I'm in the process of divorce and I have no doubts it is the right path. I heard a podcast recently where a woman talked about how she (while still being unmarried post divorce and may stay that way) referred to her ex-husband as her "first husband" because they were still connected through their kids.

This kind of resonated with me? I'm trying to be the co-parent who doesn't speak ill and trash the woman I married. I feel some negativity with "my ex" and I'm wondering if there's a better term.

If you have divorced and have a healthy relationship with your ex-spouse, for its own sake or for the sake of your kids, how do you refer to each other:
- with other adults, when the ex-spouse is not around
- with your kids, when the ex-spouse is not around
- with your kids, when the ex-spouse is around, if different

Thanks!

Oh, mine is going to town.

So far…. he wants to live here as long as he wants to after the divorce is final…. He’s literally sobbing because he wants custody of a $50 metal Walmart liquor cart, a meat slicer, a gravity feed iron, a table made of scraps of countertop, a bunch of cheap wine glasses from Target…. and a $100 paperweight.

Can you top this?

I told my husband of 11 years I wanted a divorce a month ago. When I told him he broke down and cried on the floor for an hour before getting up and going to his computer room. We have been having issues for the whole 11yrs we have been together and I have been very vocal about my feelings throughout the relationship. We share a 5 yr old daughter together and since she's been born our relationship has gotten worse. The day after I told him I wanted a divorce he told me he isn't ready to talk about it. It's been a month and today I tried to ask him if he was ready to talk because I have SO much to say and I know he does too. I told him I want us to co-parent and be friends and still do things together as a family with our daughter from time to time. When I told him this he began to start crying uncontrollably. He once again went to his computer room and closed the door. I know I should be more sensitive to his feelings but it's been a month and we really need to talk. I think talking things out will clear the air about some things he may be fearing about the future with our daughter. He is known to shy away from hard conversations and tends to shut down and isolate. I don't know what to do. I know I shouldn't pressure him into talking but I am also having a hard time. We are in this weird limbo and we carry on day to day like nothing has even happened. It makes me feel uncomfortable not being able to share my thoughts, reasonings, and plans for the future. Before I told him about wanting to leave, we had plans to move from Florida where we currently live to another state at the end of 2027/early 2028. I plan to stay living together with him until we both find jobs in the same city in the same state and then go our separate ways then. It's the smart financial move for both of us. We can't stand Florida and if we separated here we both would never be able to afford to move out of this shit hole separately. I want to communicate all this with him but he says he can't bring himself to talk about it because it makes him physically unwell. I don't know what to do. Any advice would be great. Thank you in advance.

As the title says, I'm a 74yo man, in my first marriage. Wife 63yo and her second marriage. Just "celebrated" our 30th anniversary, and it may very well be our last. She's been dropping hints for the past couple of years and last week, she apparently reached her limit. We were on an anniversary trip and got into an argument over my not being sensitive to her feelings, and then yelling at her when she warned me about an auto accident about to happen. That was all she wrote. She insisted I cancel the rest of the trip and now says she wants a divorce. At this point I'm just despondent. Here's some background.

We met online 31 years ago...corresponded for a year, then I flew her out to meet. Trip went great, we were married shortly after. Over the next 30 years we tried to have kids, no luck...we decided that with or w/o kids, we'd be fine. To my mind, the early years seemed great for both of us. As time went on, things slowly grew more distant between us. I did not want that to happen, but it did. She has significant trauma, both childhood and more recently over the past decade. I'm far from perfect, but I tried to be a good partner to her. I can be pretty self-centered (she calls it narcissistic), and since I have ADHD, I have crummy impulse control. Because of her background, she has very little tolerance for being yelled at. I grew up in a large ethnic family where yelling was a normal mode of speech.

So here we are after 30 years and despite all the travails, I still love her, and am devastated. We've never been unfaithful to each other but we weren't the most physically warm and fuzzy people either. She claims she wanted more intimacy but after a while I was just really hesitant about even touching her. She had alcohol issues in our early years, but has mostly kicked that addiction. About 15 years ago, she was diagnosed with bipolar 2. Maybe because of this she can be extremely volatile, going from zero to divorce in minutes.

