Divorced Men Share The Things They Wish They Had Noticed Before Their Marriages Fell Apart

If someone tells you they have BPD (Not Bipolar though I mean...) and they've been fine up to now and you wanna be polite and understanding and say it's not a problem. Start making plans to distance yourself now, do not develop further relationships, it's a ticking time b**b and it WILL blow up at some point.

I think in a marriage, if you are afraid to tell your wife something, you mustn’t do it. Only in this way can one avoid getting divorced.

Often times things can be fixed. Take a moment to think of the root issue. There will be a time they are exhausted and dont want to fix anything, big or small. There will be time YOU don’t want to fix anything, big or small. If you let these overlap while you are both exhausted, both of you will be cheated out of a functioning marriage purely from bluffing and holding ground that doesn’t need held. 

Some things aren’t worth fixing, you will know if you’ve found yourself in that situation. But always take a moment to say the problem out loud. Did it start over laundry? Cooking? A mess? A broken item? Just daily yelling over b******t? Fix it.

You cannot outwork or sacrifice enough for someone who is committed to misunderstanding you.

I think maybe, just maybe, if I would have called that out early, we might have had a chance. Twenty-five years gone in a p**f. Virtually all of our joint friends have migrated back to me after initially siding with her, which is only a small comfort, but it's something.

Once you identify that things aren’t right either actively work to fix it or end it. Don’t just settle for the new normal because it’s convenient. Once she has what she feels she needs to be able to move on she will regardless of what value you think you bring.

I have been through a divorce and my little cousin is going through one now. He called me for advice as we both felt blindsided (like, things are going badly due to these outside influences [moving, taking care of d****g parents, economic collapse, whatever] but we love one another and are giving our all to this relationship and our kids and one day the sun will shine again)

And what I told him is, “a woman has divorced you 5 months before she tells you she divorced you. There’s nothing left to chase, she’s just letting you know.”

Edit*: typo.

My ex and I met young. We both grew up and grew different goals, views and paths in life that just didn’t mutually track for a continuum of the relationship.

You can put in the effort on both ends to keep things going but you can’t ignore that two people are still their own persons and not everything will be eye to eye. As long as you understand their happiness and reaching their goals matters just as much as you reaching a potential you have wanted then the end is really just a new beginning for each of you and that’s ok.

It takes years to get past and never really stops hurting but you can’t dwell on what could have been when that means one person compromising on themselves.

To my younger + early married self: There were subtle signs during the dating period & in marriage that you chose to ignore. Now they’re going to rear its ugly head. That’s okay though, your belief in a true lifetime romantic partnership has actually gotten stronger from your experience. Also from this experience, your strongest inner beliefs that run deep into your soul haven’t wavered and that’s how you know it will be okay.

There's a song by Yellowcard that I heard and knew that it was speaking to me but I didn't listen. It went:

> I heard a voice last night

> It said "Wake up and open your eyes.

> Wake up, walk out tonight.

> Cause she don't care if you're d**d or alive.".

You tried your best but it was pretty obvious from the start we had different reasons for being married.
When she wasn’t willing to do marriage counseling or choose you over her hobbies it becomes pretty obvious that things are going to change.

Stop sacrificing your health to please someone who doesn't care about you. You deserve to be loved and cared for too.

Work less overtime and look into how she's spending the money

I know you don't want to believe it, but she's obviously cheating on you.

Don’t give away the house for the kids because they end up coming to live with you in your rented house.

"there is no amount of money that will make someone love you who doesn't love you".

While married:
Take responsibility for the things you do, learn from your mistakes, go to therapy so you can vent and gain a new perspective. Take charge of the finances and speak directly to put an end to the resentment.

At the time of separation/divorce:
Don’t waste your time crying for that week. You weren’t happy before and she never stopped taking advantage of you from day one. Break off your finances immediately and push for the divorce to be finalized soon as possible.

Don't fight it. Just go straight to divorce. Spent 3 years trying to salvage the relationship, and it was a doomed effort.

How you feel in the beginning is how you'll always feel. You can't fix people, you can only try to show them a better way.

I was absolutely destroyed when my wife told me she didn't love me any more. Fought for every strand of a chance to make it work.

I'm hindsight, I was wrong. I'd been fighting for years and I'd just not seen it.

I'd tell my married self, and all the married selves, to really take the time and make the effort to check in with each other and talk about your values, your wants, and where you see your future. And when you begin to notice there's disparity, don't just presume one will go along with the other or it'll all work out. An unaddressed hairline fracture is tomorrow's unrepairable fissure.

And lastly I would say to value yourself. Relationships and love are worth fighting for, they're worth compromising for, but they shouldn't mean your erasure. Ask yourself what you're really getting over and above just "being with them" and if the answer is nothing or very little at all, then that's a dynamic that needs some real examination.

Wasn't married, just long term relationship that ended with me walking in on her and her now husband.

Highly, highly recommend the book "the 7 principles of marriage work"

Not only did it help me understand how to treat the next relationship I am in with actual knowledge of what to do in rough patches, it helped me identify some of the issues I had myself that affected all sorts of relationships besides just it being about marriage.

If you feel alone and lonely inside your marriage and your spouse doesn’t care, won’t work with you to improve that, or recognize that as an existential risk to the relationship, they don’t care about the relationship, just what they can get out of it and you.

Get your own checking account and try saving every single paycheck,.