I can't stop crying!

After 30 years of marriage he has asked me for a divorce. I never thought this would happen to me! I don't know what to do!!!!

I don't have experience for a divorce but I believe almost all of our relationship problem is <a href=" https://www.google.com"> communication</a>. try to speak heart to heart with your husband slowly. be strong to open the chat, and you only need to honest to yourself, try to show him that you are still like the first time you met. I pray for you beautiful future life Mrs.

I must respectfully disagree with zacky123. In my view you shouldn't want to change who you have become back to who you once were because you have gained so much experience and knowledge simply through living through all these 30yrs. I do agree that being honest to yourself is a must. What are his reasons for wanting a divorce if I may inquire?

He says he is not attracted to me.

So after 30 yrs he suddenly has decided to part because of this alone? Really? Can you tell us alil history about the relationship? Behavioral changes, how often you two fought, your accomplishments as a couple and what not. Things relative to this sudden shift down south?

As KeeKay says there must be more and we can't help without that and we are not prying gossips. I have 50 yrs of fraught, happy, troubled, joyous marriage behind me and still attached - just, but we manage due to my wife's compassion and love and me with with my changed and reformed ways. Friends are mystified how we are together but we are and it can be done. Good luck.

Its a tough phase but you have to be strong dear and face it head on. Keeping emotions aside try to think clearly. Speak out with him. Ask him why he feels unattracted? Is he talking of emotional bonding or physical? Ask him is there any other reason too? Is he attracted to someone else? If after the talk, if you both feel you need to give it one more try, then go for counseling.

I first met my husband in 1985. At that time I was 20 years old and he was 27. I had a daughter age 1, and he had three daughters ages 5, 6, and 8 years old. After 2 years we had a son and married for years after that we had a daughter together also. Back then we partied like rock stars. He had a twin sister that was with a major drug dealer from New York. When they moved to Ohio where we lived giving us drugs for free I grew a habit snorting herein. My husband like getting high also but didn't too much has a specific substance he used. This went on from 1990 until 1995. From 1992 until 1995 many involved with our associations were dropping off like flies. I was in deep and when my sister in laws boyfriend was killed in an car accident coming from New York to Ohio that's when it all went down hill. My sister in law tried to take over distribution of drugs but was robbed. In the end she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I would go to take her to radiation treatments and we would never make it for she was an IV drug user. I watched her just fizzle away to nothing. I remember her warning me about getting addicted to heroin even though i just snorted it. Not long after that I realized I was hooked. As bad As I fought it I had to have it. During that same time we had to get custody of his three children as their mother was charged with neglect. We went to counseling and everything to make it work as it was very difficult. Those were some trying times back then but before you knew it they were all adults. Of the three two have degrees and 1 is a class away from being a social worker, but she was our rebel child. She is the one of all the children that flocked to the streets. There was always animosity there as their mother would always tell them she was coming back and have herself together but she never did. . I thought I can not go out like this and so I called a treatment center where I obtained 18 years in a 12 step program. I was fully active and involved. I was able to obtain my degree and work with the same population I once was. I then got another degree transitioning into the mental heath field. During this eighteen years of recovery my husband struggled. He'd get a year, 2 years, even at one time 7 years clean. I remember hearing him say in that 7 year time he was clean he would trick with prostitutes as that went hand in hand with using. After all except the baby all were adults we decided to relocate to a new city. The first 4 years were great. We were in recovery living a great life so I thought. Not because of us but our relationship was estranged with the tree oldest kids. I believe because of the closeness as a family we had as well as resentments they were taken from their mother. My recovery finally gave me excellent boundaries as I accepted this and began to avoid and ignore them. In 2011 my son had his first child which would be my first grand child. He played professional sports in another country and I took off 40 days to bee with my first grandson. While I was gone after 7 years my husband relapsed as my daughter called my son and me to inform us she found condoms and crack in his car. From that time on he has been drinking and smoking. Running the streets and doing the very thing he had been doing many years before. He began using with a woman and 4 years later still connected to this woman. Even though I ask him not to he is always in contact with her. He says it's not what I think but I have spoke with her before also. She too insisted at that time there is nothing. My husband is more distant with me and more running to bars and streets. One day after 17 years clean I snatched his beer from him and downed it. I then started smoking marijuana again. So for the past few years we partied again together. I never really liked it but it did stop him most times from running the streets as he was doing this to respect my recovery and didn't have to do this anymore. This girl still surfaces. My husband retired last year and this really took it to another phase. The trust is gone and while at work he does what he does. He has diabetes and his A1C is over 12. He is a ticking time bomb. He acts as though he is allergic to me. He can't look me in my eyes. He would come to bed 4-5 am and became even further away. He has probably had sex with me 5 times in the past 3 years. He told me he is not attracted to me any more due to my weight. He told me he was with me for convenience. The last time we had sex was in June 2014. Always connected with this woman. He would bitch about me going in his phone. He was really spiraling out of control and I was afraid he was going to die. Christmas Eve he went to treatment. Other then helping him with business he has nothing to do with me. I left the home while he came for a week to respect his recovery and not argue as I still have that void of no relationship. He told me he does not want to be with me anymore and has openly friended this same woman on Facebook. As much as I love social media I have deleted my page not to see this. It hurts so bad. He told me to get a divorce the same day he friended her. His heart is with another woman and it was all revealed to me. He currently has 30 something days clean and says he is going back to Florida for 30 more days out patient treatment. Recently after 3 years I have reconnected with my sponsor I have 4 days with out smoking weed or drinking alcohol. I have an appt scheduled with my old sponsor next week.

