I do think some people so over-rate a love that got away. He also needs to examine why he didn’t move forward - maybe he instinctively believed they could not last in a marriage.
Many, many people are in marriages that are ‘comfortable’. In my situation, after dating some time, I grew to love H and he loved me. I knew many things would work out well with us, and they have. We haven’t always had smooth sailing (including a very serious illness that was life threatening and has been debilitating to a certain degree after years of treatment) but we are both looking forward to the next steps in life, and are relieved about many things.
FM, I would ask to hold off moving forward on any kind of split while this gets sorted out. Also with concerns for all the facets of what it would mean to each of you if you moved forward with a split. And if indeed there is no way to reconcile.
If H is lonely now, would be being alone be an improvement, or does he think he can find someone else that doesn’t make him feel ‘lonely’?
H and I do many things separately, and we do some things together. Maybe there are things he enjoys that he thinks you should enjoy doing together but he hasn’t shared those thoughts with you?
That was the norm for most of human history—the normalization of love as a basis for marriage is a remarkably modern innovation (and, really, probably a bigger deal than anything we’ve seen happen with marriage norms over the past half century).
After we divorced, my ex married a woman he had dated before we were married. She had kids then and didn’t want more. Looking back, I think he broke up with her and married me because he wanted his own kids. But went back to her in the end (after 23 years of marriage). At least he never said we didn’t have chemistry… but I know something about how this is making the OP feel.
It might be worth doing some discreet checking to see if the woman in the long-ago “chemistry relationship” has had any recent changes in her own marital status. News of her divorce or widowhood may have triggered fantasies in your husband’s head. It would be nice to rule that out.
@fauxmaven apologies if I have missed this somehow, but many here (rightfully) are stressing how important it is for you to protect your finances. Are you willing to share if you have taken any step to do that (contacting a lawyer or your accountant)??? I think some of us might breath a little sigh of relief and pat you on the back if that has already happened.
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keep in mind that the SAHM we are talking about is pretty rare these days, often both spouses are working
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Not rare…and especially not rare when kids are young. And often when the wife/mom is working, she may only be working part-time (while kids are in school, nights or weekends). There are a lot of married women out there that do not have their own health insurance.
Maybe that is something that needs to change. As long as the insured ex-spouse hasn’t remarried, he/she should be able to cover his/her ex-spouse (as long as that spouse hasn’t remarried). Heck, if we can cover a married child on our insurance up to age 26, I don’t know why carrying an exspouse is such a big deal.
When I was working in aerospace (excellent insurance) a co-worker confided to me that he had been carrying his ex-W on his health plan for many years (neither had remarried). He never told the company that he had gotten divorced.
Nowadays, this probably couldn’t happen as easily as it could back then.
I’m a CPA. Usually one member of the marriage has a much better handle on assets, debts, cash. Make sure you know all of this. I hope it works out, but I can’t highly enough follow the other posters’ recommendations to get good legal advice and be highly aware of all aspects of your financial situation.
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might be worth doing some discreet checking to see if the woman in the long-ago “chemistry relationship” has had any recent changes in her own marital status. News of her divorce or widowhood may have triggered fantasies in your husband’s head. It would be nice to rule that out.
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Oh wow…that could be it. MANY marriages have broken up after one spouse “reconnects” with an old flame via Facebook or other social media.
My anacdotel experience has been that the man already has someone else or will find someone else very quickly. So this later day divorce sprung on the woman seems to be much harder on the woman.
Men in their 60’s can marry women in their 50’s or even 40’s or younger if they are rich enough. It just doesn’t happen that way so much for woman. And marrying a man in his 70’s or 80’s probably means taking care of someone.
So I just gotta say it stinks that a man decides after 30 years that there was no chemistry. You sleazy b-tard.
My guess is that if he is saying he will make up his mind over the next year he may not have someone – but he may consider broaching the topic to be fair warning that he is looking, and he may not wait out the year if he finds someone (new or old).
This brings up another aspect of how one can feel lonely and not having one’s own emotional needs met…if one is used heavily as a “therapist” for one’s spouse, SO, or even an emotionally needy friend.
This is made worse for many males including yours truly as many males are socialized in a manner where complaining about one’s problems or a bad day, especially if it’s chronic and/or for more than a few minutes at most during each complaining session is perceived as a negative indictment of one’s lack of emotional strength/character or worse, being inconsiderate in dumping one’s problems on others when the “proper” path is to try solving such issues within oneself while involving others as minimally as possible. .
I see this in action even in the relatively progressive environments of academia or progressive lefty activist groups as one older male college classmate with this very tendency has lost many friends and is regarded by his own admission as “a joke” by many Profs and peers in academia and progressive activist groups.
On the flipside, it seems there’s no issues with large groups of women holding long gripe sessions in school, work, and out at restaurants/coffee shops. While it seems natural to them and widely accepted in our society, I’d feel it very odd to be a part of such a social activity. While many mostly female friends state they find such sessions to be helpful in making themselves feel better, that’s very odd for two reasons:
I know very few male friends who'd participate in this with a tiny handful of exceptions....and those exceptions tend to have serious social problems precisely because their inclinations to gripe about their problems chronically and/or for hours each time tends to cause others to ostracize them or otherwise not take them seriously.
I personally don't find taking about my problems/issues at length to make me feel better. If anything, it tends to create a negative feedback reinforcement loop I find counterproductive in general. Much rather get together with friends to do some fun activity together instead.
Considering all that, it’s pretty odd many women feel comfortable telling me a lot about themselves with no prompting…including using me as “a therapist” in this manner. Female friends who know me say this is a good thing.
In actuality, this “trait” fills me with a sense of dread as IT IS EMOTIONALLY DRAINING and it’s not something many male friends do with each other except on extremely rare emergency occasions(I.e. Death of family member/friend, breakup, loss of job, severe financial/life setback).
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I spent this past weekend away from the wife. When I got back, I was the unlucky recipient of about 3 solid hours Sunday night of her complaining about her work. It can be emotionally draining, I find myself looking for an escape, which is why I brought up the 5:1 good-to-bad ratio as a marker for a happy marriage.
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This gets back to an earlier concern that perhaps the attention the OP had towards her oldest son’s troubles began to wear on the husband, particularly since that was his stepson, not his own son. Maybe the OP needs to explore that…find out if her H felt ignored because the OP was (naturally) preoccupied with what was going on with the son.
@oldfort: You asked a question in Post #229 about whether a person could have a QDRO with one ex-spouse and therefore split the pension and then do it again with a second spouse. Absolutely one could.
Suppose, for example that the present value of the husband’s pension is, at the time of divorce, $500,000, and suppose the QDRO with the first wife says the pension should be split 50-50. So at that time the remaining PV for the husband is $250,000. Husband remarries at some point and after 10 years gets divorced from Second Wife. Let’s say the PV of the “new” pension amount for the husband is back up to $500,000. If the husband divorces Second Wife, let’s assume (because it’s a shorter marriage) that the QDRO gives Second Wife 25% of the pension. So the second wife would get a pension with a PV of $125,000 and the husband would have a pension with a value of $375,000.
The husband is really messing with his retirement income by giving part of his pension away to all these wives, but hey – whatever floats your boat.
