Last week I got an email (I'm a civil servant) from my wife's attorney. He has never contacted me directly (other than serving me in person several times). I got this scanned copy attachment in the email.

So I have questions. Do I still have to pay the almost $14k I owe my divorce attorney? He was supposed to get me all the way through the whole divorce process.

At this deposition, am I going to be on the stand? Is it necessary for me to get a replacement attorney for that date (9/14/26). They're literally asking for copies of all statements. DM if you want to see the rest of the document directly (I'm willing to share it).

Advice?

https://ibb.co/LDkZsW72

One common theme I hear is to avoid alcohol when going through a divorce.

This is tough since I usually have a drink or two to calm my nerves, but don’t over-do it. I find this helps me significantly when done in moderation.

I also have quite a few friends that are comforting me during this hard time and usually get together with them for a beer or two.

I’ve already reduced my alcohol consumption but haven’t cut it to zero.

What have you found works for you and why?

Anyone else have a completely biased and corrupt Minor's Counsel? Mine gave a total BS cookie-cutter recommendation to the judge and didn't actually share any input or findings from the kids. She also didn't interview either parent, nor did she use or pay any attention to any of my 100+ pages of evidence, but she focused HARD on my ex's 2-3 pages of "evidence." She's CLEARLY colluding and working for my ex's lawyer. (Worst part is, the judge doesn't seem to notice or care.) Anyone else have a minor's counsel like that, or is it just me?

Title. If she assumed your last name then blindsided you with divorce, cheated, went crazy town - did you ask her to change from your last name?

I am tempted to do it after divorce finalises. Can't think she'll carry my family name after what she did.

Hello Reddit,

Where do I even start?

I’m a man in my early 30s. My wife and I have been separated for about 10 months. We’re still legally married, and I still love her.

Since the separation, I’ve gone back and forth a lot in my head. Sometimes I’ve been angry at her, sometimes at myself, and a lot of the time I’ve just been confused about how two people who loved each other ended up where we are now.

As the months have passed, though, I’ve started looking at our marriage differently. I don’t want to put all the blame on her, and I don’t want to put all of it on myself either. I’m trying to understand what happened as fairly as I can.

And one of the hardest things I’ve realized is that some of the things she used to tell me about myself were true.

One of the biggest was that I wasn’t ready to get married.

When she first told me about her immigration situation, marriage came up as a possible solution. I resisted because I knew I wasn’t ready. We kept seeing each other for about another year, and during that time I fell deeply in love with her.

Eventually the immigration issue came up again. I still wasn’t ready for marriage, but by then I loved her and I didn’t want to lose her, so I agreed to marry her.

I want to make something clear because I know mentioning immigration can immediately make people assume certain things. I can confidently say that she loved me. There was no malice in her. I don’t believe she was using me or that our relationship was fake. We loved each other.

What I understand now is that loving someone and being ready to be their husband are not the same thing.

She actually used to tell me that. Sometimes during arguments she would say that I hadn’t been ready for the marriage, and I would argue with her about it. In my mind, I loved her, I had married her and I wanted to be with her, so how could I not be ready?

Looking back, she was right. I wasn’t.

Maybe sometimes women are able to see certain emotional realities more clearly than men do. I know that’s a generalization, but at least in our relationship, I think she could see something about me that I couldn’t see in myself at the time.

I can see it now even in small things. Sometimes I genuinely enjoyed my own company more than hers. I would leave the house, get in the car and just drive around for a few hours. I’d listen to music, think, clear my head, whatever. Then I’d come home and sometimes find her already asleep.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting time alone when you’re married. But looking back at those moments as part of the bigger picture, I wonder what they felt like from her side. Maybe she wanted to spend the evening with her husband while I was somewhere else enjoying being alone. In some ways I was married, but I was still living with the habits and mentality of somebody accustomed to living entirely on his own terms.

We had also gotten legally married in secret. Neither of our families knew we were married. We were living together, but her family didn’t know that either because she comes from a conservative background.

It wasn’t supposed to remain secret forever. We were planning a traditional/religious wedding in her country, where I would properly meet her family and where our marriage would finally be celebrated with them.

