If you divorced due to infidelity..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"I'm divorcing due to infidelity and I'm not getting a good settlement. The court doesn't GAF about infidelity. It's also astonishing to me that his lies get past the judge. It's sociopathic. His lawyer has said many many times "our offer to her is NOTHING". And that's what they intend to do. But I'm still happier than when I had to live with him. But let's dispel the myth of the good settlement. The other party has to be somewhat amenable to it and if they aren't then the lawyers get all the money. (He chose to litigate, I requested mediation. The lawyers are having a great time!)"

I find this sort of thing to be really confusing. What's the reason you think you should get anything other than the default, which is keeping what you brought to the marriage and didn't comingle, and half of the assets earned during the marriage? If you're happy with that, then just go with what a judge decides. The child support is pretty much going to follow a formula. There are guidelines they have to follow (unless you're in some wacky state like Virginia where judges get to run wild). If you're asking for alimony on top of that, what's the reason you need his help to support yourself if you're an adult of working age?

Also, he can only "litigate" if you're litigating. Just stop and let the judge make a decision. He has to disclose his financial docs, and so do you. The judge then decides. The only reason that things drag on when they're in front of a judge is if you aren't agreeing to the defaults/guidelines.

Not that poster but she should get more because he broke their contract. There should be a penalty paid for that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:51 M who didn’t leave and stayed for the kids. The years I have invested with the kids have been great, but I regret every minute of the marriage. I am not an ahole or addict, just a guy who apparently became too safe for a SAHM to stay faithful. I wish I had left before and am filing early next year.

Hopefully, I can find someone who can love me after ~20 years of loneliness and now having a STD from my kids Dear Mom. I will never get my life back, but maybe I can build a new one before I die. If not, at least I will no longer dread coming home.

With all due respect, sounds like you haven’t done the work yet. I have said as much to two of my female friends who play victim 100% of the time after their DHs cheated too.

Considering I am the victim in this situation, I don’t have to play the victim. Please tell me the reasons that I should own her lies, manipulations and deception, so I can blame myself for being abused by the woman I gave everything I had to for half of my life.

You were the victim of cheating, but you were not the victim of the dissolution of the marriage. Do people really think life is so black and white??

Yes, relationships go through challenging periods, but being perfect was not in the vows. Adultery was the vow, seems pretty black and white to people who don’t need to create gray to justify why their actions and look at themselves in the mirror. Not all things are black and white, but I don’t see any gray in an affair.

I agree, it seems like the only time cheaters are honest is after they have literally destroyed the one person who chose to make them family. I always wonder if the people who claim affairs are not just black and white are cheaters themselves or if they only have surface level relationships, so the betrayal isn’t very important or impactful in their lives.

[Anonymous]

Is fidelity the only vow you all made? Because my DH absolutely broke many of the other promises. Not saying adultery isn’t divorce worthy but all this pearl clutching isn’t helping anyone get any wiser.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you regret it? Are you happy/at peace? What’s your age? I am in the process and feeling so stressed out. Should I have pulled a Hilary Clinton? All thoughts coming to mind that I cannot live with

I mean, it’s regrettable in the sense that it took a toll on the kids and finances. But she made her choices.

I don’t regret with preserving my dignity and modeling that for my children. It hasn’t been easy but I’m happier and surrounded by people who are good to me now. And I am free of the deception and stress and dysfunction of someone who blamed me for her unhappiness.

She might have a different answer for you. Because six years later, she’s still pretty miserable and discovered that ultimately I wasn’t the source of it. I imagine she regrets her therapist, who urged her to “self-actualize,” which she took as encouragement to develop an intimate relationship with another man.

She probably also regrets that the payout she was expecting didn’t happen. I think she had fantasies of how child support and alimony would work. Instead I leveraged the affair to a favorable financial settlement in my favor. (We live in Virginia).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:51 M who didn’t leave and stayed for the kids. The years I have invested with the kids have been great, but I regret every minute of the marriage. I am not an ahole or addict, just a guy who apparently became too safe for a SAHM to stay faithful. I wish I had left before and am filing early next year.

Hopefully, I can find someone who can love me after ~20 years of loneliness and now having a STD from my kids Dear Mom. I will never get my life back, but maybe I can build a new one before I die. If not, at least I will no longer dread coming home.

With all due respect, sounds like you haven’t done the work yet. I have said as much to two of my female friends who play victim 100% of the time after their DHs cheated too.

There was no respect in your post at all, pp. Shame on you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have your dignity, because you refused to let someone betray you. That counts.

This dignity crap is toxic AF.

On the contrary. It’s everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is fidelity the only vow you all made? Because my DH absolutely broke many of the other promises. Not saying adultery isn’t divorce worthy but all this pearl clutching isn’t helping anyone get any wiser.

I am curious about what you mean, can you give some examples? If major issues are communicated and unresolved, you can always divorce with lots of support. The issue for me is that most people on here seem to think that their spouse has some control over their happiness because they sleep late on weekends or don’t earn enough to keep up with the Jones’s. Normal point in time life challenges are things to work through together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have your dignity, because you refused to let someone betray you. That counts.

This dignity crap is toxic AF.

On the contrary. It’s everything.

Too bad you can’t take it with you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is fidelity the only vow you all made? Because my DH absolutely broke many of the other promises. Not saying adultery isn’t divorce worthy but all this pearl clutching isn’t helping anyone get any wiser.

