What do I do with her now?

CranstonCranston Member Posts: 155
edited January 2013 in 911 Relationship ER
This is a thread related to this one, but now with a different focus, at Athol's request. Athol's goal at this point is to see if there's any way to get my wife to reconcile with me. As he requested, I'm posting our history below, but you can also read the other thread for other details about what has transpired the last couple months.

When I met my future wife, she was in her first marriage to a guy who ended up being a jerk - growingly abusive. He knew some guys in our crew even before he was married to her, we knew he was strange, but we didn't know how much until later. But it was while she was with him and both of them would come and hang out with some of our friends that she and I had the chance to start talking and we always got along famously.

As a matter of fact, it went so well between her and me that I quickly had a pretty bad crush on her. But because she was married, it caused me to start avoiding her as much as I could. But periodically we would end up in the same place at the same time and we would always end up having a great conversation. Others noticed how well we got along, too, which only made me feel more guilty and I redoubled my efforts to avoid her.

Eventually she got divorced from that husband and left the state for a few years. Some of our friends were in touch with her and it began to become clear that she might be coming back to our area. People began teasing me about whether I would be asking her out. My father was adamant that I stay away from her since she was on the rebound and likely to pick up meaningless relationships and that I didn't want to be anywhere near that. I heeded his advice.

But eventually she came back and started hanging out with our crew which gathered every week at my father's home. I was in pretty good physical shape at the time, bike riding 90 miles a week, and running my own small company which was essentially covering its own costs and mine, but wasn't a huge money maker yet.

She seemed like she might be interested in me, but I was only a number of months out of another relationship (a quick one that was pretty worthless) and wasn't very quick to trust women at that time. Plus, I was still leery of my future wife because my attraction to her was so strong, I didn't trust myself. And I feared trying to start something up with her because if it didn't work out, I knew it would be significantly more painful to have to break up with her than other women, given how she affected me.

So, not trusting myself, I told my friends to tell me what they saw about how she was behaving with me. I wasn't even going to try to analyze potential signals from her. I remained aloof. I told guys on the evenings when she was going to be present that I was going to purposefully avoid her, yet not trying to be obvious. Any time she would enter the room or come near me and talk to me, I would find a reason to have to be in another room and go there to get away from her.

Uniformly my friends told stories of watching her follow me around when I did this. The fact that she might be interested in me scared me even more.

One weekend she brought gifts back from a visit to her sister in another state. She brought some beer and glasses she snagged from a bar there, just for me. My infatuation was through the roof, but I refused to do anything more than have the same good conversations with her we had always had. And I would still walk away from her in the middle of it just to get away and clear my head. I didn't want to reveal anything about how I was feeling.

Eventually, she got some advice from one of our friends, because she was reticent as well, that she could do a lot worse than me (and had!) and to think hard on what she wanted. That conversation led to us talking for the first time in a way that was clear that we were interested in one another. We would be on the phone for 4 hours at a time.

We began dating and I was anxious enough that I even got on the phone with her sister to learn more about her because I didn't want another woman who would sell herself as one thing and then turn out to be something entirely different. I mean, I know we all put on our best faces when we're dating, but I've seen too many women turn out to be significantly different than what they sold during dating and I had to do my due diligence. Her sister was clear that "what you see with her is what you get, she doesn't change".

We continued to get along famously. I could see where things were headed, and my small company would not support me and her and any potential new life together, so I shut that down and got a new job at a local company.

We dated for seven months before getting engaged. We started dating right around the new year of 2001 and were married in October that year.

We moved into a small apartment and by then I was working for a different small company which ended up being the launching point for me to make some solid moves in my career. She was finishing up her degree at the local university and by then she was pregnant with our first child.

I had a larger company, in the same type of service as the current one I was working for, approach me with a significantly better offer - almost double my salary. That led to making it possible to move to another state, where her family was, and work from home since what I did was technical and could be done anywhere as long as I had a computer and internet connection.

