My son tried out for his high school basketball team three years in a row and got cut every time. He's a good kid, but he's five foot six and not very fast, and the third time it broke his heart. He'd practiced every single day that summer. He came home from the final cut list and went straight to his room. The next morning, the coach called our house and asked to talk to him. He said he had a problem. His team didn't have a statistician, and he needed someone who knew the game and took it seriously, and he'd noticed my son was the only kid at tryouts who asked about defensive rotations. He asked if my son would take the job. My son said yes before the coach finished the sentence. He went to every practice and every game that season. He sat at the end of the bench with a laptop and a clipboard and tracked everything. Shots from every spot on the floor, who played best together, which defenses worked against which teams. He made spreadsheets. He made charts. He stayed up until midnight after games figuring out what had happened. By midseason the coach was asking him for his opinion at halftime. By the playoffs, the coach was building game plans around his reports. The team went further in the playoffs than they had in fourteen years. At the end of season banquet, the coach gave the team MVP award to their star forward. Then he said he had one more award, one he'd never given before, for the person who'd changed how he coached basketball. He called my son's name. My son is a sophomore in college now. He's studying sports analytics on a scholarship. Last month he got an internship offer from a professional team. When he called to tell us, the first person he called after us was his old coach. The coach said he wasn't surprised. He said he'd seen it from the first day of tryouts. My son asked if that's why he'd cut him. The coach said no. You were just really slow.

Espero que hayas tenido un feliz cumpleaños.

Ahora que ha pasado el tiempo, me doy cuenta de que solo me usaste y nunca me amaste de verdad.

Eres una mala persona, un perdedor que sólo tiene dinero.

Ojalá hubiera visto las señales entonces.

Ojalá hubiera tenido un sistema de apoyo que me hubiera advertido.

Cuando terminamos, dijiste: "Gracias por todo". Es una pena que no pueda decir lo mismo.

Después de conocerte, ya no tengo ganas de conocer a nadie nuevo ni de confiar en nadie.

Ah, el perro era mío, ladrón.

I'm mostly here for sympathy, but if you have any advice that's awesome, too.

I know I'm lucky to have gotten child support after my divorce, but now my ex is having financial difficulties and wants to stop paying child support for our older kid, who is in college. I am the one paying for college.

My ex is genuinely not making enough money, but he could almost certainly make more if he could pull his head out of his... you know. It's pissing me off that instead of re-negotiating child support based on his income, he's just making up random rules about how he should be able to only pay half now because one kid is over 18. He's self-employed so garnishing wages isn't an option.

I know it's probably not worth it, but it has crossed my mind that I could take him to court over this.

Loyola University Chicago and The University of Tennessee, Knoxville are conducting a research study on understanding the role of mindfulness in the relationship between stress, PTSD, and sleep quality on family functioning.  

Total time commitment is 14 days, about 30-40 minutes a day.  

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You are being asked to participate because you are a) residing in the United States, b) 18 years or older, c) have access to smartphone and to the internet for 14 days, d) able to register on our study site [Inclivio.com] to receive daily alerts by text (detailed steps will be shared) and through Inclivio app, e) have experienced domestic violence and/or abuse by in-laws in the past 24 months (have not experienced domestic violence or in-law abuse in the past 6 months, and no longer in a relationship with the abusive partner), f) are comfortable sharing your phone number and receiving daily reminder texts and mindfulness resources for a period of 14 days from the study team, and g) Not afraid of your abusive partner/in-laws and can comfortably participate in this study. You will receive a 1-month follow-up survey after completing the entire 2-week study. Read this form carefully and ask questions you have before deciding to participate in the study. 

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I am aware that social media influencers rarely have the charmed lives that they portray in their posts, but many of them seem live the life that I wish I had had, at least in part. Many people I see on FB and IG appear to have happy, fulfilling lives.

I'm 62 now. One thing that I had always wanted in life was a loving wife, someone to share my life with. I've been married twice; neither was "loving". The first was a covert narcissist, the second a grandiose narcissist. Both ground me into the dust.

I give up now on ever having a happy, fulfilling relationship with a woman. Some things just are not meant to be.

Back story: Divorce was finalized, child support was set to start on the first of the month, he didnt pay anything in, child support started being garnished the following month. The amount taken was the court ordered monthly amount plus a percentage of the back pay from the month he didn't pay.

He said anything over the court ordered monthly amount should just be given back to him...

Ha! Nope.

I know my kids are entitled to that and I dont have to give it back. We've been struggling for so long.

I do need some financial advice about this....

I am so stressed out about this I started having panic attacks and nightmares. The first week he texted me saying what they took out extra and "graciously" told me he was letting me keep it but I feel like he might make a stink once he realizes its going to keep happening until the backpay is paid off. We have joint accounts and maxed out credit cards that I'm now solely responsible for and I'm afraid if I start paying the balance down he'll start using it to "get his money back". I dont use the joint accounts. They are still open because there are bills attached to them... like credit cards and loans.

How do I prevent him from using a joint credit card but still have it available for emergencies?