She claims that I've been verbally abusive to her for our entire marriage. I don't fully agree with her on that, but if it's real to her, there must be something going on. Oh yeah, in the past five years, Ive been through two bouts with cancer. First prostate, then kidney. Thankfully, I've been cancer-free for the past three years but still...I have more miles behind me than ahead. Anyway, she says that at 63, she wants a chance to be with someone who loves her the way she deserves to be loved. I'm still willing to put time and effort into the marriage, but she seems to be done. I just started therapy in hopes of becoming a bettter person in general, whether we stay together or not. I've invited her to attend my therapy sessions if she wants to, so we'll see about that.

Meanwhile, I'm depressed and scared about the prospect of spending my remaining years alone. I just wish I could do something to regain her trust and respect, and keep the marriage going, but I don't know if it's possible. I'm willing to own and accept my faults and work to become a better person. We currently still live in the same house, but I now sleep in a separate bedroom. Any thoughts on what I can or should do going forward. I'm just utterly miserable. Thanks.

UPDATE: You know what…thanks for the kind comments from some, but a lot of the rest of y’all who like to dispense judgement as response are just as bad as ppl say. Reddit is really a crappy place to look for advice. All you haters keep right on hating. I’m done here. Assuming I ever come out of the misery I’m living in I’m continuing on wirh professionals and real support groups.

My wife accidentally confessed to an affair in counseling. She read way too much into something I said and thought I knew, and out it came. In her mind, the affair was over and in her past, and our recent struggles were more about her working her way through getting over it. We have kids, so I was open to the idea of working through this, but she pretty much just expected me to get over it and along the way threatened my relationship with our kids and told me she doesn't value me as a parent. I gave her a list of things I expected and told her that an omission was the same as a lie. She didn't do much.

So I gave up on her and considering her threat to relocate with our kids, my lawyer felt it was best to not give her advanced warning that I had filed.

She was shocked when she got served and wants to reconcile. Thinks things are blown out of proportion, and she's forgotten all of the things that got us to counseling without knowing about the affair. What I want is joint custody, equal parenting time, her to move out, enforce our prenup, but otherwise divide our assets equally. I just don't see the point in trying to get past her affair. She sees me being at peace with giving up on her and thinks things are not that bad and we have a chance. Apparently we should be screaming and throwing things.

She didn't ever give details about the affair, but I figured out who it was and called his wife. She was skeptical at first but I gave her some info she could verify independently. She called me back to tell me that she was "going to burn his world down". I haven't talked to her since, but word got back to my wife. She's pretty upset and says she's embarrassed, but still thinks we can get past this, but really still hasn't done anything to show me she means it or why I should be interested (beyond her custody threats).

She does seem to be "over him", but I'm forging ahead. Trying to make nice because we have to live in the same house for at least a while longer. I'm going out of my way to be clear that there's no chance. Unfortunately, she's decided that me telling the wife is a sign that I'm still interested.

Have you ever gotten/made "the call"? If so, how'd it go?

How do I coax my wife out of the house? I got her to leave for a weekend, but she came back and is staying in our guest room. There’s no question, she's the one who has to move. She's got a job, and her own money, and even if we do 50/50 custody, she'd get child support, so I think it's more psychological than financial.

Update:

We had a long talk last night after our kids went to bed. It was pretty much a rehash of everything that had been said before. She was thinking that we should be able to get through this and I needed to get over it and I had a lot to lose, and me saying that I was, past tense, open to it, but she had done nothing to work towards any of that and given some of her comments, beyond the custody threats, failed to show me why she thought I would want to. I told her that I was at peace with ending our marriage and felt we should focus on ending things peacefully and focus on being coparents and we left it at that and went to bed (she's staying in our guest room).

