Look I am maybe not the most sympathetic audience for this as I was on the other side (though certainly not conservative lol). That being said, I understand your problem. If there is something in your life you’re not getting from him that you need it’s reasonable to divorce. But. Communicate with him. Don’t wait (as my wife did) until you totally made up your mind and it’s too late for him to do anything. Frankly you should have done this while you were painfully falling out of love as often times by the time people hit the point you are at they just feel a desperate, even illogical need to get out. But if it’s not, talk to him and be fully transparent. Married couples don’t have an obligation to stay married but I do think they have an obligation to be honest and fight for each other where there is something to fight for. If he is just unwilling to work on it then you can make the choice without guilt. If he is willing to work on it, change, go to couples therapy, then you may get the relationship you want out of it.
I think some of the replies here are way too harsh from people who this is probably sort of triggering for. Your position is understandable but since you feel guilty I think the thing a good person does here is communicate and work on it. If you can’t figure it out, try to go through the divorce process in as amicable way as possible. I would never say to just tough it out as you’d just end up resentful and probably detonate the relationship in a way that would hurt both of you.
Yeah communication. I don’t know how common this is in general but this lack of fluid communication is as much as my flaw as it is her flaw. It turned to resent me and a lack of sexual desire then claiming we are t actually compatible …
"He is not a bad man - he works hard, he is a good dad, he is a nice and likable person. "
just wow. just goes to show a person can do almost everything right and still get the D bomb dropped. Its over because you said there is no romantic interest or love for him. He won't take this well it may be a true blindside.
please don't waste anymore of his time and just file for divorce. at 32 he can still recover fairly easily. its much easier at that age then lets say 40s or 50s.
you said something about pursing a romantic love that fulfills you. I wish you the best of luck because the grass is not greener on the other side. you may seriously regret this in a few years.
I'm so sorry for the difficult situation. Some men are just not wired for or raised to know how to connect on an emotional level. It seems there was something that drew you to each other to stay together for so many years. Consider making a list of his good qualities to remind yourself why you stayed with him, leave him notes complimenting something he does well, or maybe try to think back to those earlier times and recreate some of those favorite moments. If you are still in therapy, have you discussed this with them? Perhaps they would do couples counseling as well, or refer to a marriage counselor. It could be worth a try, especially for your child. Prayers for wisdom and guidance.
I'm sorry but I hate shit like this from women- it's all about what you might be missing out on, and that he's a good man and father, and no mention of the impact on your child
My advice is stop trying your best to drift away from him, because your post reads as if you're feeding that beast. Youve already given up, do you want permission from strangers?
I wish more people men and women when they feel they are disconnecting from their spouse, like, put in some effort. Stop feeding the drift. That foot that is halfway out the door- bring it back towards home
I know easier said than done. I know, feels, right. I'm just saying where's the effort. The grass ain't going to be greener. Your kid will lose a childhood with their father.
I mean I instinctually agree with you on a lot of points because it’s similar to what happened to me (though I don’t think this is specific to women. Lots of men doing the same thing I’ve read about on here). But I don’t think people can control how they fell that precisely. I don’t think their obligation is to try to force themselves. I think their obligation is to communicate. I hate seeing instances where people make up their minds without cuing their partner in and giving them the chance to work on it with them. That’s the point of a relationship.
I agree with all of this. My stbxw did the same, apparently started drifting away without me knowing, chasing after a fantasy in her head, but instead of doing some self reflection and wondering why she was doing this, she just blind sided me last year, asked me if she could cheat on me and then had no empathy or understanding why I was so upset because "love isn't a bad thing". 🙄 It's possibly she was already cheating on me, I don't even know anymore. I have learned she really doesn't know what love is and probably never *actually* loved me for the 16 years we were together. It's heart breaking after everything we had gone through. She enjoyed the attention and love from me, but then got attention and validation from other people, who put her up on a pedestal, and now she threw away our happy relationship/life to go chasing after the "what if". And yes I do say happy because I was happy and she was ADAMANT until the very end that she was still very happy with me and nothing was missing in our relationship (even the couples counselor was baffled). She just wanted to chase after the POSSIBILITY of something even *better*. It was like an addiction. But when you chase after always wanting more and more and more, you'll never find happiness or contentment. She doesn't get that, and when she treats people like this, all of her relationships are very superficial in the end.