She was genuinely excited about that wedding and, from what I understand, had already done a lot of the preparations. It was supposed to happen around March of this year.

Thinking about that now is difficult. At one point we were preparing for that future together, and somehow we ended up spending the last 10 months living completely separate lives.

There were other things about myself that I have to own.

I was disorganized and inconsistent, and I didn’t really have a clear plan for my life. I struggled professionally and spent too much time complaining about things instead of concentrating on what I could actually control.

Over the course of about one year while we were married, I lost four jobs.

Each situation had its own circumstances, but looking at the bigger picture, I can understand what that must have looked and felt like from her side. She was trying to build a life with someone who kept losing jobs and didn’t seem to have much stability or direction. Whatever explanations I had for each individual situation, that was the reality she was living with too.

I also never physically cheated on my wife, but I did have indiscretions with other women through text messages. Some people will consider that cheating anyway, and I understand why. I’m not interested in arguing about the label. It was inappropriate behavior for a married man, and I was wrong to do it.

My wife also used to tell me that she wanted to feel “seen” and “adored.”

I remember those words very clearly. At the time I heard them, but I didn’t really understand what she was trying to tell me. Now I think about the time I could have spent with her, the ways I could have been more present, and the stability I could have brought into our life. I also think about how often I defended myself instead of stopping to ask why the woman I loved was feeling this way.

Then there was the situation with my family, and this is where things become more complicated for me.

My wife never really felt comfortable around my parents, even before we lived with them. According to her, she felt neglected by them and believed they didn’t really like or accept her.

This was difficult for me because these were my parents and I love them. There was also a language barrier between them and my wife, which I know sometimes made communication difficult. But from what I saw, my parents tried as best as they could to welcome her into their home and make her feel comfortable.

At the same time, I can recognize now that the fact that I saw my parents making an effort doesn’t mean she necessarily experienced it the same way. She could genuinely have felt neglected or unwelcome even while my parents genuinely believed they were doing their best.

She could also be very negative about them. She would make comments about their house, their cars, the way they lived or things they did. There were occasions where I felt she behaved badly around them, and when I confronted her about it she could become defensive.

Sometimes I felt like she was driving a wedge between me and my family, and there were moments where I genuinely felt like I was being pushed to choose between my wife and my parents.

I still have some anger about that. I honestly don’t believe I would have treated her family the same way. I hadn’t met them yet, but I was preparing to meet them at our traditional wedding, and my intention was to respect them and make an effort with them because they were her family.

Eventually we moved in with my parents. This wasn’t our first choice. We decided to do it together because we wanted to save money and eventually get a place of our own.

In hindsight, it was a terrible decision, and I blame myself for it every day.

Our marriage already had cracks, she already had a difficult relationship with my parents, and then we put all of that under one roof. I know it was a decision we made together, but I still carry a lot of guilt because deep down I think I should have understood that our relationship needed its own space and stronger boundaries, not more pressure around it.

With some distance from everything, I’ve started asking myself a question I didn’t really ask enough while we were together:

What if some of the way she behaved toward my family was a reaction to the way I was behaving toward her?

If she already felt neglected by my parents and then also felt neglected by her husband, maybe those feelings fed into each other. Maybe she didn’t feel prioritized by me. Maybe she didn’t feel that I was protecting our relationship or really listening to her. Maybe I spent too much time deciding whether her complaints about my parents were fair and not enough time trying to understand why she felt the way she did.

And that brings me to one of the hardest things I’m dealing with now.

To this day, I blame myself for a lot of the fallout of our marriage because I believe I neglected her.

I think about what might have been different if I had listened more, been more present, given her more of my time and understood what she meant when she told me she wanted to feel seen and adored.

But this is also where I struggle with responsibility.

I know there are things that belong to me. I wasn’t ready for marriage. I lacked stability. I lost four jobs in roughly a year. The messages with other women were wrong. I could be emotionally absent. There were things my wife told me directly that I dismissed and now understand.

What I don’t know is how far my responsibility extends beyond that.

If my neglect created hurt and resentment in her, I can understand how that may have affected the way she reacted to me, my family and our situation. But does understanding where some of her behavior came from mean I should blame myself for that behavior too?

That’s where I get stuck.

