Realizing something I built with someone for 22 years is now over, memories and moments and flashbacks of everything we had together entering my consciousness.
... words are hard to describe what it feels like.
... a realization of what could have been and now can no longer be. Questioning my life choices and decisions and wondering why the one woman I devoted myself to for the rest of my life, through my thoughts, my words and my actions,
I hear you and feel it. For me, 21 years married, 25 together. For some of us it seems impossible that this amount of investment, no matter the ups and downs, could be dismissed in such a fashion. It still feels unreal many times.
I've talked to one or two others I know personally who have gone through something similar. They all said it is hard to describe in words. Just...if you have gone through it, you know what they are saying and experienced.
These days the hard feelings come when I come face to face with what could have been and what will be now. I try to focus on the now. Though I sometimes see the potentials and the void in their place.
I am filling that void with other things. It comes slowly. In its own time I suppose.
I am glad you have an agreement signed finally. It's not finished yet, but it gives shape to closing it out.
For me the shape is - I have three more sets of retirement accounts to balance and distribute, a car to sign over to her name only, and 11 more months alimony to send.
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H:54 W:50 D19, D17, S12 ILYBINILWY 3/23 DB1 4/23, rescinded 5/23 DB2 6/23 ("I can't do this, I Love HIM") Legal Mediation 1-5 & W moves out 8/23 – 3/24 Settlement 5/24, Court 9/11/24 <-, D 9/16/24
So I thought she had signed but apparently her lawyer is now playing games. She had until December 5th to do financial disclosure for court process and it is now December 13th. She has also lied about having cleared back payments for one of our vehicles which is still under both our names on the loan. I keep receiving collection calls for this vehicle and part of agreement was She was supposed to move it over to her name loan wise and keep the asset value and assume it's liabilities. So none of this has happened and my lawyer is now pushing through with the court process or at least indicating such as to her email to stbxw lawyer. So now I sit here with the realization that even though I did everything in good faith and offered her the mediated agreement with concessions, she is not taking any of this seriously and I will be going forward with court process in which she has a lot more to lose. I do not understand this logic and I thought the threat of court would have been enough to act but it's turning into a game now. This being said, it going through court will mean that I will have to fly back and jeopardize my job here to have this over and done with. It seems like a never ending story
Hey, C. Terrible to hear that she is seemingly playing games or taking advantage of your good faith efforts. Remember, you've been fired. Do what is best for YOU. This M is heading towards its end so why have your L just "indicate" you're moving forward instead of just telling your L to do what is needed to actually get it to closure. Are you really surprised at her behavior? From what I recall, it sounds like it is consistent with what you'd previously experienced. These courts want to keep things moving along as well, especially if there are no kids involved. Do what is in your and your L's control to put it on a path to the end. There is nothing to gain by trying to figure out her motivations or behavior or even spent much mental energy being flustered by it. It is just going to continue to disrupt your ability to move forward. My intent isn't to be harsh. We've just seen so many posts here where one S or another is delaying the process in ways that are unsurprising given the behaviors that got us here. Buckle down with your L and just work on what you need to do to have the D finalized. The finish line is in sight now run through it!
So now another delay, stbxw and lawyer asked for an extension to filing her answer to my court service. She was served on October 29th and had until November 28th to file an answer, her along with lawyer asked for an extension until December 5th, then December 15th, after the extension to the 15th my lawyer suggested we move forward with court process, at which point a response to my filing came in, with repeated mention of how shocked her and her client were to be served, also how shocked they were that I wanted to go the court route because I saw nothing was happening on their end. My lawyer made repeated requested for specific documents pertaining to car loan to which there was never any forthcoming. And in her response they mentioned how there was no need to go through court as we were having substantive negotiations (basically my lawyer would ask them for things and theyd not send anything and the negotiations were basically a rehashing of our already agreed upon mediation). So now they asked for another extension until January 15th to which my lawyer is now requesting house sale proceeds be released up to 90% of amount, if she does not file an answer through courts the divorce will go through the courts uncontested.
I do not understand the logic of the delays, she must have a serious personality disorder, my thoughts are that she was perfectly content in being separated only by distance and place of living and she thought she could keep me legally and financially tied to her for when her inevitable new relationship falls apart. The more i look back and analyze everything i see every single characteristic and personality trait of narcissistic personality disorder, where they treat you as an extension of themselves, a sort of ownership of you as a person. They dont want to let go of people that gave them supply of affection or emotion and are perfectly ok with keeping you in their life while in comolete full blown new relationships. Its the only explanation for this. It feels like there was never any real love for me as a person more love for how i made her feel and nothing more.
Ive come to accept this because i am one who needs to learn from my mistakes and watch peoples behaviour to prepare myself for future relationships, a man who doesnt learn from his errors or mistakes tends to repeat them. The delays and prolonging of all of this has had a mental draining effect on me as i wanted closure and to start anew from a completely fresh slate, not to mention that i have spent upwards of 50-70k total in the last 2 years to make ends meet and figure out how to navigate this scenario. Had it not been for me moving here and staying with my parents and having them help me financially id likely be living on the street where i was. I feel like im still being held hostage in my own life by a psychological abuser who refuses to fess up to their mistakes and accept the consequences of her actions. I feel like a toy that belongs to her, but one thats older and been replaced by a shiny new toy, but she refuses to give up the old toy because the more toys she has the more options she has even though this stuffed animal has been left dirty and missing parts.
If this isnt a cluster b personality then i dont know what is.
In the meanwhile i still have my routine, my work is going well, im finding a lot more time to socialize and making new friends. I am doing what I can but the longer this drags on the more im stealing from my future financially and mentally and it is not easy whatsoever
Try not to retrospectively label your ex to make sense of their behaviour.
That’s a rabbit hole you don’t want to go down. 95% of divorced people will tell you their ex was a NPD, a cluster B, BPD… and given less than 1% of the population actually are, it’s likely a coping mechanism and nothing more.
Sometimes, people just do sh*tty things. Nothing more, nothing less. Labeling them achieves nothing - except making you feel better.
I think you’ll probably find her apparently non-sensical time-wasting is being driven by the lawyer, and I almost guarantee her lawyer is being paid by the hour. So they will continue to ignore, delay, request, act surprised, write letters and generally waste everyone’s time … until they’ve extracted every last cent they can.
Is it frustrating to be stuck in the middle of it all? Absolutely!
If I were you, I’d be expecting the games to continue a bit longer. But don’t let it get to you - they can’t delay forever.
Imagine yourself as a dry leaf in a tornado - you can get incredibly frustrated at being tossed about, or you can just let the wind take you wherever it wants - in the knowledge that eventually, this too will blow over.
Not doing it to label her as anything to be honest, just trying to debrief and see the relationship for what it was so that i take lessons from it and keep an eye out for the same patterns in future. Ive seen a lot of videos from experts on cluster b personality disorders and many of them say the same, if someone has 5/9 traits from a their diagnostic manual then they are npd, and considering she had all 9 and the behaviours were so extreme and dramatic, its the only explanation for why she did what she did. And she repeated the exact same patterns with the last 2 dudes from what i saw from messages. The reality is diagnosis of npd is low because the disorder in an of itself is conducive to not getting diagnosed, very few do. And some of the best psychologist literature is written by actually diagnosed npd experts. And watching their lectures you understand exactly what and who you are dealing with