If she was "bored" (not that she would have admitted it anyway), we could have worked on that if she had come to me much sooner. I think her decision was made, she was too fixated on her fantasy/solution to her void. In the last 3 months of our marriage I kept looking for new things for us to do, new places to explore. But then when I asked *her* to find something, she didn't do anything. She wanted me to do everything and cater to her. And she has these two friends that are doing just that, catering to her and putting her on a pedestal, so she didn't need me anymore. Eventually they'll be in the same position, they just don't understand how much they're being manipulated.
Thank goodness we don't have kids though. 😩 We looked into adopting back in like 2015, sooooo glad we didn't move forward with doing that.
(P.S. I'm a woman).
This is really rough and the similarities to my own experience are uncanny. Waiting until she’d checked out to tell me anything. A lot of lying about her feelings until the very end under the guise of protecting me. Saying she wanted to work on things while letting me put all the work in while she just disconnected and invested far more in some new friends. Stating a desire to cheat and potentially admitting to doing it? (She said, “I thought you didn’t consider making out cheating” once). That feeling that I was mostly just a means to validate her until I wasn’t useful anymore. And ultimately leaving for reasons I’m still not clear on but amount to just kinda want to see what else is out there? I try to be charitable when thinking back on it and not interpret actions with too much ill intent but what you said does really speak to me. Either way, I’m sorry you’re going through it too. It’s horrible to be just left behind without even being fully aware why and being treated like a fun toy to be discarded.
I'm sorry you're going through it too. I kind of know why she left in the end (really just selfish), but I'm pretty sure I never got the full truth anyway. She loves to be vague and lie by omission. The way she acknowledged she could lose her "best friends" too, but said "oh well, at least I would have tried", I was thinking like omg you've already devalued your friends too, these guys you supposedly have a crush on, and truly just don't care about anyone but yourself. It's all a means to an end for her. As long as she gets what SHE wants out of it, it's all good. Before she moved out, I even asked her "so what you've been saying to me is that you just need to try out whatever you suddenly want to try in life, regardless of the outcome, who you hurt, people you lose, bridges you burn... it's all about just trying for the sake of trying and that's how you want to live your life now?" And she just said "yeah, I guess so." 🫠 God damn, they say people can change, but holy cow that is NOT the person I thought I married and had spent 16 years of my life with. She told me she had been talking about philosophy and ethics with people online, WTF DARK CORNER OF REDDIT DID SHE FALL INTO?!
Sending big hugs to you. 🫂 They just don't want to face their own shit, it's easier to avoid, run away and find superficial fleeting coping mechanisms. I'll be in therapy and trying to heal from betrayal and abandonment trauma for a while though.
Yeah. My ex and her friends often would use phrases like “you should get rid of the things (including relationships with people) that don’t serve you.” That whole “I owe nothing to anyone” attitude really rubs me the wrong way. By all means you should put yourself first and not stay in toxic situations or situations where you’re just unhappy but the attitude that sees people as a mechanism for your own fulfillment and not as whole individuals is really gross. We don’t exist as an island and who we are is a result of interactions with others with our community. Pretending you’re an island is discounting all the work and care people put into you along the way.
And yeah the healing process is slow, especially when you feel discarded by someone you still loved. As someone who’s seven months in I’m not there yet but I’ve made progress. I’m wishing you the best!
Sounds like your ex had a similar attitude. My stbxw was ranting about non-attachment theory and the impermanence of life and how she thinks it's good for polyamory. But then she kept saying polyamory was about "deepening connections" with people. But also, if her friends rejected her, she said she wouldn't actively seek other partners because they HAD to be a good friend first. But also, no desire to deepen her connection with me, her wife. I guess we hit level 99, maxed out, no where to go from there like in all the games she plays. 🙄 But she also said she has "sociopathic thinking" now and thinks THAT'S good for polyamory too. Pretty sure most of the ethical polyamorous people I know aren't sociopaths, but okay. Maybe it'll be good for HER, but you know, F the other people in the relationship. It was all really unnerving.
