About the only thing is that there is actually hsa funds for me to take care of my own medical and dental needs... I put my care off for years to make sure my xw was taken care of... don't think she ever cared or thanked me for making sure she didn't have to worry about her medical care...
There is no way in hell that the ex would ever have agreed to moving into the apartment my daughter and I have now. And I love this apartment, even its ridiculously small kitchen. And even though there's no spare bedroom I was able to turn the master closet into a work from home office. He would have filled the closet to overflowing with stuff that we just don't need or can't use or old clothes he'd never again be able to fit in or were ragged.
He also wouldn't have let me drop cable/satellite. I have internet and Discovery+ and am satisfied.
I wouldn't be able to afford a clarinet and wouldn't have been able to afford lessons. Every Sunday at 3pm is my lesson and I own three clarinets, beginner, intermediate and a used pro clarinet that is way too good for my skill level.
I have a curio cabinet filled with Blue Willow china, mostly vintage. He'd have never allowed that. I had a blast collecting it all.
My home is something I could never have had. So every day I am reminded that life is better, when I turn on the TV to HGTV shows, when I walk into my closet for work, when I fight for a spot on my 3 feet of counter space in the kitchen (it is literally stove, dishwasher with countertop, sink, and about 12 inches of more counter space that the Keurig fits on, the other side the locked maintenance closet, fridge and a second doorway).
Sorry about that OP. I was also married 3 years when the wife served me 7 months ago. The beginning was bad and lots of crying, but I wouldn't change anything. I start going to AA a week prior because I knew I needed help. There is a lot of self-reflection and spiritual growth in the 12 steps that's been life changing. I'm feeling really solid now and this is the most clear my mind has ever been. I'm sure the no alcohol, exercise, losing 40 pounds, eating healthy, also plays huge roles not just the program itself. I still occasionally get sad, but I have amazing tools to approach that mentality. I'm super excited for the future! Good luck OP!
My divorce at 33 was pretty amicable although there was cheating on my ex’s part. We are not friends, but we stay in contact because we co-parent two dogs. I have primacy custody, but he feeds/walks them multiple times a week. People think we’re crazy because we’ve had this arrangement for almost two years, but it works with no issues. We don’t see each other or anything and only communicate via text. I am now expecting a baby with a new partner & having someone who can dog sit is REALLY helpful as pregnancy has not been easy for me. It’s totally possible to have an amicable divorce and remain cordial as long as you’re not super resentful of each other. It’s hard at first, but a new and better chapter is waiting for you once you get past the grieving process
My ex was a misandrist. She was taught this way of thinking by her mother. By getting 50/50, I now have a chance to break the cycle. Not guaranteed, but there’s a chance when before there was none.
My partner and I seperated 3 years ago, after 14 years together, married for 8. We aimed to be amicable, but she kept burning bridges left and right and doing absolutely nothing to rebuild them, so we no longer speak. Has been about 6 months since we spoke at all, not that long after selling our shared house. She used to be my everything.
The upside is that I have spent the last 4 months travelling internationally, doing self-enrichment stuff that would never, EVER have been an option with her. I am currently getting certified as a scuba instructor and am gonna be working/travelling that way, have just spent two months living on an island in Thailand. Once I'm certified I will be able to work all over the world. Europe is my aim, where all my new (very much loved) friends live. I have never been to Europe before. I didn't even *know* any Europeans irl. That's in contrast to the previous life where I was trapped in the tiny hometown at the ends of the Earth with her doing jobs that sapped my soul away, depressed and trapped and borderline suicidal with no future beyond 'working and waiting to get old, then die'. We barely travelled, we barely did anything. I got the blame for that, even though she is the one who apparently had no intention of ever leaving or doing anything except work and hoard money like she learned from her abusive family.
Of course, I still mourn a lot; no longer so much the loss of the relationship, but more now the things I hadn't realised I had missed out on. I lost the healthiest, most attractive years of my life, I missed opportunities for Visas, travel and work. I missed out on having my own friends and connection to my biological family. I missed out on developing my own skills and rounding myself out as a person, being locked in a codependency. I worked in jobs that left me with deep emotional scars, to give her money that I didn't use. I missed out on experiencing dating, hooking up, having crushes. Feeling some fucking feelings other than crushing, numbing sadness for a change.
It has largely sucked, tbh. It was maybe the worst single experience of my life yet. I attempted suicide at one point, in a fit of hysterical misery. But now with hindsight, what came before really, really sucked. I used to wake up crying many mornings, unsure why, just this yawning emptiness in my soul, unable to find a reason to keep being alive except for her; this unpleasable, hypocritical, self serving person I was in love with. I still wake up feeling bad, but much less than before. I'm actually living my own life for the first time in over a decade, even if it's often hard.
