Has Leaving Enhanced Your Life ?

I have been out four years. From the time that I decided to divorce, I have been happier and healthier, and that has continued.

I never - not. one. time. -- felt depressed about ending my marriage of over 30 years. That is how dead it had gotten. My marriage had become such ashes that my heart would sink when I heard him approaching the front door. We had nothing to say to each other. I avoided him as much as possible. Our lives had become completely separate except for our having grown children together and having shared finances. We treated each other like polite roommate who were barely acquainted.

When I decided to divorce, I had been getting colds every two weeks. One would end, and days later, another would begin. Once I decided to divorce, my health bloomed. I have had perhaps 2 colds in 5 years, and no other illnesses.

The stress concerning the divorce was things such as having to fill out the list for my lawyer about my finances. Anything involving money terrifies me. One of my dear friends, a finance professor, sat down with me and helped me figure out a budget, and helped me figure out my money.

Another stressful thing was clearing out, renovating and selling the house we'd lived in for about 20 years. I had to get rid of stuff dating back to his high school days that my ex had left as well as about 800 books and various belongings of my deceased parents and grown children. Friends, dear, wonderful friends helped a lot. Saying good-bye to that house was sad because it had been my dream house -- my only love-at-first-sight house that I'd had. After selling it, I have never looked at it again even though I only live a few miles away and have a dear friend in that neighborhood.

I have never been wracked with loneliness since the divorce. Nothing was lonelier than being married to someone who was indifferent to me. I also had made a point of establishing friendships -- with men and women -- in the years before my divorce, and pursuing those friendships without my husband. My husband was the type of person who -- when I was an intimate conversation -- would join us and turn the conversation to something mind numbing like the intricacies of Dutch soccer that only he cared about.

I feel younger and act younger than I did during much of my marriage when -- as some here are/have done -- I was too depressed over the SM to do much, and I made a point of dressing unappealingly so as to avoid temptation to cheat.

So, yes, leaving has enhanced my life in the ways that are most important to me.

I do have less money, but I'd rather have happiness and freedom.

I am among the most fortunate in OppositeLand in that despite being 62 when my divorce was final, I found the love of my life. However, even if I had not, I still would be happier in Oppositeland than being chained to a person who was incapable of loving me the way that I desired. His indifference was soul draining to me.

LOL Still early days for me....although I left emotionally years ago. I like feeling like I'm alive again and I have a bright future rather than more years of solitude and loneliness within the marriage.

Hmm.
I would say my emotional self-harm has been drastically reduced. I'd likely assert the same for my ex.
I would also say that the financial effect has been every bit the disaster I'd anticipated - worse even - and had hoped to avoid at great cost.
I would say I'm lonely - in a different way.
But I am not crying every day, like I was for a year.
I've slowly been escaping the sense of self-disgust I inflicted on myself as a result of staying.
And I've regained a sense of self and hope that I can author my future, rather than depending on someone who is clearly not interested in working together with me.

So, it's like leaving a toxic corporation with a tyrant and whimsically cruel boss, and setting up a small shack selling my own wares in a hard scrabble beginning.
It feels more real, mine, and the trajectory is unknown - whereas the other was an ever mounting high stakes plate spinning trick.