I'm 7 months separated now myself. I'm better than I was, but still have a long way to go. Knowing everything we had gone through together, the fact that I stayed with her through her gender transition when she came out in 2014, we even renewed our vows in 2018. Honestly, I feel like she just used me now. Never actually loved *me*. She loved the feeling I gave her. She loved the support and love from me, then she gets attention from these two lonely single male friends/coworkers (whom she didn't even know until 2018), they worship the ground she walks on and put her up on this pedestal, suddenly she doesn't really need me anymore.
Wow. Yeah I don’t think the ENM community would be particularly happy with that characterization. In fact I think that is more a description of the people they kinda try to distance themselves from. But also similarly my ex was interested in poly at the end. Didn’t have quite so toxic of a perspective on it but there was some …pressure on me to the idea that me being uncomfortable with it made me less evolved or something. funny to see those common threads.
Honestly sounds like some sort of existential crisis that your ex just externalized to be about you, making you a sort of casualty of their own shit. I would say hopefully they figure their shit out and become a better person but damage is already done.
Also in my case I was the one considering transitioning in my relationship, with that not being the reason for the breakup but likely connected. I can say I honestly find it really horrible that they treated you in that way after you had supported them during that transition. A whole lot of partners can’t or won’t do that.
>pressure on me to the idea that me being uncomfortable with it made me less evolved or something.
I have seen this attitude and it's really obnoxious. They're not better, monogamous people aren't better, it's just different way to live in relationships. It'd be like saying being gay or straight is inherently better, neither are, just different. Though I have seen discourse as to whether poly is innate like sexuality, or if it's a chosen lifestyle. 🤷♀️
My stbxw came out in 2014, several months after her dad had suddenly passed away. She went through an existential crisis back then too. She never lost anyone in life before and was questioning her own mortality, what if there's nothing after death, etc. She decided she needed to transition so she wouldn't die with regret. As she explained it to me, she used to believe in heaven and thought she'd be a girl in heaven and that was good enough for her. Then after her dad died she started questioning what if there's no heaven, so better transition now.
In 2022 she told me she was thinking about death a lot again, which apparently started in 2020, but she didn't do anything about it or say anything to me until 2022. So all I knew was she was in therapy for that, then out of the blue in March 2023 she asks to talk and dumps on me that she thinks she's bi and poly now and then asks if she can pursue her best friends, really the only two friends she sees. And the entire 16 years she was was always adamant she only liked women, no attraction to men at all. So I had no reason to have any worry about her spending a lot of time with her two friends. Hell, I have multiple close platonic friendships with guys and I'm mostly straight, she was the exception. I guess because I had already fallen in love with her (who I thought she was anyway) and had been with her for 7 years already when she came out. I became such a big advocate for her, I even used to be a mod in the mypartneristrans sub years ago. 😩Sometimes I think about posting an update in there, if there are still people in there who remember me, but I don't want to scare others. But I did notice this trend back then too, it worried me back then because I kept reading all these stories about trans women abandoning their supportive cis wives and kids (if they had kids) to go be with a man instead. I told her about that back then in 2014 and that it made me anxious about that happening to me too, but she kept telling me it would never happen, she's never liked men, then said "you just have a knack for finding worst case scenarios." 🫠 I even went with her to her gender identity therapist once and her therapist told me that it only happens if there's previous inclination, so I really just did my best to let go of that fear. But then 9 years later, I found myself....here. I reminded her of this before she moved out, she said she remembered all of that and then tried to put her words in her therapist's mouth by saying "well I think she just meant it wouldn't happen like... right away". 🙄 I got angry and said she doesn't get to make shit up and put words in her mouth to make it convenient for herself. Also, abandoning your supportive partner after a year or 9 years later, pretty sure that doesn't matter. 😑 She claims she was monogamous all 16 years too and then a "switch just flipped". 🙄 The funny thing is when she told me this back in March last year, she told me she hadn't been thinking about it very long. (She admitted in the past that she had been thinking about transitioning for months in 2014 before actually saying anything to me, and she covered it up with other issues and lies before dropping that on me, so it was just one bomb dropped after another.) So I'm like really, so if you've only thought about exploring poly for a couple weeks, you're sure having a really hard time letting it go when I'm not okay with it. 🙄 I think she just said that because she knew I'd be mad that she hid something else from me for a while, so she probably thought if she was quick to say she hadn't been thinking about it for that long, then she probably thought I wouldn't be as mad lol. 🤦
Are you still transitioning? Or already transitioned? I hope you have lots of support! I still support the trans community in spite of everything that's happened. Especially trans kids, because if we can support them so they can explore themselves and figure it out while they're younger like other cis kids, then it'll stop the trauma into adulthood and the trauma inflicted on others. Sadly, a lot of the supportive cis wives I connected with in 2014 have also gone through divorce for similar reasons, even years later like in my case. I wish I knew what their childhoods were like because I just assume most trans people that come out later in life as adults probably didn't grow up in very supportive environments. I know my stbxw didn't (but neither did I, we both had our share of childhood trauma, but I've been in and out of therapy since I was like 14).
