Mazes of the Mind

[bttrfly]

Thank you for the thread link, D! And, you are not married to me, yet you still took some time to look it up! Why would she not have enough interest to look it up?

Because she doesn't care, can't be bothered, thinks she knows it all ... take your pick.

We all have so many details in our stories that it's almost impossible to include EVERYTHING, but I'll add another snippet. When W sent me the email I quoted above, she sent it towards the end of the week. I happened to have my children that week. That means that she had told the children about her new engagement to OM the week prior, and they had been with me all week biting their tongues about it. What a terrible situation to put your kids through!

Yes. My son overheard my exh on the phone with his AP the first night in his new apartment - 5 days after he insisted on telling son it was a "mutual decision" ... my son, who was 15 at the time, kept that information to himself for OVER 5 YEARS to protect me. I didn't find out until I called exh to beg his help with a serious health concern about our son and the AP answered the phone and told me she was his wife .... I'm sitting there in stunned silence thinking, 'how can he be married again and still covering my health insurance' ... but yeah. They do not give a flying Ef about anyone but themselves. I wish I'd accepted that a lot sooner. I would have saved myself a ton of pain and suffering.

After I found out, I immediately let my kids know that I knew. The first thing my son said was that he had asked about our marriage, and she told him that we were only common law married and didn't think we needed a divorce. He told me that he didn't think that sounded right so he looked it up and it wasn't right. So there you have it...the teenager (he is wise beyond his years, but still) thought about it for 2 minutes and thought it didn't sound right and looked it up to prove it false. Why wouldn't she have done the same thing?

Because they make stuff up in their heads:
* a narrative of what your relationship was that bears little resemblance to your reality
* what they think you will do when they do x, y, z
* what they WANT an outcome to be

AND they tend to get pretty upset when it doesn't play out the way they imagined it would.

I am at a point where I am not sure reconciliation is really a possibility anymore. I have changed to the degree that I feel like I want more than even the old version of W is capable of. I want to be chosen, I want to be loved, and I want that love to be evident...I don't want to guess about it. I want to feel confident and trusting in my partner. I want my partner to care about how I feel and what I am interested in. I want to treat my partner the same. But, I do not see that in W. My door may still be open by a crack, but I think I am close to closing the door and turning the lighthouse light off. I never wanted that for us, but I did not make the decision for us to split. But I can make the decision to move on with my life and surround myself with people I care about and who care about me.

But I have a question. After reading what I have posted in my updates this week, do you think I should go ahead and file for divorce? I have been considering that I do indeed need to go ahead and file. If for no other reason then to protect myself from the decisions she is making. In the past I have considered this her decision and have been letting her take all the steps leading to and through our split. I have not had a hand in it. But, she is engaged to another man and I am not sure she is even planning to file, so I have been thinking that I should. She has more to lose than me, but its kind of the law that we get divorced before she can marry.

As always, thank you my LBS family for being here to support each other.

This is a place all of us eventually get to -- some of us deciding that reconciliation is possible, while the vast majority of us realizing that we've grown from this experience and want something else for ourselves. In a very small percentage of those cases, it's possible for the former spouse to step up and a new relationship to evolve, but that is so very rare. We simply do not stay where they've left us, if we've done the real work involved in getting a life, personal growth and self reflection.

It's not an easy realization, tinged as it is with the sadness of the true loss of what we had, this time because WE are choosing something better/healthier for ourselves.

Only you can decide to file or not. Best advice I can give you follows:

1. Make sure you interview lawyers. Find out what your rights are. Make sure you interview several, so if you do decide to divorce, you've spiked her guns on who she can hire for herself. Yes, I know how that sounds. This isn't a ladies' tea. This is now a business that's dissolving and your partner in this business has proven untrustworthy, so take every advantage you can, as you can bet she'll do the same. Had I interviewed the nasty piece of work my ex hired I'd have saved him 5 figures in lawyer's fees and myself a lot of unneeded stress and aggravation.

2. Based on what they advise, hire one and do what feels right/makes sense to you. What you do has to sit well with your moral compass, and divorce proceedings can throw strange curveballs into the mix, so stay aware and stay in prayer!

3. Determine what you want. In my case, aside from the financial stuff, the most important thing to me was that my son would look back at this and say that I took the high road the majority of the time, and always put him first. Happy to say 8 years out I've achieved that goal, and nothing else matters to me.

Best of luck SJS, and keep us posted. xoxoxo I'm sorry it's come to this, but I have every confidence you will emerge stronger, with deeper faith, and happier in the long run. xoxoxo