18 months ago i got my girlfriend pregnant and decided to marry her 2 months later. Its been about 16 months and I think we are going to call it. We don't have any major assets and rent. I work as a cpa making around 84k a year or $5,150 after taxes, family insurance, and 401k/hsa contribs. She does not currently have a job but has a college degree and is planning to begin her career in january. What will my child support estimation look like? Should I remove her off my employer health insurance plan for next year? Any tips for family court war please help and pray for us, it is going to be ugly.

I assume a lot 🙄. I’m contemplating divorce and I’m in Texas where the house is community property (we are both on the deed anyway). The problem is I’m on the mortgage alone (yes that was stupid). He actually makes more than me but works for himself in the entertainment industry and money doesn’t come in the same way. It could be huge one year and very little the next. Overall it’s great, but when getting a mortgage approved it’s not ideal and that’s not what they look at.

We have an 8 year old son and I can handle the mortgage on my own if I had to (not that I want to!) but from what I understand, it would be unwise of me to physically move out right now? I want my space get away from him. I had a recent realization the relationship is over and having to live with him in his house is a huge drain on my mental health.

I haven’t broached the subject so I haven’t asked him to move out, but I just know him and he absolutely will never leave. In his mind, I’m leaving HIM so I should go. But it’s my name on the mortgage! I thought about an agreement where we split paying the mortgage AND rent for me, but I feel like it’s more the principle. I just can’t fathom being financially responsible for a house I don’t live in when I make less money than him. There is literally no way he will leave. No way.

As far as I understand, you can’t transfer a mortgage to another person?

Hey everyone, I need some advice… I (28F) and my husband (32M) been together for 7 years and married for about a year. I’ve been unhappy for a long time, and I’ve reached the point where I don’t think I can keep doing this. I’ve tried talking to him about the things that are bothering me, but I keep hearing promises that things will change without seeing consistent follow-through. I feel like I’m carrying too much of the relationship both emotionally and financially and that we want different things for the future. I have gone from being his wife to becoming his mother within 4 months of being married. I have talked to him countless times and nothing has changed and I’m exhausted.

I know I need to be honest with him, but I’m nervous about actually saying the words. I’ve been feeling this way for months now and I thought maybe it’s just a rough phase but the past few months have been awful for me.

The good thing is we don’t have any kids and we are currently renting together so I think it would be an easy split but then again who knows lol

For people who’ve been through this, how did you start the conversation? Is there anything you wish you’d prepared or thought through before having the conversation? Thanks in advance!!!

Hello everybody, I'm 17F and have 2 brothers (14M) and (16M). I am pretty sure my parents are divorcing soon. It breaks my heart. How was divorced parents for you guys if anyone can remember?

I have no one, absolutely no one, to talk to about this, so I need your support to get my head straight.

We've been together for 12 years (8 years married), have 2 young kids, and have been going through a rough patch for a year. She wanted a divorce around May, on the grounds that I was jealous, controlling and emotionally unavailable.

The reason she claimed I was jealous and controlling is that I found her chat with a coworker last year in November-December. There wasn't any particular red flag in the conversation, but call it a gut feeling (she was mentioning him A LOT! That's why I felt the need to snoop in the first place). I felt disturbed by their closeness. She was telling him that she could out-drink him, etc. (she's a fucking 30 year old woman, not a teenager), and she was sharing a lot about her personal life.

I asked her to distance herself. I asked her not to talk with him late at night or about personal things. She refused and told me I was being delusional and controlling. They were just friends. No matter how HURT I was about their closeness, and about after-work events that sometimes ended past midnight, with her coming home drunk as hell, she relentlessly told me I was just a controlling, jealous loser. I believed her and started questioning myself. I tried my best to keep my mouth shut about their "friendship", despite being very disturbed and HURT. She didn't care about my emotions; she said she didn't need to manage them.

After this, around January, our marriage started falling apart abruptly, as if by an invisible force. No matter what I tried, we just weren't getting along. She just wanted to talk about the problems in our marriage, a long list that consisted of incidents dating way back, and we were constantly fighting without any resolution. She couldn't move on. We tried marriage counselling, to no avail. Her problems were always in the spotlight and all my pain was ignored by the counsellor, so I wasn't eager to continue.

Fast forward to June: she initiated the divorce. We live in Sweden, so after initiating a divorce, you have to wait 6 months for it to be finalised. After 6 months you are asked again whether you're still determined to divorce, you sign, and you're divorced.

The 6-month period, which we are still in, has been very unstable. We had some good days where we felt hopeful despite everything. She'd hug me and ask for physical closeness. Our bedroom life was fine. Some days we would make future plans that involved both of us, as if we were going to move on without divorcing. It was a terrible limbo with no certainty.

In the meantime, his name started being mentioned less often, and after-work events became fewer and mostly ended at a reasonable time. I thought we were making progress.

She left her Gmail logged in on my computer last week. I stumbled upon some Quora digest emails with strange titles (related to cheating). I checked all the Quora digest emails she had received since the beginning of the year, and the pattern was staggering. There were at least 100 emails since the beginning of the year, and 80% of them had a cheating theme. The ratio was higher after March, and near 90% after June.

I went up to her, didn't tell her anything about it, and asked if she had developed emotional feelings for someone. Her initial answer was no, and she shifted the focus to why I came up with this question. That's what she cared about. I pretended to know something and kept asking relentlessly, and after a long time, she eventually opened up.