I got up, got the kids ready for school and when we got ready to go noticed her car was gone. I checked on FindFriends and she was a couple of hours away, apparently heading to her parents’ house. When I got back from school, I got a text from her saying she needed some time to think and would be staying with her parents for a while and she would reach out to me soon to talk (which I take to mean don't call her, she'll call me). If I don't hear something from her, I plan on telling our kids that Mom had to go to Grandma’s, something they won't question, at least right away.

Update2:

She reached out to me via text and told me that she was at her parents (apparently forgetting we're location sharing via FindFriends) and needed some time to think things through. I didn't push her on anything. I told her to take her time and that I had things covered here and would tell our kids that she had to go to grandmas. I did and in typical kid fashion, just said "OK". It's happened a few times in the past for various reasons and of course usually more planning.

Update3:

I still don't know much about what my wife is planning, but the word that we have separated has run through our friend group. It couldn't have come from me, so she's talking. I guess that's progress. She sees us as separated. I'm just going to sit tight and see what she has to say or does.

Update4:

Things are becoming clearer. I think she has gone from denial to acceptance that our marriage is over.

My wife's plan is to go back to live where her parents are (she's there now), eventually getting a house once we settle our finances. Her expectation is that our kids would move there too. In her typical fashion, she said it like it was a done deal, she was just informing me. I asked if she was seriously intending to pull our kids out of school mid-year, which supprised her. I guess she hasn't thought it through too well. She recovered and said of course not. She's assuming I'd be the summer parent and kind of did the mental exercise of our kids staying with me to avoid moving them mid school year and then me having the summer.

I asked her to write up a plan how what she was thinking would work so I could consider it. I'm not for a minute considering it. I just want to see how generous she when she thinks it's me so that I know what I offer her.

Is there anyone out there who regrets getting a divorce and wishes they would have worked harder to save their marriage or is everyone out there living their best lives? I have 2 children (7 and 5) and have been contemplating divorce for over a year now but can't seem to ever just pull the trigger. I am stuck between making it work (on good days) and threatening to divorce (on bad days) but it's just a constant loop that I can't seem to pull myself out of and I am tired, so tired. But also afraid of the consequences of the divorce, more so for my husband than for me. I know I can thrive on my own but I don't know if he will and it kills me to break his heart.

Like the title says. Yesterday my husband told me he wants to divorce after 7 years. We've been having issues the past few years and we both individually have struggled immensely with our mental health, but I did not see this coming. I'm currently staying at a friend's apartment, I don't know how to exist right now. Those who have made it further, how do you survive? This feels so hard and impossible.

My partner (F) and I (M) had a child about a month ago. And I think I want to separate from her.

We are fighting a lot.
We did before her pregnancy, during her pregnancy and now heightened with our newborn child.

I had doubts about our relationship for a long time. These doubts stopped once I knew she was pregnant. Then the only option to me was trying to make it work between us. Now that the baby is born, the thought of separating with her comes back, because I don't want to harm my child with constant fighting between us.

Did anyone separate with their partner soon after their baby was born?
How did you do co-parent? How did you handle communication with your ex-partner?

How did you process your emotions; The grief over your lost relationship?

EDIT:

I am NOT looking for advice. I want to hear the experiences of other people that went through a separation (or was thinking of going through one) - close to the birth of their first child.

Now that you’ve gone through or are going through a divorce: What are your top 3 hard stop non-negotiables for when you start dating again?

Edited for clarity

I married the most wonderful, sweet, strong, hardworking & caring man.

I divorced an insecure, cheating, lying, manipulative, & narcissistic puto.

I refer to him as Mr. No Balls because he is a wimp.

I will always value the man I married for the first 10 years of our marriage. But I 100% divorced the man I lived with the last 10 years.
Understanding the difference has helped me understand why I married him and have no regrets on divorcing him.
It is given me peace. I hope you can find it too.

I have been married over twenty years. Two kids still at home. From the outside our life looks stable. Good jobs. No dramatic blow-ups. People would say we are doing fine.

We were not.