Jannie, I am so sorry to hear this sad tale and frankly it is way out my league in terms of drugs. I can't help you but I am sure there will be thoce that can in here. I had very different but serious issues with the law as well as my marriage and can only say I am on the way to getting back to normal with the help I received in this website.

Jannie, Stand RIGHT back from the cine film of your life together and it's actually exceedingly simple: When you met him, albeit your reasons might have differed, you were in a wheelchair and so was he. You knew you yourself were only temporarily out of action, destined to recover, and assumed he was likewise. You thought, what better partner than one in my 'exact same' circumstance and situation; we can wheel about together, 'enjoy' distractions from our woes together, and then, when finally ready to, can start to help one another emerge from our wheelchairs and walk off on our four healed feet into the sunset (with you taking the lead). The problem was, he was EITHER more wounded than you hence still to this day isn't as ready as you to start facing life as a fitter adult OR was always a permanent quadriplegic (and you just couldn't tell). It sounds like he's given up trying to adhere to your faster rate of recovery and/or has met another wheelchair user (one who *isn't* so hell bent on trying to rise out of it due to whatever benefits it affords). He wouldn't be able to articulate that and hence uses any plausible-sounding excuse he can find, including, don't find you attractive any more. Be honest. You'd have succeeded getting full-time out of your chair LONG before today had it not been for that marriage/him holding you back as intermittently plonked you back in it. Somewhere out there are a number of likeminded/situationed soulmates as newly better able-bodied as you and as determined as you never to collapse back into that chair and to persevere with the crutches until they get back to full mobility. Some of them are making their way to your vicinity as we speak. Some of those will be better recovered, thus fitter and more willing, than others. Your mission, should you choose to accept it ("dah! dah! daaah-dah, dah! dah!, daaah-dah", etc), is to find the best of that bunch yet THIS time take a better, longer walk around him and his (this stage) crutches so that, using your new-found experience and insight, you can be confident that this one won't ever end up disappointing and disillusioning you. This FEELS like a nightmare but it's not, it's just those few seconds after you've come round from a nightmare when you're crying and yelling because you've yet to realise you're awake and out of it. Give it time and you'll thank your lucky stars you're free of that human and situational shackle, and free NOW rather than in another x years. Your life is only now about to begin. And it's a good and pleasing life. A dream of a life. If you keep the faith and remember that pairing up between a man and a woman is an human compulsion so powerful and involuntary that - aside from hell-bent, highly contrived attempts to merely delay the inevitable - actual avoidance is downright impossible, meaning, you'll soon enough find out that what I'm saying is true. Liberation from a cage - whether enforced, self-created or co-created or whatever degrees in combo - is always disturbing or even downright traumatising at first. That's why some animals choose to walk back IN. That and the fact that *everything* has its up- as well as down-sides, meaning there are plus-points to being incarcerated. However, there are many more plus-points to being free to roam the open plains. But the incarcerated animal doesn't and can't appreciate that, for obvious reasons. Your husband has replaced you with a worse model (someone still down in his lower league). You were literally too good for him... which means he was too bad for you. His selfish act, ironically enough, is the very key that's set you free. Soon enough, you'll feel grateful for that. In the meantime, you don't have to "do" anything. Just put one foot in front of the other, day by day. I won't say 'today', because today is an everything-to-a-head day, but if you think about it, last month was the very future you 1, 2, 3, 4, 5..10 years ago found so intimidating or worrying. Big deal, right? Same goes for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5..10 years ahead. Fact. You'll be absolutely fine, I guarantee it. How can I be that sure? Easy! You have what it takes to get yourself - YOURSELF, SINGLE-HANDEDLY - out of no less than a wheelchair. :-) And when I say singlehandedly, I mean because no rehab centre came to YOU, you went to it. One or two years from now you'll be hopping, skipping, jumping down the street and he'll still be wheeling himself around, going 'mew-mew, poor me'. Proof: "He had a twin sister that was with a major drug dealer from New York. When they moved to Ohio where we lived giving us drugs for free I grew a habit snorting herein." His tree - of which his sister and he were apples - *already* had issues that included a drugs problem. Yours didn't. If you haven't ever already, please read Dr Terrence Real's book on male depression - "I Don't Want to Talk About It (Overcoming the secret legacy of male depression)" for its explanations about how a wife, being female thus programmed/primed to be the emotional caretaker in a relationship, will, if unable to fix or co-fix a man's inadequacy, assume the same inadequacy (or near enough) so as not to present an unflattering, misery-making comparison in the marital mirror (akin to when a fat woman feels fatter thus more unhappy if a slim friend insists on standing right next to her in the communal changing-room mirror). Hence the wife of an alcoholic or whatever issue-ridden husband will eventually join him. The MINUTE the wife no longer has to feel responsible for keeping his welfare buoyed - this case, in this specific way - or, certainly, once she's had a chance to get over the initial trauma of their split - she all-too-suddenly-and-easily, POOF!, as if by magic, stops drinking (or whatever), whereas the now left-to-his-own-devices male will either continue as he always did or worsen. Maybe your husband was, without you even realising it, always your pet project where concerned your gradual foray into the mental health industry? Yeah, well, don't feel defeated because you know what they say: 'Physician heal thyself'. You can't possibly fix a marriage when a marriage is half 'thyself', can you. Maybe his leaving you IS his attempt to become healed?... but maybe before he can do that, he needs to allow himself to reach a head (rock bottom). I did *say*, he's set you free, right? Let some other poor woman become [a] his wheelchair emergence attempt aid or [b] excuse to stay in it forevermore Amen without feeling guilty and inadequate. (My bet is b, what's yours?) Whichever/whatever, he and his problem are now *her* problem. In a couple of years' time, maybe less, you'll wish you could send her a note that reads: "How are you enjoying my old life? Great!....DOESN'T IT." ;-)