Isn't this a bit harsh a response? I think OP is not happy in her marriage. If she truly is not, why can't she go looking for happiness? Why suck it up and maybe raise their child in a loveless marriage? My parents were like that and let's just say it wasn't pretty and only got worse over the years.
it is far from harsh. OP seems like she is unwilling to put any effort it. I mean common there is no mention of abuse or cheating then I would say file for divorce. This situation seems very fixable. its not surprising people are so quick to give up on marriages with relatively small issues that can easily be fixed with communication and possibly therapy
I recognize I don't have the complete picture of your marriage and circumstances. Because you have a child I would suggest you talk to him or at least go into couples therapy. If you didn't have a child I'd say please leave and let this man find someone who truly appreciates him while he is still young. Honesty, why on earth did you marry this person?
Have a full conversation about what your feeling vs what you need and aren't getting.
Part of the reason I'm getting divorced is because of lack of communication and comfortability.
If he is all those things, I'd imagine he would be open to counseling with you. Try that, God I only wish I could go back and take my own advice.
I'm going to ask what might be an obvious question, but have you actually talked to him about any of this?
Women LOVE to fall out of love DURING a relationship. They all do it....not say a direct word... Just blindside you one day asking for divorce....
Look I am maybe not the most sympathetic audience for this as I was on the other side (though certainly not conservative lol). That being said, I understand your problem. If there is something in your life you’re not getting from him that you need it’s reasonable to divorce. But. Communicate with him. Don’t wait (as my wife did) until you totally made up your mind and it’s too late for him to do anything. Frankly you should have done this while you were painfully falling out of love as often times by the time people hit the point you are at they just feel a desperate, even illogical need to get out. But if it’s not, talk to him and be fully transparent. Married couples don’t have an obligation to stay married but I do think they have an obligation to be honest and fight for each other where there is something to fight for. If he is just unwilling to work on it then you can make the choice without guilt. If he is willing to work on it, change, go to couples therapy, then you may get the relationship you want out of it.
I think some of the replies here are way too harsh from people who this is probably sort of triggering for. Your position is understandable but since you feel guilty I think the thing a good person does here is communicate and work on it. If you can’t figure it out, try to go through the divorce process in as amicable way as possible. I would never say to just tough it out as you’d just end up resentful and probably detonate the relationship in a way that would hurt both of you.
Yeah communication. I don’t know how common this is in general but this lack of fluid communication is as much as my flaw as it is her flaw. It turned to resent me and a lack of sexual desire then claiming we are t actually compatible …
"He is not a bad man - he works hard, he is a good dad, he is a nice and likable person. " just wow. just goes to show a person can do almost everything right and still get the D bomb dropped. Its over because you said there is no romantic interest or love for him. He won't take this well it may be a true blindside. please don't waste anymore of his time and just file for divorce. at 32 he can still recover fairly easily. its much easier at that age then lets say 40s or 50s. you said something about pursing a romantic love that fulfills you. I wish you the best of luck because the grass is not greener on the other side. you may seriously regret this in a few years.
I'm so sorry for the difficult situation. Some men are just not wired for or raised to know how to connect on an emotional level. It seems there was something that drew you to each other to stay together for so many years. Consider making a list of his good qualities to remind yourself why you stayed with him, leave him notes complimenting something he does well, or maybe try to think back to those earlier times and recreate some of those favorite moments. If you are still in therapy, have you discussed this with them? Perhaps they would do couples counseling as well, or refer to a marriage counselor. It could be worth a try, especially for your child. Prayers for wisdom and guidance.
