SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have read this more then once on SI.

I am curious. Has anyone filed D, before their WS came around?

How long did it take you to file D? How long did it take your WS to come around at that point?

I filed for divorce in July, he is coming around now (wants to talk) and the divorce will be final in November. I wish I did it sooner.

I filed in June 2008, he started coming around in September 2008. The D was final in November 2008.

He didn't really have a "Come to Jesus" for about 16 months, but by then - it was too late.

I think he would still be trying to eat cake if he could.

This is the thing, though, mixedintherut. You have to be willing to end the marriage. This isn't a game. I will move here, so he will move there.

It's a huge gamble. I was going to do it. I started talking to attorneys at the time. I wanted to throw the papers at her so she saw that I MEANT BUSINESS!!! I'm a "nice guy" so it's easy for me to feel like a pushover. In the end, I caved because I couldn't afford it.

If you're doing it to get a reaction, you maybe wasting money. You can download the forms online for about $60, fill them out and then throw it at him. See what he does.

Right now in my case when she sounds like she doesn't want to be married, I tell her...call an attorney, get the papers and then we'll talk. She won't do it.

I see this as more mental than "logistical".

Being willing to end the marriage, willing to lose the M, willing to move on as a person alone, allows you to let go of things that might be holding you back in doing what you need to do. It takes the focus off the WS and on you, which in some cases causes the WS to look at themselves finally instead of looking at the BS or fighting with the BS or blaming the BS, the BS is removed from the equation.

In our case I did not even know about my H's infidelities, did not know what a 180 was, but I was "done", I had finally given up the M and was working on my exit plan, doing the 180. This focus on "me" and no longer focusing on the M and H, no longer trying to be the best W, the best housekeeper, best whatever H needed, but just being the best me, caused him to finally look at himself in a way that caused him to "do" something. For us, part of that "do" was D-day of his own voilition and a 180 of his own, but not towards me, but towards himself and his old ways.

All this (being willing to walk away from the M) was not done with an ulterior motive of saving the M in our case, and I think that really is the goal, not to save the M, but to work on yourself and take care of yourself, if the M is saved then you are a stronger, better you and if the M is not then you are a stronger better you, ready to handle life on your own.

Grace

DDay #1: 4/17/12

DDay #2: 6/28/12

Me Moving Out: 9/5/13

Wife's first IC: 9/10/13

On DDay #2 I told my wife that I needed her to go to counseling amongst other things. She gave me transparency but did nothing else about repairing the damage to her EA until she came home from work on the 5th to find me gone. As soon as the IC office opened the next morning she had made her appointment. Up until then she had decided that she would rugsweep and hopefully it was just go away.

I know it's not filing for D, but it took that in order for her to come around. The trouble is that I don't know if it is still possible to save our marriage.

*edited to add* - I didn't leave to save my marriage. I did it to save myself. I think sometimes NC, the 180, and filing can be seen as tools to get back our WS. They really aren't. They are tools to get back ourselves. To reclaim who we are.

[This message edited by omgnome at 4:02 PM, September 25th (Wednesday)]

Those first few months post dday it was mostly about trying to save the marriage. The 180 was mostly for my sanity at that point though and I wasn't quite at the point of trying to work on myself yet.

It takes many months, possibly at least a year or even longer to decide to heal yourself for real. Your wounds are too fresh post dday to do anything more than a very nervous 180.

Mine were anyway.

Now, 13 months later, I have enough perspective to accept losing the marriage, accept a different future whether good or bad, and accept my new moods, my new wants and accept my OLD self too as there was nothing wrong with that woman.

There really was nothing horribly wrong with who I was as a person, and who I was as a person in that marriage.

[This message edited by Spelljean at 5:07 PM, September 25th (Wednesday)]

I should add, I filed to protect myself and my son, not to save the marriage. Me filing was showing him that I was done and ready to let the courts dictate what was fair regarding our child. I did not want to file for divorce, but I refused to be in limbo while he was doing whatever he wanted. I wanted to be free and eventually date again and meet the guy for me who wanted to be married to me.

Mine just wants to talk, so I don't know if I qualify as him coming around. However, our divorce is imminent and he has been trying to reach out to me. Mine is scared of me, scared of my anger... He is essentially a little bitch inside but since I let go, I guess my anger has faded and he feels comfortable enough to talk to me now.