She says she found in him what she wasn't getting from our relationship. She says she felt seen, heard, and able to be herself with him. She had changed the passcode on her phone after I confronted her last year about their closeness, and I haven't had access to her phone since. Obviously they kept chatting, and I don't know to what level the friendship boundaries started getting crossed.

One day at the office (she won't say when), he opened up to her and she opened up to him. I don't know what they "opened up" about, but he's also married, and he told her that they should distance themselves from each other. My wife agreed, and so they put distance between them, or so she says (distance my ass, they went on a work trip to California last month for 9 days!). Now I don't know if anything physical happened there. She denies it and says it was just a friendship in which they developed a dependency on each other, and that's why they cut it off. Nothing physical or emotional, he just made her feel good. But how am I supposed to trust that? I will never know.

She blames it on me. She says that if I hadn't snooped on her phone, there would have been no secrecy, and that if I had been more emotionally available, she wouldn't have sought it elsewhere. On top of the pain of being cheated on, she wants me to feel guilty for everything. She denies this is cheating. She claims everything was handled maturely by both of them.

I live in a foreign country with her, and she was always at the center of my life. I have NO ONE left in my life. I've grown apart from my friends in my home country, and I never felt I needed friends in this country because I had her and my kids. I just don't know what my life will look like from this point on.

I am shattered and feel like I'm in a dream. I NEVER thought she would do this to me… I was so stupid for trusting her instead of my gut.

I don’t know how I will look at her face and co-parent with this person. I’m just so, so sad and lost. Will I ever feel better?

A few months ago I posted here about dating after my 15 year relationship (13 years married) ended. At the time, I was cautiously excited about meeting someone new, learning to trust myself again, and figuring out what love might look like after divorce. I guess this is sort of and update, though not quite the one I imagined writing.

I'm approaching 35, and my divorce has been official for about a month. I've spent the past year doing everything people tell you to do after a marriage ends, therapy, traveling, exercising, reconnecting with myself, focusing on my career, trying new things and building a life I'm genuinely proud of.

For a while, I felt like I was doing really well. But lately, I've been lonelier than I was right after the separation.
I've been dating, meeting people, having promising connections, and occasionally getting my hopes up. But nothing has turned into the kind of relationship I'm looking for, and I'm exhausted. Dating has started to feel like another responsibility. Another app to check, another conversation to keep going, another person to get to know, another round of wondering whether we're compatible or even looking for the same thing.

I want to be clear about something. I don't feel like I truly need anyone. I've worked incredibly hard to build a life I'm happy with, with a career I love, hobbies, friends, two dogs and so much I still want to experience. I've actually come to enjoy my alone time, which is something I never expected to say after spending most of my adult life with one person. But it would be nice to eventually share this life with someone. Someone to come home to, to cook dinner with, talk about our days, plan trips with or just sit on the couch doing absolutely nothing. More than anything, I miss the ordinary intimacy of being in a relationship.

Yes, dating has burned me out, and I want to take a break, but lately I've developed a fear I can't shake. What if I stop dating and I just keep getting older, keep diving into my career, keep traveling and accomplishing things, and suddenly 10 or 20 years have passed and I never found someone? Rationally, I know 35 isn't old. But after spending practically my entire adult life with one person, starting over makes time feel different.

A few other things are piling on. I'm seriously considering selling the house I was going to keep. It's become too much to maintain, financially and emotionally, as a single person, and it feels like another piece of the life I built that's probably time to let go of.

And yesterday I learned that my ex officially has a partner. I don't want my marriage back. I know why it ended, and I know leaving was the right decision. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't sting. It's hard not to feel like he's moving forward while I'm standing still. I've also been sick and spending a lot of time alone at home, which probably isn't helping. I've noticed myself becoming emotionally numb, and that scares me.

What surprises me most is that the loneliness seems to be getting worse, not better, even as so many other parts of my life have improved.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for by posting this. Maybe just to hear from people who've been through something similar.

Did anyone else find that the loneliness hit harder after the divorce was finalized, once the chaos settled and life started to feel normal again? And how do you stay open to love without letting the search for it wear you down?

I don't want to give up on love. I'm just tired of looking for it, and even more tired of being afraid I might never find it again.

I’ve (48m) lurked here for a long time. I never posted because I didn’t think I had anything to add. Today I do.

I was married for seventeen years. I’ve been divorced for going on four years.

Here’s what I’ve learned, in no particular order.

I wasn’t the victim I wanted to be. For the first two years I told a story where I was wronged and abandoned. It was comfortable and it was only half true. The real version is that I stopped paying attention years before she did. I confused being a provider with being a partner. I was physically in the house and emotionally somewhere else, and I called that stability. By the time she told me she was unhappy, she’d been saying it for years in ways I chose not to hear.

You don’t just lose the person. You lose the witness. Nobody warns you about this. Who remembers the apartment where we started out? Who laughs at the same stupid story from 2009? Nearly twenty years of private language and shared history disappeared overnight, and some of it only existed in her head and mine. When the marriage ended, so did the only other copy of a big part of my life.

Loneliness is quieter than grief. Grief comes in waves, and eventually you can ride them out. Loneliness is a Tuesday night when you cook for one, nobody’s coming home, and nothing is wrong exactly, but nothing is right either. It took me years to be okay with that silence instead of filling it with noise, work, or bad decisions.

