After divorce, trying to move on is like doing a square dance with both feet tied together. Update.

[Wisedupwoman]

First came to MN (a life-saver) in March:

Then DH, now XH (very quick divorce) was into second OW which I found out through his deceitful, sloppy and disgusting attempts to take the cowards way out. Could not believe the man I loved for 20 years had spent 4 years lying and cheating his way through life and who then went on to try and manipulate all our DC's (and still is, divorce doesn't change anything).

We are now into mediation, I have a sol who is waiting in the wings to advise on settlements. I have, despite all the turmoil, secured a better job on higher salary and our DD has a place at 6th form. XH has been living with OW since he left, and I went no contact within 2 weeks of his leaving. He hates this as he is unable to control the situation so interrogates DC's - my adult DS's have cut him out, yet XH still tries with eldest DS, who finds it hard not to feel sorry for XH despite his awful behaviour. All our friends have cut XH out, none of them liked him it turns out and his colleagues have long called XH 'the artful dodger'. So this was a man who led a double life and I have been trying to come to terms with this and move on.

This thread is about that - trying to move on and deal with the reality that whilst I am trying to hold my chin up and tits out, XH is going to be a part of my life through our DD whether I like it or not.

I want to give my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to everyone who has thus far been so wonderful and unstinting in their MN support for me - who have walked the journey with me even in the midst of their own sadness.

arf at Dozer

Arf at you all!!

By today ptm will be reeling from the really stinging letter from my sol, Form E enclosed, and a demand that he complete and send it back with all supporting documentation within 7 days or she petitions the court not only for the first hearing but also requests they compel him to complete it fortwith.

He's dreading Christmas. I'm thoroughly excited for the first time in years. Hope you all are too. Can't wait to see the back of 2011.

So how is life with WUW now; did you have a good christmas with NM? Give us the gossip !!

Hello.

Christmas was wonderful overall thank you. All in family happy. DD is seeing her DF today for the first time in ages which I hope goes well.

NM? Still romancing me and gave me the most wonderful and well chosen gifts. I also met and spent the day with one of his siblings and their family and they too made me feel very at home. So it's moving in the 'we are a couple' direction. To be honest I both love it and fear it. I wish we had met further down the road for me. I feel that although he's behind in the divorce stakes he's more ready and certain than me emotionally and psychologically. Don't get me wrong, there's no pressure at all but ptm and me are far from properly detached and he is still playing games despite my sol moving things on to applying to the court for a first hearing. That makes me feel very insecure about commitment as I don't know what the future holds for me.

But you can't choose who you feel connected to and when. NM and me did discuss splitting for a year or until both our situations are clear, but neither of us could really see the point in that. So the word of the moment is patience.

I don't know anothermum, I never expected to be in this predicament which is both glorious and unsettling. I never thought I'd be anticipating starting again with a NM who has DC. I didn't think I'd be trying to plan a future which puts so many disparate pieces together into a good enough fit. But I do know that NM is trying to do that alongside me, with me.

Anyone who has done the same successfully and who can offer some wisdom please don't hold back!

Wow!! just... Wow!!!

I don't read any posts for ages and look what is happening! Its lovely to find out as I was just thinking about you and wondering.

I met my now DH very soon after ending it with DH number one. I knew it was too soon but felt unable to stop. It was like I was being pulled over a cliff... it was really scarey but I also knew I couldn't pass up the best thing to happen in my life. Luckily, DH is very straight forward (not used to taht) and was a great support.

I see PTM is hopelessly predictable. Wot a saddo he has become. Shame

for me, it was just over a year before I got it together with DH. I first met him just 4 months after the break up and discovery of affair.

Perhaps you shouldn't be thinking of it as a predicament. I mean, everyone's been saying here that it's great but don't rush it, and here are circumstances dictating that you can't rush it. You don't know for certain where you'll both stand after your respective divorces so you're forced to spend your time in light-hearted hanging-out mode, just getting used to being an item and getting to know each other better and better. I don't actually see that as a bad thing. When you are in a position to start planning the future in serious mode, you'll be ready for it.

Hiya, glad you had a good christmas.

No wisdom here, but confidence that you will work it all out!

