Schrödinger's Divorce 🙄

[ScreamIntoTheWind]

I’m posting this here in line with my username. I just want to be able to express all of this. I’m sure I’ll get advice anyway. Let’s face it, the unanimous advice will be to embrace the divorce and focus on a life after the bastard. And, frankly, I don’t see any other way forward either. So that is what I’m going to do.

But I still want to moan about his general mindfuckery and awfulness.

Summary: we separated in the summer. He was an incredible dick over it all in pretty spectacular ways. I’m in the FMH with our son (and my son), paying the entire mortgage and everything. He’s renting and paying the calculator rate (to the penny) which is less than half the nursery fees, never mind half the mortgage (on this house that he benefits from me continuing to pay off the equity each month).

He has been insisting we need to reconcile. But somehow that means me ‘being reasonable’, which appears to translate as just doing what he wants with a smile on my face and feeling grateful for the opportunity to be screwed over again and again.

One of the possible ways that it might ever work involves relocating (various reasons that aren’t important). So I have been doing everything I can to try to make the relocation happen (because getting out of here would help me regardless - possibly even more so if he decides to stay here). It’s been hours of looking for jobs, time consuming applications for jobs, being rejected, getting interviews, being rejected, getting more interviews… I work FT and have the kids - including 100% of the time with our son. It’s a lot of effort.

But apparently that’s not enough effort for him. Nothing is ever good enough for him. And he’s a petty dickhead. In particular, he’s unhappy that the house he’s renting is smaller than the one I live in. Clearly I should be in a hovel and he should be housed in line with his status 🙄

He’s been renting for 6 months now. He’s got a 12 month contract. He pretends we are reconciling so he can get the benefits of a marriage and family life - dinners cooked, social interaction, childcare, sex - but then he is a dick and goes back home.

At the end of last week I had a job interview. It was really successful. Unusually so. They want me to go through to a second phase and said in person and in writing how impressed they are. When I told him about that, his response was that I need to sell this house. No congratulations or anything. Just that he wants out if the mortgage and his but of the deposit NOW (stamps foot). Even though he’s tied into a rental contract for another 6 months (which he goes on about all the time) and wants to relocate (or do he says).

Then he says we should move to the other city in separate houses and get divorced (to ‘reset’ and ‘be equal again’ 🙄) and then reconcile there. I pointed out that divorce is not a hard reset on a laptop. It’s the end of the marriage - and the relationship. You divorce because you’ve decided it is not salvageable. Ever.

But then he admitted that he’d already applied for a divorce. Apparently as amicable one as unreasonable behaviour can be. He hadn’t known how to tell me but still managed to turn up at my house, eat my food, insist on ‘family time’ with DS and grab my legs and pester me for sex after doing so. Apparently it is a shame that I feel divorce is actually a meaningful action with consequences.

So he claimed we could take this weekend to talk. And then today said he felt positive but I’ll get the divorce paperwork tomorrow and he wants to ‘just get a decree nisi’. Apparently I’m unreasonable for telling him that he doesn’t get to live out Schrödinger's divorce. It’s an either you’re trying to reconcile or you are divorcing situation. It doesn’t ‘buy time’ (it actually produces deadlines and thresholds).

He’s just a bastard. I’m so annoyed with myself for continually letting myself be strung along by him because I hope that it might be possible that our son can have a family with both his parents in it and that he actually is the man I thought I was marrying.

How dare he try to persuade me that I’m unreasonable for saying that divorcing me is a very clear statement that it is over for good? And for refusing to sign paperwork to that effect unless I mean it.

So yeah. There will be a divorce. Don’t worry about that women of MN. There will be a divorce. Obviously there will be a divorce. I’ll sort out my solicitor in the morning and not let him fuck me over.

I will be much better off without this shit in my life.

Sounds like the very definition of mindfuckery and I find it hard to see why an intelligent, articulate, successful woman like you would put up with any of it, let alone the sex.
Just get your head down and get out, on your terms, not his.

Yes. You are right. I am far too good for this shit.

It is absolutely mindfuckery. I have messsges from him that are like reality through a dark mirror. Ones in which apparently he’s the one trying and I’m just being difficult for treating a divorce application as an extremely serious and formal process with profound consequences.

