I've met several women over the last 3 years which found out their H's were cheating, separated right away, filed for D, and started dating after a few months.

All the ones I've met haven't hesitated on their decisions or looked back.

Some have had kids who were older. Some with little ones. Some with none at all.

Almost all lived in states requiring a long waiting period to finalize their divorces.

So are they cheating?

Divorce papers are filed and it's a matter of simply becoming official in every one of their cases.

Some here consider this adultery. Some don't.

The ones I've known haven't been emotionally devastated by the D and dropped the WH like a hot potato when the cheating came to light.

So is dating one of these women adultery?

If they are still legally married - yes it is adultery.

Define long time - 12 months is pretty much all it takes to get a divorce in most parts. Why the rush anyway? Did any of these women have their own affairs running?

While it is adultery, I do recognise that it's different than someone ending the marriage because of their affair. Others feel differently about this.

Dr Harley recommends being single for 1 year for every 5 married for healing and hopefully so you can rationally look at the failed marriage without rose coloured glasses and thus enhance the odds of making a marriage that will last a lifetime in the future.

Maybe this will help....

What is an Affair?

I've heard it said here many times... As a rule of thumb ... if you divorce you should wait at least a year until after the divorce is finalized before you begin to date.

One of the classes my divorce care group is going to give is called "Safe People" I beleive it's based on a book by the same name. It should be interesting. It may be wise for you to take some simular classes.

You can find a Divorce Care group by going to their web site

http://www.divorcecare.org/

JMO,

Legally, I imagine it is adultery, after I filed for D, my lawyer firmly said, "No dating".

Morally, I think if you have to ask yourself the question, you have doubts and should avoid it.

Intellectually, I don't see what the hurry is. Are there waiting periods longer than 12 months? I wouldn't want to be the "rebound guy". I am always skeptical of people that find it so easy to date immediately after (or even before) divorce is finalized. I see everyone here and the heart break here and wonder how some people can just shove that under the rug. I believe it just breeds dust bunnies that will arise with a vengence.

Emotionally, the stamp by the judge didn't seem to change my feelings at all. I wasn't magically healed by the judge's 'Final' stamp. I don't think it makes it OK if your first date is lunch after the final hearing. If they are OK before that, then the stamp means nothing.

I just wouldn't assume someone was OK so soon.

JMO

I think it is wrong to date before you are divorced, but I think it may be a lesser offense than the person who initially cheated.

I think if someone dates before they are divorced it reflects poorly on them as someone who is needy and needs to be in a relationship. I wouldn't look at them like they were an awful, immoral person for doing it, but rather I would think more along the lines of what a pathetic person they are for having to immediately jump into another relationship.

I've asked myself these questions.

Yet each one of these women dated and very much acted single shortly after filing.

I met some of them months along in the process when they weren't with anyone.

One of them went out with me a few times but ended things because I was a mess at the time. We've remained friends since.

Her divorce day came when it was "official" and she celebrated.

Her H cheated on her and was allegedly emotionally abusive and she was glad to be rid of him for herself and her kids.

Then there's a childhood friend of mine who found out her H was cheating on her because I clued her in on it.

She'd dealt with several affairs on his part (that she found out about because of me) and had basically acted single almost their whole marriage. She filed and didn't look back one single time.

She celebrated as well once things were official.

Then there's another friend of mine who is a Naval officer.

She had a party.

These women were with cheaters in all these cases and I think they were emotionally overdrawn in their love bank when the affair happened. Hence they were happy to be rid of the guy.

So that's my dilema. I met a woman recently who hasn't been married that long (3 years) and who I met through a dating service. Her H cheated on her, she filed, and they are split and waiting for it to be official. There's no kids and they weren't married long.

I almost cut things off completely when I found out she was still in the process of divorcing.

So I challenged her about the contrast I see between her and some of my divorced friends. My friends are all still recovering from their pain.