If you are going to file for divorce, file because you are done... Not to see if your wayward comes running.

On Dday, I kicked WH out of the house. He went to live with a relative in the neighborhood. He continued contact with OW for months.

I couldn't decide if I wanted to R or not. I was so blindsided & so devastated. I felt so between a rock & a hard place.

Wanting to keep the family together for the kids sake won out, but at a great sacrifice to myself, because I would never R with someone who cheated on me.

Even tho I love WH.

Because WH would not stop contact with OW, it took my going to see a lawyer, then taking off my wedding ring & handing it to him, & then finally making the appt with the Divorce mediator, to finally jolt him out of his fog. I never got to the point of filing, but was on the way there.

I was willing to end the marriage because I can not be in a marriage with 3 people in it.

Wish I had done it that very day I found out. I was stupid and took him back with hopes of finding out the truth. 9 years still no truth and I am certain I will never get it now. I have heard that the WS is much more willing to come clean when they know it is final.

Plus, had I filed for divorce it would have given ME more of a chance to decide if I wanted to stay or leave. I could have had much more time to make that decision on my own. I am sure if that had taken place I would have NEVER taken him back.

[This message edited by TICKED OFF at 9:56 PM, September 25th (Wednesday)]

In my case, I think my SAWH was shocked I'd actually talked with a lawyer. I also told him I was locked and loaded. I even said "You want a divorce? Let's go. I have an appointment already set up for next week. [I did, in fact, have an appointment in order to update my lawyer and give him some paperwork I had copied before I confronted SAWH just so I could get it out of the house].We can be divorced in as little as three months."

I wasn't kidding around...and he knew it. I did come very close to making that call to let it rip. Why did I hold off? Many counselors and advice givers said this: I don't think anyone should make decisions when they aren't in their right mind or out of anger because you will carry this with you and you will always associate this feeling with this decision. I wanted to get to the place where he and i would be able to co-parent the children (who are still quite young) and not hate one another. I think we have gotten there. We're still not officially a couple again but I am more hopeful these days. And no matter what happens in the end, we will be able to be friends. I really do believe this.I'm on good terms with all of my former boyfriends (not that I talk with any of them regularly).

I talked to the attorney, I was ready to file. I was serious and planned to divorce him. I didn't see it as a tactic. The only reason I didn't was that he made a serious commitment to change and followed through with his actions.

I wish I had done it. I had ws standing at attention when I told him to leave on DD, but I backed off. We may have had a chance if he thought he was losing life as he knew it. I didn't though and now he's got 4 more yrs added to their A. Now I don't want him and he is even more involved with her.

Three months after learning the man was "unhappy," things weren't adding up (odometer readings, excessive grooming, weight loss). I contacted a lawyer for a consult.

We were in an awkward spot and I was walking on eggshells. Once I heard "unhappy" all bets were off. A few weeks later I got independent confirmation that the man went to lunch with a woman then back to her place for a few hours. I filed a few days later then confronted him and told him I had filed. He said she was a "good friend" and that he knew I would be jealous so he didn't tell me. (She is his medical assistant.)

I told him a million times that even though I filed I hoped the filing would die out of the court system and we would work things out. (I even told him that was why I did not have him served.) He dropped our chances of the marriage working from 25% to 1%.

We limped along for four months, with him sort of acting like things may work. What he really did was begin to sneak around and ramp up activity with "good friend." (He must have thought he was soooo smart.)

Four months after initial filing - I was still in a bit of denial about his relationship with her - I caught him myself at what had become their usual pickup/dropoff spot. (He didn't know I knew.) He finally admitted that yes, he was having an affair, and started sleeping on the couch.

I told him I planned to serve him and he asked for a few days to "process things." He didn't say a peep about any of it several days later. So I brought it up. Got some runaround and crazy talk.

After he told the kids - when they asked for the 20th time where he was every Wednesday afternoon, his half day - that he had been spending time with "good friend" and told me "I knew I should have f'ing left a long time ago" I knew I had to be done. So I served him. (I told him I was going to.)