I am curious about what you mean, can you give some examples? If major issues are communicated and unresolved, you can always divorce with lots of support. The issue for me is that most people on here seem to think that their spouse has some control over their happiness because they sleep late on weekends or don’t earn enough to keep up with the Jones’s. Normal point in time life challenges are things to work through together.

I just don’t think life is black and white. If one partner abuses or neglects the other for years and the other has an affair, I don’t think the cheater is the only “bad guy”. If nobody cheats but one person gambles away $10k without telling, then that’s also a transgression. If one partner works on the relationship and does all the things, but the other refuses to engage and spends life on their iphone, I wouldn’t begrudge the first an outside intimate relationship. Life is long, people are messy. There is no “good vs evil”. People do bad things and they should try their best not to. I would rather DH sleep with someone else than lose our retirement savings or become a raging alcoholic or be a horrible father. It would still devastate me, but I’m not destroying my own life over some puritanical idea that sex is absolutely everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is fidelity the only vow you all made? Because my DH absolutely broke many of the other promises. Not saying adultery isn’t divorce worthy but all this pearl clutching isn’t helping anyone get any wiser.

I am curious about what you mean, can you give some examples? If major issues are communicated and unresolved, you can always divorce with lots of support. The issue for me is that most people on here seem to think that their spouse has some control over their happiness because they sleep late on weekends or don’t earn enough to keep up with the Jones’s. Normal point in time life challenges are things to work through together.

I just don’t think life is black and white. If one partner abuses or neglects the other for years and the other has an affair, I don’t think the cheater is the only “bad guy”. If nobody cheats but one person gambles away $10k without telling, then that’s also a transgression. If one partner works on the relationship and does all the things, but the other refuses to engage and spends life on their iphone, I wouldn’t begrudge the first an outside intimate relationship. Life is long, people are messy. There is no “good vs evil”. People do bad things and they should try their best not to. I would rather DH sleep with someone else than lose our retirement savings or become a raging alcoholic or be a horrible father. It would still devastate me, but I’m not destroying my own life over some puritanical idea that sex is absolutely everything.

OP here: I dont think it qualifies as just sleeping when one person is involved. None of the scenarios you mentioned justifies staying in the marriage...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is fidelity the only vow you all made? Because my DH absolutely broke many of the other promises. Not saying adultery isn’t divorce worthy but all this pearl clutching isn’t helping anyone get any wiser.

I am curious about what you mean, can you give some examples? If major issues are communicated and unresolved, you can always divorce with lots of support. The issue for me is that most people on here seem to think that their spouse has some control over their happiness because they sleep late on weekends or don’t earn enough to keep up with the Jones’s. Normal point in time life challenges are things to work through together.

I just don’t think life is black and white. If one partner abuses or neglects the other for years and the other has an affair, I don’t think the cheater is the only “bad guy”. If nobody cheats but one person gambles away $10k without telling, then that’s also a transgression. If one partner works on the relationship and does all the things, but the other refuses to engage and spends life on their iphone, I wouldn’t begrudge the first an outside intimate relationship. Life is long, people are messy. There is no “good vs evil”. People do bad things and they should try their best not to. I would rather DH sleep with someone else than lose our retirement savings or become a raging alcoholic or be a horrible father. It would still devastate me, but I’m not destroying my own life over some puritanical idea that sex is absolutely everything.

That is how we are different, many of your scenarios would be grounds for divorce from my perspective, but none would be justifications for an affair. Abuse, addiction and adultery are all branches of the same tree, but poor parenting and financial mistakes (poor decisions with retirement savings) could be worked through in my eyes.

It all comes down to character, in the face of adversity you can either invest and grow or retreat into a secretive fantasy and set the autopilot on your real life into the mountain of problems you want to escape. Creating more problems, doesn’t fix any problems.

[Anonymous]

"...many of your scenarios would be grounds for divorce from my perspective, but none would be justifications for an affair. "

This doesn't make sense to me. Divorce is more extreme than sleeping with someone you don't intend to leave your family for. How could something be grounds for blowing up your life yet be insufficient for sex with someone else?

[Anonymous]

People have sex with someone besides their spouse for all sorts of reasons. In some situations, the "betrayed" person actually inflicted the first wound on the relationship. When that happens, it's pretty rich for them to argue that they're the betrayed one, as if they're an innocent party.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"...many of your scenarios would be grounds for divorce from my perspective, but none would be justifications for an affair. "

This doesn't make sense to me. Divorce is more extreme than sleeping with someone you don't intend to leave your family for. How could something be grounds for blowing up your life yet be insufficient for sex with someone else?

You can have sex with anyone you wish when you aren’t married. Don’t be a coward by cheating and forcing the public ownership of the decision you already made on your “spouse”. If you want an open marriage, then ask for it. If you quit, then quit with integrity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People have sex with someone besides their spouse for all sorts of reasons. In some situations, the "betrayed" person actually inflicted the first wound on the relationship. When that happens, it's pretty rich for them to argue that they're the betrayed one, as if they're an innocent party.

Is revenge cheating what you are referencing as your definition of inflicting the first wound? If so, I agree 100%, but being a madhatter doesn’t even the score because you are just lashing out to cause pain. In just about every situation the appropriate response is leaving or investing in fixing it. Sneaking around to cheat doesn’t fix anything, it is just hiding from your problems like an immature, selfish child.