Why did your spouse divorce you?

That stinks, maybe the powers-that-be think a man needs more cash if he's got to spend a big chunk of it supporting his wife and kids.
An acquaintance of mine (a warehouseman) got married some years ago and I lost track of him for a while, but when I bumped into him again and asked him how he was doing, his first words were "Wow, I'm a lot worse off financially since I got married!".
They divorced about 5 years later after having a couple of kids..

 

I got divorced, but really don't know why.

She told her father it was nothing against me, she just wanted things to be like they were when we were in college. That was a long time ago. It took her four years to figure that one out. I guess I'll never know why.

 

The reason my first divorced me. Well I caught her with someone else. She then ran and got the divorce. Which then all I cared about was my 2 sons. Ended up in a Post decree war and would eventually win custody of my sons. Cost me a business and about 40k. Went thru like 5 attorneys then went and got the law books. Took the case on myself. Won custody after being put thru the ringer. Defeated a Public Guardian Ad litem who was suppose to represent my sons but was favoring the ex. Then I destroyed her attorney in the court with the games she played. Her attorney was a straight out feminist and hated men. Never had kids herself. Daley Center Chicago.....aka the garbage division of the courts.

3 different judges.....in the end. They would ask me if I went and got my law degree. I would laugh and tell them. I was done playing with the sharks.

 

So how long have you been married? Basically speaking, anything worth having needs maintenance of some kind. Maintenance is work. That, and you're wrong about male and female being incompatible outside of the physical. Most people can be compatible outside of the physical. Anyway, you make your soul mate, you don't just happen upon them randomly.

 

With over a 50% failure rate, the current approach isn't working very well. Divorce rates have dropped a bit but only because people are waiting longer to get married. Many young people have given up on marriage altogether. As one young woman put it, "My parents are divorced; my grandparents are all divorced, and they all hate each other. Why would I want to get married?"

Soul mate. That is an interesting concept. At this point, I don't know what to think. I didn't believe in love at first sight. But without a doubt I fell madly in love almost on sight. But was she my soul mate? She was far too young. But I have never loved anyone as I do her. It was the most powerful experience of my life.

I have often suspected that what you call a soul mate is really only possible for some percentage of the population. And I know believe that what I call a soul mate is something that can take a lifetime or more to find. By the shear numbers, most people will never find their soul mate. I don't think you can turn someone into your soul mate.

This all gets into something I have thought a lot about since the greatest love of my life came into my life, and left. What are the odds of finding love like that again? 1:100?, 1:1000? 1:1,000,000? I have met over 120 women since she left two years ago and I have yet to meet anyone who moves me a fraction as much as she did in a moment.

I looked into her eyes and I lost control of my life. My world was changed forever, in a moment. I have never experienced anything like it.

 

As I read more and more about how women view marriage, and looking at my own marriage and family, I began to realize that women often view marriage in far more practical terms than men do. I think many man are more romantic than their wives and they get sucker punched as a result.

I will never forget this one woman who went on for pages about her boyfriend. They had been seeing each other for several years, I want to say 5 years, and in her view they were a perfect match in every way. He was the perfect husband because he is successful, handsome, smart, kind, loves to do this and that, blah blah blah... and they were perfect together because of blah, blah, blah, but for reasons beyond her she just couldn't get him to move things along and commit.

After reading her five or six pages of reasons why they were perfect for each other, I pointed out that never once did she say she loves him. "Wow, I didn't think about that" she responded [or similar]. Gee, I can't imagine why he doesn't want to commit!!!

I would have married my first sugar baby in a heartbeat. If asked why, there was one and only one answer: I loved her more than life itself.

I never loved my wife like that but I married her out of love, not based on some checklist or game plan. Unfortunately, my ex had very different plans; many many plans. And to this day I don't know if love was ever in the mix or not. I tend to think it was all an act from day 1. I have often wondered if she's a psychopath. Over the years I grew to believe she didn't have an empathetic bone in her body.