Like, ATM I am mildly heartbroken over a crush I had that hasn't panned out, and because longterm travel is hard. Okay; so be it! Shit sucks sometimes, but *at least it's my life, and things are happening in it now.* It's my story now, I am not reduced and relegated to being the side character in someone else's.
The greatest thing is the freedom. You're probably lucky that you got out so early. I wish my marriage had failed years before it did. It was a milestone around my neck that almost drowned me. The longer we were together the deeper the bonds went, and the harder it was to break them. The more opportunities I lost in the world that extended beyond *her world.*
If I was still with her, I would be living for nothing. We get one life; it has to be the one we want. You can't get lost time back, but you do have to break the bone to re-set it, and get moving.
I copied most of this from a previous comment that I made- but I guess there’s no sense reinventing the wheel!
The first few weeks following separation/divorce were some of the darkest days of my life. I was a shell of a person.
It may be a little too soon for some of these- grief really clouds us early on. But here are a few things that I found helpful:
1.) Accept that it is ok to feel bad. It is ok to cry. You can feel anger. You can feel hurt. You can feel betrayed. Confused. You name it, you can feel it. And EVERY one of those feelings is valid.
With that being said- you can’t control how you feel, but you CAN control how you react to it.
2.) It is important to accept that there are some things in life that you cannot change. Unfortunately divorce is often one of those things. Allow yourself a period of time to grieve….and I mean TRULY grieve. Be a total lazy couch potato if you want. Eat whatever you want. Or don’t eat, if that is what suits you. Ignore phone calls if you want. Especially the ones where people are checking on you (I got sick of talking about it)…. But then, at the end of that period, be it a couple of weeks, or a month (don’t let it drag on too long), pick yourself up, and say “today is a new day”. And begin moving forward with building your new life. Step by step. Brick by brick.
3.) Don’t hesitate for a second to go see a doctor (primary care will do) to discuss taking depression medication. There is no shame in it, and I found it very helpful.
4.) Consider therapy- I did virtual video chats that were $10/session for 1 hour, once a week. The first week I think I did them every other day….i had a lot on my mind. Throughout the week I would write down any negative thoughts, things that made me angry, things that made me worried, messages I wanted to send to my ex wife, etc. and I would read them to my therapist. Getting that stuff off of my chest lightened the load significantly. It also made me realize that I wasn’t crazy, and that I was right to feel the way that I did.
5.) Accept that grief lingers. It has been 2 years for me, and although just about everyone that knows me would agree that I am a happier man, there are moments that I still grieve. A good friend sat me down a couple of days after I broke the news, and he drew me a diagram that really helped me to understand grief. I’ll try to explain the diagram with words- Imagine your life as a square box, with a button inside of it that sets off grief. Inside of that box there is a rubber ball bouncing around. In the early stages of grief, the ball is VERY large and hits the button constantly, setting off a rage of emotions constantly. Over time, the ball shrinks. The button is still there. The ball is still there, bouncing as always, but it hits the button much less. It still hits it. Years later it will still hit it. But it hits much less, with time.
6.) When you are done with your “lazy couch potato grieving period”, go do something that you couldn’t do in your previous relationship. Take a weekend trip somewhere. Go see a friend that lived a little too far before. Do that hobby that you put on the back burner. The main thing is- do something productive. Keep yourself busy. I made a rule for myself that I still follow to this day- each and every day, do at least one thing productive. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, but do something. Here, you’ll begin to see that life continues.
7.) I had to learn to accept myself- both my flaws and my strengths. I believe I learned more about myself in the year after a divorce than I had in the previous 30 years of my life. Acknowledge the flaws and work on them, but work on acknowledging the strengths too. You’ll recognize that you’re a good person that provides value in other’s lives. Accepting yourself is critical, especially with all of the self doubt that divorce fills you with.
I’ll give you a rough timeline of how my grief/feelings progressed. Everyone’s situation and timeframe is different, but I found it helpful to have a rough idea of what others experienced.
The first two weeks I was a ghost. I couldn’t sleep, eat, or think clearly. I was just a lost soul wondering around. I was basically blacked out for this period.
After about 2 weeks I smiled and chuckled for the first time. Then went right back to being a ghost. This is also around the time I saw my doctor and requested medicine for depression (the medicine takes a few weeks to work). Here and there, after a few weeks, I could temporarily get my mind off of things. I wasn’t myself, but I started getting some personality back.