She seems ok with it and is moving on without any real looking back.

She did a ton of soul searching about it.

Why is she not devastated like my friends?

Is something wrong with her to not feel that way?

So we talked about it. She felt a strong need to explain.

It was a marriage where both people checked out and lived separate lives under one roof.

He came out one day and told her he didn't want kids. They stopped having SF and he started acting weird. She described wayward H behavior and it made sense to me as I listened.

She dealt with this for a while and her bank became empty. She found out he was having an affair and that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

So I hear what everyone here is saying about waiting to date.

BUT....

At the same time, I've advised many on these boards that if they are young and haven't been married long and have no kids to divorce, count their blessings, and find a good SO and not look back. There's no kids to try and save the marriage for and they're young.

Not having kids makes a huge difference. There's nothing to connect the divorcing couple.

So in a way I feel the advice I'm giving is wrong or conflicting.

But my own personal feeling is that a marriage without kids that ends after a short time is very different from one that has had years of good times and children.

She's a good woman and I like her. I just wanted other's opinions.

She's officially separated, never sees her STBXH, and it will be official in 5 months.

I ask this question because I've met several women like her in my time and they are all friends of mine. They all left cheating husbands and were at an emotional place that the end of the marriage that they didn't hesitate or look back or feel any desire to try and save their marriage. Cheating was the last straw.

I have my divorce care group who says "red flag!"

I've seen and met women in divorce care who were desperate to get out of their marriages and were dating anything that moved.

Those women were really scary.

She's not like them and is like my friends who were cheated on and had an empty love bank and they felt liberated in their divorces. She hasn't struck me as being "desperate" like the women I just mentioned (who were pretty much wayward wives).

Ok. 2x4 away. I just want opinions on this.

I'm guessing most will advise me to wait the 5 months for it to be "official" before going out with her.

I do not agree with any of the opinions posted thus far in this thread.

My XH left me with no children and no support when his affair came to light. Add to that, the fact that this was the second affair I HAVE PROOF of, in our less then five year marriage.

Also, I found out about credit cards that had been hidden from me; cards I had previously closed the accounts on because there was too much debt brought on by XH and I needed to get control of it. All he had to do was call and RE-OPEN the account, without my approval or permission.

He had filed for bankruptcy and told me it would not affect me in any way. Yes, dummy me, I took him at his word. Six months later, I find out that the bills are all at least six months late, my credit is destroyed, and the total amount of debt accumulated over our life together was about $60,000, which, on my salary was impossible to pay.

Add to that the lies about my person by XH and having his friends telling people I know about all of the horrible things I had done... I was done. Through and through.

Where I come from, divorce is not easy to come by. You must be separated for one year minimum. That one year came up and XH husband filed the papers. Then, he stalled. He had one year from the time he filed the papers, to finish the process. He did nothing for 8 months. And, in this time, because he did nothing, my hands were tied.

It took me posting a thread on a local message board, commenting about how great I must be because XH does not want out of the marriage after all, for him to finish the process.

I have not spoken to XH in nearly two years. I have seen him twice in those two years at sporting events. I lived a separate life from the get go of his affair, and had absolutely no reason to even deal with him, let alone see him.

I started dating and met a wonderful man. There are some people on this board who support people moving on without that piece of paper. If I had had my way, that piece of paper would have been in my hands within two months of D-Day, as all of the information about the affair, and previous escapades, came rushing in.

While I understand why people feel this way, I will not label my relationship as an affair, as when I entered it, I was not committed to a husband. I was waiting for the end to a past. Nothing more.

I do not know whether or not you should date her. For me, that depends on your feelings about the marriage contract and the intent of the contract. To me, her intent to disolve the contract is clear and she is proceeding to do that.

I would guess that even if you decide not to officially "date" her, you may remain in contact with her and potentially date her in the future. So....