I’m not looking for excuses for my failures, and I’m not trying to make her the villain. I’m trying to understand how to take responsibility for what I did without eventually rewriting our entire marriage as though everything that happened afterward was because of me.

I also never really had closure.

The last time I saw her was around Christmas last year. I remember telling her that I loved her.

She told me, “Love is not enough.”

At the time, those words hurt. Now I think I understand them differently.

I loved her then, and I still love her today. But love by itself didn’t make me ready for marriage. It didn’t create stability when I was losing jobs. It didn’t make me more present when she felt neglected. It didn’t undo the messages with other women or solve the problems that were developing around us.

Maybe that was what she was trying to tell me. Not that my love wasn’t real, but that a marriage requires more than the feeling of loving somebody.

And that is difficult to accept now because I still love the same woman. The difference is that today I understand things about being a husband that I didn’t understand when I still had her beside me.

I miss the ordinary parts of our life more than anything. Coming home to her. Eating together. Our trips. Our jokes. Just having her there.

I’m writing this right now and I’m crying.

Recently I saw something she posted where she talked about loving being single and not needing somebody else to make her happy, while also talking about still wanting love and wanting to feel “seen” and “adored.”

Those words hit me hard because they were the same words she used with me during our marriage, and I understand them differently today.

There’s something painful about finally understanding what somebody was trying to tell you when they’re no longer beside you to hear you say, I understand now.

At the same time, I know 10 months have passed. She has lived a life without me and I have lived one without her. We’ve both gone through things and had experiences the other person wasn’t part of. I don’t think either of us could simply go back to exactly who we were before.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t hope reconciliation might someday be possible. But I also understand that working on myself doesn’t earn me another chance. I could become more mature, stable and disciplined, and she would still have every right to decide that she doesn’t want to come back.

Maybe all I can do is what some men in my situation can only hope for:

One last dance.

I don’t mean going back to the marriage we had and pretending none of this happened. That marriage is gone.

What I mean is that maybe one day we could sit across from each other again as the people we are now, after everything we’ve experienced apart, and see whether something different could be built between us. Not trying to recreate the old marriage, but seeing whether the same two people could build a different one.

Maybe that day never comes. I understand that. Whatever I need to change about myself, I have to change whether she ever comes back or not.

But if I’m being completely truthful, I hope that one day we get that one last dance.

So I guess what I’m asking is:

How do you honestly accept the ways you failed your spouse without eventually convincing yourself that everything that went wrong was your fault?

Can someone’s hurt and resentment explain some of their behavior without necessarily excusing it?

And for anyone who realized after separation that their spouse had been trying to tell them something about themselves that they weren’t ready to hear at the time, how did you deal with finally understanding it when it was already too late?

I don’t really know what I expect from posting this. Maybe I just needed to finally put all of it into words and hear from people who have been through something similar.

I know I can’t change what happened, and I can’t change the person I was when we were together. All I can do now is try to understand it honestly, take responsibility for what was mine, learn from it and become a better man because of it.

I just wish I had become that man while she was still beside me.

I have basically gotten what I want with 2 x AIs vs her paid lawyer, they’ve conceded everything so that it is a fair split of assets and custody which is great.

Her latest legal letter states they want to sell the house with no improvements (it needs a lot of work) within 30 days of my accepting the later proposal which is all fine except for house sale logistics. We will likely lose $100k or more because its condition.

Then there’s the kids, they don’t know yet and they are soon to find out and they’re not going to be happy they’re losing their house, who would be?

Needing to find somewhere to live is hard with 1% vacancy in our area there’s limited options and a solo dad on 80k a year with 3 kids is scraping the barrel, my ex is in the same exact spot but has no idea what to expect in my opinion.

I am learning about my failures as a husband, as a person, but all those things don’t matter now as it is truely over. And she has started all these proceedings and pushed for this end result. I am in a nervous system battle for sure.

I have to give everything away, half my equity, half my time with my kids, my identity, my house I basically half built and my touches are on every square inch, everything about me, my financial situation, my relationship to the kids, their familiarly with their routine, their house, all of us under one roof, their security because of that, everything is changing, nearly everything, that counts to me anyway.