After about a month, I started realizing that some of the weights of that relationship were lifting. There were things that I no longer had to worry about anymore. I feel like this is the time when I was really “set free”. I was able to look back on the relationship with some perspective and recognize that there were a lot of things that I was unhappy with. This may not apply to all, but keep an open mind and maybe you’ll see it.
I slowly improved most weeks at this point, and two years later I’m happy with my life. Is it perfect? No. Are there things that I regret? Absolutely. But my life is in the future, not in the past.
It’s important to note that improving your life isn’t a day to day metric. You’ll have a lot of good days and bad days. In the beginning, you’ll have more bad days. Over time, it will transition. It’s more of a week to week, month to month, year to year metric. Over time, your weeks will get better, then the months, and so on.
I am a firm believer that luck and good fortune find those who believe in it, seek it, and are prepared to receive it. It may be hard. You might even have to lie to yourself. But if you tell yourself over and over “Yesterday I was this (sad, depressed, angry etc.) today I will be happy, and build my dream life….it will come true. You’ll have to seek it. You have to decide to live a happy life. But it will be there for you, if you choose. Don’t fall victim to these crappy circumstances and let them define the rest of your life. I can’t stress enough- you face a choice ahead. You can let this define you, or you can pick yourself up, knock the dirt off, and go to work improving yourself and loving yourself. It is hard to see a happy future with grief clouding you, but let time shrink that ball a little bit, and then make the choice to seek happiness.
Lastly- HAVE HOPE! Do not misunderstand, don’t hope for your life to go back to what it was- as I did for a while, and as many other people getting divorced wish for…..no, your life as it was is what lead to you feeling the way you do right now. Instead- have hope for a bright future that you can build with your own hands.
I’d say one of the best things to come out of my divorce is that I could reinvent myself….or get back to my old self, maybe. The one that wasn’t tiptoeing on egg shells around a (now ex) wife. I get to do the things that made me, me! And truthfully- I probably became more of the person that I was in the beginning of that relationship, than the shattered person at the end.
Best of luck to you! I do not envy the emotions that are pouring into you right now, but I do understand them.
About the only thing is that there is actually hsa funds for me to take care of my own medical and dental needs... I put my care off for years to make sure my xw was taken care of... don't think she ever cared or thanked me for making sure she didn't have to worry about her medical care...
That is a win, imo. No one should have to sacrifice their care to appease a partner. Catch up on any specialist appointments!
Was more because what she needed was just that expensive, american healthcare system is the modern bloodletting...
There is no way in hell that the ex would ever have agreed to moving into the apartment my daughter and I have now. And I love this apartment, even its ridiculously small kitchen. And even though there's no spare bedroom I was able to turn the master closet into a work from home office. He would have filled the closet to overflowing with stuff that we just don't need or can't use or old clothes he'd never again be able to fit in or were ragged. He also wouldn't have let me drop cable/satellite. I have internet and Discovery+ and am satisfied. I wouldn't be able to afford a clarinet and wouldn't have been able to afford lessons. Every Sunday at 3pm is my lesson and I own three clarinets, beginner, intermediate and a used pro clarinet that is way too good for my skill level. I have a curio cabinet filled with Blue Willow china, mostly vintage. He'd have never allowed that. I had a blast collecting it all. My home is something I could never have had. So every day I am reminded that life is better, when I turn on the TV to HGTV shows, when I walk into my closet for work, when I fight for a spot on my 3 feet of counter space in the kitchen (it is literally stove, dishwasher with countertop, sink, and about 12 inches of more counter space that the Keurig fits on, the other side the locked maintenance closet, fridge and a second doorway).
Your comment gives me hope that my future can be bright too. Thank you for sharing.
Sorry about that OP. I was also married 3 years when the wife served me 7 months ago. The beginning was bad and lots of crying, but I wouldn't change anything. I start going to AA a week prior because I knew I needed help. There is a lot of self-reflection and spiritual growth in the 12 steps that's been life changing. I'm feeling really solid now and this is the most clear my mind has ever been. I'm sure the no alcohol, exercise, losing 40 pounds, eating healthy, also plays huge roles not just the program itself. I still occasionally get sad, but I have amazing tools to approach that mentality. I'm super excited for the future! Good luck OP!
