mr. A "I'm leaning on you" have you had any other hint that he isn't sure?
Have you talked to Mr. A at all outside of the courtroom?
Is there an OW? I can't remember now!
OK I am not going to be cruel and try to convince you that there is hope if there isn't. I just wonder what your H's hurry is.
Honestly, please take a critical look at your marriage, were the 2 of you not abusive to one another? If he was, or you were, then I strongly oppose reuniting. Did you fight all the time? Did you spend more time apart than together? Were you miserable? Was he?
me,34 exH,34 S,16 months S:3/31/09-left for OW started DBing 10/09 d final: sometime 10/10 current: http://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2022856&page=1 met in 2004
You ask excellent questions and, to me, the answers are no.
Mr. A and I had a ton of external stressors when he left. But no - we were not abusive, we didn't fight all the time, we DID spend too much time apart, and I wasn't miserable. But I guess maybe he was.
Mr. A and I dated and lived together a long time before we got married. We both have divorced parents - so we said, Why get married? That doesn't guarantee anything! (Haha - so ironic to think of now.)
But then we came to a point where we wanted to get married. At least I did. And Mr. A said he did.
For the first maybe 8 months, it was awesome. We were so excited to finally be legit! It didn't seem that different to us (so I thought), but it was amazing how differently people treated us!
Then life got more complicated and everything went downhill. I'll write more about it in another post.
But, basically, Mr. A has been throwing me crumbs almost this whole time (since he left), and I've been living off them. He pulls away and then he comes back. Or maybe I'm just interpreting it like that.
NM, I will write more when my head is clearer. My WH confuses the hell out of me. But my sister asked me the other day, Would you want to date him if you just met him for the first time today? And the answer is yes!
Aargh. Ok, more later. Thanks, NM, for your food for thought!!!!
All I'll say right now about our meeting in court is that I gave a LOT more emotionally to Mr. A than he gave to me.
But thank goodness I didn't give a THING financially!
Yeah, it can be hard not to. Especially when you're the only one who has expended any - so much - effort to save what you once held so sear. MW-D says it only takes one to save a marriage. I respectfully - and adamantly - disagree. Hang in there.
Gardener
"My soul, be satisfied with flowers, With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them In the one garden you may call your own." Cyrano deBergerac
BA, thank you! TC was wonderful and, I must admit, knowing how things will go the next time around does make it easier. How are things with you?
P.S. I'm going to rely on you to bring up Michigan football every time the going gets really tough!
More than happy to obliged - I bleed maize and blue and can't wait for football season to start. Richy boy better start putting some W's in his resume or he's going to join the unfortunately large ranks of the Michigan unemployed!
Hope you've had a good weekend. I spend mine camping in the Harper's Ferry area of West Virginia and then dropped my daughters off at a 2 week horse camp. Needless to say they are happy and well I'm just a smidgen lonely.
Sorry for the long hiatus. I'm going to spend the evening winding down and catching up with threads.
BA, I agree with what you said about "Richy boy" (LOL!) and I definitely hear you on the lonely thing too - but I'm not with you tonight! I'm happy to be by myself tonight after a LOT of people time (mostly with my mom and sister) since last Wednesday.
And Gardener, thanks - so much - for your support. I hope you managed to salvage a portion of your Sunday. I'll catch up on your thread in a minute.
I don't know what kind of funkiness is swirling around in the universe (or in my own head!) but I've had a hell of a week!
I got home from court ready to go to Lake Michigan and the passenger's side door wouldn't close. This is just one of those sucky inconveniences, but I lost it. In the meantime, though, I really threw a tantrum.
Ok, now I'm just going to vent:
Then we made a quick trip to Traverse City, which was wonderful, but it was not cool to know I had an un-drive-able car waiting for me at home and I had to work on Friday morning.
The vacation afterglow was pretty much canceled out by my frantically trying - for hours - to get the car door fixed on Thursday night. That didn't happen, but at least it got bungee corded well enough to still be staying shut.
I won't go into details, but I started getting sick on Saturday and ended up going to the emergency room on Sunday. Turned out I had an internal abscess that needed to be drained pronto, so they did it.
It was minor surgery but it was my first surgery ever and I got all drugged up and sick. So I had to call in to work yesterday.
I had to go back to the doctor yesterday anyway for a follow up visit and then I went to see my IC (thank goodness!). Then my mom and sister ended up spending the night again.
Today it was a mad rush to work, then a really nice golf outing with my work friend, Erica. Bad game (as usual) but good company.
Erica and I have worked together for going on seven years. We have a really good personal relationship and very different work styles, so sometimes we butt heads. Also, since we've known each other for so long, we sometimes delve too deeply into the personal realm.
I've been really concerned about telling Erica about Mr. A because I thought she might barrage me with questions and opinions. And I've been working all this time to stay hopeful, open-minded, and compassionate, so I didn't want to backtrack in my conversation with her.
It went MUCH better than I expected. I did trash talk Mr. A a little bit - and so did she - but she really came through for me. She didn't make any judgments and she was overall very positive. Also, she didn't make it the only topic of conversation and we managed to play golf at the same time!
So yay, Erica! And yay, me! What a relief.
The problem is that I need to do my "intake" with the mediation coordinator tomorrow, and I'm having a hard time focusing. I had phone coaching with Jody a month ago to figure out what I'd say; now I don't even want to think about it. Or court last week.
At the risk of sounding metaphysical, it's like, why is all this stuff happening now?? I need to focus.