How did you do it fellas?

My biggest frustration navigating my divorce is how the system has been built.

Its built to generate conflict, to reward greed, to tickle at our worst impulses. The checks and

balances built to stop the tyranny of the legal system has been dismantled, in the ''best interests

of the child'' when it does anything but.

The lawyers(yes even yours), judges, State government employees(hello title 4), therapists are all

in bed with each other. You ask , ''why dont they fix it? anyone can see this is broken'' .

Wrong. The system is working as intended , just not for you. Their VERY existence depends on

picking the meat off your bones.

The children, you say? an after-thought. Once the smoke is cleared, the damage has been done.

Two adversaries once sworn enemies are now magically supposed to co-parent. The damage is

not even the divorce itself, its the process that causes the most damage.

Until the money/ incentives are untwined , this will continue.

Your ex-wife betrayed you, had an affair, divorced you, and blamed you for everything?

Part of grief is accepting the value of what you had and learning to let go. Grieving is a necessary step for healing and moving on.

That totally makes sense to me if my ex-wife had say passed away. I don’t know how I’m supposed to grieve with what actually happened…

Edit: I should clarify that this happened a little over a year ago and I’m doing a lot better. I know I’m doing all the right things like hobbies, gym therapy, etc. I guess this was more of a philosophical question grieving…. I was reading somewhere about how it’s important to grieve in order to move on and what the definition of grieving was and that’s what started to make me think about this.

I mean from the 5 year mark, to right before you filed. Did you do the nasty all the time ? Did it dry up?

I think cheaters do it differently than regular people, but did you still get bjs and hand massages?

Did y'all kiss? Take baths together etc .. did it keep going from the beginning all the way until the end, or did it start to decline at a certain mark?

Thank you for sharing, because I really want to know if there's a drastic correlation.

I've been considering divorce for years. It feels so hard because by and large she doesn't treat me that bad. Sexless marriages are par for the course, aren't they? So if my life is comfortable then what do I have to complain about?

There are so many thoughts and emotions to consider but at the end of the day I feel like the decision rests on three things:

1. Honesty: I've already strayed and she doesn't really know the half of it, how serious it has gotten with another. So I imagine if I told her everything everything then it would be done. So do I have an obligation to do that? What about my obligation not to hurt her? Has that ship already sailed?

2. Fulfillment: I haven't really been touched in years. And when I did get touched, it felt obligatory as opposed to desire. I think there was always a physical mismatch there and she just faked it until I was locked in. She has pretty much said as much. Do I deserve physical fulfillment? Is that too petty a concern? Selfish?

3. Ownership: I usually agree with her and let her have her way because she will argue about anything until you are battered down and agree. She does it nicely though. But after so many years of small concessions, it feels like my life is not mine. I live in her house that she decorated (I just pay the mortgage - but the money is not the issue). We do the things she wants to do. We watch the shows she wants to watch. We take the vacations she wants to take. Slowly over time and always with my "permission" I feel like I have given my life away.

I watched my father work himself to the bone for his wife and family just to be generally deeply miserable and unappreciated. I can't tell if it is a problem internal to me or if it is my circumstances. I don't want to blame her, but sometimes I feel that I do. She's a good person and it makes me feel like an evil bastard for hurting her, but how much longer can I go on being unhappy? Should I just do it until I die, like my father?

One thing I hadn't considered that has happened to me is the destruction of my confidence. That is probably a result of traumatizing work (working in schools) more so than a sexless marriage but it's probably both. No confidence = bad leadership which makes my work life even harder.

It is hard to imagine a new life but how did you all navigate this? Which of these feelings stands out as legit and which is bullshit? How did you figure it out?

One year later, after countless therapy sessions, after uprooting myself from my home state to get away from him, after losing one dog that we raised together for 15 years,
after months of him reaching out to me and harassing me…after it thought I had healed and recovered, I woke up last weekend to feeling extremely sad, lonely, angry, and every other emotion known. I woke up to knowing that this is still a real thing to me. I’ve yet to recover and I honestly don’t know how long it’ll take. However if there’s one thing I know I can do is stay strong and remind myself that I’m young and this will all be over one day.

