Divorce-what's your experience?

midiglitch

seems weird asking a bunch of people i've never met but... Even my best mates have never walked a foot in my shoes, so it's not so much opinions I need, as other people's experiences.
wife and I are calm and collected.  We both agree.  Neither has been dishonest or cheated.  We've just grown apart.  Seems time to move on.  No kids.  But have we just talked ourselves into it after a rough couple of years??
how old were you?  Telling my folks is going to be weird...
cheers friends

axisus

I think that maybe some people give up on it too easily (I'm not inferring that that is the case with you, just a generic observation). 10 years ago I was thinking I'd had enough of marriage. Right now I'd say it's never been better.

monquixote

How long have you been married?

richardhomer

Getting divorced is shit. The process itself, reducing a relationship to a financial 'deal', the sense of loss, the emptiness that lingers for years beyond....

Personally I'd avoid it at all costs....

joeyowen

If you can remain friends, then do it quickly and cheaply

My parents divorce was ugly, lasted years, and probably cost 1000s

A shame though bud, no chance of relighting the candle?

Winny_Pooh

You haven't given much info. How old are you and how long have you been together? If no kids then you are in a fortunate position. 

Heartfeltdawn

I got divorced after five years of marriage. She wanted it. No kids. I went along with it. If someone wants out, there's no point in trying to convince them otherwise. I was 29 when i got divorced so easily the youngest to have done so out of my friends. 

octatonic

No experience with it myself but we are at an age where a few people have split up now.

The most dramatic one was a wealthy female friend found out that her husband was on sugar daddy websites and had a string of young girls on the go.
She booted him out, she has the kids and from the sounds of it he got a massive payday in the settlement.

The other one was some friends of mine (male and a female, not in a relationship together) had their respective partners run off with each other. Kids involved, everyone knew each other, very, very messy.

stratman3142

I've been there and I feel for you because it's really hard. After about 15 years of marriage my ex wife decided she didn't want to be married to me any more. Also, we had two young daughters. I wanted to work at it but she didn't. She was about 8 years younger than me and once the passion died we had nothing in common. Strangely one of the hardest things was to travel up North to tell my mother, who got on well with my ex and was sad she wouldn't see her again.

We went to mediation to help sort out the divorce and come to a reasonable settlement. To a certain extent I had to go belly up to do the right thing for my daughters. She got the house and I came away with an amount we had in savings.

We kept things civil and I stayed in regular contact with my daughters, which was the most important thing to me. Neither of us ever said anything negative about the other in front of my daughters. 

But now it's water under the bridge and I've been happily remarried for just over 10 years to my 2nd wife who is truly my soulmate. She's the same age as me and we have everything in common with a shared history of the way things were and the bands we were into when we were young.

My daughters are grown up now (19 and 21). I still see them regularly and they always want to come to my gigs. I get on well with my ex wife.

Although I didn't  realise at the time, my ex wife was right. We weren't meant to stay together and getting divorced was the best thing.

There will be arguments and recriminations but overall try to stay civil and see it as a new start. Things will get better with time and, on the positive side, you now have the opportunity to meet the person you are meant to be with.

Sambostar

Drew_TNBD

You're fortunate you don't have kids. You may lose all your money, but at least your own flesh and blood wont be used as a weapon against you.

Sambostar

Sambostar

Ain't nothing like losing your steak knife in another human with squealy pig slaughtering noises from the 3am fresh slaughter in the market in the background.  Bacon tastes good.  Hope your divorce goes smoothly.  I'm sure it will.  I'm quite hungry now.

richardhomer

Sambostar said:

Ain't nothing like losing your steak knife in another human with squealy pig slaughtering noises from the 3am fresh slaughter in the market in the background.  Bacon tastes good.  Hope your divorce goes smoothly.  I'm sure it will.  I'm quite hungry now.

Ah @Sambostar - the gift that can be relied upon to keen on giving....

Sambostar

I know.  Apologies already for being a half cut, anti social, weirdo arsehole with zero friends and zero ability to make any,  What I meant was that if you listen hard though they did mix in pig noises.  I never noticed that before.

Isn't anything like freshly butchered pork though, like they used to do here before it started coming in vac packed, water pumped plastic packages from Holland.  They still do that at 3am in the markets in SE Asia and the bacon tastes mighty good.  Although you shouldn't eat pig because they are intelligent animals, but then you shouldn't eat human either because apparently so are they..

Good luck with the divorce, at least it sounds amicable.  If it wasn't, my advice would be to eat her.  Dispose of the evidence, that's what I'd do with a not very amicable divorcee.  Obviously that's all hypothetical because no one will ever marry me.

Kind of sad people drift apart but they do.  Hope your parents live long enough to see you happily remarried, or set up elsewhere.

ESBlonde

Try to keep lawyers out of it if you can. Agree everything between you, write a letter and both sign it. Hand to the judge. Walk away friends and each a bit richer.

mudslide73

My sister's divorce was like this - super amicable. They did it all themselves and it cost very little. They were both working and in a rented place - easy doors.

Everyone else I know took a real pasting financially. My co-guitarist lost everything and was staying on sofas for a while.      


ESBlonde said:

Try to keep lawyers out of it if you can. Agree everything between you, write a letter and both sign it. Hand to the judge. Walk away friends and each a bit richer.

Danny1969

You can do the whole thing yourself with no solicitors. I downloaded the forms, filled em in and submitted the paperwork. The whole thing cost about £400 and was pretty easy

Iamnobody

Try and make a go of it by doing something different?

A trip to Center Parcs maybe?

Serious answer I know a mate in your position and he seems happy to have moved on. It was tough at first though for both of them.

I would ask myself this:

Am I happy now?
Would I be happier on my own?
Has anything changed that can easily be undone?
Do I want to make it work?

Then ask her the same questions...

midiglitch

Thanks guys.
some more details... I'm 34, been married 6 years.  We own a house together which we've done quite a lot of work on.  Everything very amicable...we've already both said no lawyers, and it is pretty easy to divvy up what we've got.  What ESBlonde said about walking away friends and both a but richer seems very likely the outcome.

on the 'try harder to make it work' front... It seems like we've done that.  The unhappiness between us is about two years old now, and I think there's been about 3 really major bust ups in that time which have ended with 'we both need to work a lot harder to make this work'.  Somehow we haven't made it work.  I think to a certain extent we both feel burnt out; that there isn't enough spark left to rekindle a flame, no matter how much kindling we throw on the fire.

ultimately no one knows the answer but me and my wife, but it's good to talk about it so thanks.  Good to hear other people's stories.  For e.g. @axisus you said you pulled it back from the brink.  How close was it, were you and mrs axisus as far as discussing printing off the papers and putting the house on the market?  We are.

cheers guys

thomasross20

I've had a few (just a few!) big arguments with my partner but still going after almost 9 years now - and we've not even married - and she's 19 years older with kids, so it's lasted a lot longer than a lot of surprised people have expected it to! We're like best friends which I think is important as I don't think passion ever lasts forever, so you need a foundation to keep it steady. 

Sorry to hear about the drifting apart and yes - good that there are no kids involved. 

Interesting thread!