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Post by Handy on Aug 17, 2019 23:45:43 GMT -5
1. Concerns about starting a legal battle with the W and sending my W into some melt-down situation. I am not good with bursting other people's bubble.
2. Not expecting to really find a good match post divorce. I have little information or experience meeting women I might be interested in or they being interested in me for more than an occasional activity or fix-it / lunch-dinner activity partner.
3. Seperat housing is going to be expensive and I have a lot of stuff to move. OTH, if I was seriously involved with a woman, I know many have their own house but they most likely wouldn't like what I have.
I am OK about living on my own. I do almost everything for myself now except dusting. :eyeroll:
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Post by Apocrypha on Aug 22, 2019 12:13:43 GMT -5
At the time, I had framed the problem as a choice between sex or family, and it felt wrong to break up a family over sex.
I thought it was like a puzzle I could solve because I was willing to change or adapt anything, including myself, including the marriage format.
I thought her behavior was like a kind of correctable mistake as well - unintentional - and that if I made the right case, she'd see this was a poor way to express love, with difficult implications.
The interim solution I agreed to, found a way to maintain my family and still have room for sexual expression in my life, and also in hers.
It took years running this program before I realized my frame was too narrow or focused too tactically.
When I reframed my problem to encompass WHY there was no sex (because she didn't see me as a sexual partner, but did see others as viable partners with a much lower threshold for "yes"), I decided the long term prospects of that were inevitable, and that marriage wasn't bringing anything to the table that an amicable ex-spouse couldn't, and that the longer we ran this program, the less likely we'd end up amicable.
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Post by thefullmoon on Aug 28, 2019 17:49:59 GMT -5
I've been examining this carefully lately. Not the surface reasons but the real core. The reason I stay is that I don't think I'll find someone again. There, I said it. How about the rest of you? The one-short-sentence reason that you stay. My reply is quite cynical... There are more positive, than negative in my personal situation... Husband became very ill 10 years ago and now he is temporarily in nursing home... I never had any guilt feeling about outsoursing... I already had one divorce before, so absolutely don't want another. |
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Post by Handy on Aug 28, 2019 21:57:35 GMT -5
thefullmoon, I don't have a problem with your outsourcing. I would do the same thing with the "right partner" if I had a chance.
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Post by Rhapsodee on Sept 3, 2019 23:28:38 GMT -5
I stay for financial reasons.
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Post by shamwow on Sept 4, 2019 7:40:00 GMT -5
Fear of living in a bedsit, eating junk food. Like a student but without the future. I would have ice cream for dinner if I lived alone. Last night I decided not to cook (which I'm pretty good at) and had Chinese takeout and half a package of chocolate chip cookie dough...tonight I'm going out to dinner with a friend. The day before I had my family over for burgers (labor day holiday). Variety is the spice of life, I guess... |
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Post by Apocrypha on Sept 4, 2019 10:17:03 GMT -5
I've been examining this carefully lately. Not the surface reasons but the real core. The reason I stay is that I don't think I'll find someone again. There, I said it. How about the rest of you? The one-short-sentence reason that you stay. Do you have someone now? |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2019 10:43:30 GMT -5
I've been examining this carefully lately. Not the surface reasons but the real core. The reason I stay is that I don't think I'll find someone again. There, I said it. How about the rest of you? The one-short-sentence reason that you stay. Do you have someone now? Yes. Do I get all that I want out of marriage? No. Does anyone? Good enough is going to have to be good enough and I'm not going to throw away all that I have to reach for the unknown, the greener pastures, the rose-colored fantasy. |
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Post by Apocrypha on Sept 4, 2019 11:27:37 GMT -5
Yes. Do I get all that I want out of marriage? No. Does anyone? Good enough is going to have to be good enough and I'm not going to throw away all that I have to reach for the unknown, the greener pastures, the rose-colored fantasy. There's the marriage (defined by the shared investment in the household enterprise and related goals). H aving someone, could be defined as an invested romantic partner, someone who is interested in expressing or deepening that particular aspect of your connection. When I was not separated and still trying to be married to the woman I loved, I framed "having someone" and "marriage" as being the same thing. On the other hand, an invested romantic partner can also occur outside of marriage. I presently now "have someone" - though I am not married to her. She "has me". Likewise, four years into a close separation with my ex-wife and mother of my kids, we still share many finances and tightly interweave our schedules and sleeping arrangements as we pursue separate romantic lives, though we are technically still married and have not declared our separation yet, legally. While it's increasingly "all