How are you dealing with the anger of losing so much of your wealth? My wife makes more money than I do (I was just laid off, which is also a huge stressor) but I was a much better investor.

This means that she’s going to take half of my/our retirement funds, then will be making much more money than I moving forward - including adding to her own 410k while mine is stagnant. Even if I’m able to find another job, there’s very little chance I’ll be able to replicate my previous salary given my age and the state of tech these days.

For background I’m 52M, she’s 51F and we have a 13 and a 15 year old. I was hoping to retire after being laid off, but will now have to return to the work force in some fashion - which I’m really despising!

Any tips for how to navigate this? I’m trying to just accept that I’m going to get totally hosed on this, but looking for pointers from those who’ve dealt with something similar.

Married 25 years, dad for 17 of those years. Three kids. It’s my second week of joint custody and second time not having my kids.

I HATE her choice to divorce. I just want to be a dad. And around my kids all the time like I have been for 17 years. Now it’s this bullshit week on week off because she leans narcissist and I wasn’t “seeing” her enough.

Our kids are in such pain and they hate what’s going on, but they can’t speak up or show emotion to their mom. I’ve consoled them all as our family life is taken apart brick by brick, day by day. I moved out a few weeks ago and now they will move from the family home this week. The pain of the echoes of an empty house. The pain of the memories that won’t happen. The pain of a split life. The pain is often too much to comprehend. I can’t figure out why and I’ll never understand why she blew up our family.

Been 10 months since she left. Our daughters are only 1 and 3 years old. Yeah... she left when our baby was 3 months old and it blindsided me. One argument, one sleep deprived morning (kids weren't sleeping, I had insomnia) I flipped her off, told her to STFU, and immediately apologized. I felt parented - but I failed in that moment. I hugged her then sat down and said "please stop" multiple times with my head in my hands but she didn't stop. I can't remember what she was saying. I went upstairs to cool down. I thought we made up. Normal routine ensued for 3 weeks, affection, attending my nephew's birthday, trick or treating... then she went to her parents for a "visit". Sent a "night darling we love you xo" text. Then the next morning a cold email, saying she needed time apart because of the argument. Said she knew it was coming as a surprise.

I called her in a panic. She dumps a 5-year list of resentments on me like how I didn't take the garbage out 5 years ago (!), called me controlling because I didn't want her using the sprinkler 3 years ago, etc. Suddenly I'm manipulative, gaslighting, and emotionally abusive. She called Child Protective Services on me because of the 3-week old verbal argument because our toddler was in the room when I told my ex to STFU. Toddler didn't react. CPS closed the file in 45 minutes. Her and I barely argued in our 6 years together and now I'm a monster because I had a moment of weakness one tired morning. She rejected counseling. Deleted our photos. Her parents were extremely hostile to me when I was holding my baby at their house and I never went back in.

I grieve 10 months later. My family unit is forever broken and I didn't even know we had deep issues. I took a 7 week voluntary anger management course, been in therapy for 9 months, including EMDR, two men's groups, Rachael Sloan's nervous system regulation course (cost $2k), I exercise, walk, don't drink, hang with friends, jiu jitsu, etc. I still grieve. I'm still in shock and anger and feel completely discarded.

She hasn't show a lick of grief, or regret or anything. Just detached and "placidly" polite.
I oscillate between deep regret for swearing at her that one time, and then deep anger for how easily she walked away from our family. Our poor girls. Grieving a lot today...

Im fighting for our marriage but her resentment is insurmountable, even couples therapy isnt helping. At some point she has to try to also fight for our marriage and she's shown no effort in doing that. Im reaching the point where im no longer going to fight for someome who talks about being with me as a major burden on their life. She's looking back and turning everything in our relationship into me being this bad person in all these different ways. When this whole time I've done everything I can to be the best man and dad to our kids that I can be. There's no talking with her, no moving towards how we can improve things, nothing, only blaming me for being not good enough for years. I admit there are areas that i can improve and I have shown that I am actively trying but it doesnt matter. How long do I put up with this before I call it quits? Once i let myself get to the point where I'm thinking of leaving too, i know its over. Am i supposed to have any hope?

