Ok, I've decided to come out of the closet, so to speak (no not that way you sick bastards).
Seems I can't bump a thread from last August, but given the current mood of ATOT, I thought I'd give an update on my situation.
When the Armitage account got banned, I was about to consult a lawyer. I eventually talked to 5 or 6 before settling on one. That's the first bit of advice ... talk to several, I'm damn glad I didn't listen to some of those guys. One guy essentially told me to fold up my tent, give her everything she wanted and hope for the best ... not.
anyway, found another counselor also ... a marriage & family counselor rather then the clinical social worker we saw at first. She's awesome ... took the time to really understand the situation from both sides, instead of tossing out psychological cliches, calls a spade a spade, for both sides, etc. An older lady, reminds me of my grandmother, and has some great stories about growing up in Berlin during WWII.
Anyway, that didn't matter, as my wife never took it seriously, and actually lied to the counselor. We saw her seprately first, and the counselor was very positive with me. That she thought this could be worked out, and my wife wanted to work it out, etc. At the same time that my wife was telling me she wanted to leave, that she didn't want to work it out. Turns out she was outright lying to the counselor ... came out in our first joint session, and boy was she (the counselor) pissed off! Anyway, things went downhill from there as you would expect ... counselor actully told my wife to her face to grow up and act like an adult instead of a 14 year old school girl.
Abut this time, my wife suddenly announced that she wanted sole custody of the children, and I would get "standard visitiation" (every other weekend), and wanted me to pic them up after daycare 3 days a week (she works 3 12 hr shifts a week), get them dinner, then deliver them to her place for the night. Of course I told her bulsh|t ... I'm their father not their babysitter. She said she'd fight me for everything if I didn't agree to this, and I told her fine, we'll both go bankrupt, but I'll never agree to it. Counselor told her she was being unreasonable also, and my lawyer told me she'd likely lose, but it would be damned expensive. The only explanation she would give was "because I'm the mother". Well fvck you, I'm the father!
A little history, for the record. I easily bear at last half of the parental responsibility for the kids. They go to daycare 3 days a week. I help get them ready in the morning, I drop them off, pick them up, interact with the daycare staff, etc. On those nights, I make them dinner, get them ready for bed, read them their stories, sing them their songs, and have them in bed before she comes home. That last bit was at her insistance ... she would get pissed off if the kids weren't in bed by the time she got home, because they would get all spun up and excited to see her, and be hard to get to bed then. She had them the other two weekdays, but I always made sure I had time to play with them, and help put them to bed on those days also. She works at least 2, sometimes up to 4 weekend days a month, and then they are all mine. And in the last year she always managed to find something to do on the weekends ... working extra shifts, running events, etc. ... I went 3 months straight once without a weekend day to myself, and this is while building an enormous addition (1400 ft^2 + garage) that SHE wanted. When I complained, she hired a babysitter on the weekends, and then flew her mother up from S.A. to help out. There have been some incidences of very poor judgement or insensitivity on her part wrt the kids also, but I won't drag that out here. Suffice to say that one ended with a call to the poison control center. If the kids get sick on her work days, it's ussually me that stays with them, takes them to the doctor, etc. I'm often the one taking them to birthdays, play dates, etc.
Cliff's Notes ... I am a very involved father. Moreso then she is, and much more patient & responsible with the kids also.
So anyway ... 2 weeks later, and I was a complete wreck during that time, she reverses herself as quickly as she demanded full custody to begin with. No explanation. At this point we have temporary orders that specify a shared parenting arrangement where I have them 3 weekdays and every other weekend. But of course, she insists that its impossible for her to scheduleher work days in a block (ie. MTW, or WThF) so the kids can have some consistency. She insists on keeping her MWF schedule, so at least one weekday, when she has them, I'll be doing the daycare & dinner bit, then dropping them off at her place, and one weekday, she'll have them all day, until I pick them up after work. At least until my daughter starts kindergarten next fall. I wanted to fight for her changing her work schedule to something more consistent for the kids. My lawyer told me to STFU (literally!). That if this goes through, I'd be getting a much better deal then most fathers get without spending a ton of money. And once the kids are in school, it'l all have to change anyway.
Now we're up to mid october, and she decides she needs to see a lawyer also. She puts a retainer on the first guy she talks to, and files the papers the same day. To add further insult, it was Oct 14 ... 9 years to the day since we met.
At the end of October, she went to NY to run the marathon ... was gone 8 days I think, and worked several days straight on either side of the trip, so I definitely have documentation that I am capable of taking ful responsibility for the kids. She's never taken care of them herself for more then 3 or 4 days straight.