business" and little warmth, we've only tossed the pretense of being into each other, a pretense that always led to disappointment. She wasn't into me, so I never really had her - she began her backtracking on our wedding day. One can have the trappings of marriage, including many many legitimate benefits of it - without "having someone". For what it's worth, I also felt I'd never find someone again. It was an astoundingly long road to come to realize I actually didn't have anyone - that the person I was married to, didn't love me in what I considered a "married" way. If that arrangement had been part of our vows, neither of us would have agreed to "marriage" under those terms, and to decouple the aspects of whatever "marriage" meant into its various elements. I'd been wrapped up in the reasonable framing of "good marriage" or "bad marriage" rather than getting really clear with myself about what I felt constituted the threshold for a marriage or defined it, as opposed to (particularly) an amicable ex-spouse. I split out the benefits of marriage from the notion of "having someone". I looked hard at the idea of whether or not I would choose to marry someone who I had no romantic interest in, to obtain those benefits. They are real benefits - it's a reasonable response to consider them. |
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Post by sadkat on Sept 4, 2019 11:50:25 GMT -5
Yes. Do I get all that I want out of marriage? No. Does anyone? Good enough is going to have to be good enough and I'm not going to throw away all that I have to reach for the unknown, the greener pastures, the rose-colored fantasy. There's the marriage (defined by the shared investment in the household enterprise and related goals). H aving someone, could be defined as an invested romantic partner, someone who is interested in expressing or deepening that particular aspect of your connection. When I was not separated and still trying to be married to the woman I loved, I framed "having someone" and "marriage" as being the same thing. On the other hand, an invested romantic partner can also occur outside of marriage. I presently now "have someone" - though I am not married to her. She "has me". Likewise, four years into a close separation with my ex-wife and mother of my kids, we still share many finances and tightly interweave our schedules and sleeping arrangements as we pursue separate romantic lives, though we are technically still married and have not declared our separation yet, legally. While it's increasingly "all business" and little warmth, we've only tossed the pretense of being into each other, a pretense that always led to disappointment. She wasn't into me, so I never really had her - she began her backtracking on our wedding day. One can have the trappings of marriage, including many many legitimate benefits of it - without "having someone". For what it's worth, I also felt I'd never find someone again. It was an astoundingly long road to come to realize I actually didn't have anyone - that the person I was married to, didn't love me in what I considered a "married" way. If that arrangement had been part of our vows, neither of us would have agreed to "marriage" under those terms, and to decouple the aspects of whatever "marriage" meant into its various elements. I'd been wrapped up in the reasonable framing of "good marriage" or "bad marriage" rather than getting really clear with myself about what I felt constituted the threshold for a marriage or defined it, as opposed to (particularly) an amicable ex-spouse. I split out the benefits of marriage from the notion of "having someone". I looked hard at the idea of whether or not I would choose to marry someone who I had no romantic interest in, to obtain those benefits. They are real benefits - it's a reasonable response to consider them. I really like this @apochrypha. I’m finding it to be very true. I’m in the middle of separating myself from my marriage. Dealing with all of the emotions this entails can be quite overwhelming. It’s comforting to know I can continue with an amicable relationship with my soon to be ex-spouse. That has always been the goal for me, although recently I’ve wondered if it could be possible. I’ve seen multiple posts about the financial impact of divorce. Although I know it is a major consideration, I’m finding it doesn’t come close to the sheer emotional upheaval that comes with making a huge change like this. Some would say I’m lucky because I have a good job and can live on my own. I don’t feel so lucky looking into a future that only has half of the potential income I could have looked forward to had I chosen to remain in my marriage. It sucks all the way around. I agree with you 100%- those who have chosen to stay in their marriage have not reached their threshold yet. That’s fine because the pain and vulnerability that ending a marriage brings is only worth it when you know you’ve reached your threshold. |
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Post by Apocrypha on Sept 4, 2019 12:49:59 GMT -5
