Do you think you might get divorced once the kids are grown?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I used to have this plan. I had it all figured out - I would pack my bags the night before my youngest graduated from high and then once the event was over I would walk off into the sunset and never look back. I figured that I would leave my DH to take care of the legal details of the demise of our marriage. I also used to wish that he got himself a girlfriend bc then I would be totally free from guilt about the lack of sex (I had zero interest).

Well, a funny thing happened - he called my bluff and forced me to take a long hard look at my "plan". He got a "girlfriend". I put the word in quotes bc both he and her swear that they never had any phyical contact (she lives in another state). When I found out I asked him if he wanted a divorce. He said no, he said he had no interest in leaving me that he had too much invested in our marriage and our kids and that while he was not happy with me he still loved me and that his wanting to have sex with another did not mean he did not love me. I insisted that divorce was best of us, he said no and asked (he did not beg) and asked me to think about it before making a final decision. I took me 3 days but I agreed to give the marriage a real shot so long as he met two minor conditions.

Its been six months and its like we are two different people and our marriage is amazing. The sex is great, he is an amazing father - he is doing all the things that were lacking that made me plan to leave him in the first place and I am definately giving him what he needs most - my attention. We are definately not perfect and every once in a while I freak out and get suspicious (he travels some), but now I just tell him upfront what i am feeling and he is good at addressing my fears and concerns.

I guess what I learned from this whole experience is that no one wants to be on the receving end of a "sham" marriage and sometimes it really does not take that much effort to make each other happy. It also take so much less emotional energy than trying to put of a "brave face" just for the sake of the children. I am saying that we wont end up divorced anyway but for now we are both taking this marriage thing seruosly and be are both better off and so are our kids.

"not saying"

Oh how do I wish I were in your shoes.

My husband has told me very clearly that he will divorce me once the kids leave the house. I am devastated and it is really hard sometimes to stay, but I have no alternative. I am disabled, and the only way I will get to spend any kind of time with the kids is if I stay. We have had to go through some horrible things together and I was on too many prescription drugs and angry at the world and behaved very badly for about 5 years. I am still in love with him and cannot imagine life without him but living with the knowledge that as he says he "will never be able to love me the way he used to" is very tough and depressing sometimes. We have known each other 25 years, been exclusive for 20, and are coming up on our 15th anniversary.

He recently asked me to stop saying I love you to him because he does not want to feel forced to say it back. I am so jealous of the above poster. If only that were my situation. If only I could undo all the mistakes I have made. If only, if only. The biggest problem I have is I feel like I am basically giving up my life for my kids, who sometimes except for my beautiful boy don't appreciate me that much - their father's statements about me and behavior towards me trickles down.

My fear is that by the time the last one leaves the house I will be less well than I am now and in my mid 50s, and unable to find anyone else to spend the rest of my life with. Any words of comfort or encouragement would be welcome. I am feeling very hopeless, unloved and isolated at the moment.

[Anonymous]

Difficult to respond to your post because yours is an unusual story I think and I can't picture being disabled PLUS having behaved badly for five years. What is your illness? I admit that I identify with your husband because my husband has been so nasty to me so many times that I simply can't feel anything for him any more. I was committed to the path of staying until the kids are in college, but I've changed my mind. We are no longer angry with each other, just loveless. He's not willing to risk divorce but he needs a push so he'll find someone who can offer him the love that I no longer can. And so I think we can have a respectful divorce. Papers being drawn up as we speak.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Difficult to respond to your post because yours is an unusual story I think and I can't picture being disabled PLUS having behaved badly for five years. What is your illness? I admit that I identify with your husband because my husband has been so nasty to me so many times that I simply can't feel anything for him any more. I was committed to the path of staying until the kids are in college, but I've changed my mind. We are no longer angry with each other, just loveless. He's not willing to risk divorce but he needs a push so he'll find someone who can offer him the love that I no longer can. And so I think we can have a respectful divorce. Papers being drawn up as we speak.

