What's upsetting you today?

[orthodoc]

I was trying to avoid lawyering up ... but when stb-ex pulls shit like this ... I feel like such an ass. D-day is July 6, and I was hoping we could get there and just divide everything equitably. It would've been worth it to avoid the legal acrimony. Now I just feel like a chump. Guess it's time to find a human pit-bull.

[infinite monkey]

Originally Posted by orthodoc

Umm. Okay, long time not been here. Just wondering ... where does integrity disappear and self-preservation take over? Been trying to negotiate a 'civil' divorce, only to see the soon-to-be-ex-spouse make $340,000 disappear. Nice magic trick. Does anyone ever successfully negotiate a civil divorce? Is there such a thing? I cringe at the prospect of lawyering up only 23 days from D-Day. Am I a hopeless, laughable idealist?

That's what's upsetting me today.

I don't know...I wonder too about integrity. My marriage was 'dissolved' (sounds like an Alka-Seltzer) and I basically took what was mine and left. I don't know what drives people to fight and take: certainly there was love there at one time and shouldn't that be respected? But something takes over, it seems. Revenge? Or friends saying "get ALL you can" as a couple of my friends suggested. It's such a hard thing to go through why do people make it harder? That's a part of human nature I don't get. And I find it's more often than not the fairer sex is playing the fairer sex card (helpless. helpless like a viper) and it seems to be almost expected.

So I DO get where you're coming from but have no advice, legal or otherwise, except keep your integrity and your idealism, but don't let yourself be a doormat.

I hope it gets better. Keep in touch.

[limey]

I'm with infi, there. Unfortunately, you're not the first dwellar to have been surprised by their erstwhile spouse making off with the cash.

[orthodoc]

Narcissism is the big player in stb-ex's case. He sees nothing wrong with anything he does and is offended if others don't have absolute faith in his assertions and actions. (I'm the fairer sex part of this situation, actually.) So I fully expect him to claim everything's good and be angry if I don't continue to trust him (!). I was hoping to do this quickly and not go adversarial. I just want to get away, even if it means accepting a little less. But it looks like things'll go into the toilet.

[infinite monkey]

ortho, looking at your usertitle and sig line I'm reminded of a little picture a cow orker gave to me. It's a frog with his hands behind his head, kicked back, and it's captioned: not a single fuck shall be given today.

[orthodoc]

Heh heh ... I like it! Maybe I'll change my sig line. I found the meme page for it ... too funny. I can use some right about now.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Put some probiotics directly on it. Good ones, the refrigerated kind. Any regular pharmacy should have some behind the counter, possibly under the brand name Lactinex, but no prescription required in any case. Open the capsule or envelope and just pack the powder right on like a wad of chewing tobacco. It will taste like ass, but hold it there as long as you can. Canker sore will be gone within a day.

Imma do this today. Thnx codfobble.

[anonymous]

Our former cat, who is being fostered by our next door neighbor, is not doing well at all. He is entirely skin and bones. Our neighbors adopted a young male stray and after a long-ass time they finally fixed him. Now the young turk is constantly harassing the old cat and won't let him eat. He's starving and coming over to our house and staying outside in the rain because the young one won't let him in the house. Our neighbors are oblivious and unwilling to deal with the situation at all. Spouse person brought our old cat back into the house tonight.

I wish I had popped a cap in the stray's ass when he was still an unfixed stray.

Is it really too late for him to have a misadventure? I hold no love for my former cat, although I feel a bit of loyalty to him. The new cat is also an asshole.

I wouldn't really care except nuclear sentiment is for bringing the old cat back to our house. This might be the tipping point for me.

[sexobon]

Find yourself a young stray who will harass your spouse and let neither old cat nor old spouse back into the house.

[monster]

Beest likes roses. I've planted him roses. The yellow climbing rose at the back I planted a couple of years ago was just coming into its own this year, looking awesome with lots of blooms, and I somehow caught it in the lawnmower wheel and ripped it all to shreds as I was mowing before I left. I have come back from camp to find none of it survived I now he's trying to graft it back on, but there's a big empty gap opposite the pink climbing rose on the other side of the deck steps.

No, sexobon, I will not rip out the pink one to make the gap less obvious.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by monster

... No, sexobon, I will not rip out the pink one to make the gap less obvious.

Next time it won't be so easy ...