At one point he said he didn't like ultimatums and admitted that his pride was greater than his love for me. (He didn't take kindly to being "sued" by me because after xx years of practicing medicine he had never been sued, blah, blah, blah.)

20 months after filing, 16 months after serving and 4 months after officially becoming a single divorced mom of two I still question the sequence of events: Should I have confronted, then filed? Not filed? Tried something else?

In the end, though, he knew I had filed and continued to slink around with his friend. He refused counseling, would not transfer her to another office, showed no real signs of remorse. So I think the outcome was always going to be the same.

It really, really stinks. Broke my heart into a million pieces. I would have done just about anything short of allowing him to pal around with his friend to save my marriage. But I guess it was never really up to me.

I suppose I was willing to give up the marriage, but after 24 years together and 16 years of marriage I sure as hell didn't want to.

Being the one to file did give me a little sense of control over my life. In the end I did not get what I wanted but it was probably inevitable.

And that "good friend"? He testified at deposition that their relationship had evolved into one of a romantic nature. Imagine that!

One bright spot: I'm not awake until 4 or 5 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays waiting for him to come home from "playing poker."

Being alone is better than being with someone who didn't want to fight for me or our marriage.

[This message edited by shockandeww at 6:38 AM, September 26th (Thursday)]

I think that sometimes it is true. But really, I think it is more likely that for those who are really willing to end the marriage, they get divorced and never want the WS back, even if they want to come back. That is what happened in my first M.

In my second M, yes, I was willing to end the M. I had even called a D lawyer that next day after D-day and planned to go right ahead with it. But because of fast and immediate action on my H's part, I agreed to give him another chance, at least for a brief time, and more because I was "curious" what he would do (I expected him to fail).

But he dumped the OW like yesterday's garbage, pulled himself out of the gutter and made his life about showing me he could be a man who deserved me for a wife. He surpassed my expectations by far, and we are still together 7 years later, closer than ever, actually.

What Grace said above. Just as much mental as logistical. When you get to that point (sometimes I am there, sometimes not), you are not afraid of saying what needs to be said or doing what needs to be done. You don't take blame. You see more clearly what you have and what you want. You are able to enforce boundaries. Etc.

I filed for divorce very shortly after dday, of course h had moved out to pursue "perfect life" with ow.

I did not want it, cried the entire time at the court house. I had to do it for my sanity. If he was done, I knew that I had to start building a new life for myself and that was the first step.

He was served with the papers. About 2 weeks later he ended a.

Did being served have any effect? I honestly don't know. I really believe that now matter what I said or did would not have influenced him one way or another. I was irrelevant. He had to face himself before he could even remember that I existed.

I filed for d for me, for my survival. I believed we were done. He said he was done with me and I believed him, probably because I don't say such devastating words lightly, I mean what I say.

This is the thing, though, mixedintherut. You have to be willing to end the marriage. This isn't a game. I will move here, so he will move there.

Yep.

After I found his so-cute emails in June of last year, I told him I wanted a divorce because I KNEW it was unacceptable and I couldn't put up with that. But I wasn't there in my heart yet. He actually filed to beat me to it, after he found out I had seen a lawyer.

But he didn't wake up until I had the mental shift where I really was ready to stop trying and move on. You can't fake it; they just KNOW if you are. You have to really be ready to leave in your heart and mind. And they may never wake up. But even if they don't - at that point you're ready to move on, so you're better off in either circumstance.

ETA: Or, I could have just written, "What Grace said," because she said it better than I could have.

[This message edited by JanaGreen at 8:35 AM, September 26th (Thursday)]

As Kris Kristofferson wrote and Janice Joplin sang so well: Freedom is just another word for having nothing left to lose. When you free yourself from the M, you have nothing to lose in the relationship with your spouse. You are freed to say and do the things you need to do to take care of yourself; you are free to engage in conflict with your spouse without worry of the outcome.

Nothing after dday should be done to elicit a response from our WS. We should do what we need to do to care for ourselves and children. You do not file to get your WS to turn around, you file or separate, or 180 to protect yourself from a WS who has not turned around. If that WS does eventually turn around and start being someone safe, and maybe even attractive to stay with, then it is the BS's prerogative to continue down the path to separation and D, or to wait and see.