During this time, we had our second child.

Within a year, though, the recession was starting to hit and that company let me go. But I was approached by the main client which I had been managing while working for them with an offer to work for them directly. Again, my income jumped another 50%, which was making things quite a bit easier for us financially.

It wasn't long until the recession affected my position there as well and my contract was canceled. I sought work for months until a job dropped into my lap which was a perfect fit for my skills and we had to move back to our home state. It was all I could find and I had to take a salary cut, but it was workable.

During that time, we had our third child.
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Comments

  • CranstonCranston Member Posts: 155
    The recession continued to get worse (I was then calling it a depression) and I was concerned about the worsening job market. I could see the possibility of getting laid off again and got together with a friend to create some kind of business that could make money in case either of us was let go and couldn't find work.

    The problem was that it wasn't a regular job and definitely carried an element of risk that the cushy cubicle job didn't have.

    As I suspected, I ended up being laid off. Eventually, the business we had been working on started to produce, but as I had begun to get moving on it, though my wife had been quiet in the beginning, she began to make clear that she really didn't like the direction I was heading. She clearly wanted me back in a regular paycheck job. I agreed, but when it was coming time for me to be laid off (I had advance notice), I had done my serious job hunting. For the first time in my life, I couldn't find a single thing. I went outside the boundaries and applied in places that I never had before. Nothing.

    So I worked my tail off on my own projects to get money in. Eventually it came in, but I didn't understand just how 'not okay' with it my wife was until a certain point - a point that I now consider too late. As soon as I understood that it seemed that some of the decisions I'd made could be "deal breakers" for her (she never said this explicitly), I began getting away from that project and into another long time one I had had on the side, pretty much at the hobby level.

    (If I have anything in the history of my marriage that I can point to which I would apologize for, it would be how I handled the other business with my friend and letting it get between me and my wife as much as I did. And I did apologize for that in several specific ways at the outset of discovering she wanted to leave me in December.)

    And my work on that hobby for many years was beginning to garner a following. And some people were beginning to pay attention. So I pursued that to get away from the stuff she didn't like in order that it would be able to pay our bills for the first time. It took many months to transition and get all the right pieces in place, but as I had calculated, the funding came in when I thought it would and our bills started to get paid entirely from the funding that came in to help my old hobby business become something serious. That began at the end of November, 2012 and beginning of December, 2012.

    Now, in October, 2012, on our 11th anniversary, my wife for the first time expressed thoughts about our marriage which crushed me. I never saw it coming. It was the "I don't know if I've ever loved you" conversation. We hashed it out that day (it was actually on our anniversary, hours before we were supposed to go out to dinner) and decided we would try to work on things.

    All seemed, if not well, at least as though she and I were making effort to make things better, including starting to get some counseling individually. Then on December 1, 2012, she gave me the "we're in a bad place again" conversation. We never came back from that. It went rapidly downhill from there and in all our conversations, she refused to consider anything other than leaving me. She told me that the moment she considered leaving me to be an option, she felt like a great weight had been lifted off of her and she found herself happier than she had felt in a long time.

    We continued to hash things out through December, never really making any headway, even with both of us seeing a counselor. Then she told me one night that she had decided to file for divorce and it was clear she would not change her mind. I decided that I had to at least keep some control on the money, just in case she decided to use every penny we had in the bank for whatever purposes she may have. So the next morning, I went to the bank and took her name off our bank accounts and withdrew all the cash. At the recommendation of an attorney, I prepared to give her half of all we had in there and that I had withdrawn.

    By the time I got home, she had discovered what I had done with the money and got some very bad counsel from an attorney friend and panicked and left our home with our kids. At that moment her parents were driving out to spend Christmas with us and she met up with them and decided to return with them to their home and spend Christmas with the kids there.

