Impending Divorce

[Jarlaxle]

It's sad that you both made it through 18 years of marriage and are calling it quits.

Finances seems to be the number 2 reason for divorce, so it makes sense.

It is good you are remaining friends.

I think it's the arrival of middle age that's made the differences in our financial attitudes so painfully obvious. He has grown more and more comfortable with a "We can afford to pay the utilities and buy food, so that's good enough" attitude, while I have become increasingly more nervous about the passage of time and impending retirement (and anyone who thinks 20 years isn't impending when you're talking about preparing your finances for retirement is crazy). I don't want to wind up like my mom, working my ass off until I'm 70 and then scraping by on Social Security and sharing a house with a permanently-single child (my older brother). God willing, NONE of my children will be without spouses and families, and I have no desire to live with any of them until I'm too senile to be aware of it.

Meanwhile, he's still a good person, and we still have a four-year-old son who's going to need both of his parents working together for his benefit for many years yet (the older two are basically done with active parenting). We could make an ugly battle out of it, but the only people that would benefit would be lawyers.

hurumph....'middle age'....yea, been there, done that.

I bought a Mustang then a Cobra, she remade herself physically and spiritually.
then a few years later we both looked at each other and laughed, like what the hell are we doing? .......and both admitted we had the middle age jitters.

we didn't 'diverge' on issues though....thats a biggey. Being 'comfortable' is relative eh?

Since we got married (17 years next month), I have lost my hair, my knees, and my good vision. I found a gray hair in my beard last weekend. Liz still has 40/20 vision, her hair is still jet-black, she looks exactly like she does in our wedding reception photo except for a tattoo on her shoulder. How the hell do women DO that?!

 

[Jarlaxle]

I think the ease from which a marriage can be escaped leads to a lot of people getting into marriages they never should have gotten into in the first place.

Divorce sucks. Don't kid yourself it is going to be easy or amicable. It isn't.

My uncle's first one was...they are still friends almost 25 years later.

 

[ChloeP80]

Divorce is what you make it. You have control over how you behave towards each other and you can decide on what to fight over and what to let go. people tried to persuade me to fight for more money, I didn't, I walked away and that helped in the long run.

 

[High_Gravity]

I decided to go ahead and make a general announcement about this because I'm very likely to mention it in passing in conversation at some point, and hopefully this will save a little on questions that will disrupt another thread.

My husband of 18 years, Joe, and I are getting a divorce. This is completely amicable, and due to financial differences. Apparently, our individual views and goals toward money have grown apart over the years to the point where we have virtually nothing in common in this regard.

We are still the best of friends and love each other very much, and have decided to separate rather than have the constant fights over money sour that relationship. For the time being, we are continuing to share the house we jointly own until we can work out our individual situations for the comfort and convenience of both us and our two sons, who will be going with me when I move out.

This has been coming for several months now, but I haven't wanted to talk about it until more of the details had been hammered out. Now I have started a promising new job, and we have been able to put our plans on something of a timetable, so it's time to make the announcements official.

I am sorry to hear that, I have been through a divorce before where money was a big factor in it, my ex wife didn't bring any money in but boy could she spend it. Be careful about the living together thing, my ex girlfriend of 5 years wanted to do that and it lasted 3 days it was a living hell. Best of luck I wish you well.

Oh, it's been a hoot so far. In some ways, he's been more pleasant to be around since my decision. In other ways, I'm ready to strangle him. He seems to have gotten it into his head that I'm now his house elf (read Harry Potter if you don't get the reference) whose job it is to magically see that everything gets taken care of, complete with a three-course dinner on the table every night, while his responsibility is to go to work and come home every day. If I object, I get to hear, "You're STILL my WIFE, you know."

Still, this is nothing I can't tolerate for a while, and it's nice to hear him talking to our teenaged son in the other room and have it NOT be a lecture on what a useless pile of dirty laundry the poor kid is. I don't think he's going to convince Nick that he wants to stay here when I leave, but I know Nick is enjoying the improved relations with his father for the moment.

Well my situation was a little different when we tried this, she wanted to "see other people" which was basically code for she was already seeing another guy, she just wanted to date him openly in front of me. She said I could see other women too, but it didn't take long for the water to boil over in that situation, it was a living hell and I still get mad about it from time to time.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Divorce is what you make it. You have control over how you behave towards each other and you can decide on what to fight over and what to let go. people tried to persuade me to fight for more money, I didn't, I walked away and that helped in the long run.

Yeah, people keep trying to convince me to demand half the marital assets, which basically means the house and would require its sale. If it were JUST a house, which we had purchased together and primarily viewed as an asset, that would be one thing. But we inherited this house from his mother, and it's really the only thing of hers he has left. Forcing him to sell it would be a dick move on my part. While walking away from that much money is tough, I value my ability to like myself as a person a lot more.