Nothing says ‘I’m serious about reconciling’ like a holding nice sword of Damocles ongoing legal process over someone. No. People who are really trying to make relationships work submit divorce applications. That’s how you demonstrate commitment to trying to make something work.

I think you know that you need to stop listening to his words and only listen to his actions.

And also that you need to stop cooking for him, listening to him, confiding in him, expecting emotional support and shagging him.

And no sex ever again. Frankly. The bastard is coming nowhere near my body. Ever again.

The arsehole really seems to think we are soulmates in a romcom separated by shit circumstances but who will inevitably reconcile. Divorce is just meaningless. No one really sees it as a final ending. 🙄

Meanwhile, in the real world… he’s a selfish, arrogant dick. The difficult circumstances are him letting me down in ways that are just unforgivable. Repeatedly. And his family being beyond toxic. That definitely makes it worse. There’s no lovely romantic coming back together enabled by resetting through divorce. No. There will be a divorce. And there will be child contact arrangements and handovers and maintenance. And nothing else.

@M0RVEN

I think you know that you need to stop listening to his words and only listen to his actions.

And also that you need to stop cooking for him, listening to him, confiding in him, expecting emotional support and shagging him.

Definitely.

Although listening to his words and comparing they to just actions turns him from just a dick into a mindfucker of one.

So there is that.

He’s going to regret it when he realises that he is simply getting handovers. And a contact arrangement that is in our child’s best interests - not what suits him.

I agree he’s a mind fucking dick.

But the issue seems to be that you love him, want to reconcile with him, and are allowing yourself to be strung along by him.

Yes. You are right. That has been the issue.

I have been a total idiot. And that needs to stop. Right now.

He is not who I thought he was. He is all the things that have made my life difficult for the past more than two years. There is no hope of anything because he never was who I thought he was. He was pretending to be something else.

What matters now is agreeing a sensible child contact arrangement. Making arrangements to have a better life with my children.

Step 1. Get a solicitor. That’s tomorrows job.

You’ve not been an idiot. You’ve just been someone who really truly wants to believe that her husband is the man she thought he was.

It’s very hard to let go of our deepest held hopes and dreams.

No one gets married thinking it might end like this.

It’s ok to be sad. Devastated even.

A lot of this sounds familiar and I can promise you 100% that your life is going be lighter, happier, better, once he's out of it properly. Whatever you have to do to get rid of him, it's worth it.

I think at the moment I’m angry with him. And that’s probably what I need.

I’ve been sad and devastated. I’ve been bargaining and all sorts of states of grief since the summer. I’m sure I’ll be sad and disappointed again.

Right now I am properly furious with him. So I need to use that productively by sorting out my shit.

He doesn’t get a shrödinger’s divorce limbo. I’m going to open the email, respond with the ‘I don’t agree I’ve been any of the things he’s accusing me of, but I absolutely do want to divorce him’ option and absolutely embrace the divorce outcome.

I’ll see a solicitor, but I’ll let him bear most of the expense. I’ll get a decent financial settlement. I’ll (hopefully) get the bloody job. I’ll sell this house and move where I’ll have more opportunities. I’ll be the best mother I can. I’ll give my children the kind of happy home life with a happy mother they deserve. Maybe not in that order, but that’s the plan.

And I will not pay attention to what I now recognise as bullshit and mindfuckery. None of it in my best interests. Quite the opposite. I’ll be a broken record: we are getting divorced. I only need to hear relevant things about the financial settlement and child arrangements. Nothing else.

You can do this op. Dont look back at what might have been, if only, etc etc - concentrate on the now and what you want for yourself in the future. Hold onto that anger to see you through

You're coming out of this a wiser, stronger, very canny woman.
You won't be taken for a mug ever again.
You've found your anger and now you'll keep gathering momentum.
Bloody well done.

I'm just entering the mind-fuckery that my previously sane husband is creating and your post really helped me. I wish I could help you too. All I keep hearing is 'get a good solicitor and they will fight your corner'. But it costs so much! If I win the lottery this week I'm going to send it to you xxx

I hope you've managed to carry through with your plans OP.

Sound like a dreadful man. He's treating you as a doormat and with so much disrespect.

What do you want? I suspect you're not 100% either way.

Don't let this man come around and play happy families. And FFS stop shagging him; that's telling him he can have his cake and eat it too.