    In the mean time, as soon as she had taken off and I couldn't get a hold of her or learn where the kids were, I got legal counsel and got a case drawn up to submit to a court ASAP. I tried on Christmas Eve and was unsuccessful. So I filed it the day after Christmas and was in front of a judge on Friday that week. I tried to file the case without giving notice to my wife, but the judge wanted her to have notice. We ended up getting another hearing date in three weeks.
  • CranstonCranston Member Posts: 155
    During that time, I spoke with my wife's sister and texted with my wife a bit since she would not speak with me on the phone directly. I tried to do whatever I could to get her to come back with the kids, hoping that I didn't have to use the legal option which could get pretty rough. But finally, she texted me that she had decided to stay where she was for at least six months and had filed some kind of custody case there as well.

    The next week I told her about the case out here, and only then for the first time did she start talking about seeing the possibility of being able to make it out here in our home state again. I wasn't sure if she would come out for it, but she ended up flying out here to attend the court ordered mediation date and the hearing. We both arrived late for the mediation, so it was going to get rescheduled.

    But we both arrived in plenty of time for the hearing. Through the attorneys, we ended up coming up with a short term agreement, signed by both of us and a judge, lasting 90 days, in which I would temporarily pay for all the costs of our house and we would time share it. Our kids stay there but mom and dad rotate in and out on preset days of the week. I made sure my wife had to stipulate that she would immediately file for divorce and seek work and seek a new place of her own to live if that's what she still wanted. I had to find my own place to live as well.

    Once we've gone down that road a bit, we'll see what the next steps look like.

    On a broad overview of our marriage, looking back, I can see that my wife certainly wasn't as happy as she had initially been, starting even as early as four or five years in, I think. In my memory, it was around this time that I began to sense some kind of distance from her during sex. That only got worse over the years, in general. But I can't point to a particular event which seemed to cause that to occur.

    But I considered it part of marriage once the fantasy of it all had worn off and I wasn't concerned, but just kept my nose to the grindstone at work and enjoyed coming home to my family. But there were no major points that I can look to and say, "that was it, that was the moment it really started to go south." Even our friends, including some of hers in whom she has confided along the way, didn't have an inkling that this was possible for her. They're all stunned. They knew we were struggling, but nothing significantly different from how other married friends around us are struggling and continuing to make it through. The women around me who were close to her have consistently said to me when we've talked about the details, "Yeah, but that's marriage! You don't just leave."

    As for my part, I've discovered by reading some websites, and finally Athol Kay's MMSL, how many things I've done to slide from my alpha behavior in the beginning to consistently beta-ized behavior as the years wore on. I wish I'd read the book years ago. The way she has behaved with me in the last couple years, and her final desire to be rid of me, is completely consistent with the picture Athol laid out in his book when a woman has to deal with too much beta for too long.

    Now, I suspect that she carries much more of her own baggage than I ever knew, primarily from way before I entered the picture. I don't know how many men she's been with, but she hasn't made it sound like a smaller number. So I'm not saying this is all my fault. But I do need to recognize all the ways I probably contributed to this so I don't end up here again with whatever woman is in my life in the future. She made it sound like she's never really been happy with any of the men in her life, and her sister made it clear that everyone on her side of the family was so thrilled she married me because she finally was with a man who would treat her right. I was told I was pretty much heads and tails better than all the men she had dated before me.

    But, aside from understanding clues she was giving off as time wore on, if I had known what I know now, I think I could have done much better to head some of this off before coming to this point.

    Now, I should say some of the counsel I'm getting by close friends is that I should seriously consider whether I would even be willing to go back to someone who has been willing to do with our kids what she has. I understand the argument. Though she has not changed her tune about being done with me and wanting a divorce, I need to have some kind of game plan if she does.

    By her own admission she has been covering up her feelings and lying to me about how she was doing in our marriage for many months now, if not more. This creates a serious trust issue. If she were to approach me at some point about reconciling, I would need to know what she would be willing to do to make sure I can be certain on a daily basis that she's not hiding her feelings and lying to me again. As in for the rest of our relationship.