Basically the worst thing she could've said. This whole divorce thing was her idea. Twice. Fool me once, shame on me... We are so close to the finish line, and I have done so much to process this. I've told all my friends, spent $10k on lawyer retainers... Fuck.

we dont really talk anymore but she did let me know shes not entertaining anyone but she does kiss woman at the bar or clubs or whatever and that no one should be insecure with that and thats as far as it goes. It just sucks because before when we would go she didnt really even wanna drink or go out as much. I was okay witht that because we were married and it didnt matter. Now shes constantly saying that she is just going out by herself because she is finally not in a relationship and needs to find out who she is without being a mom or a wife. Im fine with that, However. She is 34 still living with her mom and has her mom watch the kids while she does this. Its been over 3 months since our divorce and I figured by this time maybe she would have realize how lonley and sad just going out and dating is, but she claims shes so happy and free. Any advice?

I just turned 40, 2 YO son, wife is 35 been married for 9 years. Alcohol was always apart of our life and it seemed like we were having fun in the beginning. I never thought of my wife to be an alcoholic but then I started to realize she was acting different all the time. I didn’t know what was happening, I wondered if something was wrong with her. Long story short she was drinking and hiding it. I asked her to stop and it was seemed like an easy request, she agreed and I thought we’d be moving forward. No, this carried on for years and I didn’t know wtf to do. Nobody knew and it was an isolated feeling. She wanted kids and after long thought and talks we decided to have a kid. It was great, thought this was the problem the whole time. I thought I was just not giving her what she needed and I thought we’re moving forward. After having our son (she stayed sober for the pregnancy) it was good for several months still and then came crashing down. Worse though, I called into work sometimes because she was drinking and I needed to be with our son. Friends were calling me asking if everything was ok with her. After a serious run of destruction with alcohol she agreed to go to rehab. Finished that at the beginning of 2026 and now we are here today and the problems are just starting to show again. Same bullshit. Hiding alcohol and playing the same games. I have zero trust. I don’t know what to do but I feel like I need to change my life. She is a very good and caring person inside. It’s hard to see this happen and I don’t want to pull her life out from under her but I’ve been carrying the weight of this for years now and I feel like I can’t do it anymore. I feel like I’ve spent a huge chunk of my thirties questioning wtf I’m doing with my life and I don’t know where to go.

Our marriage has been unhealthy and unsupported for many years. I’m more emotionally expressive and empathetic, and I’ve been working in therapy and support groups on codependency and approval-seeking. My wife and I have very different ways of communicating and relating, and I’ve often felt criticized rather than supported.

From her perspective, my alcohol use and years of hiding and lying about pornography have been major betrayals. I’m in recovery and understand that these were coping mechanisms for stress and anxiety. She also believes I haven’t supported her entrepreneurial efforts.
From my perspective, I’m the primary financial provider and have worked a demanding, high-stress job, often 60–80 hours a week. For years I’ve asked for more financial or household contribution. Instead, my wife built a real-estate/Airbnb business that has consumed significant time, money, and energy without providing meaningful income to our family. I’ve also spent years helping with renovations, repairs, and other work on her properties despite repeatedly saying I didn’t want this additional responsibility. I’ve felt more like an unpaid handyman and business partner than a husband.

Eventually, she told me to move into one of our unfinished properties and live separately while I worked on the renovation. She then cut me off from shared accounts and made it clear she didn’t want contact. After consulting a therapist and attorney, I realized divorce was likely inevitable—and that I had actually wanted out for a long time.

I ultimately filed for divorce first. Her response was, “I guess this means you don't want to work on things,” which was incredibly painful because I felt I had spent years trying to make the marriage work while my own needs went unrecognized.

My grown children are also struggling and have become distant, which hurts deeply. Despite everything, I still care about my wife and feel guilty that the divorce hurts her. I’m trying to reconcile that guilt with the belief that leaving may be necessary to protect myself and finally reclaim some peace, health, and happiness

Edit: this it the GPT'd version of my original rant, kudos to u/extralettuce555 for doing this and posting in a comment. This is the easier to digest version of my rant.

Good morning gents, my soon to be x and I (divorcing since several months now) had a long conversation on Saturday with a night out that ended with intimacy.

