Knowing when to walk away.

[mnhtnbb]

24. There's some very good advice in this thread

for those who are wrestling with separation and divorce.

After 32 years of a 2nd marriage at age 66 I separated from my husband last November. My first marriage ended after 7 years and no kids when I was 28. I have two adult sons now from my 2nd marriage. One of them won't speak to me and the other is very angry and judgmental. It's early in the process now and I hope they'll come around in time.

I have to say that I considered leaving the last marriage 7 or 8 years ago after our house was destroyed in a fire. I blame my husband for the fire and his unwillingness to listen to my concerns and advice, which translates to a lack of respect for me. There were lies, too, and a lack of trust. After seeing a therapist for several months I decided I would be better off with him than without him, and decided to recommit to the marriage. We rebuilt the burned down house with a better house and I lost 40 lbs in an effort to start out in better health at age 60.

It didn't work. It was a lovely house and I enjoyed looking and feeling 10 years younger, but I was still married to the same man with the same character flaws. I went back to the same therapist and after almost a year decided that I needed to leave the marriage to save myself. I was angry all the time. I still felt disrespected. I had gained back all the weight I'd lost and was back in the habit of having cocktails or wine daily to cope with the stress and anger. Now the decision to leave was compounded by health issues in my husband--at age 75--which he denies exist. It created an untenable situation for me because we couldn't talk about it. His denial made it impossible to discuss legal or financial issues or living arrangements. Without being able to talk about it, I couldn't build support for coping with the stress to come. He is in such denial and so accustomed to lying, that he 'fired' the neurologist who gave him the diagnosis he didn't want to hear after being followed for 2 and a half years by a doc with a national reputation in the field. My 30,000 hours of living with him, making observations of symptoms, in the 3 and a half years since the first strange behavior meant nothing. It was rejection of me which was so disrespectful that it pushed me to do what I should have done after the fire--walk away.

So I did last November. I came to the place where I am happiest--the beach--but will move to a high rise downtown Raleigh apartment next month where I can walk everywhere. I will have a studio apartment with a city skyline view. It's going to be a lot different than the big house we built at the end of a lane on a tree covered hillside in Chapel Hill. I'm looking forward to it and trying to figure out where I will want to be when the divorce is final . NC requires a year of separation before you can file for divorce. Presumably we work out the financial settlement during that time. We both have attorneys and have started that process.

I am happier than I've been in a long time. I am still very angry with my husband. He has turned the boys against me for leaving and actually set up my youngest to call me a couple of weeks ago and question my mental stability for leaving. He can still push my buttons. He's a psychiatrist and should know better than to encourage adult children to take sides. I think he's been undermining me, though, for a long time. Right now my goal is to get the financial side worked out to my benefit so I can support myself for another 20 years if my health should hold out.

What I've learned so far is that it really never is too late to start over. I will be 67 next month. I should have done this years ago when I realized I could no longer trust and depend upon him. I'm toying with the idea of going to live in Europe for a year when the divorce is final to see if I'd like to move to France or Italy or Spain or Portugal, which are all countries that will take retirees if they can show they have their own financial means. We'll see.