BTW, she's still livng in the house at this point, and it's pretty much unbearable. I can't even stand to be in the same room with her, and we barely even acknowledge each others presence. Now we're getting close to the Peru trip, and she discovers I've had the passports since August and the sh|t hits the fan
She has her lawyer file a petition to allow her to take the kids on this 4 week trip, despite the automatic restraining order that prohibits either parent from taking them across the state line, much less to a 3rd world country that isn't a signatory to the Hague convention that governs this stuff. I'm pretty tight with the State Dept. by this point. Amazingly, my layer suggests I try to come to some agreement on this ... it will cost thousands to fight, and given that I had given permission for this trip (months before any of this surfaced) and had previously let her take one of the kids down there by herself, and that the judge was a softie, she would likely get permission to go in some form. That and my wife was threatening to back out of the shared parenting plan, and fight forhalf of the assets (more on that later), and other stuff if I didn't. So we reached a compromise that involved her posting a fair sized bond, having me named sole custodian for the duration of the trip (might hold some weight in the courts there), and had me changing their tickets (at significant expense), so that they would come home with me. Among other things.
They left in the middle of December ... I didn't get to spend Christmas with my kids ... broke my heart. I went down there for a week in early January. Her family treated me very well, although we have a big language gap, so we didn't communicate much. I brought the kids back without incident, but was sweating bullets on the last day or so.
That's where we are now. My wife is returning tomorrow, and plans to move into an apartment at the beginning of Feb. As for the property settlement ... she has asked for $10K and my '92 Honda Civic (which I owned outright before the marriage, so it isn't marital property) ... about 1/4th of what she is entitled to by law. Doesn't want the house ... she couldn't afford the payments, and it would be a hard sell with the unfinished addition. Of course, I trust her about as far as I can spit ... even though she kept her word on the trip. So we'll se where things stand as we go into final orders. Have a mediation session next week, which I expect will be worthless (but still cost $200/hr + lawyers). Oh yea, she wants me to pay her legal fees also ... claims she only got a lawyer cuz I made her
whatever, we'll see on that one. I will pay all of daycare (about $800/month), and she will owe me about $75/month in support. Which I don't expect to see.
Before everybdy oohs & aahs about how generous she's being, note that she came into this marriage about $17K in the hole in credit card debt ... about half her current yearly salary, more like 3/4 of it at the time. I came in with substantial savings. I put her through school, paid all the bills, up until this day, so she could go to school and pay off her debt. She's paid half of daycare since we had kids, and was paying some toward the addition in the past year. I will leave this relationship with essentially no savings, a house that still needs on the order of $10K to $15K to finish, and bills that add up to within a few bucks of my monthly salary. She walks away $10K + car richer. I will almost certainly be selling my truck ('01 Tundra), and be on the edge of losing the house for quite awhile (much less finishing it). And as I said in another thread earlier today ... it was never about the money. I never once made her feel guilty or indebted to me. We were married ... a team .. forever. Money was never an issue.
Oh before I forget ... she already cleaned out the home equity loan to the tune of about $3K, so add that into the settlement.
I'm still seeing that therapist. She thinks that my wife would've been better off if she'd had just had an affair and gotten it out of her system. Not sure how I feel about that at this point. Shealso thinks that my wife will jump the rails sometime in the next year or so, come to a crisis and realize she's completely screwed up. May or may not ask to come back. If she does the answer is "fvck off". I won't live the rest of my life wondering when the other shoe will drop. I don't think I can ever forgive her for what she's done.
Not having any problems with depression, which feels very wierd. Because it feels like I should be depressed as hell, but I'm not. Hurt, angry, exhausted, devastated, everything else, but not depressed. Lexapro is some great stuff. Seems to take the edge off sexually as well, which is a good thing at this point, but could be inconvenient down the road
The kids are doing fine, but they don't really understand the stuation ... my oldest is only 5 ... she just knows that there mommy will have her own house soon, and mommy doesn't like daddy any more The 2 year old doesn't understand anything abot it of course.
Some of you folks are robably thinking we were misfits for each other from the begining. But we weren't. We clicked from the very first time we met. We were great together, dd everything together, almost never argued. Some of my friends (and hers as well) have told me that they considered us almost sort of a "model couple" who were sure to grow old together. I considered myself the luckiest guy around ... I had my soulmate, I had two great kids, a decent career. And it turned on me just that fast. Well I still have the career I guess, and part time with the kids. She is a compltely different person then she was a year or so ago. I don't know what happened ... my shrink calls it a mid life crisis. For whatever that label is worth
But it's over, and I'm trying to move on.
