News Article: My Opinion: Most Men Aren’t Husband Material
- Thread starter Bazza
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Get off my lawn, and take Sanford & Sons....I mean, Mumford and Sons with ya!! (the most pretentious hipster fake-folk band ever. hipster love the .... out of their abysmal noise)
After my ex signed the papers, she started haggling over X, Y, and Z piddly crap. Then threatened to challenge the divorce if I didn't relent.
My attorney told her, "What are you going to contest? You already signed the agreement."
I had a good laugh.
Oh, and the 750 lb Broyhill entertainment center that she left behind. She pulled up 5 minutes after the junk man had left with the destroyed remnants lying in my driveway(I had a good time sawing and tearing that thing apart). Came in the house, "Where's my entertainment center!!!" I told her I sold it, barely concealing a well-suppressed guffaw.
Sum total: You're better off without her, bud.
I love that the people that set that generation on the path it's on are the ones most excited/hopeful to see it fail.
i am surprised to learn that i have been emotionally demasculated over the past few decades
She couldn't have told you that she hates men any more clearly than if she'd condensed it into three words...
The only post-divorce story I had that was funny happened right about a year ago (August 11 to be precise).
In Texas, child support has to be discontinued via the person getting it signing off that all has been paid. Well, I think you can see where I'm going with this one. She first refused to pay sign and then wrote a 61-page appeal (I'm NOT kidding folks) to the judge, asking that I be forced to pay 1/2 of his tuition at a $52,000 per year acting conservatory he got a pittance of money from the school to attend. It made up a bunch of stuff about me, I mean, she made me sound like OJ Simpson. So I had to go back to my lawyer and spend another $4,000 for him to write up stuff and do his job and go to court etc.
So she delayed it and drew an extra 3 months. Then she shows up with a recent diagnosis of him as "disabled." Now keep this in mind - we had done mediation 18 months earlier, supposedly ending this. But what made it worth my money was that when we went before the judge (oh - on top of this, she ticked off my attorney by having the gall to bring my 18-year old son to the hearing with her so he could see daddy being the jerk).....the judge was just going down the list of "is this criteria met." Rather than answer, the ex decided to give an exposition, the judge shut her down. But then she INTERRUPTED the judge, who proceeded to point her finger down in my ex's face and say, "STOP IT! Stop it RIGHT NOW!" (This is the same ex who got up during our last counseling session and blasted me and the counselor and thought she was a bad ash, slamming the door walking out the room). Nobody - not her momma, nobody - had ever been in position to basically say "shut your hole," and it was worth the money it cost me to see it, quite frankly.
The only sleep I've lost over it that is rough is that you can go make more money that you lose, and you can find a new person - but the time you wasted trying to invest it in someone is gone forever, and when you're 48 it's a whole lot different than 28. If you get married at 21 (as I did) and divorced at 27, everyone kind of hugs you and says, "Oh, you were just too young, you didn't know what you were doing."
If you get divorced after 25 years of marriage, however, and your youth is mostly if not totally gone....you not only wind up divorced and have minimal time to regain the money you lost (which was more to the attorney than to her in my case), you also get the condescending "advice" of people who want to tell you "well, you had a lot of time and years invested, and y'all SHOULD have been able to work it out." So not only are you judged for being divorced, you're judged a second time for something you really didn't want to unfold the way it did - and had no control over. (I've said it would be easier if I knew "why" - I mean, if I'd run around or hit her or had a gambling problem or something, I could at least see my own role in it, but when your own ex admits to the marriage counselor that unlike 99% of husbands, he "does do this" or 'does do that' - you're more confused than anything else).
And let's not even get into my memory and every single, solitary day something from long ago triggers. Indeed, the only thing that has kept me from going completely nuts NOW - unlike years ago - is I now KNOW I have this "thing" and so I can try to compensate for the issues it causes. If not for "60 Minutes" and Dr McGaugh, I'm not sure I'd have been able to cope with the fallout.
Anyway - I'm fine, but I haven't looked back; back just overtakes me on a minute by minute basis.
Great post, Bill.
As I have aged....and I'm 64 now so I can say that with a degree of credibility....I have realized the most precious commodity for me is "time".
None of us for the most part know what our shelf life will be. But we do know that we have one and when your time is up....it's up.
Pertaining to the subject at hand....I'm at peace with myself for being a solo act right now - and for whatever time span it ends up at. The last relationship ended up being more of a time-waster than anything else so I walked away. It's unfortunate because I really liked a lot of things about her. But for how many days,weeks, months, and hopefully years I have left...I want to be happy.
"Time waits for no one...and it won't wait for me."
Peace brother.....
Me too! Both of us have paid a huge price due to her approaching matters from an emotional standpoint and not from a long term practical standpoint. She still pays a big price everyday
and there is very little that I can do to help her now.
Whether society likes to admit it or not, in general, most women operate from an emotional standpoint. My wife tends to disagree with me on this and that's fine (if she wants to be wrong
). But I tell her all the time, there's a reason the same group of men can hang out and be friends for years and more times than not a group of women cannot. The PC police can now bring out their bag of stones. LOL!
I won't disagree that some men aren't husband material, just as much as there are some women who aren't wife material. But if certain breakdowns (particularly the same ones) keep occurring in relationships, then at some point you have to be willing to look at yourself and see what you're doing wrong.
