Did anyone who initiated their divorce regret it?

[kakdjrvt]

I’m in the process of separating from my husband for a number of reasons but fundamentally because I’ve been unhappy for a long time and despite previous promises to change it never happened. Now that he can see I’m serious he is showing a lot of changed behaviours and has kept some of these up for a few months now which is longer than before but there is also the same pattern with other things.
The part where I’m wondering if I will regret this is that I still enjoy spending time with him and when it’s good it’s really good. I’m worried that we will separate and I’ll still be unhappy just in a different way and will regret this decision, and wondered what the experience was of others?

I think a lot of men just bury their heads in the sand until choices are forced upon them. Men are clueless how to fix an unhappy marriage, in my opinion. If you think of it, weddings and funerals are always organised by women, and everything in between too.

As for my personal situation, my husband and I separated a few times and always reconciled and are happier than ever. I drew my boundaries and when he made changes I chose not to hold grudges

I read a lot of books of relationships. Why Women Talk and Men Walk is my favourite.

I hope it helps

In the same situation and have sought legal advice. Waiting on financial info to see whether I could buy him out. Its so hard to mske that final decision. Mine has no emotional response to anything which I just can no longer cope with. He also refuses to discuss any of this.

Wishing you well op, you are not alone.

No, no regrets here. I only wish I’d done so sooner or actually, not married him in the first place. I think you need to focus on the reasons why you want to divorce him and ask why it’s only now he has bothered to make any effort!

I completely agree, but it does leave me puzzled. Being completely objective there must be a sizeable percentage of women that find that their post divorce lives is not what they expected and if they were honest with themselves regret it.

However on all such similar threads I have never seen anyone say that they regret their divorce.

What do you imagine women are expecting post-divorce life to be like? 🤔

Just because sometimes being a sole parent can be hard doesn't mean you'd regret getting rid of the man/ending a shit relationship.

Personally I've been happier since the divorce: not being undermined, not worried about what he's going to do next, not firefighting all the time. I've even been better off because he used to spend everything.

Good lord no, best thing I ever done.

Only if a sizeable percentage divorce without thinking it through. If everyone treats it as a measure of last resort, it stands to reason that there will be few regrets.

Not a divorce but I separated from my partner and father of my child. I'd gradually got more and more unhappy after our child was born due to his sheer laziness and complete lack of taking any responsibility for caring for the baby. I tried talking to him so many times and things would get better for a couple of weeks and then he'd revert. When we split he seemed to become much more serious about actually changing but when I asked how I could be sure it would last his reply was "I never thought you'd actually leave me". That kinda sealed the deal for me - he was only willing to change because it was now affecting him, not because he gave a shit about how I felt. Haven't regretted it once.

Why don’t you divorce and then date? If he changes then remain together but unmarried. Easier to leave if he reverts back to normal.

I do believe people grow through trauma. Unless something radical or terrible happens people seem to have little desire to change. Then the shit hits the fan and they have no choice but to address their issues.

What do you both want in 1 year. 5 years. 10 years?

Can you both write down what you actually WANT from a marriage. Can you design what you want from your relationship, keeping the good bits that work and changing the bits that don’t? Because you can change it if you are both willing. I doubt either of you want to be miserable.

The shock of you pulling the plug may be enough for him to change. Or it may not. Would he be willing to divorce and cohabit?

Most responses seem to be saying no regrets but I am going trhough something similar and ChatGPT tells me regret is extremely common.
First of all there is all the future doubt, plus, unless things are terrible all the time, there are good times, and you think "could things have turned around?".
Sure there are clear cut cases but moments of doubt, especially near the beginning are very common.

Oh well if ChatGPT says so it must be true 🙄

I get your point but it's not always wrong.
And it makes sense. I'm not talking about regretting it years later, I'm talking about in the first few weeks.
Similar to quitting a job for a new one. Years later we might be happy with the decision but at the start there's often that thought: have I done the right thing.

I think I may have been less certain of my decision if my ex had tried to make changes, but I also suspect that I would have been angry that it took my starting divorce proceedings to make him start those changes. But to answer your question, in the end I never did regret it, but I was worried I might forget my reasons for ending things, so I made a list. I never once needed to look at it. Work out your ethics and lifestyle preferences and see how much they do or don't aligne with this relationship. That information should drive your decision.

No regrets, should’ve got out sooner

Best thing I ever did. The month before I left I started to question it because it didn't feel as bad. But a huge part of that was that knowing I was leaving meant I could put up with more, I didn't argue back because it didn't matter, I didn't ask for help or anything because it was only a few more weeks. It felt a lot easier. But that was BECAUSE I was leaving. It wouldn't have felt like that otherwise.

If he has changed, and he has changed because you have initiated divorce, he's not going to continue that once you drop the divorce. He will go back to worse than he was before. It took me three attempts to leave my ex. Each time I came back to so much worse than before.

That's more like shock and fear of change than regret, though.

I think there's a narrative around divorce that can be quite misogynistic, probably because women file for divorce at higher rates than men. Like it must be for frivolous or petty reasons because, well, women... and they'll be sorry and they'll never find another man, oh noes.

But few people do it lightly and it's usually after every avenue of trying to make it work has been exhausted.

And women end up overrepresented because they tend to get stuck with doing the life-admin 😂

women file for divorce at higher rates than men

That's an interesting stat because my husband told me he wanted a divorce but it was me who submitted the application so I guess I will go down in the stats as initiating it.

Case in point.

I think this is what is tripping me up a bit; there’s things that I would have been really upset or angry about in the past but now I just think I won’t need to keep doing this/putting up with this feeling etc and it makes me feel calmer so I look back over the last few months and think how much calmer I’ve felt.
I got through Christmas last year by promising myself I would never have to do this again with him. I also got to this point 2 years ago and while there’s been minor improvements mostly it got worse and I hadn’t really thought that might be situation this time

Not because I do all of the life admin. Quite the opposite actually, I just didn't want to hang about.