Hi all. I have posted my story in a few places, but I'll recap here. 7 years ago my military retired husband has kidney stones. An inept urologist put a stent in his private part, clumsily, to prevent a huge one from coming down before the procedure to break up the stones. When he took it out he was even more clumsy and didn't wait for the anesthesia to work and ripped the stent out. It was horrific, and h ended up with ED. Shortly thereafter I saw signs of what looked like dementia, looking at me across the table or in our living room and looking around as though he didn't know who I was. A woman at work, married three times, raising a son who was 3 at the time, born just in time to draw a child support check because her two oldest kids were turning 18 and the money would stop, took a liking to him, and thought the size of his truck said something about the size of his retirement check. He gave me the ILYBINILWY speech in June of 2008 and on July 4 confessed to infidelity. We worked at it and have been reconciling, but his mental health is deteriorating; he is bi polar and very depressed. He had surgery August 10 of this year, thought he died on the table, and then went with me to my mother's funeral last week, which I thought might be a bit much. His mother sent an email of condolence to me at my email address and one to him, and OW has been jacking his email of late. The day we buried my mother (last Friday) she texted him, and he told her to stop. But the texting continued and that evening he called her and they talked two hours. She never accepted that he ended the affair, and she has carried a torch for him, even though she told him she was moving on. My h fell in love with her kid, and his kids live 1200 miles away. He couldn't something healthy like get involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters, or spend more time with his kids now that he no longer works. He just sat at home and listened to sad songs an d moped. He hates aging, he hates that he's mortal, he's a Peter Pan who has had one health problem after another, kidney stones (three procedures over two years), then possible prostate cancer, then a heart attack, and a recent surgery to repair an aneurysm.
He filed for divorce shortly after the confession, and he left my lawyer's office one day with a signed and notarized consent decree and agreement that we had negotiated. All he had to do was show up at court and hand it in and he would have his divorce. We left her office at 2:30, went down the street for a beer and a goodbye, I gave him a hug, wished him well, and figured by the end of the week I'd be divorced. So that night at 8:30 he calls and doesn't want the divorce, wants to move out of his apartment and come home. The next day he contacts me lawyer and asks her to help with a dismissal. So the divorce ended in dismissal.
So now he wants divorce again, and I'm not inclined to fight him. I told him I would not fight but I did not want to do one of those stupid online uncontested divorce filings that he tried to do on his path to divorce last time (which never got completed and was a waste of $200; he got a kit and filed himself and my attorney responded). I told him he needed to file and my attorney would respond in the required 30-day window. A day or two later he texted me and wanted to come down and use the computer, and he said it would only take us 15 minutes, so he has gone online, despite my assertion that I would not help dismantle our marriage, and paid over $600 to a law firm that wants him to do all the work, and now he wants ME to do all the work. I told him no, but he still keeps pressing me.
I'm meeting my lawyer this morning, and she knows all about the manic-depressive stuff, and the history, and he had called her first. He called me and said my lawyer told him I could file and he would pay for it and it would go fast, blah blah blah. When I talked to her, I told her there more issues and he was having mental health issues and it was more complicated than a simple divorce. And then I told h I would speak to my attorney myself. As you can see my husband is very impulsive. As I read recently, he moves in haste and repents at leisure.
So here's my dilemma. I have friends who say if he wants the divorce he needs to hire the lawyer and file and give me time to respond. He is no mental shape for me to be providing financial information on a form or in an online venue. We don't have joint property, our credit and bank accounts are separate (I made sure that happened shortly after his confession of infidelity), but he can't afford to live on his own, and he won't have any money for OW to suck out of him if he divorces me (not my problem, and that's not the point). All this detail that is required in this form (I refused to sit down with him and look at the online form but he printed it out and filled out his part and emailed me a scan so I could fill out mine, and I'm like REALLY? I'm going to give you my social security number and financial info? NO way) was not required in the last divorce; very little ended up in the consent decree because everything was separate. He has no sense of our finances and t hinks many things are joint that are not.
The point is, on the one hand, out of self respect, I want him to file and not ask me to help him. I can just hear him say to his parents and family that I cooperated and the decision was mutual, and he wants them to blame me, not him. Down the road when things go south, he wants to act like a victim. He's a rescuer and wants to rescue this woman who had a kid in hopes of getting married for the fourth time, but only got a child support check and some welfare assistance and is 44 and doesn't want to work for a living. She could have been in college while her 11-year old has been going to school, but sleeping with men is how she makes a living.
On the other hand, an uncontested divorce will go fast and he will be out of my life and done, but my friends say he won't. They say that he will fight with her and show up here and want to convince me he's back, only to leave again. That was his pattern 7 years ago. He finally broke up with her and came home, but he went back and forth for several months. My friends say this is just a piece of paper for him, to make the OW happy, and for the OW to feel like she got to f**k with my life, and that their relationship will remain volatile and violent and he will run here. If i cooperate with him in the uncontested divorce, I will be sending him the message that I will cooperate with anything else, like letting him go back and forth.
