Sellout...I would tread lightly on suggesting any changes to her plans. The more you tell someone what they are doing is wrong (even in a kind way or with the best of intentions), the more they often become insistent on doing it. Right now, this is what W thinks she wants. If you go to her and ask her to stop, you are inadvertently telling her she is wrong because she is doing something you don't want. The message she is going to hear is, you care about your feelings and not hers, and you run the risk of pushing her completely out of reach that way.

I remember one of the things Cadet posted to me when I first landed here a couple years ago...there are two types of divorce--legal and emotional. We're always desperate and scared to stop the legal paperwork as though it alone were the relationship. It's not. It's simply a legal stamp on a relationship that existed prior to that and can continue to exist afterward. Even if you were divorced tomorrow, the relationship isn't truly over until you're both emotionally divorced from it and make the decision to move on. Don't panic about the legal stuff. Time is your friend.

If I were you, I would simply use your time to express that, while you're sad and this wasn't the path you would have chosen, you understand she feels this is what will make her happy and you want that for her. Wish her well and then let her go. You can't hold her back. You can only help her want to stay. It doesn't matter if, today, that puts you one day closer to divorce. Sometimes you have to lose the battle to win the war. Your goal is to show her you are a different man with her best wishes at heart--that proverbial man she would be a fool to leave.

A personal anecdote: my H filed for D and things went all the way to the judges final signing before H pulled the case and asked to reconcile. One of the things he told me after the fact was how much my support of him had meant rather than my trying to force him to stop the D.

Don't give up hope. Sometimes even the worst of situations can turn around. Lead with your love rather than your fear.


Me: 43, Him: 40
Married: 21 years