WE PROCEEDED ON II

[JustStunned]

Gunny, the vagaries of life never cease to amaze me. Make a decision, take a fork in the road, and over on the path just left see a catastrophe happen. Luck, Karma, Joss? It’ll mess with your head.

You sound good. Glad you sent an update.

[JustStunned]

Semper Fidelis


D@m edit button!

[jbnati]

gunny, so glad to see you out there. Yep, there must have been a bigger plan for you moving out. I'm thankful you were out of there.

Hope you're doing well otherwise. Sorry to see your W is so adamant about the D. Glad you're staying busy and creating your own life.

[gunny]

Good morning all. Today is the beginning of fleet week here in the New York area, on Friday I will be going into the city along with a group of veterans to take a tour of the U.S.S. Tawara. Should be quite a day.

Not much new on the D front. I have to send the completed paperwork to the divorce company, which will then file.

Hope all is well out there, enjoy the day!

[gunny]

Eleven months into my experience, I have the following observations to share.
1. Before this experience, which has been by far the worst I have experienced in my life(second worst is my younger sister dying at age 13 from menningitis without warning, I was 21)my views on divorce have, (not surprisingly) changed dramatically. I remember talking with my wife a number of times about friends who were having marital difficulties and saying that if they werent happy, what was the sense of staying together, life was too short, they deserved to be happy, and if splitting accomplished that feat, then so be it. Little did I know that I would one day be a casualty of this nonchalant attitude.

2. Children, no matter what the experts say, never really recover from their parents being divorced, esp if the d is acrimonious. They may be resilient, and may appear to be unaffected, but inside they are sad that the family has been torn apart. And their sadness is generational in its affect, because their attitudes about relationships and men and women are bound to be affected.

3. No one ever wins in a divorce, no matter how amicable it appears to be. I have seen enough divorced people in the two support groups I am a member of to know that they have this sad, hollowed out look, they never really get over their loss, even if they are the ones who initiated it. Even people who arent members of support groups but have been divorced tell me that in the back of their minds they always know it can happen again. Innocence has been lost forever.

4.No fault divorce laws are causing incredible damage to the family unit, and society in general. Since my separation I have become accquainted with many single divorced parents, mostly women, who have to struggle everyday with the challenges of working full time, raising kids, doing homework, keeping up a house, etc. It is incredibly sad to see this.

None of these observations are world beating or particularly revalatory in nature, but I seem to be thinking about them more and more as the date for my D approaches. Anyone feel the same?

[jbnati]

I remember talking with my wife a number of times about friends who were having marital difficulties and saying that if they werent happy, what was the sense of staying together, life was too short, they deserved to be happy, and if splitting accomplished that feat, then so be it.

I only agree with that everyone deserves to be happy. I think the theory of splitting to accomplish that feat is a big 'ol myth.

I agree with you on #2, D sets up a cycle with our children.

I also agree with you on #3. Nobody wins, per se. However, I also believe we can use the adversity to become better people. I am not even close to the same person I was 15 months ago. Maybe that's just GAL'ing.

We're killing ourselves as society for sure with no-fault D.

I think we have to play the hand we're dealt, though. There's a lot we can learn. We can become better people. We can work on our own happiness.

[kolja]

3. No one ever wins in a divorce, no matter how amicable it appears to be. I have seen enough divorced people in the two support groups I am a member of to know that they have this sad, hollowed out look, they never really get over their loss, even if they are the ones who initiated it.

Wish my (and, presumably yours?) wife would learn this. I fear for her that as the newness of her 'new life' wears off, she'll be in the same place. As far as I'm concerned the door would still be open to her, but would she be too scared to come back? Too prideful? And then left to live with the loss? I can only imagine what it would feel like to live with the loss knowing it was YOUR idea originally...

[JustStunned]

Semper Fi, Devil Dog.

I remember talking with my wife a number of times about friends who were having marital difficulties and saying that if they werent happy, what was the sense of staying together, life was too short, they deserved to be happy, and if splitting accomplished that feat, then so be it.

This was espoused by one of XWs great aunts. When XW told the kids she had made her decision she stated she heard words to this affect. She stated the shade of Great Aunt B agreed with me.

This is not a sea story, both of my kids and SIL2 have told me this on separate occasions. It shocked them into inaction and disbelief. It is an indication of how deeply she was affected by her crisis and how desperate she became to justify her decision.

Children, no matter what the experts say, never really recover from their parents being divorced, esp if the d is acrimonious. They may be resilient, and may appear to be unaffected, but inside they are sad that the family has been torn apart. And their sadness is generational in its affect, because their attitudes about relationships and men and women are bound to be affected.

Quite true in my limited experience. I have five nieces and two nephews affected by decisions their parents made. Although adults when their mother made her decision my own children have admitted to working through affects wrought by this experience. My daughter who I see most often has confided to me about some trust issues. This was a fairly long discussion revolving around the idea that someone could throw away 30 yrs in a few days. I hope I helped. Time will tell. One niece and one nephew have also been affected by our D. Through dysfunction in SIL2 relationships XW and I became surrogate parents for a time.