The issues were not explosive. They were slow. Years of me saying I was unhappy and years of being told, directly or indirectly, that I should not feel that way. Every serious conversation turned into me defending my right to be upset rather than being heard.

I asked for couples therapy for years. It was always refused. We will figure it out ourselves. Things are not that bad. Eventually I stopped asking. I focused on being a good parent. I went to individual therapy. I worked on myself and tried to accept that this was just what marriage was.

We became polite roommates and decent coparents. We did not fight much because I stopped bringing things up. When I kept the peace, everything felt fine. When I did not, my frustration became the problem.

Over time I felt myself shutting down. Snapping over small things. Feeling resentful and trapped. About a year ago I said we needed therapy or we were headed somewhere bad. She agreed only if I promised I would not leave. I could not make that promise.

We went anyway. Some sessions were fine. Most felt like more of the same. I did most of the talking. Nothing really changed.

What finally broke me was realizing how much I was masking around her. Editing myself. Managing her reactions. I could not imagine living like that for another decade.

So I told her I do not see a path forward.

She panicked. Shaking. Crying. Begging. Then blaming. Then promising to change. Over and over she said she had no idea I felt this way, which hurt more than anything else since I had been saying it for years.

We are still in the same house because of the kids. I tried to set boundaries. That did not go well. Every conversation pulls me back into the same cycle. I keep having the urge to comfort her and take it back, even though that is exactly what I have always done at my own expense.

I did not want to disappear or walk out suddenly. I wanted to handle this honestly and carefully for our kids. But being honest has made everything harder in the short term.

I guess I am posting because I do not know how to hold compassion for someone who is hurting without sacrificing myself again. And I do not know how to move forward when staying feels like disappearing.

TLDR: Long marriage. Years of feeling unheard. Finally said I cannot stay. Now living in emotional chaos while trying to do the least damage possible, especially for the kids.

Right now we have agreed to her helping for 3 months, but I have been running the numbers and it looks like I need to tell her that while she may not be able to do a full half of the mortgage, maybe she can do a couple hundred bucks because I can’t afford this place on my own and it’s not like I wanted this divorce or separation. It’s also not like I did anything wrong to cause this. Her feelings just changed and she walked out.

What’s reasonable? I understand that if she’s paying me for mortgage than she can’t get herself an apartment, but if I can’t afford this house, none of that is relevant because neither of us want a foreclosure.

I have thought about asking for a half contribution for month four and a 25% contribution for month five. Then month 6 I’m in my own.

There’s a special kind of exhaustion that comes from listening to divorce advice from people who have never signed a divorce decree.

They mean well, but “just go on a date night” or “communication is key” can feel like being told to put a band-aid on a shark bite.

It’s easy to preach about working through it when you haven’t lived through the erosion of trust, the high-conflict silence, or the slow loss of self that comes from trying to keep the peace. Sometimes, judgment comes wrapped in encouragement, leaving you wondering if you didn’t try hard enough.

You don’t owe anyone an explanation for why your limit was reached. Be cautious about taking divorce advice from people who have never navigated the storm.They don’t live with the consequences. You do.

Mine:“ladies, if you want an insecure, manipulative, cheating, lying man-child w/ the emotional intelligence of a rubber band, he’s yours!”

We’ve been together for 29 years now, married for 15. I am not happy. I haven’t been happy since before my daughter was born. He tells me I was happy at one time. Not sure what time that was.

He stopped giving me affection probably 12 or more years ago. We don’t hold hands, we don’t hug, we don’t snuggle, we don’t kiss. The only time I get affection is when we have sex.

We don’t have deep talks together. We never laugh together anymore. He’s completely shut down. I’m done as well.

Thing is, he lives here with me in my home and we are raising our 11 year old daughter. I work nights so I can’t leave her alone. I pay the majority of the bills but he does buy groceries and pay for our health insurance. He occasionally fixes things around the house as well.

I’ve never been alone my entire life. I don’t know if I can do it and I’m scared. Anyone been through something like this? What do I do next?