My husband has been extremely nasty to me as well, and my reactions to that are part of my "bad" behavior. There was one time where i completely fucked up, other than that it has been mostly about me gaining weight on steroids (which I have lost), but can cause a lot of rage (the medication and getting fat), and being for a while on too many painkillers so I was sort of out of it, and being completely focused on my illness and not on him. In my defense, I was also completely focused on my kids. My parents are toxic and wreaked havoc on our marriage and now that I realize it I no longer want to be around them.

Nonetheless, I have to say that I am starting to realize that before I did a few things that were actually really bad, he would go on rants about all the other unforgivable sins i and my family had committed etc. So in the long run I'm not sure the one awful thing was the tipping point (it happened four years after he first asked for a divorce). I think perhaps the Rubicon was him asking for the divorce in the first place. He says at that point he just did not want to be married to a (physically unattractive because I was overweight) disabled person, and now he does not want to be married to whatever I am - a self centered entitled bitch, terrible mother, mentally impaired, crazy, take your pick.

I did really fuck up by kicking him off our vacation and keeping the kids (the plan had always been for us to stay that extra week and for him to leave, but I panicked and called the cops when he wanted to take the kids.) We used to have a nanny and he worked more and I had lots of alone time with the kids and was very close to the them, but all that has changed in the last 3 years because he has basically taken over and convinced them i am incompetent. For me that is when true hell started, and i frequently feel I am in it.

It is not usually an entirely miserable situation, i love being around my kids and would not be able to go to their performances or be nearly as involved in their lives as he lets me be were I not in the house. The unconditional love and admiration i get from my son, the pleasure I have in the conversations with my older daughter when she opens up, and the sweetness inside the little tyrant who is our youngest make life worth living.

I just have to function in a constant state of denial. But I do wish he would stop the rants and sometimes open hostility. Loveless and not angry would probably be better than bitter, resentful, and critical in a way that is not constructive and just rips me in two. The more I write the more crazy this sounds. And as I've said, I still love him. And I can't really imagine staying for ten more years if I ever completely stop loving him and just feel grateful that he is allowing me to hang around.

He is a good father and used to be a wonderful guy, but if I am no longer loved because of what I've done, the feeling is almost mutual. I keep hoping for the old great guy from 2007 and before to come back, and sometimes I see traces and it gives me hope, and then it is dashed. But I am definitely a shell of the person he married 15 years ago, primarily due to permanent disability that includes chronic pain and no driving and prescription narcotics, but also due to the low self esteem that comes from no longer having a job and frequently being treated like shit.

So in some ways I am totally dependent, and I understand that he resents it. As he said recently, he thought in sickness and in health was either you die or you get better, not a life sentence. So we are staying together for the kids and then after 25 years of marriage (and 35 years of being on and off in love), the game will be over. I have stopped thinking that I can win him back because I just get crushed over and over.

So I try to live day to day in la la land pretending I am in a true partnership to the extent he will let me and trying not to as he says "get cosmic" because every time I go there I just end up crying and crying and crying - for my old self, for his old self, for our old relationship, for my old stronger relationship with my kids, for him treating me so cruelly.... It goes on and on.

And finally, for the fact that while he is right that I will probably never find anyone who loved me the way he did for the first 20 years of our relationship, I am deeply afraid that I will never find anyone else to love me at all. Kids grow up and leave and you have to let them and then for me there will be no one left and he will go on his merry way, because he is not disabled, because he can. He says I resent him because of my disability but THAT is what I really resent - his ultimate ability to walk away without a care in the world and leave me in the dust, hoping at that point that my kids still love me.

Please do not advise me to get out - I cannot, for a variety of complicated reasons, one of which is that I would go bankrupt trying to take care of my kids because of the help I would need, and ultimately as he has pointed out they will decide who to live with and it is a very easy choice - the driver or the non driver who cannot help them with their homework. I guess I just wanted some sympathy from cyberspace. Perhaps tomorrow I will have a cup of tea. The pain keeps me up.

[Anonymous]

I understand completely. We did not intend to have health issues! But we do and we are irritable to each other. He is a man and could replace me, no problem. A woman of 60+ Well GL with that!