Love isn’t what I thought it was. I thought it was a feeling you either had or lost. Now I think it’s mostly maintenance: showing up, getting curious about the other person again after the tenth year, and saying the uncomfortable thing before it becomes the unforgivable thing. We didn’t fall out of love. We let it go unattended until there was nothing left to save.

I’m not the same man, and the divorce is why. I’m not going to pretend I’m grateful for it. I’d trade it all to have avoided the pain I caused and the pain I felt. But I’m more honest now. I’m a better listener. I’ve learned to sit with discomfort instead of running from it, and I finally went to therapy, which I should have done a decade earlier.

What I miss most isn’t the big things. It’s someone knowing how I take my coffee, someone texting “did you eat?”, and being known without having to explain myself.

I’m not here looking for pity. I’m doing okay, mostly good. But I wanted to say all this out loud to people who understand, because the people in my life who haven’t been through it don’t quite get it.

If you’re in the first year and it feels like you’ll never breathe normally again, you will. It just doesn’t happen on the schedule you want.

wife and I going through a divorce. she wants a car and 15k which is fine by me. how should i go about it? she doesn’t want to sign the car over in her name bc she’s afraid im going to take her off the insurance, and i don’t want to give her the 15k until after the divorce is final bc im afraid she’s going to say i never paid her. we live separately btw. any advice would be appreciated. thank you.

Hi all. It’s nice even to find this sub and feel less alone. I’m the one that instigated my divorce and I’m having horrible guilt, shame, even full on regret and thinking I made a mistake, confusion, begging for my (still wife) back…. The grief is all consuming.

To back up…
I met my wife seven years ago at age 24. She told me then she was polyamorous and could never be monogamous with me. I was young, didn’t know what that meant, didn’t really care, but figured we could figure it out over time. Fast forward our second and third year of dating we were living together and slowly working toward opening up. I was reading books, growing toward the idea, slowing trying it, she went on dates, slept with people, over time I became ok with it…. Or so I thought. I started telling people I was poly, started really leaning into it, but never dated around.

She met a guy who she really fell for- older guy- and they had great sex and chemistry but he is also poly and married so they only have a day a week together. My wife and my sex life had dried up after year one together- way before ever opening the marriage up- I’m not sure why, but my desire for her didn’t really ever come back. Even when we tried to get it to come back before poly.

We got married, it was beautiful, we agreed never to have kids, we had a very good financial and life partnership. Very stable and loving, though we struggled to feel connected. We have similar values, nice moments, vacations, lots of trust and support, but not much actual connecting, including physically. Any shared interests dried up, as did laughter, conversation, and a lot of alive-ness. I thought that was normal. I still don’t know.

I got sober a year after our wedding (1.5yrs ago) and that changed things. Within a few months I met a woman and began dating her with my wife’s blessing. She was (and is) still dating her other partner. Over the course of a year I fell in love with this woman. Incredible chemistry physically and otherwise, it scratched all the itches I’d had from my marriage that I didn’t know I had.

Over the course of the last year I felt myself lean away from my wife and into the new woman. And it was a pain point for my marriage, but we continued working through it over and over. I was trying to rebuild my marriage while falling in love with someone else. It was hard and draining. I didn’t want to rebuild my marriage much more than just out of a sense of obligation.

Eventually, two months ago, I was feeling like I needed to exit and give my relationship with my now-girlfriend a shot. I knew I couldn’t make the decision FOR the other relationship I had, but it was hard to separate the two or think clearly. I started to do just that, but had a sudden change of heart, a freak-out of epic proportions, where I thought “OMG…. I can’t just give up on my wife, our home, our life, this entire life we’ve built and this future we have. I have to try and fix it, give it a real shot”. So I did. I broke up with my girlfriend. I went home. And then over the next four days something snapped in me. Maybe it was just grief over losing my GF. Maybe I moved too fast to get through that and give my marriage a real shot. Maybe not. But I broke- and all this rage came out about her dating other people, feelings I’d suppressed when I thought I “became” poly.

So, four days after deciding to recommit to the marriage and ending my relationship with my Gf, to end the marriage, I reversed course again, telling my wife I am not poly and that I needed to be with someone I could connect with like my GF. It felt very abrupt and sudden to her.

The next two weeks she was rocked and deeply upset but I was a robot. Didn’t feel anything. It all hit after two weeks and the grief started and has only gotten worse for me since then. Meanwhile the roles flipped- now she’s holding the line that nothing I can say or do could make her ever want to try this again, because of the way I abruptly ended things, it’s irreparable harm, etc.

I know (I think… at least most of the time) she’s right, I know (I think… at least most of the time) we aren’t meant to be together, I know I made that decision for a reason, but my doubt creeps in and it destroys me. The grief is a tidal wave eclipsing all light and killing my heart. I’m terrified I made a huge mistake, terrified what it means that I swing back and forth so drastically about something so important, terrified I don’t know what I want or who I am and that something is deeply wrong with me. I am so confused- maybe I just made up the stuff about not being poly as an excuse to chase my GF… after all, I was pretty content and happy in a poly situation! Maybe I HAD grown and changed, then just threw away the life for no reason.

