What did I do now?!
I'm like the living ideal for a great divorce. I proposed that I keep the house, as I was the only one who could afford it, but that I would also keep all debt (around $20,000), I also gave her about $4,000 to put a first/last months rent on a place, buy whatever she needs etc, and she walked away with her car (8 years old), and anything she wanted from the house. We would split the kids 50/50, and in AZ the child support calc said I should be paying her $330 a month total (7 years later its $475, we revisit it every 2 years, I get raises, she does not) which was way less than I would have guessed.
She got to walk away and start over with a car, furniture, and whatever else, plus a couple thousand in the bank. I got to keep a house but had to pay off debt and rebuy anything I needed. We were both sad about it, and the first couple of years were slightly tricky to figure out. We both got pissed, had disagreements, etc, but we always talked it through, and compromised when we had to. We definitely had a few times where it could have gone sideways and bad - like, when I started dating my current wife, she told me that she didn't agree with how fast our relationship was going, and she can't forbid me from dating or anything, but she can tell me that she doesn't want my girlfriend coming up to her house when I pick up the kids. I was like "You do not want to go down this road. If you want to set that ultimatum then my recourse will be that you no longer come up to my house, you can sit in your car outside my property and call when you get there. That's just the starting point. We both came from families with bad divorces, we both agreed we weren't going to let that happen. This is you starting that process, I don't want that, you don't want that, I'm asking you to reconsider the long term consequences this is going to create." And she backed down fast.
A couple of years later she is at my wedding, doing my current wife's hair and makeup while they both cry and hug and laugh together. We are all three in a Facebook messenger chat that is just them talking to each other 90% of the time. They don't hang out together or anything, but get along super well, to the degree that if something were to happen to me, I think they would continue co-parenting the kids.
But yeah, I can't remember if I said anything in here, but a couple of months ago I planned a weeklong trip on the East Coast, and I invited my ex-wife to come along (I felt bad she hit a money issue and her summer plans with the kids got cancelled). So, I paid for everything, and me, my current wife, my ex-wife, and our 2 boys flew to NC, and spent a week driving around Virginia, hitting tourist spots, and hanging out at the beach. She paid for all her own food and even pitched in for some of the places we went to. It all went really well, though by the end of it I knew I wasn't ever doing that again haha. It really highlighted so many of the little reasons I wasn't happy in that relationship, she would just sigh or make a face about some random thing, and I would remember what it was like to have to deal with that all the time. My new wife smiles, laughs, and gives me blowjobs, and if she's unhappy about something talks to me about it lol. Way better. (Haha, I was was typing this my wife just text me a big thankful lovey message randomly, feels good)
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that it is possible to have a fucking great divorce. I still think the biggest factor was quitting the marriage before we hated each other. We were together 11 years, but by 6-7 I knew we were both unhappy and just trying to make it work BECAUSE. 5 years of marriage counseling, ups and down, and just a lot of sadness and wasted time later we called it quits. I think if we had tried to make it work much longer it would have started to get ugly, it was already starting really.
Anyway, I know the popular theory around here is that I'm a (likeable?) idiot who just has everything randomly work out and fall in my lap, but I promise it takes work to make things happen, and lots of stuff doesn't work out, I just generally keep moving and focus on the positive, unless its some huge disaster like the car thing. I don't advocate that everyone should get a divorce immediately for everything, but if you can't sit down and look at yourself and your life and genuinely feel like you are happy more than you are unhappy, yeah, maybe its time to make some hard calls and big changes and see where the future takes you.