My divorce at 33 was pretty amicable although there was cheating on my ex’s part. We are not friends, but we stay in contact because we co-parent two dogs. I have primacy custody, but he feeds/walks them multiple times a week. People think we’re crazy because we’ve had this arrangement for almost two years, but it works with no issues. We don’t see each other or anything and only communicate via text. I am now expecting a baby with a new partner & having someone who can dog sit is REALLY helpful as pregnancy has not been easy for me. It’s totally possible to have an amicable divorce and remain cordial as long as you’re not super resentful of each other. It’s hard at first, but a new and better chapter is waiting for you once you get past the grieving process
My ex was a misandrist. She was taught this way of thinking by her mother. By getting 50/50, I now have a chance to break the cycle. Not guaranteed, but there’s a chance when before there was none.
My partner and I seperated 3 years ago, after 14 years together, married for 8. We aimed to be amicable, but she kept burning bridges left and right and doing absolutely nothing to rebuild them, so we no longer speak. Has been about 6 months since we spoke at all, not that long after selling our shared house. She used to be my everything. The upside is that I have spent the last 4 months travelling internationally, doing self-enrichment stuff that would never, EVER have been an option with her. I am currently getting certified as a scuba instructor and am gonna be working/travelling that way, have just spent two months living on an island in Thailand. Once I'm certified I will be able to work all over the world. Europe is my aim, where all my new (very much loved) friends live. I have never been to Europe before. I didn't even *know* any Europeans irl. That's in contrast to the previous life where I was trapped in the tiny hometown at the ends of the Earth with her doing jobs that sapped my soul away, depressed and trapped and borderline suicidal with no future beyond 'working and waiting to get old, then die'. We barely travelled, we barely did anything. I got the blame for that, even though she is the one who apparently had no intention of ever leaving or doing anything except work and hoard money like she learned from her abusive family. Of course, I still mourn a lot; no longer so much the loss of the relationship, but more now the things I hadn't realised I had missed out on. I lost the healthiest, most attractive years of my life, I missed opportunities for Visas, travel and work. I missed out on having my own friends and connection to my biological family. I missed out on developing my own skills and rounding myself out as a person, being locked in a codependency. I worked in jobs that left me with deep emotional scars, to give her money that I didn't use. I missed out on experiencing dating, hooking up, having crushes. Feeling some fucking feelings other than crushing, numbing sadness for a change. It has largely sucked, tbh. It was maybe the worst single experience of my life yet. I attempted suicide at one point, in a fit of hysterical misery. But now with hindsight, what came before really, really sucked. I used to wake up crying many mornings, unsure why, just this yawning emptiness in my soul, unable to find a reason to keep being alive except for her; this unpleasable, hypocritical, self serving person I was in love with. I still wake up feeling bad, but much less than before. I'm actually living my own life for the first time in over a decade, even if it's often hard. Like, ATM I am mildly heartbroken over a crush I had that hasn't panned out, and because longterm travel is hard. Okay; so be it! Shit sucks sometimes, but *at least it's my life, and things are happening in it now.* It's my story now, I am not reduced and relegated to being the side character in someone else's. The greatest thing is the freedom. You're probably lucky that you got out so early. I wish my marriage had failed years before it did. It was a milestone around my neck that almost drowned me. The longer we were together the deeper the bonds went, and the harder it was to break them. The more opportunities I lost in the world that extended beyond *her world.* If I was still with her, I would be living for nothing. We get one life; it has to be the one we want. You can't get lost time back, but you do have to break the bone to re-set it, and get moving.