I’m all over the place and in a ton of pain and just needed to vent. Thank you kind strangers ❤️❤️❤️

My husband and I are about five months into our divorce. Married 11 years, no kids. We're selling the house and working through the financial stuff with attorneys. It's not exactly pleasant, but neither of us is trying to destroy the other.

Last weekend I had coffee with a close friend who officiated our wedding.

She's known both of us since college. When we got married, we asked her to get ordained and perform the ceremony because neither of us was religious and we wanted someone who actually knew us standing up there.

She took it incredibly seriously. Wrote this beautiful ceremony, interviewed our parents for little stories, practiced for weeks because she was terrified of messing up.

It was honestly one of my favorite parts of our wedding.

During coffee she got quiet and told me she's been feeling guilty since we announced the divorce.

Then she said, "I stood up there and told everyone you two were going to grow old together. I feel so stupid now. I'm sorry."

I didn't know what to say.

She wasn't being dramatic or trying to make the divorce about herself. She genuinely seemed embarrassed, like she'd vouched for something that turned out to be fraudulent.

And the thing is, I don't think she was wrong.

We were happy when we got married. We meant every word of those vows. We had years of a pretty good marriage before things gradually stopped working. Nobody was secretly planning an exit at the altar.

I don't look at my wedding pictures and think everyone was fooled. I see people who loved each other and had no idea what the next decade would bring.

But I've noticed people around us doing this more and more. Friends saying they "should have seen the signs." My sister questioning whether we were ever really compatible. Even my husband recently said something about how maybe we were never right for each other.

It feels like everyone wants the ending to explain the entire relationship.

I'm not trying to romanticize a marriage that's ending. There were real problems. We hurt each other, we tried counseling, and we're divorcing for good reasons.

I just don't understand why the divorce has to retroactively make every good thing we experienced false.

I told my friend she gave us exactly the wedding we wanted and that I'd never regret asking her.

She cried. I cried. Really productive coffee outing.

Has anyone else dealt with people rewriting the history of your marriage once they found out it was ending?

I'm finding it strangely difficult to defend the good parts of something I've also decided to leave.

I want to preface this by saying I am not justifying my actions. I do not support cheating in any way- physical or emotional. I’m just scared and ashamed that I might have and it scares me.

I want to provide some background information. My husband (32M) and I (32F) have been married for four years, and we both come from Catholic families. Before he moved here on a fiancé visa, we had only met in person four times (normal for our culture).

I grew up with a lot of physical and emotional abuse. My parents beat me very cruelly for normal mistakes/decisions anyone would make. I would always dream of my prince to sweep me away and save me from them and how we would create our own little happy family. I started dating my now husband. He told me he found me to be beautiful and thought my curvy beautiful was attractive. Then I gained 80-90 lbs during Covid. Because we were long distance, I was so scared of what my boyfriend would say but he never said a word or made me feel bad about the weight gain. My mother told me my boyfriend only wanted a green card because no one could truly love someone who looked like me. My father said he felt sorry for my husband for having to look at a body like mine in bed. Despite fights where I found him texting another girl in my apartment immediately after we first had sex, and me catching him in a lie about using coke, I stayed because I felt like he was so kind to me and that he was safe space away from my family. I shared my pain and insecurities with him. I wanted to believe I had finally found someone who loved me.

Before our wedding, there were two incidents that I overlooked. First, he got angry because I was being wasteful for having leftover ketchup on my plate and told me I couldn't leave until I finished it. I cried while licking ketchup and eventually threw the plate in frustration. Another time, while assembling furniture, I laughed after he finally accepted a suggestion I had made several times. He told me to look in a mirror and asked who could possibly find me attractive. He later cried, apologized, and promised never to say anything like that again. I believed him and went through with the wedding.

Throughout our marriage, he repeatedly criticized my weight. Twice before sex, he removed my clothes and then pulled me in front of a mirror, pointed out parts of my body, and asked when I planned to lose weight. He claimed he was trying to motivate me, but those moments made me feel broken. I always dreamed of having a husband who secretly took pictures of me because he loved how I looked candidly. Instead, mine would randomly show me photos and say, "This is what you look like. Why can't you just lose the weight?" During one fight, he said that even when I was skinny, I was only OK-looking and that he didn't understand why people called me beautiful. I felt even worse about myself because I believed he was as disgusted by my appearance as I was.

For the first year and a half, I paid all our expenses, used my honeymoon savings to visit his family, and even paid to bring his brother to the US as a surprise. When my husband got his first full-time job, he used his first paycheck to visit friends rather than do something special for the wife who had supported him. I kept hoping that if I asked for less, never requested dates, vacations, or gifts, and made myself small enough, he would finally be happy with me.

Whenever his comments hurt me, he would apologize and say he had been cruel and stupid. I would be upset for a few days, then push through.

Everything changed when my father was placed on a ventilator with a life-threatening infection. My husband chose to travel overseas for a friend's wedding instead of staying with me. His friend had actually encouraged him to stay by my side, but my husband went anyway. When I called him crying after speaking to the doctor, he said I was bothering him and ruining his good time, then hung up. I will never forget sitting on the toilet, sobbing and feeling completely abandoned.