    Now, I'm not dwelling on that too much because that may never come to pass. I have no idea. I just like to have some idea of how I'll handle that conversation if it comes up.

    I am MAPing and continue to get in shape and take back my life. I am already at a completely different place with her emotionally, though I still love her. Writing out our history like this has been terribly difficult for me because I can remember so many of the little things in our history that I've loved sharing with her. I remember when I used to make her laugh uncontrollably. It's been so long since we've been like that together, I can't even remember when the last time was that I saw her laugh like that with me.

    (It's the many memories like these that put the lie to the, "I don't know if I've ever loved you" statement. None of our friends, nor her sister, believe that, either.)

    I'm operating with the understanding that we're done and our future relationship only involves the practicalities of taking care of our children as best we can. Until she comes to me and says something about us that's different from "I'm done with you", it can't be anything else. She needs to deal with the natural repercussions of her decisions and I'm trying not to help enable minimizing any discomfort for her about it. I have to give her SOME space in order that I don't diminish my position with the judge, but that's about it. And given how much counsel I know she's received from many pastors, her counselor, and some friends, and that she has refused to budge an inch about being done with me, I don't see any other way to proceed.

    This is what she wants, and I believe her when she says it, so I'm moving on with my life and my kids and my career and using the court to make sure there are some hard boundaries around how we handle this.

    Let me know your thoughts about the whole thing.

    I'm in a tough emotional middle ground. I still love her and miss her, but part of me is scared to take her back. In some ways it feels very similar to the time just before we started dating. I don't want to risk going through this again - and even more importantly, I don't want to risk putting the kids through all this again.

    That's it in a nutshell.
    Mrs_JAngelineFlynn_Lives
  • Athol_KayAthol_Kay My Underground LairPosts: 8,046
    edited January 2013

    Well the "I never loved you" line is just a line. What it means is she isn't in love with you now.

    What was happening 4-5 years ago that led to the sexual decline?

    What's the religious background of the two of you? You seemed fairly hardline Christian toward the end of the last thread.

    If the primary issue was income, why was she homeschooling? Why not two incomes?

    What's your finanical status now?

    She had started Facebooking an ex-bf in October? What happened with that?

    Medical conditions and medications for either one of you?

    Birth control history?

     One Hour Call   12-Week Guided MAP

    "The turnaround is tremendous.  And I'm lifting weights, eating better, and tackling projects.  I have all this great energy without a vampire sucking my life force.  :)  He's a lot stronger standing on his own two feet, as well."  - Scarlet

  • TemplarTemplar WashingtonSilver Member Posts: 3,371
    What was her degree in? Is it a marketable skill? Would getting her off the couch and working make a difference. Some women have to much time to think about how unhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaappy they are while watching Oprah. Not that simply her working will solve the whole deal. It sure might help. It would give her some stake and control over the financial stability of the family.
    NeoTheLeo
  • greenbluegreenblue Member Posts: 522
    Not that I'm some wise sage or something but I copied a post I wrote for someone else. I think it may apply here as well.

    When I started on my road to change it was at a divorce prevention forum. My first post was during day one of my separation. I made a lot of mistakes to get where we are now, but MMSL was not one of them. It was in part the best thing I could have done.

    The weird thing is that I started in a blue pill forum. I think after 100's if not 1,000's of stories the members of the forum started sharing very red pill advice because it works. Needless to say it actually goes against the blue pill advice of the book the forum revolves around! Anyway here is what I learned for a situation like yours.

    1. Stop the begging, pleading, getting on all 4's etc. it's a real display of low value. If you are doing any of it you need to stop now.

    2. Don't think you can debate her into coming back. It probably took her hamster months if not years to come up with the rationale to leave. No logic will talk her out of it.

    3. Show her that not only is the grass not greener on the other side, since she left you started watering your side, mowing it, and fertilizing it. Self improvement is pivotal. She needs to be able to see it.

