Best friend divorcing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ll also give my perspective (I’m the PP whose husband also is C suite for a start up and makes $500k, obviously we don’t have the financial benefits of his working for a billion dollar company like your friend but I’ll give my perspective.)

I left my job when I was pregnant with my first born. I didn’t have much of a choice due to my husband’s travel schedule and was happy to do it. In the younger years it benefitted the family immensely, we have an incredible community of friends and I was involved in a lot more than I could be if I worked full time. This was impactful as we aren’t from the area in a very tight knit community so didn’t have the connections many do. Kids are thriving.

Now the bad- most men in these kind of leadership positions often really prioritize work and aren’t the best husbands. My husband loves me (or at least he says he does) and he is a wonderful and involved father but I certainly come last behind job and fatherhood. He just doesn’t have the bandwidth and our marriage feels lonely and kind of sad to me. He leaves a lot for me to deal with because of how demanding his job is and doesn’t follow through on many things he promises to take care of. I handle 99 percent of the mental load. Last few years since my kids are out of pre-K has been insanely rough on my mental health. I do all the things people suggest like volunteer, etc. But I am mentally
bored out of my mind and looking for an outlet for this. As I said I worked for a top company 10 years ago but I’m not exactly a top recruit now. lol! And I know that. I have a small business but I really am sooooo depressed and hopeless I struggle with staying motivated. That’s just the reality of my situation. I’m trying to come up with a plan, maybe she needs your love and support more than you realize.

OP here. This is very true to what I see. She has come second to his job forever. And yes to everyone who is saying it, he will find a much younger wife and will marry and have an amazing life and I think she is okay with that. I just want to make sure she’s making the right decision and also want to support her as she walks through this.

[Anonymous]

So what's the issue?
Your friend is divorcing.. as she's unhappy.
She's an adult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll also give my perspective (I’m the PP whose husband also is C suite for a start up and makes $500k, obviously we don’t have the financial benefits of his working for a billion dollar company like your friend but I’ll give my perspective.)

I left my job when I was pregnant with my first born. I didn’t have much of a choice due to my husband’s travel schedule and was happy to do it. In the younger years it benefitted the family immensely, we have an incredible community of friends and I was involved in a lot more than I could be if I worked full time. This was impactful as we aren’t from the area in a very tight knit community so didn’t have the connections many do. Kids are thriving.

Now the bad- most men in these kind of leadership positions often really prioritize work and aren’t the best husbands. My husband loves me (or at least he says he does) and he is a wonderful and involved father but I certainly come last behind job and fatherhood. He just doesn’t have the bandwidth and our marriage feels lonely and kind of sad to me. He leaves a lot for me to deal with because of how demanding his job is and doesn’t follow through on many things he promises to take care of. I handle 99 percent of the mental load. Last few years since my kids are out of pre-K has been insanely rough on my mental health. I do all the things people suggest like volunteer, etc. But I am mentally
bored out of my mind and looking for an outlet for this. As I said I worked for a top company 10 years ago but I’m not exactly a top recruit now. lol! And I know that. I have a small business but I really am sooooo depressed and hopeless I struggle with staying motivated. That’s just the reality of my situation. I’m trying to come up with a plan, maybe she needs your love and support more than you realize.

OP here. This is very true to what I see. She has come second to his job forever. And yes to everyone who is saying it, he will find a much younger wife and will marry and have an amazing life and I think she is okay with that. I just want to make sure she’s making the right decision and also want to support her as she walks through this.

It's not certain or even probable that he will have an "amazing life with his second much younger wife." What are you talking about? Men might rush into second marriages faster than women do, but those second marriages are not necessarily happier than the first one. Additionally, these men are not necessarily happier than the women who left them just because they remarried and the women did not.

DIvorce sucks for everyone involved- him, her, the children, the extended family etc. I mean, if she has to leave, she has to leave. But her ( and yours too) assessment of the situation and the consequences is bizarre.

Advise her to seek a counselor/therapist. You don't seem to be able to provide any objective, helpful advice to her in this regard.

Let her cry on your shoulder, tell her you will always be there for her, no matter what she chooses to do. And then stay queit about the rest of it.

[Anonymous]

Get to know God and follow your end of biblical marriage prescriptions for a year. See what happens.

[Anonymous]

I was at an executive outreach meeting yesterday with a president (#2 guy) of one of the biggest Fortune 500 companies and he said that his parenting/being present with nearly-grown kids was about 4 hours a week. He has some regrets but he's a corporate lifer so stayed on the treadmill (my inference).

This absence from the home is pretty typical of powerful, highly-paid people. Michelle Obama was openly pretty mad about Barack Obama's household neglect until it became clear that he had top tier potential and needed to put in the time (Senate race, etc.)

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry, OP. We're going through this but we're on the husband's side right now. We have all been good friends (six couples) but the wife seems to have gone off the deep end and won't communicate with any of us (she left to their second home, he is here in our neighborhood, children are away at summer camp for six weeks).

