Short story, she was a high functioning high earning alcoholic. It’s always a 2 person issue so I don’t fully blame her, but when every negative thing in life is covered in 2 bottles of wine a night, well, it’s harder all around.
40 here, second time getting divorced, no kids from the second marriage, but it was close to a decade. First marriage has the kids and that business is settled thank God, so no custody stress, although I’m forced to live back home with my parents. I quit my career to help take care of my second wife and support her job, it was risky but I trusted her.
I have my girls 50 percent of the time, the other 50 I’ll be alone. Now I’m unemployed, and I accrued about 30k credit card debt tied to her and things she needed to do and buy. They have a hiring event at my local warehouse, I’m gonna go grind out in a warehouse in figure to make money until I can get back in my career track, but I’m just cut lose here in the world. My life is for my two little girls now…
Kind of tired, feel beat down and demoralized.
I know I can do it, but yeah, didn’t think I’d be a single dad again or be divorced twice. Post divorce life one made sense and you meet a lot of people. Divorced life two though, I dunno, I dunno what people think or if I even care at this point frankly.
I have no friends anyways, she really isolated me
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You’re not truly a man till you have been married and divorced twice. You will laugh about that later.
My closest childhood friend had two children outside of wedlock with a girl and married her after the first. She turned out to be a heroin addict. And got herself in major legal trouble. The children were born in ICU because of her drug use. She lied her way through the first but after the second the hospital reported it to child protective services. They told him divorced he and obtain full custody or else lose the kids so he did. Her issues kept getting worse until she died of an overdose.
He then married a woman which was really for his own convenience because he needed help with two little kids. The marriage was okay enough but she wanted kids of her own and he did not want anymore so they got divorced.
After several more years, he meets a lady who has two kids and her husband died of a drug overdose. They hit it off. Their kids hit it off. They are married now. One of the best marriages I’ve seen. They’re perfect for each other and so much better together. He hung in there and found his good life.
Thrice divorced. Went through something similar with number three, we had a kid and she was an ex addict with BPD. My first two marriages were easy without kids and the home was only in my name, cars too, so I kept all that (I initiated divorce). For the third, the custody battle crossed three states, I spent over 100k, and in the end I gave up because I was spending my son’s future to spend time with him now and that wasn’t fair to him.
Get a good lawyer, do a consultation with every single good lawyer, get your shit together with the job whatever you may find, put the CC debt on her, paint her very negatively during the process but let your lawyer frame that negative painting, and you’ll win fairly handedly if what you’re describing is true.
the aftermath of the marriage will be trivial compared to re-entering the job market in this economy at 40 with a gap in your resume. that part is going to be rough, and it would be fair for you to seek a lump sum alimony, then use that for retraining.
but i have good news: it gets better, if you let it. it might take years, but it does. i’m the happiest i’ve ever been—have a great partner, good job, bright future (albeit probably not much longer in the US). you have to let it happen though. if you have some bad feelings, let them go. get into some therapy. be there for the kids. live fully in the present.
good luck. you got this.
Not sure if I could. First wife was just so she could get her citizenship, friend of mine from hs.
Second we ended after 10yrs, we remain good friends until today, we vacation together as families. Her husband and I are good friends, we often stay at each other’s houses. Our primary focus has always been our son. We were just better friends than husband and wife. She married a good man and he loves my son, I couldn’t ask for anything more .
Not me, but my cool french grandfather was married 5 times and his last wife left him for a bit and got pregnant by a german guy, and my grandfather eventually took her back with the kid at 3 months and raised him as his own son as revenge to the german. My grandfather was a teen in Normandy and used to loot dead Nazis when he came across them (we still have some stuff), so perhaps it was very personal lol.
So yeah, in his 60’s, 70’s and 80’s he raised the kid to love him more than he could ever love his bio dad and that was good revenge. Fwiw this was in French Polynesia, and the boys mother was a native to the islands, so it was a pretty cool situation in the grand scheme of things. My grandfather passed around the time the boy was entering adulthood and he turned out to be a great guy who details really cool cars in Fiji or Vanuatu I think. I always thought it was funny that this kid was sort of like my uncle too, even though I was maybe 10 years older.
I am twice divorced. I was young and dumb when I married the first time. It lasted a few years before we decided to end it. A few years later, an old friend set me up with someone. We really clicked. She didn’t have any of the red flags I had learned to watch out for after the first marriage. Unfortunately, she had a whole different set ( and hid them well while dating). It was worse than the first marriage.
Now, I am ten years into my third marriage. I had no plans to marry or even date when we met at work, but we got along really well. There was chemistry, and we had to figure things out before it got awkward. For the most part, it has been a piece of cake. Any difficulties we have had were dealing with external issues, but not relationship issues.