Sorry no wisdom here either but glad things are going so well for you. You are a much braver person than me. I know I couldn't get involved with anyone so quickly ... but thats just me and I know me. Horses for courses .... I hope everyone has a great time tonight at the bells and tomorrow starts a new fresh year for everyone. >

Just want to say Happy New Year to all who have lurked/posted/PM'd on this thread.

Thanks for everything this year, and I'll see you all in 2012!

Wisey x

Happy New Year to you Wisey - hope 2012 is all you could wish for!

Happy New Year to you too Wisey! Your thread has given me great inspiration in moments of despair and as a result I am looking forward to a New Year and a New Start. Thanks x

Hey.

Well after the high there had to be a low. Unbelievably pissed off and anxious today.

PTM has moved the financial goal posts again. Not only is he planning to stop paying the capital on the mortgage he is now saying he can't see why he should pay all the mortgage when he has no 'substantial claim' on the property. This is an about turn. He wishes to reduce payments so he can pay DD and me 'extra' money each month to make our lives easier . Mortgage company say if he just stops paying the capital without agreement between us all they'll chase us both for the money and we'll be in default. Sol says don't agree to anything whilst PTM hasn't done what he's supposed to have. What a shitty situation.

I know, I know. I've been in touch with my sol who can't see me before next week so I have to sit on it. And I also know that I've been luckier than most so far. But this means that we have just spent our last Christmas in our home, me and DD, because i can't make up the mortgage myself and I won't be able to afford another mortgage where I live because PTM now wants a 50/50 split. So he is trying to force the sale of the house and I'm afraid he'll succeed where all other controlling strategies have failed. I don't have a particular attachment to the house actually but I did want to choose when I left it since PTM also forced the end of our marriage. But I know when the numbers don't add up any more and I have to admit defeat.

Unbelievably fed up and miserable. Not even NM could raise my spirits tonight. Coupled with that I've got DD telling me how much she thinks her DF regrets everything and she'd do anything to have us back together under one roof! Bollocks to that is what I thought but I said something a bit less offensive.

So I'm looking at the rental market to see what's about and how much. I plan to empty the sheds into a skip this weekend (remember that story?) so it's done. NM has offered to bring his large van to do it and save me that cost of a skip, but you know what? I think no thanks I'll do it myself. I don't need one man to help me rid myself of another, I can do it all by my self.

Oh Wisey sorry to hear this, you do sound down at the moment... guess this is all part of the rollercoaster of divorce.
I think its the post New Year blues as well, I've been hit by all the queries from the E Form straight after New Year so life is shit at the moment, but hey.... onwards & upwards. Every item that goes in the skip is 1 more piece in your move to free yourself of PTM and go on to be happy.
Stay focused, its temporary I'm sure
x

Am sorry wisey .

Can he really do this ahead of the financial settlement? Wanker. But sad loser if he thinks this last desperate attempt to have power over you will be effective.

Also sounds like he's seeking to manipulate DD again, playing at being contrite, sad, poverty-stricken, lonesome........words fail me. Hope having to move doesn't upset her too much.

Good for you re the skip, although might it look bad in court? Want you to be whiter-than-white and get v good deal (though still love saffy's pants-on-pyre approach).

Also still up for a MN vigilante mob to sort him out! With knobs on.

Sorry about form E wiseoldowl, hope 2012 brings good things for you too.

I shall take pictures of the -shit- stuff left in the shed before I empty it out. not sure that the court will take a hugely critical view of my getting rid of rusty tools, bits of cable, old screws, tins of solid paint etc etc and a rickety office chair.

Whatever, PTM just didn't bother to come back and do it himself.

Oh Wisey :(

So he's re-grouped over the holidays after OW's kicked him in to touch. Its like Fatal Attraction when she rises up in the bath...

I suppose subconsciously you were expecting him to be a total shit and with you calling the shots for a good few months, he's resorting to the tactics of a man who's run out of honourable options.

Its like deja vu messing around with your DD and the money arrangements. You've been here before, but that time, you were much more vulnerable and chasing your tail. This time, you have your ducks in a row, so its time to calmly use them to rid yourself of this purple-wearing-slacks arsehole. Work out which things are worth fighting for and which you can leave to one side.

