On Tuesday, September 5th around 4:30pm I walked out of my home county's courthouse a divorced man.

It was ugly, long, drawn out, unnecessary, mean, embarrassing, necessary, earned, disappointing, satisfying, and about 17 over adjectives.

I feel numb. I feel like a failure. I am glad my marriage is over, it should have been legally over years ago. I got everything I wanted as far as visitation, vacation schedule, and holiday schedule that I asked for concerning my toddler age daughter. The money was split 50/50 except for the house which went 60/40 in her favor. I pay twenty percent in child support which i was already doing.

She played dirty. real dirty. It didn't matter.

It is all very anti climatic. I don't feel celebratory. I feel sort of beaten up. I feel tired.

If there are any reactions to this post or interesting comments, I'll read them. I feel sort of tired of posting here too. I am happy I met some nice people.

That's all.

Gekko, I have the feeling I'll be feeling like you soon. I plan on asking my wife for a divorce sometime next week possibly. I'm wanting it because I'm dead to her. I have been rejected by her so many times, I'm just staying in it now, because I made a committment. She claims she's trying, but she's not. I'm done. Do you have any reccomendations on how to make this break as clean as possible? I feel almost everything you described right now. But mostly I feel relief that I'm finally standing up for myself and taking my leave. In my little brain I plan on keeping the house loan, letting her have the car loan, and around half of any cash we have sitting around for her to start over.

She won't care about that stuff initially. She's going to live with her parents I'm sure in another state. We have no kids. So, it should be simple in terms of materialistic things. We'll both feel like crap for a while, but at the same time I feel good and optimistic about this decision. HOwever, I still have second thoughts too, and I know there's no turning back. But a decision must be made!

gekko could you let us know how she played dirty several of us are going through this now

I might go thru this. I'm the W. But I have one kid, and he hardly ever seems interested in her much <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> He only watches her if I have to leave w/o her. I ask him to take her to the park and do daddy things. He doesn't even tell her he loves her. I don't think he is really ready to be a daddy imo.

well, i will answer this for him because honestly i do not know if he will be back posting here or anywhere else for awhile and he had told me before to go ahead and post what had happened with his hearing so i will give it a shot. if he does happen to pop back on here i am sure he could add to what i say.

first off i would like to say that if anyone can offer any words of encouragement to gekko to go for it and i will def tell him to come and read them. everyone was telling him to go and celebrate when this divorce was done but as he has told me over and over he just feels so beaten up. and i get that. i remember signing my legal separation agreement. i thot i would feel "free" finally free from the evil i was married to and ready to be happy and just jump right out there and smile away... well, i did not feel that way at all. instead i felt a literal gutteral sadness overtake me. i guess i felt like all the trying i did brought me to this final outcome of failure. the marriage was not good and i no longer wanted it but still felt terrible inside. i felt like all it did was validate his affair relationship. gekko i know is feeling a lot of those feelings.

something else that made him feel badly, and i hope others can chime in here, is that his ex, who had totally let herself go during the marriage, now apparently looks smashing and even tho he looks at her and does not in any way want her, he feels very hurt that she could not put forth that effort for him. like, why didn't he deserve to have her look that good for him? what is it about HIM that made her let herself go, but as soon as they are not together she goes and gets great looking again... being a woman i have some ideas i reiterated to him, but mostly i think gekko needs reassurance to know it is not HIM that made her let herself go, it is not anything to do with him. he felt like there must be something about him that brings this about in women he is with, they get comfortable and then let themselves go... plese, some comforting input in this area i think would be good for gekko right now.

as far as his ex playing dirty... well, she basically just got the final hearing postponed about a million times so she could continue to live off of the ridiculous amount of money he was giving her every month. she tried to dig into every little corner of his life and use it against him (this is after they signed what in my state would be the equivalent of a sep agreement) basically anything he did after signing that was a mute point as far as the divorce (not that he did anything wrong at all... not living with a bunch of beer drinking buds or with 6 loose women or anything)... she was and still is very angry and hurt that the dead marriage she put no effort into was over and she tried everything she could to make him pay up financially and to try and keep his daughter from him. most everything she tried really did not work. just the actions of a very bitter and angry selfish person, much like my ex is.