If your friend is depressed, it's possible she's not seeing reality right now. I would maybe see if you could get her to agree to continue therapy (and hopefully medication?) for a period of time to see if she can maybe get more clear-headed about things. (I wouldn't phrase it that way to her but you know what I mean). Since she's felt like this since day one, it sounds like it isn't a total surprise, but I don't know how old their kids are and it may be in everyone's best interest to sit on this for a bit.

I would absolutely not reach out to her husband, even if you two are friends. I now know things I kind of wish I didn't, but I would not tell the wife even if she were speaking to us (and would also keep her confidence if she did tell us anything). It is not your place to talk to him at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell her to talk to a lawyer? Why would staying with someone who makes her miserable be the better option? What kind of friend are you?

That's rude. There's no need to pile on OP. This friend has been married to this guy for years without loving him, so it's not crazy to think that leaving him now may not be the best option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MYOB. She needs to contact an attorney.

OP isn't meddling, this is her best friend! It's not like she's snooping around looking for information or poking her head in where she isn't wanted - her friend is telling her all this stuff and she's trying to figure out what to do with it.

But I get it, you don't have any friends so you don't understand how friendships work. This probably isn't the thread for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My best friend of 35 years (like a sister to me) says she isn’t in love with her husband. She likes him and they are friends, but she isn’t in love with him and doesn’t think she can get there. She had felt this way since before they got married but they have kids and she has stayed because of them. She feels like she is at the end of her rope now - she is always sad, crying, etc and says there is no connection and she doesn’t know what to do. Her husband is very powerful (think C-suite at a billion dollar company) and his ego won’t take this well and may make her life difficult. I’m also not sure it’s the right move for her, she seems depressed and am not sure how to guide her. What advice can I give her or how can I support her? She is seeing a therapist and is open to anything but she can’t seem to get out of this cycle that she wants to leave him.
I shouldn’t reach out to him right? I think he would be completely shocked by all of this.

Honestly, that can go a long way. She's probably in perimenopause or having a mid-life crisis. I'm not someone who would say you should be unhappy rather than get divorced, but since she made the choice to marry and have two kids with a guy she only liked, I guess I feel like she owes it to those kids she had to try not to blow their lives up because all of a sudden she's decided she needs to movie romance. I'd hate to feel like she does, so I do feel sympathy for her, but this is also the life she consciously created, so I think she should get her depression under control. Therapy is good but she may also require medication? I would counsel against making any decisions until she feels like herself again. You know, the self who decided that being married to a friend isn't the worst thing to happen to someone. Again, I'd be sad to feel like I was married to only a friend, but again, I didn't decide to marry someone I felt that way about and she did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think she didn’t realize what love felt like until she did and then she realized how much was missing in her life. I know that sounds crazy but it’s honest.

Is she having an affair? I have a friend who also married a "friend" who we all knew she wasn't in love with (he was in love with her though). They didn't have kids, but 10 years later she had an affair and ended up divorcing him for her AP. She had confided in her friends that she didn't want to be alone and she felt like she could do better but he was the one who was there so she'd marry him and then see if someone else came along. We said that's not a great plan...but people do what they want.

It just seems interesting that she's realizing what she's "missing" now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think she didn’t realize what love felt like until she did and then she realized how much was missing in her life. I know that sounds crazy but it’s honest.

So did she cheat? Or how did she realize what love felt like? Stop enabling this nonsense fantasy. She is done with her marriage. OK, and so are many many people. All this crap about love this and love that when she has no idea what love is sounds childish. As you encourage her childishness, be ready to keep being the one she will keep whining to when she is divorced and realizes that the grass is not greener on the other side.

Spoken like a man that wants to keep women trapped in unhappy relationships.

Not PP but I'm a woman and I'd tell a friend that the grass isn't necessarily greener than a marriage to a friend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:... but you don't want to help her.

You want to rat her out to the potentially abusive partner she wants to leave. You insult her intelligence and clearly care more about her financial status than her mental health.

With friends like these...

OP here. I have no words for you. Find a different thread to bully please.

To be fair OP you asked if you should go to her husband. That is dangerous for your friend! Anyone who would do that to me is not looking out for her friend at all!

OP said she meant to tell him that his wife was struggling/unhappy. Also, nowhere did OP say that the husband is abusive... If you're referring to the fact that he'd be nasty in a divorce, that doesn't mean he's abusive now. If he were, I'm pretty sure she would have led with that...

[Anonymous]

Your friend should go to a menopause specialist (not her regular doctor or ob).

[Anonymous]

OP here - thank you all for the advice. Her DH is not at all abusive and I think she had some doubts going into the marriage but she didn’t trust herself to know what love was supposed to feel like. She loved her DH like a friend, but that was it, but she didn’t know better. And no affair, I don’t think she would cross that line, but I do feel like she’s felt connections when chatting with people which maybe opened up to her the idea that love should feel different than it does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - thank you all for the advice. Her DH is not at all abusive and I think she had some doubts going into the marriage but she didn’t trust herself to know what love was supposed to feel like. She loved her DH like a friend, but that was it, but she didn’t know better. And no affair, I don’t think she would cross that line, but I do feel like she’s felt connections when chatting with people which maybe opened up to her the idea that love should feel different than it does.

So she has experienced infatuation, not love. That is going to last a couple of years, after which she'd wish she had the friendship she currently has with her DH.