Looks like alot of guys on ATOT having a rough time of it right now.
Good luck to you all.
Armitage
Seems I can't bump a thread from last August, but given the current mood of ATOT, I thought I'd give an update on my situation.
When the Armitage account got banned, I was about to consult a lawyer. I eventually talked to 5 or 6 before settling on one. That's the first bit of advice ... talk to several, I'm damn glad I didn't listen to some of those guys. One guy essentially told me to fold up my tent, give her everything she wanted and hope for the best ... not.
anyway, found another counselor also ... a marriage & family counselor rather then the clinical social worker we saw at first. She's awesome ... took the time to really understand the situation from both sides, instead of tossing out psychological cliches, calls a spade a spade, for both sides, etc. An older lady, reminds me of my grandmother, and has some great stories about growing up in Berlin during WWII.
Anyway, that didn't matter, as my wife never took it seriously, and actually lied to the counselor. We saw her seprately first, and the counselor was very positive with me. That she thought this could be worked out, and my wife wanted to work it out, etc. At the same time that my wife was telling me she wanted to leave, that she didn't want to work it out. Turns out she was outright lying to the counselor ... came out in our first joint session, and boy was she (the counselor) pissed off! Anyway, things went downhill from there as you would expect ... counselor actully told my wife to her face to grow up and act like an adult instead of a 14 year old school girl.
Abut this time, my wife suddenly announced that she wanted sole custody of the children, and I would get "standard visitiation" (every other weekend), and wanted me to pic them up after daycare 3 days a week (she works 3 12 hr shifts a week), get them dinner, then deliver them to her place for the night. Of course I told her bulsh|t ... I'm their father not their babysitter. She said she'd fight me for everything if I didn't agree to this, and I told her fine, we'll both go bankrupt, but I'll never agree to it. Counselor told her she was being unreasonable also, and my lawyer told me she'd likely lose, but it would be damned expensive. The only explanation she would give was "because I'm the mother". Well fvck you, I'm the father!
A little history, for the record. I easily bear at last half of the parental responsibility for the kids. They go to daycare 3 days a week. I help get them ready in the morning, I drop them off, pick them up, interact with the daycare staff, etc. On those nights, I make them dinner, get them ready for bed, read them their stories, sing them their songs, and have them in bed before she comes home. That last bit was at her insistance ... she would get pissed off if the kids weren't in bed by the time she got home, because they would get all spun up and excited to see her, and be hard to get to bed then. She had them the other two weekdays, but I always made sure I had time to play with them, and help put them to bed on those days also. She works at least 2, sometimes up to 4 weekend days a month, and then they are all mine. And in the last year she always managed to find something to do on the weekends ... working extra shifts, running events, etc. ... I went 3 months straight once without a weekend day to myself, and this is while building an enormous addition (1400 ft^2 + garage) that SHE wanted. When I complained, she hired a babysitter on the weekends, and then flew her mother up from S.A. to help out. There have been some incidences of very poor judgement or insensitivity on her part wrt the kids also, but I won't drag that out here. Suffice to say that one ended with a call to the poison control center. If the kids get sick on her work days, it's ussually me that stays with them, takes them to the doctor, etc. I'm often the one taking them to birthdays, play dates, etc.
Cliff's Notes ... I am a very involved father. Moreso then she is, and much more patient & responsible with the kids also.
So anyway ... 2 weeks later, and I was a complete wreck during that time, she reverses herself as quickly as she demanded full custody to begin with. No explanation. At this point we have temporary orders that specify a shared parenting arrangement where I have them 3 weekdays and every other weekend. But of course, she insists that its impossible for her to scheduleher work days in a block (ie. MTW, or WThF) so the kids can have some consistency. She insists on keeping her MWF schedule, so at least one weekday, when she has them, I'll be doing the daycare & dinner bit, then dropping them off at her place, and one weekday, she'll have them all day, until I pick them up after work. At least until my daughter starts kindergarten next fall. I wanted to fight for her changing her work schedule to something more consistent for the kids. My lawyer told me to STFU (literally!). That if this goes through, I'd be getting a much better deal then most fathers get without spending a ton of money. And once the kids are in school, it'l all have to change anyway.
Now we're up to mid october, and she decides she needs to see a lawyer also. She puts a retainer on the first guy she talks to, and files the papers the same day. To add further insult, it was Oct 14 ... 9 years to the day since we met.
At the end of October, she went to NY to run the marathon ... was gone 8 days I think, and worked several days straight on either side of the trip, so I definitely have documentation that I am capable of taking ful responsibility for the kids. She's never taken care of them herself for more then 3 or 4 days straight.