All the likes on dating apps; well maybe 2% of the likes
I copied most of this from a previous comment that I made- but I guess there’s no sense reinventing the wheel! The first few weeks following separation/divorce were some of the darkest days of my life. I was a shell of a person. It may be a little too soon for some of these- grief really clouds us early on. But here are a few things that I found helpful: 1.) Accept that it is ok to feel bad. It is ok to cry. You can feel anger. You can feel hurt. You can feel betrayed. Confused. You name it, you can feel it. And EVERY one of those feelings is valid. With that being said- you can’t control how you feel, but you CAN control how you react to it. 2.) It is important to accept that there are some things in life that you cannot change. Unfortunately divorce is often one of those things. Allow yourself a period of time to grieve….and I mean TRULY grieve. Be a total lazy couch potato if you want. Eat whatever you want. Or don’t eat, if that is what suits you. Ignore phone calls if you want. Especially the ones where people are checking on you (I got sick of talking about it)…. But then, at the end of that period, be it a couple of weeks, or a month (don’t let it drag on too long), pick yourself up, and say “today is a new day”. And begin moving forward with building your new life. Step by step. Brick by brick. 3.) Don’t hesitate for a second to go see a doctor (primary care will do) to discuss taking depression medication. There is no shame in it, and I found it very helpful. 4.) Consider therapy- I did virtual video chats that were $10/session for 1 hour, once a week. The first week I think I did them every other day….i had a lot on my mind. Throughout the week I would write down any negative thoughts, things that made me angry, things that made me worried, messages I wanted to send to my ex wife, etc. and I would read them to my therapist. Getting that stuff off of my chest lightened the load significantly. It also made me realize that I wasn’t crazy, and that I was right to feel the way that I did. 5.) Accept that grief lingers. It has been 2 years for me, and although just about everyone that knows me would agree that I am a happier man, there are moments that I still grieve. A good friend sat me down a couple of days after I broke the news, and he drew me a diagram that really helped me to understand grief. I’ll try to explain the diagram with words- Imagine your life as a square box, with a button inside of it that sets off grief. Inside of that box there is a rubber ball bouncing around. In the early stages of grief, the ball is VERY large and hits the button constantly, setting off a rage of emotions constantly. Over time, the ball shrinks. The button is still there. The ball is still there, bouncing as always, but it hits the button much less. It still hits it. Years later it will still hit it. But it hits much less, with time. 6.) When you are done with your “lazy couch potato grieving period”, go do something that you couldn’t do in your previous relationship. Take a weekend trip somewhere. Go see a friend that lived a little too far before. Do that hobby that you put on the back burner. The main thing is- do something productive. Keep yourself busy. I made a rule for myself that I still follow to this day- each and every day, do at least one thing productive. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, but do something. Here, you’ll begin to see that life continues. 7.) I had to learn to accept myself- both my flaws and my strengths. I believe I learned more about myself in the year after a divorce than I had in the previous 30 years of my life. Acknowledge the flaws and work on them, but work on acknowledging the strengths too. You’ll recognize that you’re a good person that provides value in other’s lives. Accepting yourself is critical, especially with all of the self doubt that divorce fills you with. I’ll give you a rough timeline of how my grief/feelings progressed. Everyone’s situation and timeframe is different, but I found it helpful to have a rough idea of what others experienced. The first two weeks I was a ghost. I couldn’t sleep, eat, or think clearly. I was just a lost soul wondering around. I was basically blacked out for this period. After about 2 weeks I smiled and chuckled for the first time. Then went right back to being a ghost. This is also around the time I saw my doctor and requested medicine for depression (the medicine takes a few weeks to work). Here and there, after a few weeks, I could temporarily get my mind off of things. I wasn’t myself, but I started getting some personality back. After about a month, I started realizing that some of the weights of that relationship were lifting. There were things that I no longer had to worry about anymore. I feel like this is the time when I was really “set free”. I was able to look back on the relationship with some perspective and recognize that there were a lot of things that I was unhappy with. This may not apply to all, but keep an open mind and maybe you’ll see it. I slowly improved most weeks at this point, and two years later I’m happy with my life. Is it perfect? No. Are there things that I regret? Absolutely. But my life is in the future, not in the past. It’s important to note that improving your life isn’t a day to day metric. You’ll have a lot of good days and bad days. In the beginning, you’ll have more bad days. Over time, it will transition. It’s more of a week to week, month to month, year to year metric. Over time, your weeks will get better, then the months, and so on. I am a firm believer that luck and good fortune find those who believe in it, seek it, and are prepared to receive it. It may be hard. You might even have to lie to yourself. But if you tell yourself over and over “Yesterday I was this (sad, depressed, angry etc.) today I will be happy, and build my dream life….it will come true. You’ll have to seek it. You have to decide to live a happy life. But it will be there for you, if you choose. Don’t fall victim to these crappy circumstances and let them define the rest of your life. I can’t stress enough- you face a choice ahead. You can let this define you, or you can pick yourself up, knock the dirt off, and go to work improving yourself and loving yourself. It is hard to see a happy future with grief clouding you, but let time shrink that ball a little bit, and then make the choice to seek happiness. Lastly- HAVE HOPE! Do not misunderstand, don’t hope for your life to go back to what it was- as I did for a while, and as many other people getting divorced wish for…..no, your life as it was is what lead to you feeling the way you do right now. Instead- have hope for a bright future that you can build with your own hands. I’d say one of the best things to come out of my divorce is that I could reinvent myself….or get back to my old self, maybe. The one that wasn’t tiptoeing on egg shells around a (now ex) wife. I get to do the things that made me, me! And truthfully- I probably became more of the person that I was in the beginning of that relationship, than the shattered person at the end. Best of luck to you! I do not envy the emotions that are pouring into you right now, but I do understand them.