    4. That being said don't tell her you are improving! If you do she will know you are doing it just to win her back, which means that it's probably just temporary, and you'll go back to being your old self.

    5. Be patient. She needs to believe the changes are permanent this takes time!

    6. Always be cheerful around her! Let her know you are doing great! No one wants to get together with a sad loser.

    7. Start moving on. Yep you read that right. Kill your oneitis for her. Start believing you can have a happy dating life without her. Doesn't mean you have to start dating, just believe it, and start acting like you can. This is a major DHV. Just don't be surprised when she comes back.

    Ultimately if she comes back is completely up to her. It's the most bitter part of the divorce red pill. You can do all you can and she may never respond. Learn to accept that, learn to push through that, because in the end being outcome independent is actually your best chance at getting her back.

    You want her to think, gee look at him! He is doing so well! I better snap him back up before someone else does!
    ABGuy
  • 2manypasswords2manypasswords OhioSilver Member Posts: 366

    @Cranston - here are random thoughts on this thread & on your original long thread (which I had followed):

    1) The first husband was "growingly abusive" according to whom?  Did anyone else think this besides her?  This could be another history re-write along the lines of her saying she never loved you (and along the lines of whatever BS she told her parents after fleeing the state).  Remember, you were worried for a while there that she would accuse you of being abusive.

    2) Maybe there were things you could have done differently regarding your job/business situation. But I get the sense your wife didn't really understand that the biggest f&cking recession of our lifetime was underway.  I picture her as someone who spends alot of time in her head in some kind of la-la land that makes sense only to her.  I stand by what I said in the original thread as far as homeschooling being a bad idea in your case.  Isolation + rumination = trouble.

    3) Don't know why you'd want to take her back.  But if you do, she needs to tell you everything.  Including things like what really happened with husband #1.

    OtterABGuyNeoTheLeo
  • 2manypasswords2manypasswords OhioSilver Member Posts: 366

    @Cranston - just had another thought...I find it hard to believe that an "attorney friend" counseled her to legally kidnap her children & leave the state.  Unless your wife told the attorney friend there was abuse going on.

    This is a huge problem whether you stay married or split up.  Because the next time her life isn't just perfect (whether you're together or not), she may very well play the abuse card again.

    EightbitpastorgeekMr_BrownNeoTheLeo
  • Mr_BrownMr_Brown east coastSilver Member Posts: 3,636
    The grass is greener on the other side because it's full of bull shit!
    Been an uphill battle, both ways, in three feet of snow, with newspapers for shoes, but I'm a better man for it!
    shibariFlynn_LivesLinanati
  • AngelineAngeline planting seedsCategory Moderator** Posts: 14,500
    edited January 2013
    We are concerned and wondering how things are going, but don't feel any pressure to post unless you need to. Have a great time with your kids. Resist the temptation to pump them for info. Just enjoy.

    Oh, and Merry Christmas!
    "Speak your truth." - Scarlet
    Remember to play!
    Do the right thing, whether anyone is watching or not.
    Be married, until you are not.

    Email address: angeline.greenwood@att.net
  • ScarletScarlet Category Moderator** Posts: 7,542
    I am SO freaking happy for you!!!
    Speak your truth. 
  • CranstonCranston Member Posts: 155
    Athol_Kay said:

    Well the "I never loved you" line is just a line. What it means is she isn't in love with you now.

    What was happening 4-5 years ago that led to the sexual decline?

    I was off on that original estimation, it was probably closer to 7-8 years. It was around the time our first child was born, I think. Other than that, it seemed relatively normal. I had good work and the bills were getting paid and we were able to plan forward.

    What's the religious background of the two of you? You seemed fairly hardline Christian toward the end of the last thread.

    We're both Lutheran.

    If the primary issue was income, why was she homeschooling? Why not two incomes?