she tried to tap into inheritance money that his mother, not he, got any of. she tried to get all kinds of $$$$ out of him basically. she continues to try and shame him for leaving and continues to try and make him feel like he is nothing.

divorce is ugly and dirty. lucky are those who can do one amicably... i am sure they are few and far between.
gekko could really just use our support right now and encouragement. any kind words or words of advice i am sure would be welcome.

thanks,
mlhb

Perhaps my experience will help. I'm not saying that my experience will match with yours, but let me share my perspective, and if it's helpful fine, if not, then I suggest that you just let it go.

You don't mention how old your daughter is, but I can say that for the first five years of my daughter's life, I wasn't really involved. Much of it was I didn't know what to do, or even know if I was welcome.

That last part was not helped by my ex-wife. When I would get up at night with YD as an infant, when she was crying, I had difficulty getting her back to sleep. I would watch what my ex-wife did to meet YD needs and comfort her back to sleep, but I didn't get the same results.

I guess XW got frustrated listening to her continue to cry, and I know I was pretty frustrated myself. So XW would take YD from me, and from my perspective, demonstrate that my way was wrong or ineffective. Eventually, you just stop trying when someone tells you in word or action that your effort is not good enough.

I felt like I was simply the ATM and guy to load the van and carry heavy things, squish bugs, and cut grass.

As the years went by, I came to resent my daughter, not because of her, but because my ex-wife had time for her, but wasn't willing to find 1 hour each day to have husband/wife time.

She would say she wanted me to spend more time with the kids, and I would agree, and do this, and say I wanted more time with her. She would say ok, and then couldn't be bothered to leave the TV when I arrived home, couldn't be bothered to be the parent and encourage our daughter to sleep in her own bed. (I would come to bed and find YD in the bed, you can't really teach her to fall asleep in her own bed when you let her fall asleep with mommy. Sure, I could have carried her to her bed. It's just that my preferences didn't seem to matter. It was as if I said, it bugs me to find YD in our bed when I come to bed was fuel to have it happen more frequently until it was a daily event.)

I shut down because I didn't feel like I was part of the family. Right or wrong, my impression was that I was good only for the things mentioned above, being the sole source of income, carrying heavy things, driving, lawn and home maintenance, and bug killing.

I wasn't worth the effort to get off the couch when I came home from work to be given a kiss from a grateful wife.

It wears on you, and like others have said, you are tired of being rejected, not experiencing appreciation and/or love in your love language.

So you retreat, you work more, or read, or immerse yourself in a hobby.

Now that I'm divorced, besides the financial benefits of not having a spendthrift wife (paying $1K/month in child support is far cheaper than being married for me) is that I'm able to have the kind of relationship with my daughter that I want to have. I don't get her as much as I want, and I regret that it took the divorce to see that I needed to seperate my resentment regarding my ex-wife's behavior from my YD who needs a daddy.

So I had my part.

The other thing to realize is that not everyone can just play with a toddler for hours on end. I admit, my YD is becoming a lot more fun now. She can communicate, is beginning to understand abstract ideas, we can read together, I've taken her trout fishing, she will ride rollercoaster that her mom wouldn't ride, she doesn't complain about my cooking like her mom and 1/2 sister did, etc.

She is just a lot more fun to be around, and I'm not so stressed from wondering how I was going to pay for what my ex-wife wanted.

So what I would encourage is that if you want your husband to have a great relationship with his daughter, then show your daughter what a great relationship looks like by having one with your husband.

None of us here are without fault. We can complain about our spouses or ex-spouses, but that solves nothing. We have to look at ourselves and look at what our spouses say their needs are, and decide if we are going to accept what they say they need and if the vows we took to love them (a verb, not a feeling) are meaningful, or are we just going to make ourselves a liar by looking for a way out.

I decided my vows meant something, but my ex-wife chose the other man.

