what a terrible xmas

It sounds to me like your stbx has other issues that she is not prepared to discuss. This think about cooking is just the tip of the iceberg.

The trick is to try and get her to be totally open about what she feels is wrong in the marriage. It may be like opening the flood gates.

Then when it is out in the open you can chose to try and resolve the issues or walk away and get divorced.

Have you suggested counselling to her?

Exactly! There is more than just not cooking enough meals or stuffing the chicken for Sunday lunch going on here!





Lucretia wrote:

martra wrote:

Hi
This is all that the stbx has told me about grounds for divorce. She thinks it is /was unreasonable for me to ask her to cook the family the evening meal two or three times a week! Let me give more info. I do shiftwork during the week(have different job at weekends). When on late shift didn't see much of kids, but usually made sure I was up half to three quarters of an hour before they went to school. always checked they had done everything ready to go to school. stbx was always up 1st and usually had everything in hand.
But when I was on early shift, would get up 5am. do my days work, get home about half hour b4 kids get home. Obviously they are now old enough to sort themselves out now but I was nearly always there for them.
In our earlier days of marridge my wife would always have evening meal ready for us, but as time went on this gradually stopped. and in the end i was doing evening meal and washing up, then getting kids to bed.
My stbx works for herself from home, but generally only has 2-3hrs work a day on average. So i did not consider it unreasonable to ask her to spend half hour or so some days of the week doing evening meal!
She has also complained i have very seldom cooked a roast dinner for the family!
I do confess to the fact that i do not like cooking!
So basically in the early days I provided for my family, and helped with the kids when I could and stbx looked after house and home. Then as thing went on i was doing more and more around home, giving all i could. and she was giving less and less
Just to compound my workload we brought a holiday home abroad, which we worked on together to start with. but again I now seem to be running single handed.
I am sure there is more to tell but that should be enough for now, thanks for all you replies

Hi Martra.

I am going to (once again) put an alternative view. It may well be a load of old hogwash, but please bear with me.

I am married to a man who to the outside seems the perfect husband. He works long hours ( as do I). He did all the ironing in the house and occasionally ran a hoover round. However to our friends he would make a big thing of it and use it as a way of putting me down ( albeit in a 'joking' fashion). If you believed half of what he said, then it would appear that I did nothing and he did all of it.
Now I am not saying this is what you are like, but I do see so many stories on here about men who do everything, provide for their family and the wife does nothing and I have to say that I do tend to take it with a large pinch of salt.
Because the bottom line is this..... she is NOT happy. She is NOT giving you the real reasons only a few references to not cooking dinners enough - there is more than that.
Are you a control freak I wonder? Has she given up trying to do anything because you insist on doing it all? Why did she stop cooking the evening meal? Why did she stop putting the kids to bed? Do you have a large streak of playing the martyr? Believe me my stbx has and it is hell to live with.
I have to write a Petition for grounds of unreasonable behaviour soon and I am going to find it very difficult because on the surface it all seems fine. BUT it wasn't fine - not at all.

Please don't take any of this the wrong way. All that you say may well be true BUT it is vital you pick away at why your wife is so unhappy with the marriage. It may be that you can change things.

As for having an affair - well not all unhappy spouses are unfaithful - it doesn't necessarily follow.

Happy New Year - I really do wish you the best and hope that you can have a reasonable resolution to this.

Hi
The relationship had been difficult with stbx for a while, we did discuss me going to my parents for a while. but i did not see what this could achieve, so my condition for this was that we had some counseling first.
but my stbx did not see this would not change her feelings. I actually did not expect counseling to change her feelings but to help me understand what was going wrong.(I did tell her this)
Then may have understood why I had to be the one to move out.
I still think there is more to tell, maybe if i ever get the papers from her sol.i will find out more.
Part of the reason i do not intend to do the divorcing, is i will have to pay.. for a divorce i didnt ask for!!!
(The stbx will probably get legal aid).

Martra

Counselling cannot make a person change their feelings. So your ex was wrong about that, many people misunderstand counselling that it will solve problems, it does not, it guides people to be more emotionally tooled and as you say helps you to understand what the problem is so it can be dealt with head on.

Sounds to me like she wants out, let her file, she has done nothing yet, I would ask her again when she intends to have you served with papers and I think you should wait.

Are you still paying for the marital home?

Stbx could still Petition for you to pay costs, Martra.

And whatever reasons she puts in her petition for divorce, it may not be the real reason.

It sounds as though she doesn't want to save your marriage and in that case, probably the sooner you end it and sort things out the better.

My husband left me 18 months ago and moved in with someone else. I spent a while asking lots of "why?" questions but it didn't alter the fact that he'd left.

So instead of looking back and wondering what if/why I started looking forward and thinking about what I wanted in the future.

All the energy spent on why she wants a divorce won't alter the fact she wants one - and you could be spending the energy in sorting out a decent financial settlement.

Excellent words from Nell. I went through being divorced for UB and no I didn't leave my wife for someone else.

When the Petition came through it was 6 pages of reasons and the majority were incorrect. She put down things like i'd tried to force her to abort our youngest child etc when in fact it was a conversation she had with her mother. She alledged relationships with all the women in the office (again not true). That I beat her up and was abusive and violent (again not true and in fact I am in a protection scheme against her for DV and harrassment not the other way round). It was devastating to read as it has very little in the way of truth. What I see now and from what came out later was it was done with her own agenda in mind and to get what she wanted.

You have to take reasons with a pinch of salt sometimes as they're just a means to a divorce within two years when two parties have grown apart.

T

decent financial settlement.

This from my position now seems very hard to comprehend.
I am living in parents spare room, with little space to have kids over night. Unless someone can tell me otherwise, I believe the less i look after the kids the more maintainance my stbx can claim. The more she claims from me the less chance there is of me ever being able to get a place of my own where i can have kids.
I know I should be thinking positive, but right here right now am struggling with my situation.
Hopfully everyone on here will help me through.