Proxima Centauri

Please, please, please, please, please, consult a lawyer.

:banghead:

Janaya

Darren,

I get the feeling that you think consulting a lawyer is somehow agreeing that your marriage is over or somehow betraying your wife. Such is not the case. You need to know legally where you stand. Even if you think your wife is only threatening divorce you still need to know where you stand legally. I think such a consultation would help you remain calm in times of trouble because you would know for sure what threats of hers have legal respectability and which ones do not. Consulting a lawyer has nothing to do with your current feelings about your marriage. It has everything to do with your legal standing if your wife is actually serious about a divorce. I say that you should do it just for your own peace of mind. Your thread has shown a history of cyclic blow-ups and reconciliation each one worse than the last. This does not predict that you and your wife will not eventually reconcile, however, when she threatens divorce you must take it seriously and you should pursue legal advice since this is what she is threatening you with.

On another note, any part of the previous message that I wrote has to do with your legal standing, not your emotional one. I sincerely hope that you can salvage your marraige because it is obvious that you love each other. Well it's obvious that you love your wife but I realize I am only getting half of the story. So I assume that your wife still loves you as well. As you have written and as I have indicated before I think that your wife has much deeper problems than religion by itself. She needs professional help. She needs to see a medical doctor and a psychiatric one as well. You should offer to go to see a doctor as well. Then you can tell your wife "whatever we find out we will deal with together". Hopefully she will see that as support on your part. Perhaps you will become aware of behaviour that enables your wife's dependence as well. I don't know. I just know I have been dealing with this sort of past myself. (albeit on a much smaller scale).

Peace,
Janaya

jj

Janaya, that was very well said. I've been trying to convey that for some time now, but not as well.

Darren, my concern is that you are able to cope, and not taken out by one of the many cheap-shots routinely and commonly taken by aggressive divorce attourneys.

Vicar Philip

The recommendations to seek legal counsel are all well and fine, but you guys have to understand that I KNOW she is not seeking the same. When I e-mailed her the other day that I would be home at 6PM, she told me she was more glad inside than mad. She wanted me to come home.

If she was talking to a lawyer, she would tell me. That's just how she is. She is a painfully honest person. She says nothing she doesn't absolutely mean, and like she said, that means one has no regrets. Her father is like that to a fault. In fact, he and his late brother hadn't spoken for over 10 years, and to this day he still has no regrets regarding that failed relationship.

The other part that has come out of this is that my wife has realized just how much damage her grandparents did to her. True, they were forced into a position where they had to raise my wife and her brother because the father and mother were irresponsible, but the way they treated those kids was not something to be proud of. Just one example, they not once gave either one of those kids a goddamn birthday party. Not even a fucking cake. Can you imagine? My wife doesn't celebrate her birthday to this day. I get her a card, and her birthday is close enough to our anniversary that we kind of roll them together. But the pain of that is still there.

It is clear to me that my wife does want our marriage to work, and I am going with that assumption.

Don't get me wrong, I still greatly value the advice of everyone here; I just don't think legal counsel is warranted at this point. A few days ago I would have thought otherwise, but right now I can really see a difference in her thoughts and reactions to things. She has stopped blaming me for her feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth, and instead focused on the people who actually did the damage. Hopefully the counseling next week will further refine her realizations.

Darren

seebs

Let me be one of the people to play Devil's Advocate:

Whether or not it's meant that way, for most people, exploring an option means validating it; it makes it a little more "the kind of thing I do". It sounds to me like you really don't want to do that with divorce right now, and I think that's fine.

My position on pre-nuptials, divorce law, and such, has been for some time that the worst that can happen will have already happened before any of these things come on the radar, so what the fuck do I care?

HelenM

Darren,

I understand why you don't want to see a lawyer as long as things proceed as they are now. And I'm not sure why you'd need to, because I can't see how being at home with your wife and arranging to go to marriage counseling together could be used against you.

And it would be hard to convince your wife that you're fully committed to making the marriage work, and hopeful that it can, if you're talking to a divorce lawyer. Given how insecure she is, it could really undermine her belief that you want the marriage to work and/or that you think it's going to work, if she knows/finds out you're talking to one.

Anyway, I think it's great that you read what everyone says and take it into consideration, but in the end you make your own decisions based on your own situation. That's how it should be because you're the one who will live with the consequences of your actions - not us.

Helen

Vicar Philip

My best friend highly recommended a marriage counselor to me, and after two days of calling, I finally managed to talk to her. I described our problem at first in terms of my wife's bad childhood, and she was very understanding and sounded promising.

Then I mentioned our differences in believing in god.

She spoke about "the power of the lord to help us" and "the love god has for all of us" to get us through difficult times.

Bleccccch.

Well, this is gonna play right into what my wife wants to hear. But now if I back out, it will appear to her that I don't really care about our relationship. I think I'm going to have to grin and bear it and hope that this counselor can help my wife get through her childhood issues, regardless of the counselor's fundy-ism. The counseling center mainly offers a class to enable partners to learn "family life skills," and the literature I saw from my friend didn't look religious.

It's just amazing how prevalent this fundamental Christian mindset is. What the hell is wrong with people?

Terracotta

IMHO, it's quite unprofessional for a counselor to use their particular religion in their dealings with their clients. Unless this counselor is based through a church or church-based institution, of course.

I'd keep searching, if I were you.

Godless Dave

Me too. I might even go so far as to make an anonymous complaint to the counselor's employer or any relevant oversight/licensing organizations.

Proxima Centauri

Your wife is is more intelligent than you or other people assume. She did badly at school. Probably that was because of a stressful, abused childhood and low self esteem. She developed her intelligence learning manipulative skills instead. She needed those skills to survive her difficult childhood and minimize abuse.
Being a Supervisor at Walmart is a challenging job. She has to cope with a steady stream of difficult customers, etc on a daily basis. There are any number of University Professors, respected in their field who could not do your wife's work.
Build up her self esteem by showing appreciation whenever she does something good, cookery etc.
Don't underestimate her either. I hope you won't be wanting sympathy in a week or a month because of problems which a lawyer could have prevented. She accuses you of restricting her spending money. Can you prove that you acted reasonably? You need a lawer's advice.