I really like this @apochrypha. I’m finding it to be very true. I’m in the middle of separating myself from my marriage. Dealing with all of the emotions this entails can be quite overwhelming. It’s comforting to know I can continue with an amicable relationship with my soon to be ex-spouse. That has always been the goal for me, although recently I’ve wondered if it could be possible. I’ve seen multiple posts about the financial impact of divorce. Although I know it is a major consideration, I’m finding it doesn’t come close to the sheer emotional upheaval that comes with making a huge change like this. Some would say I’m lucky because I have a good job and can live on my own. I don’t feel so lucky looking into a future that only has half of the potential income I could have looked forward to had I chosen to remain in my marriage. It sucks all the way around. I agree with you 100%- those who have chosen to stay in their marriage have not reached their threshold yet. That’s fine because the pain and vulnerability that ending a marriage brings is only worth it when you know you’ve reached your threshold. I like making informed choices, and making difficult choices into easier choices to make. This doesn't necessarily make the consequences of those choices easier to bear, but rather, makes the decision to try to bear them easier to commit to. Often, an easy choice to make is one in which it seems that there is no actual choice at all. We frame it as a choice, but it might simply be an inevitable consequence. For example, take the "choice" to move a terminally ill loved one to a hospice. I'm lingering on this one point - "I didn't think I'd find anyone again" because it's so common, and because it kept me rooted. I didn't want to throw all "this" (an undefined this) away to shake the dice again and risk getting no one. My thought on this isn't distilled yet, but I think it's the word " again", that (when I said the same thing) is feels like an unwarranted assumption of the present state. I don't know that's the case with the OP here, but I see it a lot here and I said it myself... I think the fact that I was married, and had had a wedding and shared a house and bed - that helped obfuscate the fact that I clearly did not have anyone NOW. I did not have that kind of relationship with my wife. If given the choice, knowing what I knew, I would not have married her. The work of marriage was all about compensating, tolerating, and mitigating that cruel core issue. So, if I wanted to have a romantic invested partner in my life, it wasn't a matter of exchanging one for another; because I already didn't have one in my marriage. I had many associated aspects of lifestyle benefits associated with that (not all financial, by any means), but they were also threatened with collapse at any point by our lie and the tension that resulted from it. In explaining our parting to interested parties, I've often come to this phrase: "It became too difficult to be married to woman who is single." |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2019 14:08:28 GMT -5
Well shit, now I HAVE to stay. We bought a buy one get one pair free of those expensive sunglasses you see online. My, what a tangled web....
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Post by sadkat on Sept 4, 2019 14:22:56 GMT -5
Well shit, now I HAVE to stay. We bought a buy one get one pair free of those expensive sunglasses you see online. My, what a tangled web.... 🙄 |
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Post by worksforme2 on Sept 6, 2019 10:19:33 GMT -5
I've been examining this carefully lately. Not the surface reasons but the real core. The reason I stay is that I don't think I'll find someone again. There, I said it. How about the rest of you? The one-short-sentence reason that you stay. I guess I have seen this from at least a dozen women who were still in their SM at one point, as to why they stay. And from a few men. What I have also seen is that the majority of the women who said this and have now divorced have found that they are in fact "fuckable". There are a couple exceptions but I think those women have just been so traumatized by the SM experience that they can't garner the courage to get back in the game. It isn't that they aren't "fuckable", they are. And when they regain enough self esteem I expect they will find there are males out there that consider them very "fuckable". I still have the crisp $100 bill that isthisit nibbled around but wouldn't bit on. I would be willing to put that bill on the table again and bet that if you ventured forth into the mating pool, you would find some ladies out there that found you quite "fuckable". |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2019 10:27:48 GMT -5
I've been examining this carefully lately. Not the surface reasons but the real core. The reason I stay is that I don't think I'll find someone again. There, I said it. How about the rest of you? The one-short-sentence reason that you stay. I guess I have seen this from at least a dozen women who were still in their SM at one point, as to why they stay. And from a few men. What I have also seen is that the majority of the women who said this and have now divorced have found that they are in fact "fuckable". There are a couple exceptions but I think those women have just been so traumatized by the SM experience that they can't garner the courage to get back in the game. It isn't that they aren't "fuckable", they are. And when they regain enough self esteem I expect they will find there are males out there that consider them very "fuckable". I still have the crisp $100 bill that isthisit nibbled around but wouldn't bit on. I would be willing to put that bill on the table again and bet that if you ventured forth into the mating pool, you would find some ladies out there that found you quite "fuckable". I haven't been particularly concerned about fuckable. But, my dating life when I was young wasn't particularly active and I've had a very limited number of sex partners. Add 30 years of wear and tear, the confidence hits of a SM and.....not a recipe for success. I understand the frustration that boils the conversations here down to "stay, leave, cheat" and I take them to heart. Staying is difficult but known. Leaving is difficult and unknown. Cheating just doesn't work for me although I wish it did. |
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