Honestly it's better to just get it out of the way and let people know "Oh yeah, I'm separated and in the process of a divorce. We have 3 wonderful boys that we love very much, and stbxh actually works here. Isn't that funny?" You don't have to actually feel like it's amicable or even like H very much. But I know when exH were splitting up it was just easier on both of us and D18 if we acted like it was a Gwyneth Paltrow-esque conscientious uncoupling. If he didn't throw out to everyone who listened that I had cheated on him 4 years prior to the split I had no reason to unload his addiction and mental health issues on anyone who didn't really know what was going on in our home. And being kind to each other in the end when we couldn't or wouldn't be kind to one another during our relationship made moving on and not being at each other's throats when I started to date too quickly for his taste or when he made the unilateral decision to move an hour and half away from his daughter.
That being said. You've not been "married-married" for almost 2 years. And I'm sure the divorce will finalize in a few months. If you tell people you're married without the qualifiers, at some point when you show up to events with a guy who isn't your husband people usually will start asking all kinds of questions, or worse filling in the blanks with their own imaginations. I know this one from experience. I did start dating around pretty quickly after I left exH (at first nothing serious, I literally just wanted to know what it was like to date again. I had been locked down since 18). The reality of the situation was: 1. I was barely 29 years old. 2. We had been sleeping in separate bedrooms and speaking about only household and kid business for 2 years. 3. We hadn't had s3x in over a year, and prior to that one time it had been 9 months before that. Oh and prior to that 6 months. Every aspect of our MR, except co-parenting which he barely did, had been dead and gone for quite some time. I was healing, healthy and more than ready to move on the minute I walked out the door which people very close to me knew that, but to an outsider I looked like a floozy....lol. I think it's just best to be honest and up front about the reality of the situation.
