<BR>We've been married for a year and a half, but really most of it has been a process of breaking up. She's living in San Diego now, and I live in Denver. We get together about once a month. We lived together about a year, before the fights just got too much.<P>Anyway, the reason I'm writing is I just don't see any way that we'll ever be able to do the Joint Agreement thing. Any suggestions would help.<P>We've both been divorced from previous controlling and/or dependent spouses. We both are finally independent now. I make a good living, but my ex takes most of it (two kids), and in her previous marriage her ex would spend all of her money in bars, so sharing money is extremely hard for both of us. We usually go dutch or trade of who pays, which seems to work. We have separate everything. We just never really merged anything.<P>Anyway, we seem to pretty much meet each others needs well, when we are together, except I can't express when anything is wrong without her going ballistic, and she seems to need her complete independence.<P>I'll give an example of why we have everything separate. She totalled her car a while ago so she needed a new one. She bought an old sports car that costs tons to maintain, without even discussing it with me. Actually she told me and I said I thought it was a bad idea. We fought and she said I didn't want her to have anything nice, and then she bought it anyway. I let it go, because she paid for it, and she has to pay for the insurance and maintenance. If it was all on me, I think it would drive me nuts.<P>Anyway, do you all think a marriage can work with so much separate, or am I fooling myself?<P>
