Monday, March 24th at 1:30pm marks our first hearing. We were only given 15 minutes by the judge.

Brief chronology of events

1. I filed for immediate custody of our son upon learning how my W hid him from me at OM's house. Assigned to court #3

2. She filed for divorce. Assigned to court #13

3. I filed for dismissal of divorce petition because neither one of us met the state minimum requirements.

4. I filed for my petition on #1 above to be moved to court #13. There is no need to have two courts deciding what eventually will become the same case.

5. I answered her petition for divorce on #2 above with a petition for legal separation. My reason is that since I believe in M, I want to make sure I stay on until the end. If anybody wants to end the M, let it be her. Am I open to reconciliation? It would be very difficult for me but I still am. Remember this is just my response to the divorce filing, it does not mean the judge will drop the divorce for legal separation.

So, the hearing for #5 will take place Monday. Temporary child custody should be set then.

The hearing for #4 was postponed to a yet to be determined date.

The hearing for #3 I believe is this Thursday.

Too much going on but once the petitions are consolidated, it will be easier to follow (I hope).

And so our days in court begin...

My W has been extremely nice since last Friday. I am highly suspicious. Tonight, the night before the hearing, she finally answers my request to have our S spend Spring Break with me with a resounding yes and a "you will receive a letter from my atty."

Please pray for me. Thanks.

<small>[ March 23, 2003, 11:00 PM: Message edited by: utterlyconfused ]</small>

Hi UC,

You sound as if you have if all together. Also you sound more resolved. Your actions no longer depend on how she acts or reacts. This is good personal progress.

I will certainly keep you and your family in my prayers. It is hard to go through it all but aren't you glad you have clarity of mind and a calm heart?

I like the way you put it all in a logical order.

take care,
L.

UC-

I hope things turn out better than you could've hoped for with these hearings and I'll be praying for you. Good luck and god bless!

UC-

I am also facing a custody hearing next monday. I am closely mointoring you and it's helping tot take some of my fears away...

please keep me posted on your events....

My prayers are with you.

We've got your back, buddy.

Been praying for you, also your W and son.

Hope you continue to improve.

SS

Thanks to all of you...

OK... so how come, if I got most of what I asked for I feel like sh*t? More on this later.

We never got to speak with the judge. Our attorneys spoke to her for about 1/2 hour then the attys took their respective clients to a separate meeting area.

Some of the following decisions were made by the judge, some were worked out between us through the lawyers.

Keep in mind these are temporary orders.

</font>

1. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I remain in the house while I pay for the mortgage, utilities and incidentals for the house. I make the minimum payments on our CC debt.</font></li>
2. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">She gets temporary custody. Judge added additional visitation time for me and said that my W's practice and request to follow the minimum guidelines was unacceptable.</font></li>
3. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">She asked for spousal maintenance and for me to pay her car insurance. Judge ordered a one hour hearing for the first week of May to decide spousal maintenance.</font></li>
4. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The judge ordered child custody evaluation (which I had requested). My W's lawyer wanted a tribunal to decide it.</font></li>
5. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The judge ordered me to pay $750 for her lawyer's fee.</font></li>
6. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">She wanted me to file jointly for income tax return (she did not work last year) and put the refund on a trust fund to be divided when the divorce is signed. I agreed to file jointly only if the money went to atty's fees including the $750 for her lawyer.</font></li>
7. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">She still cannot take our son out of the county unless it is for medical appointments.</font></li>
8. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">She wants us to notify each other immediately, but no later than one hour, when a medical emergency arises regarding our son. She probably requested this because it took me two hours to notify her when our son broke his arm. In my defense, I took him to the emergency room and was concentrating on him. I didn't give her a call until he was better and that took a couple of hours. Two ironies about this, one is that she has never done this courtesy to me (in fact she still hasn't told me about a couple of instances where he was sick, I learned it from him) and that a few months ago, I was the one who asked her to do this.</font></li>
9. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">She wants her personal property.</font></li>
10. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">She wants our son's books, CD's and bicycle. The only thing I said no to was the bike. Am I supposed to erase all traces of my son's at my house? Let her buy him one herself.</font></li>

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The rest of the stuff is minimal and I did not disagree with.

Now, my venting:

Why is it that a woman can cheat on her husband, leave her husband, break up her child's family, move in with another man while married, and get away with it? Explain to me how the legal system is supposed to protect the innocent? Not only have I spent a large sum of money on all this, I also have to pay $750 of her lawyer's expenses and she wants spousal maintenance. Spousal maintenance for what and why? Why can't she find a job like she always wanted?