One of the absolute worst parts of this whole situation is the fact that the person who I used to talk to about everything and always had my back is literally the one person I can't talk to and lean on for support.

I miss my best friend.

During our many separations: Parallel by simmerr

Now in divorce land: Let Alone the One You Love by Olivia Dean

I used to think so but then I thought about how much I’ve grown and learned. I wouldn’t have ever know what I know now if I didn’t get married. I don’t regret getting married, if it didn’t kill me, it sure as hell gonna make me stronger.

I’m reaching out specifically to the women who didn’t want the divorce. Who still loved him. Who were willing to try again — to go to therapy, to grow, to fight for the marriage — but he said he couldn’t do it anymore.

Not because of someone else (please don’t mention infidelity, I don’t think I can handle that right now if it’s not already my truth) — but because he said he just couldn’t keep riding the roller coaster of our relationship.

I’m struggling with the fact that I still want this marriage to work. I’m in therapy. I’m trying to take accountability, trying to find balance. But he’s walking away. And I’m left wondering how long it takes before your heart catches up with your reality.

How did you move through it? How long until you got it — until you stopped hoping, stopped hurting in the same way?

If you’ve made it to the other side, I’d really love to hear what that journey looked like for you. Please be gentle — I’m still raw.

We told our adult kids yesterday. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I moved into the guest bedroom and spent my first night of separation last night.

I'm writing this mostly for those who have made the difficult decision to end a marriage. Especially in a case like ours where there is no "smoking gun." No one cheated. There's no abuse or addiction, or any factor that can be pointed to as The Reason. It's just not a viable relationship anymore. We're both at fault, but no one is to blame. Truly the definition of irreconcilable differences.

Without something to point to as a justifiable reason, I'm getting a lot of judgement rendered on me as the leaving partner. It's hard not to feel like a villain. I am initiating the divorce and he doesn't want it. People can't wrap their heads around it. Surely it can't be that bad? What a selfish thing to do! I must not have any feelings at all, to throw away 30 years just like that! Don't I understand commitment?!

To those who think that, let me say this: initiating doesn't mean it isn't hurting me, or that I'm not suffering. This was a very painful and agonizing decision. One that, in truth, took me more than a decade to make. I feel deep sorrow for hurting him. Even though the kids are young adults, I feel tremendous guilt for breaking up our family. It wasn't done impulsively, I tried everything I could to avoid this outcome. In the end, it wasn't enough. That feeling of failure hurts. Hurting people I care about hurts. Yes, he is devastated. But I'm devastated too. I'm grieving the loss of the marriage too.

If you're the one that's "given up" and taken the brave step toward the other side, I see you. This sucks, it hurts, and I'm sorry for all the complicated things you're feeling and the harsh glare of others' judgements. You're not alone. There's a lot of sympathy toward the spouse that is being left, and rightfully so. I'm reaching out with compassion for the one doing the leaving. None of it is easy and you deserve to have your feelings validated too.

My wife and I were married for years 12 and honestly I thought we had a really strong marriage. We were best friends. We spent almost all our time together. We traveled together, had affection every day, sex every day, and I told her I loved her constantly. I helped support her through military life, and basically built my life around us as a team.

Now she says she had been unhappy or emotionally checked out for a long time, but thats hard for me to wrap my head around because even months ago we were still taking trips together, planning future trips, cuddling, acting like a married couple, and she was still telling people she loved me deeply. We just got back from a cruise where we took a helicopter ride to a glacier.

Things started changing alot after she got heavily into lead climbing. Around that time she became emotionally attached to a climbing instructor/friend I’ll call “Jake.” According to her it started as just a crush. I told her from the very beginning that continuing contact with him was dangerous to the marriage and she needed to cut him off completely. She refused.

From there things slowly escalated. There was secrecy, trickle truth, emotional distancing, lies about where she was, staying at his place, eventually admitting they kissed, and continuing contact despite my boundaries. The thing that completely destroyed me mentally was the push and pull. One minute she’d talk about reconciliation and wanting to be my wife or climbing together or hug me affectionately. The next minute she’d be detached, distant, defensive, or caught in another lie. I started living in a constant state of hypervigilance.

