yes.

Thanks, TK.

The woman is my wife, and she has asked me for a divorce.

Sorry I am such a downer, guys.  There was no warning, and I am crushed.  I thought we would be holding hands on the sofa, watching our grandchildren opening Christmas presents, and I am still wrestling with scenarios where this is just the temporary by product of exhaustion and numerous extraneous circumstances.

Last edited by Max (1/17/2013 9:34 pm)

That's terrible news, Max. Wish there was something I could do other than offer moral support from 3,000 miles away. Just keep thinking every tomorrow will be better than today.

I just went through that myself Max. I can't tell you it's going to be okay, the fact is it just sucks. You're going to have things bother you that you never even dreamed about. Like seeing the marks in the carpet where a piece of furniture used to be. You can quite easily find yourself lined up for an anti-depressant prescription, sleeping medication, or do something stupid while walking around like a zombie. Be very careful and attentive while driving specifically and do not let your mind wander.

Also, do the following.
1) Try to eat something, even if you aren't hungry.
2) Cry if you need to, let that shit out man, then compose yourself.
3) Get your friends to take you out to happy hours and drinks (1-2 times a week if need be, just get the hell out of the house and hit on the waitress/bartender. Don't expect it to go anywhere, but it's hyper manly, and will ease the difficulty).
4) Get an attorney. Too many people end up sacrificing more then they should trying to do what's right, and end up just screwing themselves for the next 10-15 years. Let the legal guys do their job.
5) Pop off in here, everyone here will definitely be understanding, sympathetic, and happy to divert you with discussions of sports/gun control/music/famous people dying.
6) Not immediately mind you, but in a month or two or three, get laid. I'm not saying jump into a relationship, but find a rebound. It does help.
7) Give yourself a trip or something that your ex-wife wouldn't let you have/do. Man cave? Vegas? For my first wife it was DirecTV, for my second it was my smartphone. Treat yourself to a couple of things that you were denied.
8) It's a very scary place to be mentally, and reach out when things are tough. You'll quickly find out just how true and dear your friends are, and it will be a positive in a world with a lot of negatives.

I think that's all I can come up with for now.

Seriously man, I've been divorced twice, and the first was her leaving for a man in her college class. Took my daughter with her, and looking back, it's a miracle I got through it without hurting myself or others. The second? That was a pretty short marriage (2 years) and the person she turned out to be was nothing like the woman I had originally married. I was pissed for about 2 weeks, and then glad to be rid of her.
 

Sorry to hear that Max.  Life sucks sometimes and everyone has their own shit.  Everyone gets through it.  You just got to keep your head up. 

Alz, there's a song by Stan Ridgway called "Walkin' Home Alone"* that does a poignant job of capturing the emotion of seeing things like the impression in the carpet where a piece of furniture no longer is.  

My wife and I were standing at the bar last night, and a woman we had met once before--very attractive--started telling me her marriage was on the rocks but that her husband does not yet know.  That sparked an inspired response from me, I told her she needs to hear from a guy's perspective what to say, and I gave her my contact info, right in front of my wife and told her to get in touch while my wife is out of town. A tinge of jealousy helped draw my wife back in 2002, when we almost divorced. 

I won't do anything stupid that would sabotage any lingering hope we have, but I hold out some hope that I still have enough appeal to the ladies that I will be able to score some ego-stroking meaningless sex, if and when the breakup occurs.  And, I have a friend trying to hook me up with a job in Bangkok, and there are many worse places in the world to rebound from a failed marriage than Bangkok!

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK8_p69XyCE

Last edited by Max (1/19/2013 5:27 pm)

Max wrote:

OK.  So the attractive girl from the story above shows up on this, the first night while my W is on vacation.  We start to talking and yada3, she tells me (1) she and her H have decided to divorce, and (2) her daughter resembles the Korean WOMAN with whom she had an affair.  CHA CHING.  Cannot lose.  I am in good shape.  Think about football, and then March Madness.  All is well here in the PNW, guys.  :-)

Well this has taken an encouraging Penthouse Forum-esque turn.
 

alz wrote:

I never thought I'd be writing but....

 So . . . write already.

"I must have drunk more than I thought that night to have written that.  I don't even remember writing it."

Ahhh, we've all had our nights when we've consumed every liquid in the house short of Pine-Sol.

"In the meantime, her mother made an inappropriate comment on FB, saying she hoped my wife would pick and move into her sister's house."

Sounds like getting your mother-in-law and my mother-in-law together would be the equivalent of joining the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster in "Ghostbusters."

APIAD wrote:

"Ahhh, we've all had our nights when we've consumed every liquid in the house short of Pine-Sol. "

Yeah like sunday.  Is to normal to wake up feeling hungover 2 mornings later?  What happen to the days when I could grab 6 hours sleep and put in a full day of manual labor?

 
It certainly is... It's called drinking like your 22, when you're 37....
 

I'll be 49 in another month or so.  I try not to drink past legal limit when I am out--two drinks, plus one per hour--but sometimes I'll come home and start drinking the cheap red wine.  I had skipped dinner that night, too.  Trying to get back down to my fighting weight.  I don't really fight, of course, but I am the same height as Sugar Ray Leonard; a few years back I saw a rerun of one of his fights, and I noticed he looked pretty cut when at his fighting weight of 65 kg.  I had been up as high as 80, but am down to 73, and losing about a kg per week.  Whether to help convince my wife to stay or else to prepare for hitting the market, it won't be a bad thing to lose the belly flab and add some muscle mass to my scrawny frame.  So, at 5' 11", my goal is 65 kg.

"my goal is 65 kg."

What's that in American? About 25 pounds? Seems kinda scrawny.