Have any of you rekindled or consider working things out?

I'm going to contact a lawyer soon, but I wanted to see if anyone was in the same situation.

Our parenting agreement has her listed as the School Placement Parent. She has an apartment in district, I have an apartment out of district a few minutes away. I drop/pick the kids up from her apartment on the weeks that I have them, which is written in our agreement. We have 50/50 custody.

Our agreement states that if she were to move I would have 60 days to relocate to the school district. If I don't relocate then the kids would transfer to the better rated school based on the Ohio Department of Education.

I have known for a while now that she intended to move in with her current boyfriend and had made plans to take over her lease to keep them in district. Plans have changed and I am moving in with my girlfriend in a different county. I let her know of the change of plans and she told me that she would stay in the apartment to keep them in their current school.

The district she planned to move to is poorly rated vs. the one I am moving to being highest rated in the area.

I found out Friday when I picked up the kids that her boyfriends sister is moving into the apartment and she will continue to have her name on the lease and pay half the rent so the kids can continue to be dropped/picked up for school.

I was concerned that this is violating the district rules and a quick google search showed me that you have to eat, sleep, live at the current address to be considered a resident. Just keeping a lease doesn't qualify you alone. The penalty for the fraud is a misdemeanor and possible fines for tuition reimbursement.

I don't really want the kids to have to transfer schools, I just want them to go to a top rated school. I'm more concerned that I can get wrapped up in fraud by association or knowing of the possible fraud.

I sent her a text about the situation in a helpful "Hey I didn't know this and you might want to look into it" text. She replied that she already discussed it with her lawyer. I'm skeptical that she did, because how would a lawyer tell her this would be ok.

Has this happened to anyone elese?

Redditors who were married for less than 2 years: what happened, and how did it end?

I have been separated 11 months now after a 17 year marriage. Have been dipping my toes into dating some merely as an experiment and because I was craving physical touch.

Met a woman on FB that instantly began falling for me dispite telling her that I want to take things slow.

She is super kind and told me all the things my ex never said. Another thing is that she is cute but really not my type and im not feeling the vibe or connection.

I sorta broke things off with her this morning and I feel guilty because I know how rejection feels. Perhaps im too empathetic in my old age.

I posted here a few days ago about how I finally lost my job and a dead hand switch fired off an email to my wife while I was just sitting around being fine. The stress finally got too high and I sent her a bunch of rambling bullshit telling her e everything. How could you do this to me, I loved you, I'm at the end of my rope etc, brought up the hookers and how at least they don't destroy tour entire perspective on reality. The whole 9 yards. Cops came, forced me to go with EMTS. 20 minutes in the hospital and an Uber ride home. I ended up getting so plastered I sent her a pic of my breathalyzer reading a .35 the next morning and then continued sending her bullshit like Crankdat songs. She wouldn't address anything I said other than my scheduled video call with the kids and I did apologize and say I was okay and done with my episode this morning and did get to talk to them. That's the first time I've said anything to her that wasnt clinical and about the kids in 6 months. Well I do feel better and now I guess I know she does at least want me to stay alive. My lawyer is going to be so mad. He's metaphorically gonna drive over here and kill me tomorrow.

I have so many dear friends. I have family members whom I love deeply and who I know love me. There are people in my life who encourage me, check on me, laugh with me, listen to me, and remind me that there is still so much good in this world.

And yet, if I am being completely open, rarely do I feel whole.

There are moments when I find myself lost in a turmoil that is difficult to explain—a despairing torment of the soul that exists somewhere beneath everything everyone else can see. From the outside, life can appear normal. I can laugh. I can work. I can joke around. I can have conversations, make plans, pursue goals, and enjoy the people around me.

But somewhere underneath all of that, I am still searching.

I look deeply for answers. I look for love, wholesomeness, encouragement, purpose, faith, friendship, belonging, and reassurance. I find many of those things, too. I am incredibly fortunate for the people who have remained beside me and for the people who have entered my life during some of its most difficult chapters.

Yet sometimes even those beautiful things feel strangely inconsequential against the emptiness left behind.

I have struggled to understand why.

I think part of the answer comes from spending years in a relationship where I slowly lost pieces of myself.