In the longer run, you want a clean break from him, with the legal stuff tied down to within an inch of its life. Leave him no wriggle room and keep moving forward with your own life.

As for the shed and all his crap... I'm iinclined to encourage you to do what you need to. You're in charge and you decide. You are equal to him in these negotiations.

Stay strong. xx

McNaughty I can't fight for the house, I can't afford to and I don't really want to. Having said that DD is really upset at the prospect of having to leave her home as well as wishing her DF was here. She has asked me to arrange for some counselling because she feels so unhappy and needs to talk to someone outside the situation. So I've made enquiries and found someone who would see her short term but who wants a 'family' session first off. PTM has not responded to the email I sent him explaining what DD wants and what the counsellor says.

i'm at a loss as to what to do, but I'll just go ahead and if PTM doesn't come I suppose that'll give the counsellor the information she must be seeking.

This is turning into a rant.

The thought of going back to square one at 52 years old terrifies me. I grew up believing that owning one's home was the 'right and best' way to live. Now I'm having to consider other options when I should have been looking forward to the time when the mortgage was paid - not that far off really.

I wonder if PTM ever really sleeps soundly since he has wreaked so much destruction on all our lives including his own - the consequences of which are only now beginning to make themselves felt. I knew that the last few months were really a moratorium before the hard bargaining began, but I clung onto the last vestiges of hope that his tears in mediation and those promises to prove his word to me were genuine (if manipulative and merely of the moment).

I'm also positioned to need a sol who is making a tidy sum out of all this, which makes me very angry and increasingly i find myself feeling utterly ground down by it all. I'm tempted to ring PTM and tell him that for the want of him sending actual proof of his assets and liabilities he is going to cost us both thousands more pounds which we can't afford to pay out and which will have a direct effect on our DD.

I believe PTM has discovered I'm seeing NM and his version of the 'jealous ex' will be to make it as difficult for me as possible to have a new relationship AND keep my home (which suddenly he can't see the point in paying for). So I'm wondering if NM is worth it tbh.

Only you can decide what NM is worth, but IME it would be quite wrong for PTM's bad behaviour to be rewarded by driving NM away. Who, pray, buggered off from the marital home, child, and spouse of 30 years, for a cheap shag? And who is now being all sulky because what's sauce for the goose has proved equally appetising for the gander? Be damned to him.

I am quite surprised he has got away so long without coming up with the necessary paperwork. I thought there were laws about these things, otherwise the only divorces that ever went through would be by mutual consent and we know that ain't the case! (XH would still be stonewalling now if he could get away with it.) I wouldn't ring PTM to say what you were going to, though - again it rewards him by giving him direct attention, and by letting him know he's annoying you. Get the sol to send a snitty letter instead. You might put in something to the effect that you will be seeking additional costs from the settlement, given that it's his intransigence which is making it unnecessarily expensive. That might shift his purple-clad arse.

Btw I'm not sure what snitty means, a cross between sniffy and snotty I think. My spellchecker doesn't like it, anyway. (But it doesn't like "sniffy" either, or, for that matter, "spellchecker"!)

Snitty. I like snitty, and shall add it to my repertoire forthwith and be gone spellchecker!!!

Of course Annie he's got away with it for too long and his long, uncecssarily detailed letter to my sol which he presents as a disclosure can be summed up in one sentence: "I am not willing nor ready to let go yet so Wisey will have to wait". I'd have more respect for him if he were just to say that one thing.

It's gotta be court time, hasn't it? Expensive maybe, but the way things are going, more like an investment. The consequences of him continuing to do nothing at all are unaffordable, whichever way you look at it.

This looks quite interesting. I found the bit that says "In the event that one person fails to complete or disclose certain documents, higher costs may apply - and in some serious non disclosure cases, imprisonment can follow" particularly amusing for some strange reason.

Hear hear annie.

This has nowt to do with NM, Ptm would have done this at some point whether or not you had met anyone new, he was never going to pay for you to stay in the house, as my granny would say he is all mouth and no trousers (or something!).

The counsellor's request sounds strange, and potentially stressful, am sure you / dd can explain the situation without ptm. Maybe you could speak to them and find out why they think a "family" session might be useful and explain your concerns?

All mouth and purple trousers, which is worse!