I can't speak for others on here, and I certainly haven't been married as long as some of you here have, or even were married, but I've found that reasonable compromises between the husband and wife are well within reach if both people are willing to work for it. Anytime one person has to work so much more on the other one for an extended amount of time just to make the relationship or marriage work, it's going to break down. I learned early in my dating life that looks aren't the supreme factor, and the substantive stuff really does matter. Physical looks are the opening of the front door, but it's what inside that counts. Even among our friends, there are enough of personality differences that I know I wouldn't marry the other wives if I was single. I appreciate the friendship, but there's a reason we're just friends, nothing more. I wouldn't be surprised if they felt the same way as well. Some of the divorce stories I've read on here just absolutely blow my mind, and it's clear that the ex's the TF members were trying to get away from are just flat out crazy, and there's no man or woman that'll satisfy them.
I can't speak for others on here, and I certainly haven't been married as long as some of you here have, or even were married, but I've found that reasonable compromises between the husband and wife are well within reach if both people are willing to work for it. Anytime one person has to work so much more on the other one for an extended amount of time just to make the relationship or marriage work, it's going to break down. I learned early in my dating life that looks aren't the supreme factor, and the substantive stuff really does matter. Physical looks are the opening of the front door, but it's what inside that counts. Even among our friends, there are enough of personality differences that I know I wouldn't marry the other wives if I was single. I appreciate the friendship, but there's a reason we're just friends, nothing more. I wouldn't be surprised if they felt the same way as well. Some of the divorce stories I've read on here just absolutely blow my mind, and it's clear that the ex's the TF members were trying to get away from are just flat out crazy, and there's no man or woman that'll satisfy them.
You probably know this drill, too. My ex gave two craps about investing, saving for retirement. Spent like a drunken sailor, and, when she would get a decent-paying job, would quit after 2-3 months because she had to actually be held accountable for something.
But she sure as heck was interested in my 401k, IRA, and even my pension when it came time to divvy up the assets. If she had contributed her fair share to the retirement, I wouldn't have despised this so much. I was putting 20-25% of my salary into retirement, but she put in virtually nothing.
Luckily, I was able to negotiate a cash settlement in lieu of her touching my pension. And I've been trying to put hand-over-fist $$$ into my retirement since the divorce, and i think I've recovered much of what I lost 4 years ago.
And it really chapped her behind when she learned she had zilch rights to my inheritance from my Dad. And I also have a 2nd pension (small) from a company I worked for a few decades ago.....that I just didn't mention during the divorce.
Coming to peace with the reasons is the stepping stone to a new relationship. I will say that anyone you date in the first three years is very likely to be very inappropriate, for a variety of reasons.
I've been divorced for 30+ years, after a 22 year marriage. OTOH, I will have been remarried 32 years next month. However, I know exactly why I ended up divorced and I also know why my present wife divorced. My present wife and I were friends even before my divorce and were friends for several years before we decided to marry. After all these years, we're still best friends. Oh, we can quarrel. A few years ago, when we were building a retaining wall, we screamed obscenities at each other which I'm sure made the neighbors were sure we wouldn't last much longer.
Of course, fatigue was the biggest factor.My ex-wife had the final laugh on me. She passed last year and left me as personal representative and trustee of her estate. If she can see, she probably laughs every day...
Wow, your situation sounds eerily similar to a family friend of ours. The poor sap worked his butt off to financially plan for their future yet his high maintenance wife couldn't successfully fight the desires to "keep up with the Jones'" when it came to her equally as high maintenance friends. Boutique shopping that would make your head spin. She wouldn't be caught dead in anything less, such as something from Khols, Stage, or any other place where the middle class "peasants" shop. I guess the best way to describe her is "100,000 millionaire". I'm sure you're familiar with that term. For those who aren't it is a common term used in financial planning when you have someone who makes into the mid to low six figures but lives like they make millions. They ultimately end up being apart of the working poor. They go broke. Glad you got out and have recovered.
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You guys make me grateful for my ex-wife. We divorced 6 years ago, upon my request. I wasn't happy and hadn't been in a long time. I hung around for my kids so they could grow up with their dad and not single mom as I had. When they finally got old enough, I went for it. We stayed friends for a time after the split until she met the man she is now married to. Oddly enough, I took the pictures and wrote the profile for the dating site where she met him. These days, if the kids (now in college) need something, they ask me for it. If they ask her, and she can't do it, she will either ask me or tell them to do so. We mostly get along while not really talking much unless it pertains to the kids, who I talk to individually as much as possible. I did pay quite a large amount in child support for the first several years, even while splitting custody, but I did that to make sure my kids had a decent home life no matter which parent had them that week.
So, all of this bitterness and hate you guys have for your ex-wives I don't completely get. But me not getting it is a good explanation for why I am divorced. Our relationship was more of a friendship that should have stopped at that point. We lacked in passion, from both sides, so we never fought about anything. And as much as you may hate fighting, try a relationship where there is no passion at all and see how you like it.
So, all of this bitterness and hate you guys have for your ex-wives I don't completely get. But me not getting it is a good explanation for why I am divorced. Our relationship was more of a friendship that should have stopped at that point. We lacked in passion, from both sides, so we never fought about anything. And as much as you may hate fighting, try a relationship where there is no passion at all and see how you like it.
Going thru the estate thing as executor for my Dad's estate right now.
I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
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