When you spend enough time with someone who makes you feel that your greatest value is what you can provide, tolerate, fix, sacrifice, or endure, something begins to happen inside you. You stop asking yourself what you need. You become accustomed to measuring your worth by whether someone else is satisfied with you.

You give more. You try harder. You forgive again. You explain yourself again. You sacrifice another piece of yourself because you believe that eventually the love you keep pouring outward will somehow find its way back to you. And sometimes it never does.

Eventually you begin confusing being needed with being loved, and those are not the same thing.

Being needed says, "You have something I want." Being loved says, "I value who you are." That distinction has become painfully important to me.

I spent years believing that if I worked harder, provided more, remained loyal, showed patience, forgave enough, or sacrificed enough, perhaps I would finally reach that place where I felt genuinely valued.

Instead, I became exhausted. Not simply physically exhausted. Soul exhausted. There is a kind of exhaustion that sleep cannot repair. It comes from constantly questioning yourself. From wondering whether your feelings are legitimate. From trying to keep peace while quietly losing your own. From being made to feel selfish for having needs of your own.

Eventually you can become a stranger to yourself. Then one day the relationship ends, and everyone expects freedom to feel like freedom. Sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes freedom initially feels like standing in the wreckage of a house you spent years trying to keep standing.

There is relief, certainly. There are moments of clarity. There are even moments when you suddenly realize how much weight you had been carrying. But there is grief, too.

Not simply grief for the person or the relationship, but grief for yourself. You grieve the years. You grieve the person you used to be. You grieve the things you tolerated. You grieve the future you thought you were building.

Perhaps most painfully, you grieve the realization that some of what you believed was love may have been something very different. That realization can leave an enormous hole.

I think that is the hole I am learning to fill now. And I am beginning to understand that it cannot be filled entirely by another person.

Friends can love me. Family can love me. Someone wonderful can tell me that I matter a thousand times. But rebuilding myself requires learning to believe that independently of anyone else's approval. That may be the hardest part.

I have spent so much time looking outward for reassurance that I am only beginning to understand how important it is to look inward.

Who am I when I am not trying to make someone else happy? What do I enjoy when nobody is judging it? What do I want my life to look like? What kind of man do I want to become? What brings peace to my soul rather than simply distracting my mind?

These are questions I am learning to ask again.

And rebuilding is not some triumphant movie montage where everything suddenly becomes beautiful.

Some days rebuilding means getting out of bed and deciding that today will not belong to the past. Some days it means laughing with a friend. Some days it means sitting alone with uncomfortable thoughts instead of running from them.

Sometimes it means rediscovering something I once loved. Sometimes it means accepting kindness without wondering what someone expects in return. Sometimes it means looking into the mirror and trying to recognize the person staring back at me. And sometimes it simply means surviving a difficult night and trying again tomorrow.

I don't believe healing means pretending none of it happened. I don't want to erase my past. It shaped me. There are scars I will probably carry for the rest of my life. But scars are not the entirety of the person carrying them.

I am still here. I still love deeply. I still believe in kindness. I still believe there are people whose love doesn't come with a ledger attached. I still believe laughter can be genuine, friendship can be unconditional, family can be a refuge, and another human being can look at you and value your heart rather than simply your usefulness. Most importantly, I am trying to believe that I deserve those things without having to earn them through suffering.

Maybe feeling whole isn't something another person gives us. Maybe wholeness is something we slowly reclaim. Piece by piece. Boundary by boundary. Friendship by friendship. Prayer by prayer.

Laugh by laugh. Day by day.

There are still moments when I feel lost. There are nights when the loneliness feels impossibly loud. There are times when all the encouragement in the world struggles to penetrate whatever darkness has settled inside me.

But those moments are not the whole story.

Because somewhere beneath the hurt is still a person who wants to live fully. Someone who wants to love and be loved. Someone who wants peace. Someone who still believes there are adventures ahead, memories yet to be made, people yet to meet, and reasons yet to be discovered for why this chapter had to hurt so much.

I don't have all the answers. Perhaps I never will.But I know this: I spent years trying to prove that I was worth loving. The life I am rebuilding now will be about finally understanding that I never should have had to.