Remember, folks I never wanted this divorce, I still don't want it. Which brings me to the initial point and that is I feel like sh*t. Why? I'm not sure but what has hurt me the most is boxing up and giving her all her stuff. I know it does not belong to me, I know. However, I wanted her to sift through the stuff and pick what is hers. I wanted for her to go down the trip through memory lane. I am hurting enough to have to go through it myself. To me, it is additional punishment.

Additionally, giving her stuff back is another step in the finality of this M. In other words, her stuff at our house represented to me a sliver of hope. It looks like I'm still in denial, after what looked like I was moving on to acceptance. Maybe I'm returning to the denial stage. I sort of view her stuff as not being spoiled yet by the A, by the other man. I feel that I slowly continue to lose parts of me and grieving starts again.

Somebody, please wake me up from this nightmare.

Why do I continue to say "I'm losing my W," instead of saying "I've lost my W, let me move on?" Why can't I let go? What is this all about? I should have been happy with today's decisions, instead, I cried most of the way from the courthouse back to work. I keep saying "I'm losing the best thing that happened to me," instead of looking forward to the future.

I failed, miserably I failed. Some days I still feel guilty for not doing more things she wanted during the M. Some days I feel guilty for not doing a good enough Plan A, for being confrontational when I should have been more understanding and helped her out of her dilema of being on the fence. The OM played the part perfectly, he did not have to do much because it was her who kept pursuing him. I know I heard the "you are the prize" line many times but I sure don't feel like it. He hit the jackpot with her and I could not compete with His Royal Trashness.

No matter how hard it is for each of you, I envy all of you who have survived the A.

Enough venting...

UC ... she doesn't deserve you. And you, mi buen amigo, deserve far more. You will have it, of that I am confident.

On another note, I too am shocked that a person who is living with another he/she is not married to while still married is afforded so much. It astounds me that your wife is being rewarded, in some way, for her choices.

I have been thinking of you.

UC-

I can relate to the feelings that you had after leaving the courthouse. It also strikes me very close to home because I was the WP. I think in the end, this is the reason that I retreated from an all out battle over the house.

Your feelings of failure and sadness are stemming from mourning. You HAVE not failed and you know this in your heart. The fact is you LOVE your wife still. You had dreams and plans that are not to be. Yes you are still hanging on to her by having her stuff there. Please do yourself a favor and get it out of there as soon as you can. YOU need to get this out so you can start to heal.

I totally relate to this because I still have my stuff in the house....Someone challenged me on this today and I will be posting on that in a few minutes.

I'm sorry that you are being financially raped after being emotionally raped. You definately deserve better. I will say that I think MB has helped you more than you realize because many men would be bitter and would hate ALL women after going through something like this.

Hugs to you.

I know the MB web site has helped me tremendously, especially all of you, my friends.

I think I figured out what is going on inside of me. Two things:

1. The death of my M. I can make the argument that it is dying a painful and slow death. But I can also make the argument that it has been dead and situations like yesterday's are constant reminders, triggers of sorts. I feel like I've gone back to just getting out of the denial phase.

2. All night I thought I felt the way I did due to control. But it isn't really. Yes, I will admit there is an element of control, but what hurts me the most is that by her having physical custody most of the control over my son's life has been usurped from me. What I feel is that I've lost my W and now I'm losing my son. I know I'm not losing him physically, but I keep losing him over the day to day decisions, experiences, raising him, etc. For instance, how is it possible that my W makes a decision about him at school that I have no say on nor am I notified about it?

She already took away my W (herself) and now I feel it is an uphill battle to prevent her from taking my son away from me.

<small>[ March 25, 2003, 09:32 AM: Message edited by: utterlyconfused ]</small>

UC,
I doubt if anything has changed between you and W lately, but I wanted to see how *you* are doing.

SS

UC,

I don't know your whole story but read this thread and felt your pain. While going through my own personal hell I was reading this and said to my self "poor guy".

What strikes me most (while you might not believe it) is that you ARE rational. Yes, I know you are feeling like crap now, but yours is one of the most intelligent posts I've read from what appears to be an extremely intelligent man.

It might not be much, but God, my heart goes out to you and wish you peace and the best.

Even though I can't believe that life will get better for me, I just have to believe that your life WILL get better and someday you will find happiness. It was just something in your post.

I'll be thinking of you.

Willow