I am looking at the above quotation, and I wonder if she has elaborated on this point. How does she feel about marriage now related to leading separate lives. As Mel has pointed out, Mel feels that she learned alot about her own independent behavior and how it affected her marriage when she thought she was doing good in her marriage.

This quotation makes me wonder about what this woman feels she has learned about "independent behavior" in a marriage.

I would say it is adultery and that the person has not given themselves adequate time to reflect and fix the parts of themselves that led to the breakdown of the relationship. They will then carry that forward and into new relationships.

Perhaps this is the type of person who is the main contributor to the adultery statistics being so bad? I see the statistic that 65% of marriages survive adultery, I would rather see the statistic on what % of marriage survive adultery where the BS wanted to fix it.

lake,

I hear what you're saying, but I did ask her to elaborate. I didn't dump all that info for the sake of brevity.

She was a standard betrayed spouse prior to finding out. She was married to a man whose behavior she couldn't explain or understand.

He would say typical waywardisms to her and she was lost in trying to understand him.

She tried to reach out to him and figure out what was going on and it just wasn't happening.

She showed me her d-day letter to him when she finally found out about the affair.

Her attitude is very similar to what was just described. She was DONE when the affair came to light.

I've met several women who were done as soon as an affair came to light.

There is a VERY funny connection between her and I which I can't reveal just yet. We were connected in a Kevin Bacon sort of way before we met and it's pretty funny.

But that will be revealed in time.

I thought it sounded like she told you she and he were leading separate lives before the betrayal. So I wondered what she thought about that lifestyle of independent behavior between spouses. I think that as Mel points out, it is difficult to fully understand "independent behavior" and label it as such.

Morally it's wrong to date while only separated. Legally separated in the eyes of the court it is not adultery.

However one needs a year to heal from and grieve the loss of the relationship before they will be ready to date. This healing time can only begin after the divorce is final.

It has also been shown here that dating during a separation will only cause a ton of pain. Then the additional baggage when a later attempt at recovery of the marriage.

Even if their was no PA before the separation the pain will not be any less for the BS.

Road,

She is the BS. She is done. Filed and out of contact with her ex.

No desire at all to reconcile. Counting the days till it's official.

She's like a few other women I've met who were emotionally checked out of their marriages. She went through the confusion of most BSes who don't know their WS is cheating.

She found out and was devastated, but throw on top of it that he was doing it when she was deling with her mother nearly dying from a heartattack and that was pretty much it.

Honestly, I know I would have completely checked out of my marriage if it hadn't been for my kids. My feelings about infidelity were really strong before my marriage because of my dad's philandering.

So I would have kicked my ex to the curb and not looked back if it hadn't been for the kids.

A lot of my feelings for my ex revolved around her being a mom to my kids and my idea of famiy.

I've asked myself how I would have handled it if there were no kids and I'm really sure that I would have gotten over things much quicker, thanked heavens it happened before we had kids, and moved on fairly quickly.

So I think it is possible to do when someone is in a childless and sexless marriage.

Agreed about it being easier when there are no children. I had absolutely nothing to tie me to XH, and I thank goodness for it.

Apart from the still valid marriage licence you mean?

You sound like you have doubts because you asked here and then answered your own question.

I think that you can achieve the right mix. You have been through so much in the breakdown of your own marriage and are not going to go into any relationship with a pre-cursor to fail.

However, it is possible to go really slowly too. How about an agreement to "just get to know each other" and take it slow until the divorce is final?

If she is the right one, then 5 months is not all that long to invest for a lifetime of happiness and full consideration of her current situation.

Good luck.

bigk,

This is where I start to diverge.

A BS has every right to end a marriage. Biblically speaking it's the only justifyable reason to divorce.

So from a religious standpoint, unless there's something I don't understand, a BS is justified in divorcing and no timeline is set on it.

Now, there is the legal question.

So here's a whopper for you:

I have a legal divorce. Yet my church has never annulled my marriage and she is technically still my wife from a church standpoint (though I think God understands a formality).