It hurts to believe the promise of another person, and then have them look for a way out. I honestly believe I'm a better person for having divorced, and regret that I was unable to convince my ex-wife, faults and all, that there was a better marriage in our future with each other.

She made choices that I would not have made, and I made choices that she would not have made. We had the opportunity to learn and grow together, but either did not, or were unable to capitalize on that opportunity.

I pray, for the sake of your child, that you are able to connect with your husband in a meaningful way, that you can let go of your judgments about your husbands relationship with his daughter.

While he may not love his daughter the way you do, or the way you think he should, you can't say that he doesn't love his daughter. To do so is a love buster, a disrespectful judgment, and could be one of the things that is destroying your marriage.

There are two reason why I believe my relationship with my daughter is better today.

1. I made it a priority to do so.
2. I don't hear the constant criticism of my ex-wife telling me that I'm doing that relationship "wrong."

You can't make his priorities, but you can ensure that you are not nagging or criticising him about how he conducts his relationship with his daughter. That is a sure fire way to poision that relationship. He will begin to associate criticism with her, and feel it's useless to have any relationship, because it will never be good enough for you.

I just want to say that I hear you brother.

I had the same experience. I wouldn't say that my ex looked smashing, but it was hurtful to ponder that the treadmill, exercise bike, and healthclub membership that she wanted and I paid for were not of any use until she met the OM and suddenly was motivated to exercise.

So the thousands I paid for things she asked for appeared to just be ways to get money from me, but were not worth actually using until she began her affair.

I say this because I want you to know that I get this feeling, I understand it, and have lived it.

This isn't any, my pain is bigger, better, worse, comparision. I say this to let you know that I have empathy for what you may be feeling.

Divorce sucks, and it's about someone or both people breaking a vow. It hurts to have someone make a promise and then break that promise. Even if we don't feel like performing loving acts for that person, we ofter were willing to do so, and simply wanted our spouse to do the same thing.

Sometimes, we just want to hear them say, "I'm sorry I hurt you."

Instead, we experience folks with a sense of entitlement. "I'm entitled to your money because I put up with you while we were married."

I recall having a conversation during the divorce where I said I got tired of doing things because I did not experience appreciation. Saying thank-you would have gone a long way. When I paid for 1/2 of step-daughters summer camp, or that I put her on my health and dental insurance because it was a better plan that the one her dad had, and no-one said thanks, or the times I drove her to camp, or carried yours and her luggage.

I just wanted to hear thank you.

What did I hear back, "You are supposed to do those things, you shouldn't expect a thank-you."

Whatever!

I hear you brother gekko. I leave the consequences to God. Sometimes I ask if I can watch them suffer, but then I say a prayer and remind myself that God is much better at consequences and punishment than I would ever be, and that I need to work on my own side of the street and stay safely away when God does decide to act.

I just pray that my YD is no where near if there are such consequences this side of heaven.

Hey Gekko, if your reading.......

I wanted to say, I felt much the same as you as far as, I did not feel like celebrating. After all, what was there to celebrate? A failure of a marriage? I did go to dinner with a couple of friends, but it wasn't with celebration in mind. It was more to ease my mind of what had taken place earlier that day. A finalization to the end of an 18 yr marriage.

I believe once the dust settles, you will be feeling more yourself and the days will get less clouded.

I'm sorry she felt the need to play dirty. There is no understanding that, so don't spend your time wasted on trying to understand.

As far as her looks? My best guess? She played that card to its fullest. She absolutely wanted you to see her in that light and you to feel the way you are feeling.
It has so little to do with you. Don't take that on for yourself.

Take care of yourself. Someday when you're up to it, stop by and let us know you're doing well. That day will be coming!

