New night(s)

[kyrie]

I am caught up in your sitch (as of tonight anyhow).

Seeing a lawyer is simply becoming informed. You need "DO" nothing, but gain information. Don't let the mere concept of it, scare you off.

I saw it as empowering and in a weird way, helped me stay married. Why?

Because I didn't feel as financially threatened by either choice.

I learned I would not starve if he stayed

(but I did keep tabs on his spending. When he began to get out of control and spoke of mortgaging the house to "invest" in Alaska, again, I literally worried about losing our beautiful home. So I filed for a sep ONLY, (not a Div) partly b/c I wasn't ready emotionally to give up but didn't want to see decades of work thrown out the window, so I filed to protect the few assets he had not cashed us out of (which had been done Without my knowledge & which has cost us over the past decade, nearly 7 figures in lost income and real estate. UGh, painful to contemplate and not good for my soul).

AND I certainly would not have been worse off in the long run (>3 years) without him, due to child support and other division of assets.

So I knew I was going to be "okay" financially, either way. That made me feel I was choosing to stay married for the right reasons, ie b/c I wanted it to work.

I did not tell my h about seeing a lawyer until HE threw out the D word and a fairly insane vision he had of how much better off HE would be...

I simply, calmly said, "No, H thats not accurate. I believe, based on what a L told me what would happen is X & Y and then we'd divide the retirement accounts in half and etc etc" and he "threatened to see a lawyer himself"

and I said, with complete sincerity, "H, I hope you do see a L. I'm not lying. You need to know the realities of your choices but you're right not to take my word for it."


SIDENOTE **I am a L by profession but I would tell anyone not to trust their spouse's lawyer OR their spouse when the spouse is a L, for an "objective analysis" of a divorce. For instance, My older brother is a L, and he divorced a GREAT woman (wonderful SIL and I still miss her!)

and my brother said he wanted to handle the details of their divorce himself, but he was authentically unaware of how biased he was in his favor. I think he sincerely believed he'd contributed MUCH MORE than he had. Rationalized frighteningly well and it was Almost delusional and this is MY brother whom I love....


YES my H did see a L and I don't know what to make of his conclusions, but we're still married.



Knowledge is power and that power can be internally calming, not necessarily adversarial knowledge. It's another way of saying you might feel better about being married, by knowing your rights.

I've done some research and questioned a few recently divorced friend, but not spoken to a L directly.
Again, I'm not financially threatened at all. He is though!
His spending is excessive lately too.
The only thing that will help me feel better is knowing I did the holy thing. Not "what I feel is right".