[Anonymous]

Disabled poster: your moods will ebb and flow and so I'm sure you will feel better at times, but I sense that your guilt over the 'one really bad thing', calling the cops and kicking him out of your vacation, needs to be aired out. We do things that we have to do, everyone understands the way emotions overtake rationality sometimes and you did not physically hurt anyone. I called the cops on my DH for something that was debatably unfair to him (he shoved me once and knocked me down but I was not at all hurt, and now it is on his record). My son, watching, was horrified at me for calling the cops on daddy. But when I was able to think rationally much later, I was able to put in perspective and am totally at peace with it. My husband won't forgive me for it but I recognize now why I had to do it at that particular juncture. My confidence now (a few years later) that it was a reasonable action under the circumstances means that my husband gets no value when trying to shame me for it, and better yet my son and I have used the situation to talk about nuance, self-control, and choices. I know your situation is very different but the point is the same, you felt the need for protection for yourself and your kids, or using something other than words to convey to your husband the depth of your anger and hurt. Justified or not in 20/20 hindsight, it was not wrong. Put it in a box and move on to the more pressing matter, how to keep close to your kids while holding on to your own self-worth. You must do both! Think of it as a science problem: brainstorm every single option available to you, no matter how ridiculous they sound, and then break them down into positives and negatives. Put down the actual costs, psychic costs and benefits of each action. Do you have a sister or friend that could then look it over and see what you might have missed? I find that I get so flooded with emotion that I can't think effectively and that may be happening. So try to make it as rational as possible, as if you were observing or assisting someone else in your exact situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Disabled poster: your moods will ebb and flow and so I'm sure you will feel better at times, but I sense that your guilt over the 'one really bad thing', calling the cops and kicking him out of your vacation, needs to be aired out. We do things that we have to do, everyone understands the way emotions overtake rationality sometimes and you did not physically hurt anyone. I called the cops on my DH for something that was debatably unfair to him (he shoved me once and knocked me down but I was not at all hurt, and now it is on his record). My son, watching, was horrified at me for calling the cops on daddy. But when I was able to think rationally much later, I was able to put in perspective and am totally at peace with it. My husband won't forgive me for it but I recognize now why I had to do it at that particular juncture. My confidence now (a few years later) that it was a reasonable action under the circumstances means that my husband gets no value when trying to shame me for it, and better yet my son and I have used the situation to talk about nuance, self-control, and choices. I know your situation is very different but the point is the same, you felt the need for protection for yourself and your kids, or using something other than words to convey to your husband the depth of your anger and hurt. Justified or not in 20/20 hindsight, it was not wrong. Put it in a box and move on to the more pressing matter, how to keep close to your kids while holding on to your own self-worth. You must do both! Think of it as a science problem: brainstorm every single option available to you, no matter how ridiculous they sound, and then break them down into positives and negatives. Put down the actual costs, psychic costs and benefits of each action. Do you have a sister or friend that could then look it over and see what you might have missed? I find that I get so flooded with emotion that I can't think effectively and that may be happening. So try to make it as rational as possible, as if you were observing or assisting someone else in your exact situation.

Thank you so much. The biggest problem is that I cannot seem to get over his ability to destroy me with his words so that I start crying and have to stay in my room instead of being with my kids, or cannot pull myself together enough to go on the family outing (I think he may do that on purpose). And I have no contact with other adults because I am confined to my house, and also because there is basically no one I would say any of this to. I do not want to embarrass him or my family.

But thanks so much about your observations about the call to the police. I said to him recently (this happened almost 3 summers ago) how long are you going to rake me over the coals for this, and what else can I possibly do to say I'm sorry. He basically said he was going to continue until he felt like stopping and that if I could not stand it I could always leave.

But there were rational reasons behind what I did, not the least of which was he was threatening then not to take me to the next place we were going which would have left me (as far as my very upset mind could figure out) alone in a house in DC without air conditioning with no access to food. When he upsets me I cannot think straight and he did this on the last night he was there and all I could think was, even if you are offering to take us ALL away now, leaving a week early, you are then proposing something that may endanger my life (I have had bad accidents with stairs). So I kind of did have a good reason to get him off without us and have a cooling off period. My kids have totally recovered from that (they did not want to leave a week early anyway although the police did upset them) but as I said he keeps saying "our marriage should have been over 3 years ago." I don't know whether that is better than the previous hypothesis that it should have been over in 2007.

