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Thread: Realizing your former spouse is better off without you...

  1. #1
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Realizing your former spouse is better off without you...

    Recently I heard some murmurings about my ex-wife from mutual friends. So I googled her.

    I see how happy she is and how so many things in her life are going absolutely splendidly. She is really living her dream.

    I can see now that she is so, so much better off without me. I was probably dead weight holding her back.

    Anyone else look up an ex-wife or ex-husband and realize they are a lot better off without you?

  2. #2
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    I've actually had the opposite experience. My XW spiraled down for more than a decade before deciding to take control of her life. I'm not sure how one measures such qualities in life, but MHO is that XW still has not gotten back to where we were (individually) when we separated. BTW I know this because XW and my mother remained friends after our divorce. Your wife liking your mom is great while you're married; it makes things sticky when you're not and both veer wildly into codependence.
    Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

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    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveinMN View Post
    My XW spiraled down for more than a decade before deciding to take control of her life.
    What do you mean?

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    My experience was more like Steve's, I guess. My ex would not deal with his alcoholism (why I left) and married again and was more abusive and sicker and died. He was estranged from four out of five of his kids at the end. His wife seemed to still like him fine, so in that sense, he was much better off.

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    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    My ex remarried and the 4 of us have developed a friendship. We live in different states but get together for all important things with the kids. They also fly here to see one of our sons and I cook his favorite meal and he does the same for us when we fly out there to see the other 2 kids. My kids are very happy with the situation.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Teacher Terry View Post
    My ex remarried and the 4 of us have developed a friendship. We live in different states but get together for all important things with the kids. They also fly here to see one of our sons and I cook his favorite meal and he does the same for us when we fly out there to see the other 2 kids. My kids are very happy with the situation.
    That's so nice, TT!

  7. #7
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    I often think it is nice that an old boyfriend found a wife who is better suited to his preferred activites than
    I was. He is a big outdoors man doing full on hiking and kayaking snd cycling and doing lots of nature observation and photography, into his 70’s.

    I wasn't interested in those activities.

    While we were fairly well suited in several ways ( shared values about consumerism and spending money, liking similar films, reading, lack of religious interest, simple domesticity, and the ummm chemistry) he found someone even better suited because she goes with him on many of those outdoorsy trips.

    And my spouse is interested in the same things I am, gardening, old houses, worldwide travel. The worship of bulldogs is an acquired taste for DH, though. He likes dogs but didn't gravitate toward bulldogs, that is MY obsession.

    so while i was ok with ex, we are both better off with life partners.
    Last edited by iris lilies; 7-24-18 at 12:21pm.

  8. #8
    Moderator Float On's Avatar
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    I've only had the one husband but have an EX-fiance that we got back in touch a few years ago via facebook of course. He's gone through 2 wives and current wife they live in separate states due to work. He went from running marathons to weighing over 400 lb at one point. It was interesting reading his healthy living blog and finding the source of his weight gain and failed marriages was blamed on me abandoning our relationship.

    My other EX-almost finance (I broke up with him the night he was asking me, I was way too young and headed to college) passed away 3 years ago from a heart problem. The girl he dated after me, he married. His parents never liked her and always wished he'd married me. That made a strain in their relationship all those years. He had a very rough last 2 years of life due to the heart condition, basically spent the entire 2 years in hospital or rehab center.

    One sort-of boyfriend from college, he and his husband just celebrated 30 years. That sort of explains a lot of issues we had! Christian college and parents where he felt he had to like the opposite sex or it was sin. We are still best of friends. He's from east coast but his husband and I actually went to high school together. They had a great career in real estate in CA before the crash (lost their Malibu mansion) but have rebuilt their lives in NY with an international real estate company and doing wonderful. I still see them, they own his husband's family farm in my hometown so I get to see them at least once a year. In fact we just made plans the other day for a Thanksgiving visit and if I ever get back to NY city or Hawaii I've got a place to stay with them.
    Float On: My "Happy Place" is on my little kayak in the coves of Table Rock Lake.

  9. #9
    Senior Member JaneV2.0's Avatar
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    I can't believe anyone would be better off without me. In fact

    A co-worker approached me and asked "Isn't this your ex?" And there in the paper was an article reporting that a certain business owner was under arrest for insurance fraud. Seems he secreted stock under the floor of his business, claiming he had been burgled. That night, I got to watch him doing the perp walk.

    Later, I briefly dated an attorney. Our relationship didn't last long for reasons of geographical undesirability (mine) and the fact that he was a barely functional alcoholic. A few years went by, I moved, and one night I got a rambling, drunken phone call which ended abruptly when I hung up on him. A few more years went by and I read in the paper that he had died. leaving a multi million dollar estate to his sister, who was refusing to take it for some reason. The details escape me now.*

    *"The bank filed the petition after Mrs. Moriarty refused to accept an inheritance that could be as much as $10 million from the estate of her brother, ... a Portland, Ore., attorney who died in May. Bank officials feared that she declined the inheritance in an attempt to block her husband's creditors."
    Last edited by JaneV2.0; 7-24-18 at 3:02pm.

  10. #10
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ultralight View Post
    Originally Posted by SteveinMN
    My XW spiraled down for more than a decade before deciding to take control of her life.
    What do you mean?
    Well, to use the year we separated as a baseline, when we split up both of us had career-type jobs. She was so unsettled by the divorce that her work attendance and performance got pretty bad and, eventually, she was fired. Since she was in a job field that was being automated out of existence anyway, she never could get a foothold back in the business. She wanted to keep the house we owned jointly when we divorced but when she lost her job and didn't get another one, the house ended up in foreclosure. So her credit rating tanked, too. At one point she took on four part-time/non-contract jobs at a time to pay her rent. She's gained a lot of weight, had some age- and weight-related health issues, and chose not to address some significant emotional issues.

    She finally got into some housing in which rent was a percentage of income, which freed up the primary $$$ worry. She also got a job that offered medical benefits (including mental health). And she finally acknowledged that I, certainly, had moved on with my life and there was no percentage in hoping that things could be like they were. With a lot of pushing by my mother and by her closest friend, she finally started therapy to address the behaviors that got her where she was. So she's doing better now, but she did herself a lot of damage.
    Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

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