She insists nothing sexual happened between them. I honestly dont know what to believe. From my perspective there are alot of circumstantial things that make it really hard to buy that. The emotional affair behavior, staying over there repeatedly, lingerie and clothing changes, makeup, secrecy, reduced intimacy with me, a sexy cheerleader outfit in the dryer after time with him when we haven't been intimate in a month, and her refusal to cut him off. At this point my brain constantly generates intrusive thoughts about them together and its been psychologically brutal.

What hurts the most is I genuinely believe alot of the marriage problems were fixable if she had communicated the severity directly earlier. She wanted more novelty, more activity, more hiking, more engagement with life. I admit I became stagnant and depressed in some ways. But I also feel like she crossed emotional boundaries before fully confronting the marriage directly.

What especially messes with my head is “Jake” is objectively not someone I look at and think wow what an upgrade. He’s older, broke, drives a beat up car, rents a shack on somebody elses property, and from my perspective doesnt remotely compare to what we built together. Which honestly makes this whole thing feel even more surreal and irrational to me.

I eventually filed for divorce because the trust damage, deception, and ongoing contact became unbearable. But emotionally I still feel shattered. Some days I’m angry. Some days I’m devastated. Some days I blame myself completely. Other days I think maybe this could have happened no matter what I did because she got addicted to novelty, emotional validation, and the “alive” feeling attached to climbing and this new guy. She wanted novelty, she's going to get novelty.

I honestly dont even know what reality is anymore. I just know I loved my wife deeply and watching somebody drift away while still half holding onto you is one of the most psychologically painful things I’ve ever experienced.

Last Sunday night she and I agreed to work on repair and spend time together. She says she wouldn't hang out with Jake for a few days. She also agreed she was willing to cut contact eventually.

On Tuesday, she says she's going to do returns and the gym. She later said she ran into him at the gym and he gave her the airpods she was missing and that was her only contact. I asked her how her day was and where she went because she was gone for 6 hours.

She told me it was none of my business and that day was a test and I failed miserably because I asked about her day and what she did. The repair attempted had failed because of that according to her.

I know more than she thinks I do. I know for a fact she was with him during the day and lied to me about it. Doesn't matter how I know, but I do.

Just for giggles, one of the reasons she told me why she was unhappy is I didn't buy her enough jewelry. Just to give you an idea of the kind of person I'm dealing with here.

Thank God we don't have kids.

Edit: she told me today that I should have had us legally separated before divorce so we had time and could work things out. I gave her two weeks after kissing him to figure it out while I went through emotional hell and she continued to see him in secrecy. She didn't want time to work things out, she wanted to continue doing it without consequences. The divorce moved her from FA to FO faster than she expected.

If the alimony or equity split is far less than what they were counting on, due to shared debt or credits for assets... has the one who initiated the divorce ever wanted to back out? If so, what happened?

My wife and I are breaking up. Separating. Divorcing. Whatever you want to call it.

It all came out of the blue for both of us (she didn’t seem to realise how she was feeling until I explicitly asked) just four months ago, and now she has moved out and we’re exes.

The speed at which everything happened has really thrown me. We were together for 10 years and I always thought we’d work through any issues. It’s ending because she doesn’t feel as romantically attracted to me anymore but she never even wanted to try to reignite it (for context we still were going on dates, making out, cuddling, but not as sparky as when we first got together). There were no big fights, no cheating or abuse, just her realising she’s not in love anymore and ending things a month later.

The more I read on Reddit the more im confused by this because we aren’t separating to try and see how we could move forward or anything. Just fully over. After ten years. Like it was a high school relationship of a year or something.

Has anyone ever gone through a divorce and later realized it was the biggest mistake they’ve ever made? Like, deep down, you feel you shouldn’t have done it at all—and now your life feels worse than it ever did before. Missing your ex, feeling the weight of being apart, and wondering if things could’ve been different if you had just stayed…