But as I said before for numerous reasons that cannot really be shared here I have to stay. So you are right. What I really need to figure out is how not to let him get to me so that I don't get to do the things I want to with the kids and in the outside world. It might actually be easier if I did not love him because then he could not hurt me nearly as much. But I'm not sure whether I could survive if I felt that way. The biggest problem is that he and my kids are my world, and when he destroys me he takes me away from them either by making me emotionally upset or just leaving the house with them. The one thing I have concluded from this thread is that divorce is inevitable, so I am going to start to work on accepting that.

Again, thank you so much for all your advice and making me feel better about my behavior under the circumstances I was in.

[Anonymous]

Possibly. Probably not. Kids are 11 and 13.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think about it sometimes. DH is a very good father and a good man. Sex life has been nonexistent for many years, and I fear if we stay together I'll need to have an affair. Still, we are overall happy together. I just wish there were more of a sexual component to our marriage.

I'm having an affair but keeping the marriage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"If I were in a good but passionless marriage, I would absolutely stick it out for the kids."


The issue here is how one defines "good". Yes, I agree that it make little sense to leave a "good" marriage but I have a hard time seeing how a marriage without passion can be good. I think that being in a relationship where you are not receiving fullfillment will affect other aspects of your life - its just snowballs into unhappiness. I think that if you are willing to "stick it out for the kids" you should be willing to work at making the marriage work.

My DH would say we have a good marriage. Passion level is low, but he honestly doesn't care. There are some people more interested in contentment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"If I were in a good but passionless marriage, I would absolutely stick it out for the kids."


The issue here is how one defines "good". Yes, I agree that it make little sense to leave a "good" marriage but I have a hard time seeing how a marriage without passion can be good. I think that being in a relationship where you are not receiving fullfillment will affect other aspects of your life - its just snowballs into unhappiness. I think that if you are willing to "stick it out for the kids" you should be willing to work at making the marriage work.

Are you sure you are not confusing passion and affection, or perhaps sex? I can absolutely see a good marriage without passion. How many 60-year olds do you think still engage in bodice-ripping? You can work on lots of things in a marriage, like kindness, consideration, compatibility, habits, but passion? Not required by the rulebook. Nice to have but optional. Affection, yes, comfortable sex that hits the spot, yes. Passion, meh.

Huh. My 60 year old lover is a bodice ripper. We are in an affair because his wife feels like you do about passion, and he's not ready to give it up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"If I were in a good but passionless marriage, I would absolutely stick it out for the kids."


The issue here is how one defines "good". Yes, I agree that it make little sense to leave a "good" marriage but I have a hard time seeing how a marriage without passion can be good. I think that being in a relationship where you are not receiving fullfillment will affect other aspects of your life - its just snowballs into unhappiness. I think that if you are willing to "stick it out for the kids" you should be willing to work at making the marriage work.

Are you sure you are not confusing passion and affection, or perhaps sex? I can absolutely see a good marriage without passion. How many 60-year olds do you think still engage in bodice-ripping? You can work on lots of things in a marriage, like kindness, consideration, compatibility, habits, but passion? Not required by the rulebook. Nice to have but optional. Affection, yes, comfortable sex that hits the spot, yes. Passion, meh.

Huh. My 60 year old lover is a bodice ripper. We are in an affair because his wife feels like you do about passion, and he's not ready to give it up.

How old are you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I understand completely. We did not intend to have health issues! But we do and we are irritable to each other. He is a man and could replace me, no problem. A woman of 60+ Well GL with that!

So do you now just cater to his every whim, become his slave, because you are scared of being alone? That is sort of where I am unless I have a "I used to be a lawyer on Wall Street and the breadwinner" moment of insanity. But I also desperately do not want out of the house because of my kids. My kids have about ten years to be completely out of the house, doubt that we will last THAT long, but my husband has clearly explained that financially (for me) every year I stay will matter. He did not explain this to me - he explained it to another man who was getting divorced in front of me about alimony.