    I don't think the primary issue was income now that I'm reviewing the finances. I was pulling home enough extra income recently that many women would likely be content with the extra they had to work with. It was simply 'less secure' than a cubicle job. I'm coming to understand how much she has liked to spend money. I'm finding receipts hidden everywhere (not a huge quantity, but a few) - her end table, in the car, etc. She was spending money I didn't know about.

    But, again, I don't think this is really about that. I think that's a symptom of whatever she has going on emotionally that she's not been telling me about - or may not even know about herself.

    She had always wanted to be a SAHM and we agreed upon it from the outset. We both believed that it would be best if the husband/dad were the breadwinner and the wife/mom stayed home to keep the house and raise the children. Plus, the additional financial burden created by having to hire some sort of daycare for the young kids always seemed to break even with the wife's likely income, from everything we've seen, so we didn't see the point.

    What's your finanical status now?

    My project is moving along very nicely. I'm pulling in enough to get the bills paid and make sure there's food and fuel, etc. This is a great place for me to focus right now, aside from my kids. I have good reason for optimism.

    She had started Facebooking an ex-bf in October? What happened with that?

    She sought out and found her ex on Facebook on Wednesday, November 28. I saw no evidence of anything prior. They were in touch at that time for around 11 days. In December, from what I'd seen, after I confronted her and made sure her sister and mom knew what she was doing, l saw no evidence of further contact in the time prior to her leaving with the kids - and I did check. Of course, this doesn't mean that she didn't create another Facebook account and email address from which to play those sorts of games. But that possibility only highlights how little control I have over such things.

    Once she was in another state and requested that her cell phone be removed from the family account so she could have it on her own account, I was certain she started it back up again, but I had no ability to confirm my suspicions nor do anything about it if I was right. I could have contacted her ex on Facebook purely on my gut feeling that they were talking again and told him to never contact her again, but since I couldn't really do more than that and I was completely out of the loop, I let it go and focused on my court case and my MAPping. I agreed with some of the input I got that nailing down the court case and getting her back here with the kids, making sure she couldn't easily flee with them again, would be the most disruptive thing I could do to any fantastical notions she may have about another man.

    Medical conditions and medications for either one of you?

    Birth control history?

    You can see how I answered some of this here. Let me know if you want more.

    Honestly, as much as it all still hurts, and emotionally I still have no idea how I'll be struggling with this on any given day or hour, I'm operating out of the assumption that she and I will never be together again and that we now need to start up our own lives and we just need to balance our time with the kids as best we can. I obviously have no idea what the future holds. But this strategy matches my MAPping and my career focus and goal to get as much time with my kids as I can.

    I continue to get advice from all sides, but it really seems like we're entering the first phase of routine in which I just have to live my life and wait and see how things go. It sounds like she found a friend to stay with near us while she's not in the house with the kids (I know the friend I heard about) and her mom is with her here in our state right now during the transition.

    The next fun part will be when I make sure she understands that, according to our signed agreement, in less than a couple months I'll be giving 30 days notice to vacate to our current landlord so that we can move into our own places. I'm expecting some pushback on that. The debate will be whether it's a good idea for me to offer an extension on this temporary situation so she can keep looking for work (assuming she'll likely ask for it when she can't find work), insofar as how the judge would see it. I really don't want to be an enabler of her behavior and I don't want to weaken my position in court, either.

    Of course, please let me know your thoughts. I continue to get support from some friends along the lines of, "You never know what may happen." But it's hard for me to think that way. It's a little easier emotionally to assume it's really over. Not that it matters. It's ridiculously painful no matter what, even now.


    C
  • ScarletScarlet Category Moderator** Posts: 7,542
    I'm so sorry you're going through this.

    Here's what I don't understand:  I respect your traditional view of marriage and therefore not wanting to divorce.  I have a very high threshold for divorce myself.  But it seems your threshold has been met.  You say that you don't foresee yourself getting back together.  Why then, do you not want to be the one to file even though it would be advantageous for you to do so?  In my personal (albeit non-religious) opinion, it's more important to protect your children from additional instability than to hold fast to a line that's no more than splitting hairs.  
    Speak your truth. 
    LinanatiAthol_KaySmashmasterAngeline
  • CranstonCranston Member Posts: 155
    Scarlet said:
    I'm so sorry you're going through this.