I wanted a divorce, but my father told me I was in my 30s, fat, and would never find anyone else. He said my husband could easily find a beautiful younger woman and that I would be the loser if I left. When we went to the courthouse, my husband begged me to stay and promised to change. Three months later, during an argument about our lack of sex, I cried about always having to initiate intimacy. He responded that maybe if I were better-looking, he would have f**ked me more. That destroyed my self-esteem and changed how I felt about him. When I told my parents, my father again advised me to stay, suggesting that losing weight might make my husband treat me better.

I stayed because I felt having something was better than having nothing. About ten months later, I was laid off. That same day, my husband jokingly asked how I could afford brunch with my sister now that I was unemployed. That was my breaking point. I told him I was done. How could he question my spending on the day I lost my job after I had covered all his expenses for a year and a half?

And this is where I messed up. After I told my husband that I was done and wanted a divorce, I confided in my trainer, who lives abroad and whom I've never met. I vented about all the crap I dealt with and how relieved I felt. I definitely over shared and I do regret that. Two weeks later, the trainer admitted he had liked me for a while but kept it to himself because I was married, but since I was getting divorced, ge said he thought he would tell me. I realized I liked talking to him too. I developed feelings as we kept talking because he treated me with kindness and respect. When he wanted to talk sexually, I refused to go further because I wasn't comfortable doing so before my divorce was finalized. I had no intention of meeting him or doing anything sexual before then. I didn't think I was doing anything wrong by talking to someone who genuinely seemed to want me. I started feeling happier again- glowing and taking care of myself. Even my husband commented on how much I changed.

This experience also made me angrier at my parents and husband for making me believe no one else could ever want me. It showed me how wrong and cruel they had been and that there were other possibilities for my life.

When my husband and I went to finalize the divorce, he begged me again to stay. I told him about my feelings for the trainer. I asked my husband if I should get a new trainer but my husband told me it was fine as long as I kept things platonic. I told the trainer this and we really did our best to talk as just friends. but four months in, I finally accepted that my feelings were not going away despite trying to talk as just friends. I told my husband again and this time he told me I needed to cut contact. I called the trainer and explained everything. I apologized and explained why I couldn’t even be friends. I blocked the trainer, although it was incredibly difficult, and cried almost everyday for months afterward.

Since then, my husband has started therapy and genuinely acknowledges how cruel and messed up he was. He wants to improve himself and save our marriage. However, even five months after blocking the trainer, I still think about him every day. I care about my husband and love him, but I'm not IN LOVE with him. I feel irritated when he touches me and have no desire to be intimate with him.

I just feel so incredibly guilty and ashamed, even after I told my husband. He told he was hurt but he understood why I liked someone else and told me he didn’t consider it cheating because we were staying in separate bedrooms, I had signed my own apartment lease, and we had a date set to go and file the divorce papers. But I feel like a monster because I am so against cheating and I don’t understand how I could allow myself to like someone else before I was completely divorced. I told myself it was fine because I never met the other man in person. I didn’t allow anything sexual to happen (even though I did have sexual thoughts and fantasizes about him), so I thought it was OK to just talk to someone I liked, who liked me back, since I was about to get divorced. I think I feel this shame because even after blocking the trainer for five months, I still think of him daily. What do I do? I feel like I’m still emotionally cheating by thinking of him.

I know this is obnoxiously long and I apologize but I am so confused. I feel like I’m a horrible human being and I feel so guilty and confused. Am I a cheater? Did I go against my own values?

Anyone have advice on a divorce settlement that includes saliva testing for a few months before kids are driven or before one parent gets overnights? Ex has a history of hiding illegal drug use (nitrous oxide) while taking care of child as a baby and lying about it for years. Also has a huge weed problem (although we live in a legal state) where he cannot make it to parenting time on time, leaves vapes and gummies out where the kids can get, leaves stove on, leaves bath running, etc. History of suicide threats as well. He refuses any sort of testing and is set on going to trial. I want to suggest testing for a short while, if he passes he can have the kids overnight again, although I don’t feel good about that. There is no test for nitrous, but I’m also concerned he could be hiding other drugs, since he lied about so many things for years. Kids are very young.

I'm married to an alcoholic wife with anxiety and spending addiction. We have 1 teenage child together. My spouse was functional and sober for many years. She got a new job got anxious and after increasing medicine dosage ended up with mental breakdown. Then started drinking again. Long story short she had a bunch of ER visits, went to 3 recovery clinics and have been away from home for 5 months now in another state. She raked up around 13k in medical debt so far. I filed for separation about a month ago and was told it could take 3-6 months. Even before this happened though we were already drifting apart. Because she was on antidepressants she had no sex drive and in the last two years we were maybe intimate twice.

She's in safe house now and about to lose housing unless she finds a part time job to pay for it. She's talking about coming back home but I don't think I can handle living together. I really don't want to sleep with her in the same bed or even interact with her in the house. In her mind she still loves me and wants things to work out and from my perspective after separation I want to divorce her.

I'm not sure what to do. Should I let her come back to the house and somehow sleep in separate rooms or tell her to go live with her parents. She was there for a month but does not get along with her mother and there was constant tension where they tried to push her out as well.

