Feel like I'm living the movie Groundhog Day...

[workinghardguy]

It seems you aren't giving her more space than she is looking for, but instead the minimal space she can tolerate easily. When she gets that minimal space, she gets a bit friendlier, that's all.

Hmmm... that's some pretty good insight... I think you're on to something. I would say it varies... some days I give her all the space she can handle (so much that she comes seeking me) but other days I respond too quickly and thus we end up locked together. Today for example... lots of texts and emails about financial stuff. I've purposely been very responsive with anything she needs access to so she can see that I want her to get what she needs to get out since that's what she wants. Now, about five minutes ago, she just called to chat. WTF? So I show her how much I am willing to hold the door open and she wants to stand in the open door and chat. BTW... I just cut her off and said I had to get to work and ended the call, though I wish I had simply not answered. Still trying to untrain myself...


Unfortunately there really isn't a way to have her move out now and get us to the point where this works. That $400/month simply means we will actually be able to get ourselves debt free by June.

She has no desire to get out before Christmas. The kids don't know at this point, and neither of us want to drop this on them at Christmas time. While we may look back at this Christmas with pain, I would think that dropping this on them right at Christmas would make the holiday sour for a very long time. Even her C and my C have said moving out now is a terrible idea because of how it would link the trauma of the split and the holidays in the minds of our kids.

Right now we're putting about $2000 a month towards paying off debt. If she moves out she would need to pick up $1000 of that per month. The other option is she moves out and we take forever to get rid of our marital debt. I am not willing to do that. It's probably because my first divorce we tried that, it failed, and I ended up in bankruptcy because my XW couldn't do her part of the deal. I'm not willing to do that again. And I've been upfront with her on this. I have told her, she can have her D but I won't sign a thing until we get our debts cleared out.

I know this is anti-DB and probably controlling, but it's my limit. Note that she isn't stopped from divorcing me... she could file any time and then it becomes a contested divorce. In our state that's probably 8-12 months to complete. Non-contested will take 5-6 months.

So... even if we filed today we'd still not be divorced until June anyway.

Lastly, the financials only work on her end if she gets more child support from her XH, which she is entitled to. She was going to file in October, but didn't. Then it was going to be November, but she didn't want to fight with her XH about Thanksgiving. Then it was going to be this week, but she doesn't want to fight with XH about Christmas. Well... ok then, I can't file for you, but it's another $400-$600/month that would certainly accelerate the move-out timetable and is the only way this works after the split.

We have already discussed the structure of much of our assets and financials. Really, my 401k is the only thing we haven't settled on.

As far as the child care, we haven't put it down in writing but have talked about it. We are already doing the "my weekend", "your weekend" thing. What we still need to do is the weekday schedule.

You're right though that she's very amendable at this point to anything that gets her out faster. The problem is making that actually happen.