 

Actually, it's because they 'discover' something intolerable about themselves.

 

How about the possibility that most people are not truly compatible; indefinitely?

Why is a failed marriage about fault? Maybe the fault lies with the concept of marriage.

I see marriage as a crap shoot at best. Who are you going to be in ten years? Who am I going to be in ten years? Who the hell knows? Two people may or may not grow together. They may grow apart. Is it anyone's fault if you simply grow to be incompatible?

 

There is nothing wrong with the concept (it's just an idea, after all). It's entirely doable, and a satisfying way to live. The 'fault' lies with the people involved not being committed to the idea.

I blame low emotional IQ.

 

How do you know how committed someone is? Are you claiming all failed marriages are due to someone's fault? On what basis?

 

Marriages are only as solid as the people in them. The 'idea' can't ruin the relationship, only the people can.

 

Show me the evidence that marriage is not flawed. As soon as people could get divorced, the flocked to the divorce courts.

Are you saying the institution is more important than being happy? What is the point?

 

You ascertain that sort of stuff long before agreeing to marry, obviously. If the person of interest has not been raised to respect the institution of marriage, and is okay with the idea of divorce, you know they're not likely to fight when the going gets rough.

 

Is marriage worthy of commitment no matter how bad? If I married a serial killer and discovered that later, should I be loyal?

 

How do you know failed marriages have anything to do with a lack of commitment? And a commitment to what? If the marriage is fundamentally failed because you are no longer compatible, and you make each other miserable, what is the point?

 

What?

Do you not even know that 'working on a marriage' is precisely the effort made to keep it happy? If you respect the institution, and don't believe in divorce, you're going to work damned hard to make sure it's a happy marriage. What sort of lunatic wouldn't?

 

Should people be miserable the rest of their lives to make other people feel good about marriage?

 

Sorry, again .. why on earth would anyone allow a 'bad marriage' to happen? Are you talking about masochists?

Obviously, we're only discussing the regular humans here .. not serial killers.

 

Or might decide marriage is just an primitive custom and there is no reason to be committed to misery.

One should be committed to love, not a piece of paper. If the love is gone, the rest has no meaning.

 

And what is the spectrum? How bad does someone have to be before it's okay to give up?

 

Commitment to marriage isn't commitment to the piece of paper, it's commitment to a healthy relationship. How is it possible that a grown up doesn't realise this?

 

One should be committed to a healthy and stable relationship. That's the ONLY way marriages survive in our culture.

 

I would say addiction (without desire to fix it), criminal activity, abuse. Most other things can be fixed with determination and support. Why would you expect others to tolerate all your little fails, if you can't tolerate the same in a partner?

 

I can't answer the first question without getting upset. But in the context I will say this: some years ago I met an extremely attractive young woman when we joined a class of tennis tuition. Now not only was the timing of us both joining the same intake fortuitous to the point of being an unbelievable coincidence - we were total strangers living in a Kentish village - but so was the compatibility of minds and the mutually strong physical attraction. And as if those factors didn't speak of fate taking over, I had been unexpectedly fortunate that, against the odds, I'd been able to change my shifts (at work?) upon which my joining that particular class depended; had I not been able to change my shift sequence, it would have enabled her husband to join instead of me, which was what they were really hoping for. In other words him joining as well as me would have exceeded the intake number and compromised the need for an even on-court number tuition-wise. After 5 years we were separated by circumstances. Fast forward to about 5 years ago: we met again via FB and after a few dates it began dawn on me that in the intervening years I had changed but she hadn't, and what was once the love of my life (I thought at the time) slowly turned into a realisation that we were totally incompatible , and even though young children were no longer involved, thereby enabling a getting-together, I contrived to gently back off. I realise now that it wouldn't have lasted even 6 months. Once again my Guardian Angel had guided me toward taking the right path.

 

I'm in law school, and am quite honestly very seriously considering becoming a divorce law because I've seen plenty of that ****. Man-hating feminists are so common in divorce law, there needs to be something to counterbalance that bs.