Need advice on detaching- Part 2

[kiro]

Kiro,

My husband was also a faithful Muslim man until he declared he became an Atheist simultaneously when he walked away from our marriage. It's so odd that a good spouse who has followed their faith most of their life can suddenly flip a switch like that!

Nicole, this just proves that a lot of this has to do with lost family values and often with lost faith. And it also proves that it's a crisis that the WAS/Midlifer faces that is much bigger than the marriage. It's about the meaning of life. For me, because I believe strongly in God, the loss of faith is much more serious than the loss of the marriage.

By the way, I am not saying that people who don't believe in God cannot have successful marriages. I'm just talking about what I know. I always believed in God, so I cannot speak for those who don't believe.

When I spoke with a lawyer and a called a mediator in January neither specified whether it's better to start the process sooner or later. Perhaps sooner is better if you've already reached the point where you can envision moving on and if a year has already passed since BD and there's been no real progress towards reconciling. I can also say that now for myself after six months has passed since the divorce announcement and we're neither reconciled nor divorced that staying in limbo isn't terribly great either.

I think the main reason the lawyer gave me that advise was a pure financial one because I earn much more than my wife and I will have to pay her spousal support in addition to child support and splitting our assets. The more we delay the D, the more I keep paying her bills without an agreement and I continue accumulating savings and assets that will have to be split.

I'll give you an example: I am paying $2,000 mortgage payment every month. If we stay in this limbo state for 2 years before finalizing the D, I would have paid $48,000 mortgage payments to the home. At D, the value of our home will be split by 2. This means that during these 2 years, I gave her half of the $48,000 unnecessarily.

It's all about the agreed separation date during mediation negotiations. The partner that earns more will want the earliest separation date as possible. The other partner will try to get the latest separation date as possible. If both partners earn similar incomes, it probably doesn't matter financially.

I do hope your wife will wake up and save herself and realize what she's done. It'll be too bad if that happens after divorce, especially if you no longer want her back in the future. I wish there'd be some way to prevent these situations from happening. Most of us never expected this so how could we have known?

Divorce is just a piece of paper. If all the right factors are there for a reconciliation, this can be done after D. At this point of my marriage, any R will be a re-marriage anyway. From reading your story, it's the same thing for you.