Thank you all for the great advice and support – I have finally arrived at a place where I have totally detached and stepped aside from his ongoing game playing. I have found the courage to respond to his email (sent it on Friday). I ignored all the ramblings about his life, OW, wanting to stay in touch etc. and concentrated only on what I wanted to say which consisted on the following (and I quote)
“I am saddened about how you are choosing to unilaterally end our marriage I will not accept divorce as my choice - I don’t believe it is a solution to our current situation or the right outcome in the long term for either of us. I cannot describe the way it feels to know that you have chosen to abandon me, our family, our marriage and our future life together. But I understand that it’s time for me to accept the futility of continuing to fight for our marriage and a reconciliation that you don’t want at this present time. I believe any ongoing contact with you will only add to the great amount of pain, hurt and damage to an already severely harmed relationship. Therefore, this will be my last direct personal communication and contact with you. You are choosing, by your actions and words, to no longer be a part of my life by wanting divorce, and I will respect that choice. Consequently, I can longer share any part of my life with you and at this present time I do not wish to see you or hear from you. Your choice to end our marriage in divorce is yours alone, I do not intend to invest any interest or time into something I do not want; as such you must proceed along that chosen path and any further communication and negotiation between us can be done via solicitors”.
What does everyone think – should I have been harsher???? I know he doesn’t deserve to be treated with any respect or kindness, but my intention is to keep things civil so that when the divorce goes through I cannot be accused of being the “crazy, spiteful, malicious ex-wife”. I know it’s a bit late to be asking for any input into the content of the email I sent him, but I would appreciate your thoughts anyway…….
It’s funny but I feel relieved – even though my intention at this stage is to do nothing but wait to see what he does, I feel like I have control over the situation and will get stronger with the NC. I know many of you have rightly asked about financial security, legal advice etc – I have previously sought legal advice (on 2 separate occasions) so I am aware of my rights and I have a lawyer lined up for when he files for divorce; I separated our finances back in December 2017 and we no longer have any joint accounts/credit cards – everything is in our own individual names and I am financially fairly secure (better than he is). The only thing we still share is our mortgage (which he is paying) and I need to keep it that way as it needs negotiating as part of the divorce. As most of you are aware I have relocated (out of the area where this all happened) and have started a new job (he remains unaware of this and thinks I am still where he left me) so in many ways I have already started a new life (its just hard to let go of the old one but I guess that will just take time). Thank you all for the ongoing support, wise words and feedback – it is invaluable to me.
Quick update…….so after sending that email to him on Friday, I received a text yesterday saying that he had received it but had not yet read it – he was intending to read it this morning…….what on earth was the point of that???????