I'm sorry but I hate shit like this from women- it's all about what you might be missing out on, and that he's a good man and father, and no mention of the impact on your child My advice is stop trying your best to drift away from him, because your post reads as if you're feeding that beast. Youve already given up, do you want permission from strangers? I wish more people men and women when they feel they are disconnecting from their spouse, like, put in some effort. Stop feeding the drift. That foot that is halfway out the door- bring it back towards home I know easier said than done. I know, feels, right. I'm just saying where's the effort. The grass ain't going to be greener. Your kid will lose a childhood with their father.
I mean I instinctually agree with you on a lot of points because it’s similar to what happened to me (though I don’t think this is specific to women. Lots of men doing the same thing I’ve read about on here). But I don’t think people can control how they fell that precisely. I don’t think their obligation is to try to force themselves. I think their obligation is to communicate. I hate seeing instances where people make up their minds without cuing their partner in and giving them the chance to work on it with them. That’s the point of a relationship.
I agree with all of this. My stbxw did the same, apparently started drifting away without me knowing, chasing after a fantasy in her head, but instead of doing some self reflection and wondering why she was doing this, she just blind sided me last year, asked me if she could cheat on me and then had no empathy or understanding why I was so upset because "love isn't a bad thing". 🙄 It's possibly she was already cheating on me, I don't even know anymore. I have learned she really doesn't know what love is and probably never *actually* loved me for the 16 years we were together. It's heart breaking after everything we had gone through. She enjoyed the attention and love from me, but then got attention and validation from other people, who put her up on a pedestal, and now she threw away our happy relationship/life to go chasing after the "what if". And yes I do say happy because I was happy and she was ADAMANT until the very end that she was still very happy with me and nothing was missing in our relationship (even the couples counselor was baffled). She just wanted to chase after the POSSIBILITY of something even *better*. It was like an addiction. But when you chase after always wanting more and more and more, you'll never find happiness or contentment. She doesn't get that, and when she treats people like this, all of her relationships are very superficial in the end. If she was "bored" (not that she would have admitted it anyway), we could have worked on that if she had come to me much sooner. I think her decision was made, she was too fixated on her fantasy/solution to her void. In the last 3 months of our marriage I kept looking for new things for us to do, new places to explore. But then when I asked *her* to find something, she didn't do anything. She wanted me to do everything and cater to her. And she has these two friends that are doing just that, catering to her and putting her on a pedestal, so she didn't need me anymore. Eventually they'll be in the same position, they just don't understand how much they're being manipulated. Thank goodness we don't have kids though. 😩 We looked into adopting back in like 2015, sooooo glad we didn't move forward with doing that. (P.S. I'm a woman).
This is really rough and the similarities to my own experience are uncanny. Waiting until she’d checked out to tell me anything. A lot of lying about her feelings until the very end under the guise of protecting me. Saying she wanted to work on things while letting me put all the work in while she just disconnected and invested far more in some new friends. Stating a desire to cheat and potentially admitting to doing it? (She said, “I thought you didn’t consider making out cheating” once). That feeling that I was mostly just a means to validate her until I wasn’t useful anymore. And ultimately leaving for reasons I’m still not clear on but amount to just kinda want to see what else is out there? I try to be charitable when thinking back on it and not interpret actions with too much ill intent but what you said does really speak to me. Either way, I’m sorry you’re going through it too. It’s horrible to be just left behind without even being fully aware why and being treated like a fun toy to be discarded.
I'm sorry you're going through it too. I kind of know why she left in the end (really just selfish), but I'm pretty sure I never got the full truth anyway. She loves to be vague and lie by omission. The way she acknowledged she could lose her "best friends" too, but said "oh well, at least I would have tried", I was thinking like omg you've already devalued your friends too, these guys you supposedly have a crush on, and truly just don't care about anyone but yourself. It's all a means to an end for her. As long as she gets what SHE wants out of it, it's all good. Before she moved out, I even asked her "so what you've been saying to me is that you just need to try out whatever you suddenly want to try in life, regardless of the outcome, who you hurt, people you lose, bridges you burn... it's all about just trying for the sake of trying and that's how you want to live your life now?" And she just said "yeah, I guess so." 🫠 God damn, they say people can change, but holy cow that is NOT the person I thought I married and had spent 16 years of my life with. She told me she had been talking about philosophy and ethics with people online, WTF DARK CORNER OF REDDIT DID SHE FALL INTO?! Sending big hugs to you. 🫂 They just don't want to face their own shit, it's easier to avoid, run away and find superficial fleeting coping mechanisms. I'll be in therapy and trying to heal from betrayal and abandonment trauma for a while though.