This is the disabled poster who has been told that once the kids are gone, so is her husband. I am now unemployed and have no 401k. But my health and my age mean that my ability to find another life companion (I truly always thought he was the one) is ebbing away, year by year. And I do not want to end up alone. I have had three relationships, the first started when I was 14, I met my husband at 19, and started dating him when I was 20 or so. My brother was my best friend until I met my husband and now I don't feel comfortable sharing any details about my marriage among my family or friends because I do not want to embarrass my husband. My husband since I was 19 has been my best friend, and still is.

But I have basically never not had a family, and once my kids leave he would be my only family the way things have worked out. And he has told me over and over again for the last five years that he will leave. Now after research he has said (after 5 years of putting the fear of God into me) that he will not leave until our kids are in college. My kids will be gone before I am 60 plus. I will be in my 50s. All these numbers are so scary any decade after 40 doesn't seem to matter, but I'm sure it does.

I am now 40 plus and not unattractive, at least on the outside. My husband has sort of convinced me that I am unlovable but maybe that is not true or maybe I could try very very very hard to change. But I am disabled. I have money coming in until I am 65, and no way of obtaining any more or gainful employment or adding to a 401k. That has been true for almost ten years.

If you had known how replaceable you are and that your husband fully intended to leave you (which in your case Thanks be to God does not appear to be the situation) once the kids leave, when would you have left? i will not get custody of my kids - my access to them will be fully controlled by my husband, but of course unless I come into some money that will also be true after we get divorced and they are all adults.

I am talking age, and disability, which is not so controllable. Right now i am attractive, have substantial disability income (ends at 65), and in pretty decent shape but I spend almost half of each day in bed. My kids are too young for me to leave them alone with their father. That ought to change in about 6 years. By that time I will be 50.

What would anyone recommend I do? All the men I meet are in my husband's den and at our church. I cannot even talk to the women that I know, because the ones I have known for a long time know him (we met in college), and the ones I know now I just could not talk to because I do not want to shame my husband or my family.

When would you leave? What would you do? He has threatened to have affairs (actually claimed he had in front of my 6th grade girl but then backed down, she was shaking her finger as he said it, telling me not to believe it), but I guess I could try to plan my own exit strategy.

My kids do not believe he will EVER divorce me because he has threatened terrible things in addition to divorce so often that the words, like the other terrible things he has threatened for 5 years, either never appear or are a flash in the pan, Otherwise life for all of us would be intolerable.

The one thing he has known since I was 19 is that fidelity is an absolute deal breaker for me. I cannot believe I am thinking about it myself, but only in terms of finding a life time companion, which he has asserted he will not be to me once the kids are gone.

Again, advice welcome. I think I have been given the blessing through a previous poster that I am not a horrible person and did not commit an unforgivable act and given that this is the first time I have told anyone I cannot tell all of you how much it means to me.

Thank you

[Anonymous]

if my marriage can survive until the kids are out of the door, both of us will be close to 60, too old to get a divorce. We have grown apart in the part decade and will probably continue to drift further apart in the next decade. Hopefully we can still be good roommates by then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Don't you think it hurts kids to have them grow up thinking marriage is a loveless exercise in endurance and having children means postponing your own happiness for decades?

No, I think it hurts kids more to shuttle between homes, have their HHI income drop precipitously, spend their holidays wishing the other parent was around, let's see, what else? Oh, pretending to "love" the new step siblings, wondering if the infant half-sibling is more cherished than they are, STILL listening to their parents bicker on the phone because that never actually stops, trying to be impossibly "good" so as not to upset the apple cart even further, wondering where the hell that Dad went ....

It's not a dumb fluke that the couples with the highest amount of education -- meaning, among other things, they read a lot and follow current research -- are the least likely to divorce and presumably therefore, the most likely to tough it out for the sake of their children.

No 8 year old wants his Mommy to Just Be Happy and Find Excitement Again with some new guy named Tim, if it means exploding a non-abusive family dynamic.

So uh, yeah, I'm trying to gut it out for my kids.

EXACTLY! Excellent post!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Depends on what is going on in the family.I begged my parents to get divorced at at minimum get separated when I was 8. They waited 'til we were both out of the house.Hate their decision, nobody benefited.My sister also hates her childhood when it comes to family dynamics. All we wanted was peace and quiet and that our parents were happy. We got no peace and quiet, and mom was miserable as hell.