@eoe,
He may be cheating in fact it is likely that he is cheating but to act without being sure is 100 percent wrong in my opinion.
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre in my opinion no one should be able to go to court to end a marriage for the reason I simply do not wish to be married and that go 500 hundred times when children are in the picture
There should be solid reasons abuse, non-support, cheating and so on.
@BillRM,
absolutely, or at least divorce should be very time consuming, like a five year waiting period.
@BillRM,
I agree that nobody SHOULD go to court and end a marriage where children are involved, but I am not one that agrees the state should have power over individual freedom in such matters. My husband and I have been together for quite a few decades now and ensured that our kids had parents who loved each other and them. I wasn't fortunate enough to grow up in a home like that--a divorce would have been far preferable.
If one person is determined to leave, I cannot condone giving the government the power to say they cannot. I certainly think the court should be able to demand that the departing parent contribute whatever is necessary to ensure that the kids are housed, fed, clothed, and educated until they are at the age of majority.
In a perfect world only grown ups have kids and they have them after they are married and have established a warm and loving home for them and they parent with love and competence. Such a world would be far more prosperous and safe and more crime free and pleasant to live in.
Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world so sometimes we just have to do the best that we can.
@Foxfyre,
Quote:I agree that nobody SHOULD go to court and end a marriage where children are involved, but I am not one that agrees the state should have power over individual freedom in such matters
If people enter into a contract and know up front that the contract will be difficult to break then the only freedom that has been limited is the freedom to not keep your word.....I can live with that.
@hawkeye10,
Well that was the old hardline conservative point of view before the liberal concept of 'no fault' divorce became the norm, and it is true that divorce was less common before it became cheap and easy.
My own experience almost certainly colors my point of view and I might not be entirely objective on this issue. I do put a great deal of stock in individual liberty.
Right now I tend to think that social pressures should be brought to bear to shame people into honoring their wedding vows and being responsible adults and meeting their obligations, but the state should not have the power to say who can separate and who cannot. Too much opportunity for mischief when we give the state powers that it does not have to have. Then again every state establishes necessary law governing the marriage contract and I suppose laws governing termination of that contract woud not be much different.
I'll think on it some more.
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre if you do not wish the state to be involve in you private relationship then do not take out a state married license in the first place.
Have a nice church "wedding" if you wish to without signing the state paperwork but once you sign what is a binding legal contract it is kind of late to be stating that the state have no right to enforce the contract!
It is beside a public statement of love a marriage is just a special partnership agreement that the state set the rules for and nothing less or more as far as the state is concern.
I love my wife more then anything in the world and would cheerfully lay my life down for her, however we both was very awared of the legal aspects of such a contact and spended a few thousands of dollars on lawyers bills beforehand as a result.
Once more it is a contract.
@BillRM,
I must be really communicating badly lately.
@Foxfyre,
I do not know why you think we are not communicating.
Yes the state can not force people to share a home less alone a bed however the state can "punish" anyone who break this contract without good grounds to do so, as they do with any other form of a contract.
If you wish to leave and end the partnership without some reasonable grounds for so doing you are not going to be taking the bulk of the family assets to start with including the family home.
The children if any should normally remain in the family home with the partner that is not in breach of the contract as it is unlikely that if there are no legal grounds for the divorce that the partner that had not breach the contract is an unfit parent.
No fault is a silly idea on it face and to see how silly try applying a not fault concept to any other from of legal contract!
Back to the comment on "gut feeling." Yes, a gut instinct is often a good leader. However, in my case, my wife listened to her gut instead of communicating with me.
She brought her suspicions to her mom, her sisters and to her internet buddies on the women's relationships chatrooms (aka bitter divorced women).
Less than a week into our marriage, she accused me of lying to her when I had not. But because she *believed* I had lied, then anything I said to defend myself was perceived by her to be a lie. This put me in the impossible position of not being able to defend myself at all. Try it sometime. You can't convince someone you're not lying if they believe you are.
Of course, her family were not objective at all, and they reinforced her suspicions by being "supportive" of her.
I suspect that her buds on the womens' BBS's were mostly divorced and emotionally damaged themselves so they all supported her, too.
I, too, run a business, and when she and I married (actually before then), she was given free access to everything--my software & email passwords, etc. I didn't think twice about giving that info to her. I trusted her 100%--enough to let her work in my business, and enough to marry her.
What she did at home while I was out working all day became evident slowly over two years. She spent her time reading my email and sifting through gigs and gigs of files on my computers. Now, I trusted her with my email PWs for the purpose of checking it for me in case I was expecting something important while I was out of the office. But what she did with this trust was dig through ten years of past emails (I don't delete emails because disk space is cheaper than my time) and then accuse me of dating women I'd dated as long as ten years ago. I know, it doesn't make sense to me either. She dug up names and facts that I'd long forgotten, then ask me out of the blue (usually at 2 a.m.), "Who's Mary?"