The very clear message I want to send to him is that if he chooses divorce, OUR relationship is OVER and the porchlight is NOT on.
And I have been given until the middle of December to finish writing the remaining chapters of my dissertation; the Graduate College Dean says I must have a draft, not a great one, not the final one, to my committee or he will not approve any more extensions and I will not get to complete it. The fastest way to unloading this s**thead of a husband is to give him what he wants and move on. My goal was to have my lawyer do all the talking to and meeting with him FOR me so I never have to see him again, which can happen if he will just file and stop expecting me to help. And I had explained this horrible deadline and asked him to please wait until January, but he won't hear of it. He's so selfish, so stupid, and so sad and pathetic.
What advice would any of you give me?
He filed for divorce shortly after the confession, and he left my lawyer's office one day with a signed and notarized consent decree and agreement that we had negotiated. All he had to do was show up at court and hand it in and he would have his divorce. We left her office at 2:30, went down the street for a beer and a goodbye, I gave him a hug, wished him well, and figured by the end of the week I'd be divorced. So that night at 8:30 he calls and doesn't want the divorce, wants to move out of his apartment and come home. The next day he contacts me lawyer and asks her to help with a dismissal. So the divorce ended in dismissal.
So now he wants divorce again, and I'm not inclined to fight him. I told him I would not fight but I did not want to do one of those stupid online uncontested divorce filings that he tried to do on his path to divorce last time (which never got completed and was a waste of $200; he got a kit and filed himself and my attorney responded). I told him he needed to file and my attorney would respond in the required 30-day window. A day or two later he texted me and wanted to come down and use the computer, and he said it would only take us 15 minutes, so he has gone online, despite my assertion that I would not help dismantle our marriage, and paid over $600 to a law firm that wants him to do all the work, and now he wants ME to do all the work. I told him no, but he still keeps pressing me.
I'm meeting my lawyer this morning, and she knows all about the manic-depressive stuff, and the history, and he had called her first. He called me and said my lawyer told him I could file and he would pay for it and it would go fast, blah blah blah. When I talked to her, I told her there more issues and he was having mental health issues and it was more complicated than a simple divorce. And then I told h I would speak to my attorney myself. As you can see my husband is very impulsive. As I read recently, he moves in haste and repents at leisure.
So here's my dilemma. I have friends who say if he wants the divorce he needs to hire the lawyer and file and give me time to respond. He is no mental shape for me to be providing financial information on a form or in an online venue. We don't have joint property, our credit and bank accounts are separate (I made sure that happened shortly after his confession of infidelity), but he can't afford to live on his own, and he won't have any money for OW to suck out of him if he divorces me (not my problem, and that's not the point). All this detail that is required in this form (I refused to sit down with him and look at the online form but he printed it out and filled out his part and emailed me a scan so I could fill out mine, and I'm like REALLY? I'm going to give you my social security number and financial info? NO way) was not required in the last divorce; very little ended up in the consent decree because everything was separate. He has no sense of our finances and t hinks many things are joint that are not.
The point is, on the one hand, out of self respect, I want him to file and not ask me to help him. I can just hear him say to his parents and family that I cooperated and the decision was mutual, and he wants them to blame me, not him. Down the road when things go south, he wants to act like a victim. He's a rescuer and wants to rescue this woman who had a kid in hopes of getting married for the fourth time, but only got a child support check and some welfare assistance and is 44 and doesn't want to work for a living. She could have been in college while her 11-year old has been going to school, but sleeping with men is how she makes a living.
On the other hand, an uncontested divorce will go fast and he will be out of my life and done, but my friends say he won't. They say that he will fight with her and show up here and want to convince me he's back, only to leave again. That was his pattern 7 years ago. He finally broke up with her and came home, but he went back and forth for several months. My friends say this is just a piece of paper for him, to make the OW happy, and for the OW to feel like she got to f**k with my life, and that their relationship will remain volatile and violent and he will run here. If i cooperate with him in the uncontested divorce, I will be sending him the message that I will cooperate with anything else, like letting him go back and forth.
The very clear message I want to send to him is that if he chooses divorce, OUR relationship is OVER and the porchlight is NOT on.
And I have been given until the middle of December to finish writing the remaining chapters of my dissertation; the Graduate College Dean says I must have a draft, not a great one, not the final one, to my committee or he will not approve any more extensions and I will not get to complete it. The fastest way to unloading this s**thead of a husband is to give him what he wants and move on. My goal was to have my lawyer do all the talking to and meeting with him FOR me so I never have to see him again, which can happen if he will just file and stop expecting me to help. And I had explained this horrible deadline and asked him to please wait until January, but he won't hear of it. He's so selfish, so stupid, and so sad and pathetic.
What advice would any of you give me?
Put the internet to work for you.
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