But I'm still TECHNICALLY married to my wife according to the church.

So am I committing adultery?

My priest seems to be ok with giving me communion.

So at what point is a BS allowed to give the big Plan D and Plan FU to the WS and start living again?

I'm talking about BSes here. Not waywards.

A BS can say from minute number one that they're done because the other partner broke their vows and violated them.

Why is a BS held hostage to legalities if they wish to dump the wayward right away?

I'm offering that as food for thought.

I could, if I chose to, say that my exww is legally separated from me but that i choose for her to be my wife since God and the church are the only ones with the authority to divorce us.

Granted, I plan on seeking the formality of an annullment eventually, because I do wish to remarry in the church someday with it's blessing, but that's a bridge I'll cross eventually.

Gotta take care of the earthbound legalities first since I'm going on a 3 year divorce now in terms of custody issues.

So where exactly do we disagree???

I totally agree the BS has the right to end the marriage.


Personally I find the whole concept of annulments presented only by the Catholic church so far as I know to have no biblical basis whatsoever. People get marriages annulled after YEARS and in the case of the OM in our case, his second wife got an annullment to marry him even though he and she were in an affairage - just so they could get married in church.

Personally, I believe what the bible says not what any priest says.


I completely agree.

God HATES divorce but he ALLOWS it in the case of infidelity. It is up to the BS to make that decision. Divorce is not God's perfect plan - reconcilliation is but it is up to the BS IMO.


Well we are commanded to obey the laws of the land.

A fresh new BS doesn't really know what they want - they need to be able to make decisions about their future unemotionally so they need to wait. They also need to take some good length of time to heal before embarking on a new relationship. That really is just common sense.

There is a reason subsequent marriages fail more and quicker than first marriages.

BigK,

Then were in agreement.

The church gives its blessings to a marriage. You're right that there is no biblical basis, HOWEVER, if the church is going to marry someone, then there's a process to follow.

My father, for example, cheated. He can never marry with the church's blessing ever again. The marriage was annulled for my mother, but not for my father.

HE was the guilty party, not her.

So the church as an organization has given my marriage its blessing. It is important for me to have the church's blessing in a marriage so I basically have to inform them that my ex cheated, was a non believer (in anything, I don't mean that in the "not Catholic" sense) and never had the intention to remain true to her vows.

A board meets, looks at the facts in the case, and then decides if the marriage should be annulled.

I would never, for example, sit idly by if she were to try to marry in the church again. She had no biblically valid reason to divorce.

Now I could be all wrong about all this, but that's how i understand that the system works.

And your friends shouldn't have gotten the annullment if it really was an affairage.

I really hope they didn't get it. Someone should have informed them of the facts and that adultery was involved.

It's not supposed to be a rubber stamp approval thing.

In the end, we'll find out what's true and what's not when we die.

But, like you, I understand that i don't need a priest or a church blessing to know that God knows the facts.

But Church leaders aren't omnescient and need to be informed to be able to give a blessing to a marriage. It's a covenant and a sacrament.

I'd say that's the case no matter what flavor of Christianity you subscribe to unless you're a member of Christians for Living it Up! Their motto is, "hey, we believe and our sins are forgiven already, so lets party!" (that was an actual offshoot and movement of a Christian sect after the Protestant reformation took place). I don't think they quite got the memo.

POM,

I would submit that it can be argued either way whether or not it would be adultery for you to see this woman. If that's the kind of discussion you're looking for, have fun!

Having said that, my question would be "who would it hurt?" And based on what you've said, the answer seems to be no one. If it's not going to directly hurt anyone, it becomes a question of whether she will suddenly have a change of heart and go back to her husband. It sounds like there is zero chance of that.

So my question is what are you looking for? Your next spouse or someone to casually date? With one answer, dating her seems fine to me. The other, not so much. You can probably connect the dots.