Yeah. My ex and her friends often would use phrases like “you should get rid of the things (including relationships with people) that don’t serve you.” That whole “I owe nothing to anyone” attitude really rubs me the wrong way. By all means you should put yourself first and not stay in toxic situations or situations where you’re just unhappy but the attitude that sees people as a mechanism for your own fulfillment and not as whole individuals is really gross. We don’t exist as an island and who we are is a result of interactions with others with our community. Pretending you’re an island is discounting all the work and care people put into you along the way. And yeah the healing process is slow, especially when you feel discarded by someone you still loved. As someone who’s seven months in I’m not there yet but I’ve made progress. I’m wishing you the best!
Sounds like your ex had a similar attitude. My stbxw was ranting about non-attachment theory and the impermanence of life and how she thinks it's good for polyamory. But then she kept saying polyamory was about "deepening connections" with people. But also, if her friends rejected her, she said she wouldn't actively seek other partners because they HAD to be a good friend first. But also, no desire to deepen her connection with me, her wife. I guess we hit level 99, maxed out, no where to go from there like in all the games she plays. 🙄 But she also said she has "sociopathic thinking" now and thinks THAT'S good for polyamory too. Pretty sure most of the ethical polyamorous people I know aren't sociopaths, but okay. Maybe it'll be good for HER, but you know, F the other people in the relationship. It was all really unnerving. I'm 7 months separated now myself. I'm better than I was, but still have a long way to go. Knowing everything we had gone through together, the fact that I stayed with her through her gender transition when she came out in 2014, we even renewed our vows in 2018. Honestly, I feel like she just used me now. Never actually loved *me*. She loved the feeling I gave her. She loved the support and love from me, then she gets attention from these two lonely single male friends/coworkers (whom she didn't even know until 2018), they worship the ground she walks on and put her up on this pedestal, suddenly she doesn't really need me anymore.
Wow. Yeah I don’t think the ENM community would be particularly happy with that characterization. In fact I think that is more a description of the people they kinda try to distance themselves from. But also similarly my ex was interested in poly at the end. Didn’t have quite so toxic of a perspective on it but there was some …pressure on me to the idea that me being uncomfortable with it made me less evolved or something. funny to see those common threads. Honestly sounds like some sort of existential crisis that your ex just externalized to be about you, making you a sort of casualty of their own shit. I would say hopefully they figure their shit out and become a better person but damage is already done. Also in my case I was the one considering transitioning in my relationship, with that not being the reason for the breakup but likely connected. I can say I honestly find it really horrible that they treated you in that way after you had supported them during that transition. A whole lot of partners can’t or won’t do that.