BTW, she's still livng in the house at this point, and it's pretty much unbearable. I can't even stand to be in the same room with her, and we barely even acknowledge each others presence. Now we're getting close to the Peru trip, and she discovers I've had the passports since August and the sh|t hits the fan
She has her lawyer file a petition to allow her to take the kids on this 4 week trip, despite the automatic restraining order that prohibits either parent from taking them across the state line, much less to a 3rd world country that isn't a signatory to the Hague convention that governs this stuff. I'm pretty tight with the State Dept. by this point. Amazingly, my layer suggests I try to come to some agreement on this ... it will cost thousands to fight, and given that I had given permission for this trip (months before any of this surfaced) and had previously let her take one of the kids down there by herself, and that the judge was a softie, she would likely get permission to go in some form. That and my wife was threatening to back out of the shared parenting plan, and fight forhalf of the assets (more on that later), and other stuff if I didn't. So we reached a compromise that involved her posting a fair sized bond, having me named sole custodian for the duration of the trip (might hold some weight in the courts there), and had me changing their tickets (at significant expense), so that they would come home with me. Among other things.They left in the middle of December ... I didn't get to spend Christmas with my kids ... broke my heart. I went down there for a week in early January. Her family treated me very well, although we have a big language gap, so we didn't communicate much. I brought the kids back without incident, but was sweating bullets on the last day or so.
That's where we are now. My wife is returning tomorrow, and plans to move into an apartment at the beginning of Feb. As for the property settlement ... she has asked for $10K and my '92 Honda Civic (which I owned outright before the marriage, so it isn't marital property) ... about 1/4th of what she is entitled to by law. Doesn't want the house ... she couldn't afford the payments, and it would be a hard sell with the unfinished addition. Of course, I trust her about as far as I can spit ... even though she kept her word on the trip. So we'll se where things stand as we go into final orders. Have a mediation session next week, which I expect will be worthless (but still cost $200/hr + lawyers). Oh yea, she wants me to pay her legal fees also ... claims she only got a lawyer cuz I made her
Before everybdy oohs & aahs about how generous she's being, note that she came into this marriage about $17K in the hole in credit card debt ... about half her current yearly salary, more like 3/4 of it at the time. I came in with substantial savings. I put her through school, paid all the bills, up until this day, so she could go to school and pay off her debt. She's paid half of daycare since we had kids, and was paying some toward the addition in the past year. I will leave this relationship with essentially no savings, a house that still needs on the order of $10K to $15K to finish, and bills that add up to within a few bucks of my monthly salary. She walks away $10K + car richer. I will almost certainly be selling my truck ('01 Tundra), and be on the edge of losing the house for quite awhile (much less finishing it). And as I said in another thread earlier today ... it was never about the money. I never once made her feel guilty or indebted to me. We were married ... a team .. forever. Money was never an issue.
Oh before I forget ... she already cleaned out the home equity loan to the tune of about $3K, so add that into the settlement.
I'm still seeing that therapist. She thinks that my wife would've been better off if she'd had just had an affair and gotten it out of her system. Not sure how I feel about that at this point. Shealso thinks that my wife will jump the rails sometime in the next year or so, come to a crisis and realize she's completely screwed up. May or may not ask to come back. If she does the answer is "fvck off". I won't live the rest of my life wondering when the other shoe will drop. I don't think I can ever forgive her for what she's done.
Not having any problems with depression, which feels very wierd. Because it feels like I should be depressed as hell, but I'm not. Hurt, angry, exhausted, devastated, everything else, but not depressed. Lexapro is some great stuff. Seems to take the edge off sexually as well, which is a good thing at this point, but could be inconvenient down the road
The kids are doing fine, but they don't really understand the stuation ... my oldest is only 5 ... she just knows that there mommy will have her own house soon, and mommy doesn't like daddy any more
The 2 year old doesn't understand anything abot it of course.Some of you folks are robably thinking we were misfits for each other from the begining. But we weren't. We clicked from the very first time we met. We were great together, dd everything together, almost never argued. Some of my friends (and hers as well) have told me that they considered us almost sort of a "model couple" who were sure to grow old together. I considered myself the luckiest guy around ... I had my soulmate, I had two great kids, a decent career. And it turned on me just that fast. Well I still have the career I guess, and part time with the kids. She is a compltely different person then she was a year or so ago. I don't know what happened ... my shrink calls it a mid life crisis. For whatever that label is worth
But it's over, and I'm trying to move on.
Looks like alot of guys on ATOT having a rough time of it right now.
Good luck to you all.
Armitage
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