How I Finally Convinced My Husband To Divorce Me In Peace

You want to leave but they want to stay.

No one tells you that divorce isn’t a one-time event. It’s an ongoing rollercoaster. When does it end? (Shrug.) Who the heck knows?

I always thought long, drawn-out divorces were for the rich. I don’t own a business, my quasi-ex-husband Joseph isn’t fighting for the summer house in the Hamptons, and I’m not pushing to get extra custody of the kids.

We’re everyone’s wet dream of a divorce. It should have been easy.

Instead, everything went to hell courtesy of Covid and his unwillingness to split up. I don’t know why he was so shocked. We never had sex, he was caught going to massage parlors for “happy endings”, and with his commute, we never saw each other except on weekends. We spent a fortune on marriage counselors.

When I told him last summer that I was done, he didn’t take it well. I agreed to try a Parenting Marriage (where we remain as “coworkers” to keep raising our kids under one roof) but then you’re still stuck with the same crap that made you unhappy in the marriage in the first place. Then I agreed to Nesting (where the parents rotate out of the house and the kids stay) but I realized, that’s absurd; I don’t want to maintain two properties with someone I can’t get along with.

Breaking bad news to Joseph isn’t easy. He has a temper. It would take me a day or two of mental prep in anticipation of telling him that I wasn’t happy. He wants to stay married, whereas I want to live in a house where I won’t get yelled at or insulted by another adult.

Last week, I told him we needed to start planning for the divorce now that the kids’ school will be over in June. It takes two people for this endeavor but once the summer starts, there won’t be a need to juggle their academics as we did during the Covid school year.

That didn’t go over well. At all.

I told him how I spoke to our real estate agent and that we should hold off on selling the house until the fall because there isn’t any inventory for us to buy. Joseph then tells me he’s reneging on our plan about the proceeds from the sale of his mom’s house; he wants his portion back (which he’s entitled to, in California). Our original plan was for us to split everything but that I would put in a post-marital agreement that when my parents die, he’ll get a portion of that. Which was perfectly fair to me, since I benefited from his inheritance.

Giving him all of that inheritance back means that I’ve been renting my own house all these years. I’ll have enough to buy a mobile home while he buys me out of my half of a renovated 4,000 sq ft house with a pool.

In a weird form of PTSD from living in a house full of land mines, I cracked.

I know how much Joseph makes roughly (I don’t know for sure because communication was nonexistent for our marriage and questions were answered with a mumble). I know this because I see the after-tax amount deposited in our bank account. He didn’t have dependent care or healthcare for the kids taken out of his paychecks.

Grabbing the folder I put all our tax papers into (submitting everything to our accountant this weekend), I look at his W2 earnings. The company he works for keeps getting sold every year, so much that one year he had five W2s in a single year. When that happens, they pay out in one lump any potential profit sharing and he starts back up in a higher tax bracket (which then gets lowered throughout the year, unless you switch jobs), or something to that effect according to our tax guy.

His earnings in 2020 were 2.7 times higher than mine.

Joseph insisted last year that I would never get alimony. I never thought to ask for it because I work full-time, I’m independent, and I sure as fuck didn’t want to go down that battle route.

Last night, I got mad. Rage-filled mad.

He commutes far away. That means Monday through Friday, between 8:30 am and 9 pm, he might as well be dead. All phone calls to utilities, insurance, my son’s therapists, and any other random company were done entirely by me. Any time the kids needed to be immediately picked up because they were sick or taken to dentist appointments, that was on me. I rarely ever got my real job done because I spent my workday dealing with being a Household CEO. The mental load was enormous.

My job bores me to tears but it provides the insurance I need for my son’s treatments and the flexibility to do all the household things during the day. I’ve turned down jobs because the driving distance would add an extra 30 minutes to my drive and I wouldn’t be able to pick the kids up by the 6 pm cutoff time. I also turned them down because the ramp-up would be extensive, meaning I couldn’t get any house administration done.

I was offered a job I really wanted, but Joseph talked me out of it because it would be too stressful on me juggling the drive, the new job, and the kids.

While I’m lucky to have a good career, there has been zero growth for 9 years. And I accepted that because it allowed me to do what was necessary for the kids.