    Here's what I don't understand:  I respect your traditional view of marriage and therefore not wanting to divorce.  I have a very high threshold for divorce myself.  But it seems your threshold has been met.  You say that you don't foresee yourself getting back together.  Why then, do you not want to be the one to file even though it would be advantageous for you to do so?  In my personal (albeit non-religious) opinion, it's more important to protect your children from additional instability than to hold fast to a line that's no more than splitting hairs.  
    Yes, I understand. In many respects, I'm simply holding her to what she says she wants. There's not going to be any difference legally. Whichever of us files, the automatic restraining order would kick in and neither of us would get a leg up.

    But after talking to my pastor friends, it does matter as far as the church is concerned. Again, I'm not trying to get into a drawn out doctrinal discussion here. I really see it more as my version of, "You want out? There's the door!". And she can have everything that comes with what she's decided.

    I don't think she has any idea how hard it's going to be for her once she does this. If she's choosing it, she has to make it all happen. And she will. It's really a moot point except that at some point in the future, I can see myself talking to her along the lines of, "What do you want me to tell you? What you're struggling with are the logical and obvious repercussions of your decisions."

    And at the same time, after looking at all the options, this also creates the most stable environment for the kids as well. All the things that need to happen are achieved at once.


    C
    willieSmashmasterAngelineshanna_banana
  • 2manypasswords2manypasswords OhioSilver Member Posts: 366

    I agree with @Scarlet.  Putting it on her to file for divorce seems like it just delays the inevitable.

    Giving her an extension on the rental housing is a bad idea.  If you back down on that, she (and her attorneys & the judge) will expect more flexibility later on down the road.  She has a very recent history of being untrustworthy and has an even longer history of being secretive. 

    She also doesn't seem to handle adversity very well, and you do neither her or yourself any favors by offering her a cushion like that.  I'm not advocating revenge.  I'm saying don't get between her and the natural consequences of her actions. 

    So use extreme caution in cutting her slack.

    shanna_bananaTimitzNeoTheLeo
  • ScarletScarlet Category Moderator** Posts: 7,542
    @Cranston that's fair.  So long as it doesn't put you at a legal disadvantage, there's something to be said for making her actively choose this.  
    Speak your truth. 
    [Deleted User]SmashmasterAngeline
  • CranstonCranston Member Posts: 155

    I agree with @Scarlet.  Putting it on her to file for divorce seems like it just delays the inevitable.

    Giving her an extension on the rental housing is a bad idea.  If you back down on that, she (and her attorneys & the judge) will expect more flexibility later on down the road.  She has a very recent history of being untrustworthy and has an even longer history of being secretive. 

    She also doesn't seem to handle adversity very well, and you do neither her or yourself any favors by offering her a cushion like that.  I'm not advocating revenge.  I'm saying don't get between her and the natural consequences of her actions. 

    So use extreme caution in cutting her slack.

    If she files "immediately" as she agreed to in writing, it will take her as long as it would take me. Even if she drags it out a little longer, as in a week or two, I really don't care. But if she's as dead-set on getting it done as I think she is, I'm pretty sure I'll be served with the papers within a week or two. I'm not concerned.

    (She's no longer wearing her wedding ring - one I had custom-made for her... unique - and I heard from one of the kids that she "lost it". I'm thinking she sold it. I try not to think about this too much. It's the little things that I grind on most and cause more pain for me for some reason.)

    I tend to agree with you about extending the 90 day window, and for many of the same reasons you mentioned. I think one of the healthiest things for everybody is if we all move on to the next stage of this thing ASAP - that is, we live in our own places and come up with some kind of decent custody arrangement and start living our long term routine.


    C
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