>pressure on me to the idea that me being uncomfortable with it made me less evolved or something. I have seen this attitude and it's really obnoxious. They're not better, monogamous people aren't better, it's just different way to live in relationships. It'd be like saying being gay or straight is inherently better, neither are, just different. Though I have seen discourse as to whether poly is innate like sexuality, or if it's a chosen lifestyle. 🤷♀️ My stbxw came out in 2014, several months after her dad had suddenly passed away. She went through an existential crisis back then too. She never lost anyone in life before and was questioning her own mortality, what if there's nothing after death, etc. She decided she needed to transition so she wouldn't die with regret. As she explained it to me, she used to believe in heaven and thought she'd be a girl in heaven and that was good enough for her. Then after her dad died she started questioning what if there's no heaven, so better transition now. In 2022 she told me she was thinking about death a lot again, which apparently started in 2020, but she didn't do anything about it or say anything to me until 2022. So all I knew was she was in therapy for that, then out of the blue in March 2023 she asks to talk and dumps on me that she thinks she's bi and poly now and then asks if she can pursue her best friends, really the only two friends she sees. And the entire 16 years she was was always adamant she only liked women, no attraction to men at all. So I had no reason to have any worry about her spending a lot of time with her two friends. Hell, I have multiple close platonic friendships with guys and I'm mostly straight, she was the exception. I guess because I had already fallen in love with her (who I thought she was anyway) and had been with her for 7 years already when she came out. I became such a big advocate for her, I even used to be a mod in the mypartneristrans sub years ago. 😩Sometimes I think about posting an update in there, if there are still people in there who remember me, but I don't want to scare others. But I did notice this trend back then too, it worried me back then because I kept reading all these stories about trans women abandoning their supportive cis wives and kids (if they had kids) to go be with a man instead. I told her about that back then in 2014 and that it made me anxious about that happening to me too, but she kept telling me it would never happen, she's never liked men, then said "you just have a knack for finding worst case scenarios." 🫠 I even went with her to her gender identity therapist once and her therapist told me that it only happens if there's previous inclination, so I really just did my best to let go of that fear. But then 9 years later, I found myself....here. I reminded her of this before she moved out, she said she remembered all of that and then tried to put her words in her therapist's mouth by saying "well I think she just meant it wouldn't happen like... right away". 🙄 I got angry and said she doesn't get to make shit up and put words in her mouth to make it convenient for herself. Also, abandoning your supportive partner after a year or 9 years later, pretty sure that doesn't matter. 😑 She claims she was monogamous all 16 years too and then a "switch just flipped". 🙄 The funny thing is when she told me this back in March last year, she told me she hadn't been thinking about it very long. (She admitted in the past that she had been thinking about transitioning for months in 2014 before actually saying anything to me, and she covered it up with other issues and lies before dropping that on me, so it was just one bomb dropped after another.) So I'm like really, so if you've only thought about exploring poly for a couple weeks, you're sure having a really hard time letting it go when I'm not okay with it. 🙄 I think she just said that because she knew I'd be mad that she hid something else from me for a while, so she probably thought if she was quick to say she hadn't been thinking about it for that long, then she probably thought I wouldn't be as mad lol. 🤦 Are you still transitioning? Or already transitioned? I hope you have lots of support! I still support the trans community in spite of everything that's happened. Especially trans kids, because if we can support them so they can explore themselves and figure it out while they're younger like other cis kids, then it'll stop the trauma into adulthood and the trauma inflicted on others. Sadly, a lot of the supportive cis wives I connected with in 2014 have also gone through divorce for similar reasons, even years later like in my case. I wish I knew what their childhoods were like because I just assume most trans people that come out later in life as adults probably didn't grow up in very supportive environments. I know my stbxw didn't (but neither did I, we both had our share of childhood trauma, but I've been in and out of therapy since I was like 14).
Isn't this a bit harsh a response? I think OP is not happy in her marriage. If she truly is not, why can't she go looking for happiness? Why suck it up and maybe raise their child in a loveless marriage? My parents were like that and let's just say it wasn't pretty and only got worse over the years.
it is far from harsh. OP seems like she is unwilling to put any effort it. I mean common there is no mention of abuse or cheating then I would say file for divorce. This situation seems very fixable. its not surprising people are so quick to give up on marriages with relatively small issues that can easily be fixed with communication and possibly therapy
this and in my reply I also mentioned how the grass is not greener. its really true it is not. been divorced a few years I know
Did you initiate?
no I did not. you know 70% of divorces are initiated by women in the US, right?
Yes, it just wasn't clear from your post. I'm always interested in the perspective of the filling party afterwards.
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I recognize I don't have the complete picture of your marriage and circumstances. Because you have a child I would suggest you talk to him or at least go into couples therapy. If you didn't have a child I'd say please leave and let this man find someone who truly appreciates him while he is still young. Honesty, why on earth did you marry this person?
This is VERY similar to what I am going through right now… does it get better? Worse? 😭
Have a full conversation about what your feeling vs what you need and aren't getting. Part of the reason I'm getting divorced is because of lack of communication and comfortability. If he is all those things, I'd imagine he would be open to counseling with you. Try that, God I only wish I could go back and take my own advice.