But now, I’m mad.

I never got to focus on moving up the chain at work. I never got to stay late to finish projects. I never got to attend meetings past 5 pm. I had to be the one leaving in the middle of a conversation with a manager because I got a call from the school that one of my kids was sick and needed to be picked up. He had the luxury of focusing on his job when he went to work.

Joseph makes 2.7 times more than I do and he will get the fucking house. I’m up every night doing side hustles just so that any “fun” things I do (like botox) don’t come out of my regular job’s paycheck. That goes straight to the family. None of my salary goes towards little splurges on myself, like clothes or makeup.

I’m not a stay-at-home mom. Assuming his pandemic job life stays the same, we will have the kids 50/50. It’s audacious to imagine someone like me thinking I deserve alimony. I sure as fuck am too scared to suggest it to him.

Last night, I had the closest thing to a nervous breakdown. So much that I began to scare myself because I couldn’t stop. I began to doubt if I made the right decision, but then I thought of the alternative of staying in this marriage and I wanted to gauge my eyeballs.

I knew divorce would suck. I just stupidly thought it would be equitable.

My meltdown was as melodramatic as Joseph’s has been almost every night when I first asked for a divorce. The tension and fear of living with his rage poured out of me through sobs. Despite how I was the glue that kept everything together, I’d start over in my forties like a kid fresh out of college.

Joseph heard me and comes back into the bedroom. With wide eyes, he mumbles if I’m okay.

I flip my shit.

“You keep telling me that I’m being selfish and that I’m not thinking about the kids. You’re getting the house. I’m going to be living in a one-bedroom condo with a carport at best. The kids will hate ever visiting and will complain about having to see me. I’m giving up everything (pointing to the room), every single thing we have, I’m giving it all up just for my,” I pause, take a deep breath, “mental health. So if you think I’m trying to live some fantastical Orange County single girl life, you’re wrong. I’m losing everything.”

I also ranted about how I’m taking on a million side hustles just to make a few extra bucks. My nervous breakdown is in full force. With my fingers gripping my desk as I yelled, it almost snapped in half.

The look on Joseph’s face says it all.

Finally.

Finally, he gets it.

“Okay,” Joseph says quietly. “I won’t say that you’re being selfish anymore.”

He walks out of the room.

The good part of growing up without parents who buy you things is that when you need to find money, you’ll find a way to make cash. After my melodramatic meltdown, I woke up the next day ready to get my head back in the game.

I contact my loan agent and ask her to rerun the numbers to determine how much of a loan I qualify for. This will tell me how much extra I need to save between now and this fall to buy a detached home.

I sort through the list of people in my head who are remotely handy and can advise me if I end up getting a fixer-upper on how to replace things myself. With only having the kids 50% of the time, that’s a lot of time for me to watch YouTube videos on how to replace bathroom cabinets.

The internet tells me roughly how much I can make with temporary gigs. I work from home and no one watches my time; I might as well take advantage and look for another job that I can do in parallel. Being a writer has it’s advantages.

Writing out a shopping list of the things I’ll need to buy when I’m on my own, I realize that I don’t have to buy those things once I’m divorced. I paid for half of everything in this house, Joseph can then pay for half of the things I’ll have in my new place. I’m not paying for half of the kids’ bedding that they’ll keep while I have to pay in full for the bedding at my new place. With that, I come up with a shopping list and am already picking things up when I see them on clearance (thank you Target, for having your kids’ bedding on clearance for 75% off this week).

If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s stretching a dollar. I can make this work.

While I’m out buying groceries, Joseph sends me a text.

“Hey, we’ll figure things out. And it won’t be hostile. I know you care and I appreciate how you’re approaching this. Sometimes I just need a couple of days to catch up.”

More like he needed a couple of months to catch up, but I won’t split hairs. I hit rock bottom after months of being in perpetual fight-or-flight mode and discovering I’ll have to buy a dilapidated box because that’s more affordable than renting. If this is what it takes for him to finally work with me on this divorce, then I’ll take it.

My head is back in the game and I’m excited again for the future. This path to divorce is a rollercoaster of emotional mind fucks.