Global Guy, always too busy to be a husband or a dad (about 5 nights home per month for the last three years), has left the marriage, declaring one year ago that he didn't love me anymore.
Now he has finally said that it's over and he wants to divorce, but he hasn't filed papers yet. Last week, I discovered that his income for next year, always determined at this time of year, will be a lot less. He's a partner in a big global firm and paid based on their profits, which to no one's surprise I'm sure, have taken a nose dive.
This means that whereas I thought I would be financial secure, I may not be, all for a (hopefully) temporary blip in income. We might not be able to ensure that I keep the house AND pay for his new place AND pay for what will surely be an expensive divorce. As an ex-banker and mgt consultant myself (though gave up work 9yrs ago to be full time mum to 3 DD's, 13,11 and 5) I manage all our money and I know we cannot do it all.
This house, absolutely lovely and the result of a creativity I never thought I had, means a lot to me AND the girls. They are very upset at the thought of moving, and GG has said we do not have to move.
On his residence, he has been sleeping on friends' sofa in London for the last 6 mos and is desperate to find somewhere to live, but on the verge of signing for a 1 bedroom flat, fully furnished on the East side of London (we live 60 mi SW of London..) I told him that was NOT on. So now, he's looking for somewhere W of London....
On divorce side, we both have London sols....and have agreed to go through the collaborative process, though I'm still questioning whether all his lying denial, procrastination and running away, will make this avenue possible. We have been given scary cost figures by our sols if we cannot go collaborative.
Two months ago, when he finally told me that he wanted out, and I told him that HE had to file papers and not me, that I was NOT the one leaving the marriage it was him, I felt some sort of catharsis. My efforts to find the key to make him realise what a mistake he was making, were over, and I felt better. However, now that I face financial insecurity for a temporary blip in income, I'm wondering whether I can face postponing our divorce for a year, allowing him the opp to find a place where he can be a dad...
However, I sooooo want to move on. I want to leave this limboland and put everything into some predictability for my girls, getting him to be in more frequent contact with them...Any thoughts????? (sorry for the long opening...these things are so involved, aren't they?)
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Big, but temporary, financial change. Should I postpone divorce?
Kaelle · 28/07/2011 08:39
Don't know if you're still there K or fast asleep by now.
Just want to say, it's ok, you are only 1 month in - why wouldn't you be preoccupied with everything? Feck, I still go into over thinking things and I'm 5 months down the line, my strength is fragile and subject to the slightest whiff of anything remotely challenging to my sense of being in charge of the process.
Thing is, grief is like a leaky bucket. Soon as you think you're on top of one thing, another comes along and reminds you of the loss and it hurts like hell.
So you still love GG deeply, and hold out the hope that there is still something worth saving. That's fine too, we all do it. I still love PTM but there's nothing there to fight for. Just keep pressing on though, don't wait for him to realise the error of his ways, I'm sure this has already been said, but he will have to do this by seeing you get on with your life without him. Sometimes it's the wake -up call they need, and sometimes it's not, but whatever the outcome, you will have done the work you need to for yourself and your DD's.
Don't worry about the long posts, just get it all out there 
.
Kaelle, Yes! I never asked to be a single parent either. I did not want this situation but it is HERE now..and I have to deal with it the best way I can.
ABCKF came back yesterday and was so remote. And the kids just disappeared into their rooms. Usually they only go there at bedtime. He hardly rings the children and it is this lack of interest that makes me go insane with rage!!! 
I know about the napping! I am trying hard to stop it but will have to next week when I start my new job. But I cannot sleep at night and am exhausted in the day and am desperate for a nap in the afternoon.
Once it is all over; the marriage finished legally and he is out of my life, only then will I get some peace. I hope so anyway.
I think you are doing a marvellous job! You are in strife YET you still have time to post on other threads...thank you.
I honestly just needed a break this evening, and just got pissed off that there was no one to relieve me.
Goes with the territory, I'm afraid K. I was the same but actually it didn't last all that long as I kept remembering how he was actually the source of all the arguments that DD and I had before he left and for a few weeks afterwards. But when I began to recover, so DD and I have begun to settle down and I don't resent PTM for not being here to pick up the slack - because he wasn't doing that anyway. GG wasn't there either, was he, except you still had a relationship with him you thought you could rely on. That's the only (only, she says) thing that has fundamentally changed, your capacity to cope hasn't, your DD's, I'm sure would have had their moments with each other which in a different context would have gone under your radar, but you're more sensitive now to everything.
Your DD's will settle once they see you have, I promise, and you will find yourself wishing he was there to share it less and less. I'm sure that these bolters tell themselves that they haven't left their children, they just left their DW's - but that's an excuse, and a poor one, for just ditching their families and trying out a responsibility free life. But it will catch up with him, and he will have to make the choice at some stage to either put his DD's before himself or deny them the relationship they need with him. All you can do is be there if he doesn't step up, or tolerate your feelings if he wants to be a major part of their lives but not yours iyswim. Now, here am I sitting here telling you this as if I've got it all sewn up, which of course I haven't.
I know that PTM wants to be more involved with DD, but I absolutely refuse to facilitate that beyond not stopping their seeing each other. She is old enough to make her own arrangements at 16, she doesn't want me setting up formal access, she doesn't want to feel at the mercy of arrangments she has not been a part of deciding, and I'm glad actually. It means she is in control of her own relationship with PTM and he has to settle for what he can get.
I know you don't want to be a single parent, that's another of the injustices of the situation, someone else suddenly takes that choice away and you have to live with it. But you really are doing brilliantly in awful circumstances trying to hold everything together and deal with the abandonment you feel as a partner 
.
IMO these bonds we make with life partners are resonant with those of our primary attachment figures whom we depended entirely on for giving and keeping us alive, so it's no surprise that as an adult we are transported back to that first experience of the fear of abandonment - except we now have to deal with our own and our DC's in the context of their issues and our own. Hope that makes sense.
Keep going K, let us know how the tape goes, I'd be interested to see if it's helpful and if it is, I'll try it myself.
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