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by orthodoc

Umm. Okay, long time not been here. Just wondering ... where does integrity disappear and self-preservation take over? Been trying to negotiate a 'civil' divorce, only to see the soon-to-be-ex-spouse make $340,000 disappear. Nice magic trick. Does anyone ever successfully negotiate a civil divorce? Is there such a thing? I cringe at the prospect of lawyering up only 23 days from D-Day. Am I a hopeless, laughable idealist?

That's what's upsetting me today.

Give it up. Get a lawyer or you will be buttfucked in court.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by orthodoc

Umm. Okay, long time not been here. Just wondering ... where does integrity disappear and self-preservation take over? Been trying to negotiate a 'civil' divorce, only to see the soon-to-be-ex-spouse make $340,000 disappear. Nice magic trick. Does anyone ever successfully negotiate a civil divorce? Is there such a thing? I cringe at the prospect of lawyering up only 23 days from D-Day. Am I a hopeless, laughable idealist?

That's what's upsetting me today.

Hi orthodoc

We've discussed this question before. Here's a link to a thread I created back in the day on the subject. It is a good thread, with lots of helpful comments by other posters. I didn't contribute much because at the time, my head was exploding along with my marriage. I faced the same confusing situation; I wanted my marriage to remain intact and I wanted my own life to remain intact. I wondered about how to reconcile my loyalty to my (former) spouse, her loyalty to me, and my reaction to the extreme measures she'd taken at the beginning of our divorce. It was terrible.

I don't like conflict. I find most conflict upsetting. I can't speak for your husband, and I've read your questions several times over and I'm still uncertain whose integrity is disappearing and whose self preservation is taking over. But regardless, I *do* know this: you can't control what the other person's doing or thinking. You can influence it, to some degree, but ... not much, really. What you can control (mostly) is your reaction, your response to the situation.

That's really good news and here's why. You have to live with yourself in the future. What you do now is what you'll have to look back on someday. Do the right thing, now, *for you*, and you will minimize the regrets you will face later. If being civil is very important to you, be civil. If having a fair financial settlement of your assets is important to you, work for that. If retaining possession of a particular object is important to you, secure it. Find out what is important to you, write it down. No, write them down. Then look at the list and identify which ones you can accomplish on your own and which ones require cooperation (or compulsion) of another person, likely your soon-to-be-ex-spouse. This list, it is probably not filled with mutually exclusive items. You can probably do many of them without having to sacrifice others. The ones you can do alone, do them. The ones that take two people, you need to have a plan how to get those done.

Just like any other group effort, how to reconcile competing agendas and motivations, how to engender a spirit of cooperation and civility, how to stay on target and reach your goals is a multi-faceted task. I can't advise you on how to do this. I would urge you to keep a couple things in mind as you work through this. Keep in mind your own worth. Keep in mind you need to take care of yourself, and that YOU are the primary person responsible for that and the person who has the most power to achieve this. Keep in mind the items on your list, and their relative priority. Keep in mind this is a long term process, months or years long for different aspects. Also keep in mind this whole process can easily bring out the worst in anyone, yourself included. Adjust accordingly for yourself and for the others.

Look after yourself. Be good to yourself. Be as good to others as you can be while caring for yourself too. Ask for help and support. You have a source of it here, but other friends and professionals (lawyers, etc) have their place. Don't be a hero. You have a long, (likely) crappy road ahead of you. Pace yourself.

Keep checking in, ok?

[plthijinx]

good luck with that orthodoc. i tried that civil thing and yeah, didn't work out so well. definitely get a lawyer.

my roommate right now is in surgery getting his spinal L1, 2 & 3 fused together right now. i'm going to be a nervous wreck all day.

[Stormieweather]

Orthodoc, sorry to hear about your marriage. My opinion is that when a marriage gets to the point where divorce is inevitable, those formerly important ideals such as love, loyalty, fairness, and sacrifice are lost. However much you feel them yourself, and your soon-to-be-ex partner claims to still feel them, fact is, they probably mostly went out the door before divorce was even considered. So protect yourself and whatever remnants of the relationship are left, and get legal representation.

I thought my divorce was civil and fair. I did the paperwork myself, he agreed to everything, which was slanted in his favor to get him to agree to a speedy end. Now, 10 years later, turns out he has been verbally stabbing me in the back to our daughter for years. As a result, any semblance of a relationship I have with her is in shreds due to his incessant trash-talking about me combined with normal teenage angst. So yeah. At this point, I almost wish I'd taken him to the cleaners (or at least gotten what was due me) instead of trying to "play fair" or be nice.