Uh, Mary? Well, I have 25 clients named Mary...
"No. Mary. You know who I'm talking about."
Who?
"The Mary you got an email from."
What? I don't know who you're talking about unless you mean the Mary I went out with in 1999.
"Yes. Her." (obviously really agitated)
"We went out like twice, it didn't work out and I haven't seen her since. I didn't even remember her til you brought it up."
"OK."
Great. Now I'm awake. How the Hell did my wife come to ask me about a woman that I knew ten years ago and never heard from since? She must have been reading my--HEY!
For the record, I have never once checked my wife's email.
She would also open my snail mail if it came from a woman, or had feminine handwriting on it unless it was from my mom or sister. 99% of my customers are women, so getting mail from a woman once a week was normal, and was usually a check for the work done at their house, or a thank you note.
Nonetheless, she opened my mail. Nothing got to me unfiltered.
The story gets worse from here. But the point is, her suspicions were unfounded but her constant accusations over the first two years of our marriage made me feel untrusted and unloved. Her constant suspicions also planted toxic seeds in her mind. She began to see everything in a wrong light--even taking words out of context in order to satisfy her need to incriminate me.
My wife filled my work schedule every day, and knew where and with whom all my appointments were, yet somehow managed to convince herself that I was sleeping around with women several states away, yet I magically made it home every night to our own bed.
This constant distrust, false accusations and the fact that she wouldn't let me hold her in bed anymore magnified our feelings of detachment and in spite of my trying to communicate with her (she would throw accusations at me but then not allow me to respond, or simply call my responses lies), and in spite of going to marriage counseling (where she learned that she had to listen to my side with an open mind--but it didn't stick), her family and internet buddies won. She left one day while I was at work. Oh, she returned my numerous phone calls at midnight (from 300 miles away) and said, "we need to talk."
Well, no, not now we don't. The time to talk was when you were still here.
All this could have been avoided had she just made the choice to trust the man she married instead of strangers on the internet and her family.
BTW, two days later, the bank's NSF notices started to arrive. She had written a bunch of checks then emptied our bank account without my knowledge leaving me stuck with the NSF fees, plus paying the bills again, plus the late fees and penalties forthwith.
When you marry someone, you have the obligation to trust them above everyone else. Don't go on a witch hunt, because you will find witches, even if your mind creates them.
If you are feeling suspicious, you need to talk with your husband and tell him that you know he loves you but you are feeling weak right now and need the reassurance.
And why not see if you can get involved in his business? After all, you are an investor, so why not come along to his client meetings? You might find that his meetings with women are nothing. Or you might find out something unpleasant. But in either case, you had better avoid false accusation because distrust will destroy any relationship. Either outcome, you will have peace of mind that you did the right thing.
Oh, in case you're wondering, I do not trust my "wife" anymore. She has PROVEN herself untrustworthy. But I never, ever, falsely accused her.
Finally, what really popped out to me in your original posting was that you kept mentioning your husband's business and his many "investors." Why so many investors? Sounds like too many chiefs, not enough indians. Or else it's a new term for Amway downliners. LOL
Best of luck.
@GeneralTsao,
This must happen quite a bit more than people realize.
I couldn’t understand why my husband valued the interaction with the other woman over me. He supposedly had chosen me to marry. And yet he spent hours cultivating relationships with other women. He would call them and email them when I wasn’t present. And he would spend hours viewing naked women and other inappropriate videos on the internet. (he never figured out that his computer we reflected in the window behind him…he kept accusing me of digging through his computer files…I didn’t have to.)
I found it funny that he would say he had more integrity in his little finger than most people had in their whole body. And yet when confronted about his actions he kept saying he wasn’t doing anything wrong. The fact that I had told him it hurt me and that his actions weren’t building up our marriage didn’t seem to register with him. He kept saying he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
What would have saved our marriage is hearing the words (with actions to back it up!) “Wow! I didn’t mean to hurt you with these other relationships. You are more important to me than any other woman…that’s why I chose to marry you. I will do what it takes to protect our marriage. Those other relationships are meaningless and I will end them if that’s what it takes. I love you more than any other person.”
Instead my husband told his girlfriends that every day he woke up he wished that he could divorce me. But it’s funny, when I left and gave him his wish he won’t do what it takes to get our divorce finalized. Still everything else takes precedence over me.
So…all of that so say….your gut is most likely right. If he’s not willing to build your relationship up and help you to feel secure in your relationship then it’s not a relationship worth having.