Married 14 years, divorce has been ongoing for 4 months, still living together because house logistics aren’t fast. He should be moving out soon but he’s already seeing other women and it’s like being shot in the heart over and over watching it happen right in front of me. When this started I knew the divorce needed to happen, but now everything in me is screaming to go to him, that every issue with the marriage pales in comparison to the enormity of the loss. We should have had such an amazing life together, I’ll never understand this. I can’t stop crying. I don’t think I can survive this. He’s my family and my best friend and I wanted to grow old with him.

I’ve been through the whole range of emotions. A lot of anger initially that he couldn’t have been a better partner. He’s had a lot of issues over the years where he’d get frustrated and snap and take it out on me, sometimes in really fucked up ways. The closeness got strained because it felt like being married to a tornado of knives and I never knew what was going to set him off, but even still, I never stopped trying. Friends and family have told me it’s been abusive but it’s not black and white where he’s a villain deliberately trying to hurt me. I wish he would have gotten help. Instead he told me that he gave up and doesn’t want the obligations of being married, of having to consider my feelings or figure it out anymore. I shrank myself and my needs so much over the years to try and make him happy but it didn’t matter, I still got rejected in the end. I know I’m not perfect either even though I tried to be, and that I enabled a lot of the mistreatment, I didn’t know what to do, did therapy myself for years but that doesn’t change him. He’s also sad our life together is ending and says he thinks he’s going to regret this later, but he still wants to leave. Why does he need to go out and find somebody new when I’ve been right here the whole time? Love and loyalty weren’t enough. I know I can’t change what’s happening, how do I survive this?

How do you all deal with missing out on half your kids’ lives. As much as I don’t love my husband, we still were a very tight family unit. My two oldest are in college and I’ve always been fine and happy when they are off with friends. And am totally fine while they’re away at school. But the holidays without them, the big games we aren’t watching together, when I hear of plans being made with their Dad… it’s heartbreaking for me. How do you all get through it.

This will be a long post and I apologize in advance, but I just wanted to let it all out for now cause I feel like I'm going to lose my mind soon if I don't.

I need help and some advice. I dont know if what Im feeling is valid or Im just tired.

Me and my husband are both 39yo. We're married for 8 years and been together for 8years before that. We have a son who is turning 3yo early next year.

He's a kind man, but not a good provider emotionally and financially. I'm the one who have a fulltime work eversince we've been together. He had business early part of relationship but all those didnt took off, almost all I'd share my savings or bonus for his capital and all ended up closing, and there was a time he even ended up with debts which I had to pay off.

He tried working for around 2 years with different companies but it all ended up with him quitting due to various reasons, and now he's only source of money is only through being a driver/service whenever someone within his contacts need a private driver.

I say he's a kind man, specially to others. He'd go out his way to help others. There are instances though that its at our own expense and could be an inconvenience to us. I usually let it pass thinking he's just kind. But now we have a son, there were several events that I couldn't understand his kindness anymore. When I gave birth, a day after I gave birth, he had to leave me and our son with a helper (not a licensed individual) who we don't personally know and whom he only hired that day so he can service (he as a personal driver) a group of people from his hometown who are on tour. Looking back, I thought it was okay cause he'd get paid for it. But thinking now how I was physically and emotionally (hormones and all) drained, I don't know if the money was worth it at all as I ended up not sleeping cause I couldn't just let someone I don't know look after my only son.

The other day, he took our son with him while he help a friend of his to run some errands and it took them until past 9pm to get home by which that time our son was very tired.

I also say he is a kind man as he never hit me physically but he has become short tempered (I dont know when this started at all but he wasn't like this in our early years together) and he would easily raise his voice at me on some instances even if we are in public or with relatives. He has a temper that now I have an automatic switch on my mind to stop and think first before I say or do something so as not to trigger him.

His temperament now also extends to our son that everytime our son would do something that annoys him he would shout at him. He'd only mellow down when our son starts crying and he'd hug or son and say sorry after. At bedtime, my son has a habit of asking him to massage his back. Its somehow our son's way of being soothe to sleep and our son only wants his dad. At times when my husband is too tired to do that, he'll snap at him and he'd do the same thing of hugging and saying sorry again after our son cried. I always remind my husband that its not healthy but it keeps on happening.

His anger outburst is always at its highest when we are with my family. For context, there is this unspoken but well known fact that my Dad don't like and treat my husband as a family and there was one time before when we were just a year into our marriage where my husband cried to me and said that my parents don't consider him as a son even though we are already married and has never really liked him even when we were bf/gfs. They are now just civil to eachother and my Dad never really do anything that will disrespect my husband to his face but he'd also almost always never talk to him not unless really needed. My husband now though, everytime he would talk to my dad, would have a noticeable of irritated tone in his voice. Even at my mom, who had a mild stroke and no longer think and act the way she used to, he would snap at her if she's done something he thinks is wrong.

He would also constantly tell me things that he saw my parents or brothers did which he don't approve of, such as simple things like using the wrong utensil that will damage the induction pot, or when my mom was eating sweets in front our son which we don't allow our son to eat saying she is inconsiderate, or when my brother sliced the watermelon to thin and wasting the portion which could still be edible, or when my brother leaves the empty used glass on the sink. I couldnt remember a time he wouldnt make comments about my family. And I know these maybe annoying for him, but its not like I see my family everyday that I need to be bother of all these things. When I tell him that he should tell it to them directly, he'd say I'm their family and I should be the one reminding them. Now Im in this situation that I would always think and check his temperature before I do something for my family as everytime we are with my parents, his face is always long and he is always on the edge and I'd walk on eggshells just to ensure he doesn't suddenly set off.