No one ever wins in a divorce, no matter how amicable it appears to be.

IDK, but I don’t think there is anything to win. We survive, we change, we proceed on, hopefully gaining something from the experience. I have learned something from each of life’s experience.

I’ve learned not to pry an extension cord out of an electrical socket with a metal knife. I have learned that closed almost empty cans of oil based paint have no place in a trash fire.

I am learning the value of unconditional love.

No fault divorce laws are causing incredible damage to the family unit, and society in general.

I don’t fault the law. It is the application I fault. I think the pendulum has swung too far and the alternative is beyond contemplation. Both of my parents D’ed in the 1950’s under the old system.

Growing up I had a step sister from my father’s XW’s indiscretions that he adopted in 1946. In his D he provided photographic proof. It was ugly.

Mom was battered and shot at. Her XH was a violent alcoholic. I had a half sister from that union. Born premature in 1949, weighing about 4 lbs, immature lungs, with an underdeveloped suck reflex she was fed with an eye dropper for the first month or so. Learning and emotional difficulties impeded her throughout her short life. She passed before 50. Her premature birth was linked to a beating mom took.

Flawed as it is I’ll take this system over that. I’d rather see proactive relationship therapy tied to major life events be the norm, but here I am fantasizing about a societal change.

For all my parents history and baggage they had a good marriage, and I grew in a happy caring environment. To your third point they had their scars, but they overcame them and learned to make their marriage work providing a nurturing environment for me and two of my three sisters.

They showed me there is life after D, there is happiness. We need to make it happen.

Semper Fidelis

[workinghardguy]

The acrimony is part of the key on how children resolve the divorce. Children strive to fix their family unit because it is the source of their identity. Their egos demand that it work because to them, they and family are almost interchangable.

However, if there isn't conflict and the family unit can function but be different then the child isn't constantly forced into repair mode. Contrast that to the combative/acrimonious divorce where parents are in conflict. Each conflict resets the child into "fix it" mode. Each conflict demonstrates the family unit as not only alternatively functioning but as malfunctioning. The child identified with that. The child never gets to move beyond the early step because they are constantly trying to resolve the drama. Even though they have no power to do so.

[gunny]

Hello all, just wanted to pop in to get up to date. Today it is one year since my stbxw dropped the bomb on me as we finished our daily run down at the canal. Hard to believe it has been one year.

During this year, I have learned many things about myself, some that I knew, and some that I probably knew but didnt like to acknowledge.

Many times people have said that there was a reason for what happened, and that I am supposed to learn something from it. I am still trying to figure out what the lesson was. I think I am a more compassionate person than I was a year ago(and I have always been a compassionate person), but I am also (understandably), much less trusting, and more cynical about life in general. Not much, if anything, really surprises me anymore. I have found a whole micropopulation of divorced, or separated people who feel the same way. Many of these people say they have become better people for the experience, but I often find myself wondering if they are saying this in the hopes of convincing themselves. Don't know.

I do know that I am in a much better place one year later than I was. For almost 7 months I literally did not have one moment of joy in my life. Today, I find myself almost content at times, but then, like a slap of AQUA VELVA in the morning, I come back to reality and remember "oh yeah, I'm in the process of a divorce" About 7 months into the ordeal I made the difficult decision(for me) of taking an anti-depressent. I had always been deadset against taking any prescriptin drugs, esp anti-depressants, but I got to the point where I felt I had no choice. I started out at 10 mg of lexapro. Today, I am down to 5mg and take it only twice a week. In 30 days I will have weaned myself off, but I am doing it slowly, under my doctors supervision.

Taking the ad enabled me to regroup, and get myself back on an even keel. That, along with joining a couple of divorce support groups, adult children of alcoholics group. seeing a therapist(initially once a week, but now down to once a month), taking some classes at the local community college, going back to church, and generally making an effort to reach out and meet new people(not always the easiest thing for me to do)has helped me to cope with a pretty crappy sitch(like all of us here)

Would I rather not have had to do all this, and would I like to have my old life back. A RESOUNDING HELL YES!!I miss my old life. I was very, very happy. I will always miss what I had. But, we have no choice but to play with the cards we were dealt with(read that somewhere on here), so I make do.

I am not going to blow sand and say I am glad I have gone through this, because truthfully, I am not. Many days I am doing the best I can to get by. But, I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE ON HERE WHO OVER THE LAST YEAR HAVE TAKEN THE TIME TO POST HERE TO ENCOURAGE ME. IT HAS REALLY MEANT ALOT. YOU HAVE ALL BEEN TREMENDOUSLY HELPFUL, AND I THANK YOU ALL.!!

For those of you who are new to this site, keeping coming back, it does get better, there is hope. I look forward to reading all of your sitchs, and hope to find some more success stories as we go forward. Semper Fidelis all. OOHRAH!!