K!

thanks for the responses.

i doubt i will wil post much. i think the world of mlhb, karona, and dukhunter. i have gotten to know them irl (in real life). so i talk to them often.

mlhb covered most of it. I have zero feelings for my ex. the way she treated my family and me and my daughter's best interests is reprehensible. i mean i have family members not speaking to me right now because our hearing was so ugly.

i have moved on. i have begun the next phases of my life. i do feel beaten up but not beaten down. for divorced guys/divorcing guys out there - concentrate on the kid/s. make yourself the best father you can be. always pay your money on time and in full. trust your lawyer and tell him everything, whether it matters on not. post filing behavior doesn't matter if your child isn't compromised, mine wasn't. that being said, be careful.

thank you to any and all of you who have imparted wisdom. esp mlhb, karona, and duk.

i got divorced sept 5th and my birthday was sept 10th. i haven't celebrated either one.

Gekko, I had the same experience as Karona, not the relief I think we all expected. With children, it is never over.
Happy Birthday because you deserve to think of the new year you are starting.
My life is far better than before.

Gekko,

Good luck. You gave yourself the best advice..the focus should be on your child now.

It took me 2 years of separation before my divorce was final. I kept telling my friends how I would throw a big party when it was over and I was finally free from the big cheater. When it finally happened, I didn't feel like celebrating, but I did feel relief. On Valentine's Day last year, I took the kids out to dinner. They said, "we know who Daddy's valentine is, it's J(OW)". I said, well, you are my Valentines and I am lucky to have 2. I look at those kids and think my marriage couldn't have been a total failure.

Hang in there. If you truly gave it your all and did everything you could to work things out, then these feelings should dissipate and you can get on w/your life. Healing takes time, so be patient. Take care of you and your child.

UPDATE:

I am sick tonight and that combined with me watching the Falcons get beat by the Giants in person at the Ga Dome made for a long day and night. So, I am up and reading the forum.

About three weeks ago, just before the first of October, my ex and I started speaking in a civil manner. She called me one night to discuss getting the rest of "my stuff" and some issues with my daughter. Thirty minutes later I am begging to get off the phone with her. Usually we just exchanged terse emails and that was all. She told me she shredded all the papers and "evidence" from the divorce and she was "tired of fighting". We have the spent the last three weeks getting along, even exchanging cooking tip and funny stories about our daughter's behavior. We have turned a corner and I have offically gotten EVERYTHING i wanted out of the divorce. I know what kind of father I am and will be. I have my identity. I now have a civil, decent, and appropriate relationship with my daughter's mom. That's all I wanted.

We have two issues to work out; the decision on attorney fees, worst case scenario is I pay two to three thousand of hers, prolly won't have to pay any. We also must decide the equity of the house after she refinances, This will happen in November, She has told me she doesn't care how that shakes out and is leaving it to the lawyers. That is a majr change in her behavior.

I went back to therapy on September 14th. I wasn't crazy again or anything but the stress of the hearing made me think I needed a tuneup. Hot therapist is doing well and thinks I am too. We talk about how I have gone from Co-Dependency to something quite the opposite and I need to find a balence so that I am not such a polarizing person to my friends and family. Hot therapist is encouraging me to pursue first rate relationships and live my life for myself and of course my daughter. I am doing this.

AS far as mlhb and I, I realize this will break the hearts of AGG and his acolytes on the forum but I am very happy with her and our progress. We probably won't see each other again until New Years Eve but the slow pace of our relationship is perfect for me. Her being in anothr state gives a lot of time to myself and my friends. How i interact with my daughter as a single parent is unaffected as well. I am happy with my new life, and I am happy with getting to know mlhb.

Goodness, this was a long post, I am hanging around mlhb too much, I am started to ramble like her.

hey! i don't ramble! LOL

i just talk alot.
and it is all full of true and honest blonde wisdom. ;-)

good post by the way.
of course we had already talked about all of that, but it is nice to see you back here.

mlhb

Fat chance, my heart is not so easily broken <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />. Enjoy the progress <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.

AGG

gekko,
Just want to thank you for sharing with us on the forums and your helpful insight with our mutual struggles. Best life to you and your DD. The way you've handled yourself and the nurturing you provide her is wealth beyond measure. The bank accounts and house pale compared to the riches you hold in her small hand.
God bless you both.