This year and the last time my parents visited us was in June. At the request of my other brother. We brought my parents out for a day trip outside the city before they fly home the next week. As usual, he had a long face, wouldnt talk to my Dad and was just altogether irritated and had a tone whenever I talk to him. I just let him be and just decided to be peacefully enjoy our time. On the way home I couldnt hold it anymore and snap at him after he replied to me irritatedly about a question I asked calmly. He ended up shouting at me in front of my parents and brother. This was also seen by our son as I was holding our son. We didnt talk for almost 2 weeks, he went out of the house and would just come back home at night to sleep. That time I had to do all the housework, cook and look after my son evertime I had a chance (I work remote and at home) and had asked my parents to attend to our son while I was working. When parents left, I had to message him in chat and asked if he didnt want to take care of his son then I'll hire someone else then that's the only time he stayed back at home.

We don't hire a nanny or a sitter since he don't have a regular job. Our setup is more like that he is the househusband. But this part is where we always argue as well. Sink is always full dishesh, dirty clothes are all over the place, our son will always miss the proper time for eating, wont have a nap and sleep very late. He would always forget to give our son the vitamin, or put cream on his wound/allergy as directed by his pedia. I just think its because he is a guy, and men do household and taking care of kids differently so I would just remind him or even do it myself after my work. He seldom play with our son as well and would always be on his phone and everytime our son tries to go to me and when Im in a meeting or held up on something and would ask my husband to get our son first, he would angrily pull our son away making our son cry and he would go lock himself and my son in our room upstairs. I would hear my son wailing and it would make me feel guilty for having to work. I always tell my husband that our son just need him to play with him and he doesnt need to forcefully pull him away and evrytime he does that, that I feel bad like its my fault having to work rather than taking care of our son, but he still do it regardless. So now, I try to do my work at night when son is asleep and try to limit my meetings so I can play and look after with my son in the morning.

I was thinking he might be tired, so I also suggested to do prep meal on weekends and baking so cooking food on weekdays wont be a problem for him anymore. When I do the prep meal or bake, he won't help and just be on his phone not unless I ask him.

Then on weekdays, I would ask him to ensure to put the remaining food in the freezer so it won't spoil fast. But no, never once he did so some of the food I prep get spoiled.

With taking care of our son, I say he is a good Dad but not a good Father. The sudden outburst and cursing that he don't filter even if our son is around is something I dont wish my son to grow up to.

Today, he had a sudden outburst and kicked the toy box of our son. My son looked at him. I looked at him eyes wide signaling him that our son is looking at him. He didnt try to say sorry or change his mood. My son started crying when he saw his Dad's face. I asked him what his problem is and can he not see our son's reaction and that our son is scared. He then shouted at me and said its my reaction that made our son cry. We ended up arguing in front our son and I took my son to our room and just held him close while he was crying. He left and hasnt been home till now. I ended my work early and prep the dinner for us and has put my son to sleep crying as he was looking for his dad.

Its 1am now as I write this and he is nowhere to be found, no messages. He is always like this, he would leave the house. He'd always never say sorry even I said I was hurt. He would be all nice and considerate a few days and he'd do it again and it will be the same and we'd made up without any apologies and it goes on and on.

I feel an empty heartache on my chest thinking what would happen to him when we separate. He cheated on me when we were still gf/bf. He threatend me that he will jump out of the window when I told him we should separate. I told his sister about it, but we ended up making up. He cheated again on the early year of our marriage, I was about to leave for good but he stopped me and again we made up. In hindsight, i am extremely scared and worried he might hurt himself again but he told me he would never do that (hurt himself) again. I even told him Im also genuinely afraid of him hurting me someday during one of his sudden outburst but he said he's not that kind of person.

Everday I feel like im keeping tabs of him and I feel bad about it. I feel like maybe I made him like that and Im not considering his feelings.

I dont know what to do and am worried what would happen to my son if we separate. Im afraid I cant do this alone.

I feel like I deserve this, I deserve what I am tolerting. But I'm just so tired.

I was wondering, my husband said with the seperation coming up he would move 5 hrs away to his home city. We have teens and a Kindergarden aged child he would not be seeing regularly.

He says he has "no choice" as he doesn't want to stay were we are now, because of me and because he doesn't like this place as much. In his home city where he grew up he has parents and siblings etc. He would be "alone" here.

I find it a bit odd that he would prefer leaving his kids especially the youngest to not see them as regularly as he could when staying here ...is this a common thing for fathers to do? Or even some moms?

To me it's strange. I understand it to some extent but I for example would stay close to my kids even if I would be otherwise "alone"....

As the above says. The house has about £140k equity. Her pension is much better than mine. No saving either said that I know of. Was offered £20k to sign everything over and walk away.

What am I actually entitled too.

During and after the 2024 election I read a lot of content online from women who wanted to divorce their husbands because they went MAGA or voted for Donald Trump. Could be the other way around too, with MAGA wife and liberal husband. I think a lot of people were just venting over the election and don't know if any of the talk actually resulted in divorces.