Wow that is awesome soulmate!!! Thank you so much for the input. Are you a clinician? How do you illustrate this so well? I just left my doctor and she ordered me something for the mood swings. I'll just be glad when this is over. I never looked at it in this way but it fits so well. I did not come from the greatest background but alcohol and drugs were not a part of it. I currently am not in the wheelchair but trying to get off the crutches!!!!!! I know God is going to bless me. Everyone tells me this time next year I will be happy and grateful all of this happened. I will be glad when I get to that phase. Please all stay in touch and keep giving me the insight as it really helps!!!!!

you said hes not attracted to you. This is what you do and I promise it will work. Gym membership get in fit feel good about yourself and let it shine. New hair style means different color and different cut! Shock him. A few new ofits. Have confidence in yourself and make sure he sees that. Do NOT beg him to stay first string him along like you don't care. Dont be mean. Dont say you dont care but make sure he sees he doesn't own you!. Keep visibly busy and look and be happy!

I did loose around 50 pounds since he first told me that a couple years ago. Currently he is in another state in treatment. He did 30 days came home last week to get his car take care of business still avoiding me like the plague. He asked me for a divorce on Sunday and that same day friended this woman who continues to surface for four years now. For the first time I was able to see her. She wasn't bad looking. She works at Walgreens. I am a degreed professional. I closed my Facebook account. He gave me half his money in which he knows I am legally entitled to and left. I am financially fit, I am employed with a degree and a career but I am so sad about this failed marriage as I was adopted and God blessed me to finally have my own family. I just wanted it to work. We worked so hard and raised the kids and now this. I went from having a beautiful home to seaking an apt or something. Currently I am staying with my best friend as I can not go back to my house. I have changed my address to a PO box. My best friend has a beautiful home with a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room in the basement in which I am currently staying as I have contemplated suicide before and they don't want me to be alone. Everyone tells me I am a complete package including beautiful but I just don't feel it. I am grateful for this sight as it along with other tools are helping. Jasmine27 he is not in my presence for your feedback. But I could still take your suggestion for overall wellness. Please all please keep giving me the feedback. Soulmate where are those others on the crutches? I know I got to get resolution on this first but I really believe I will never trust a man again!!!!!!!!

Ugh, Jannie, would you even WANT him back? Maybe it's too soon to ask you that question because you'll obviously be in huge shock at the moment, not even capable of knowing which way is up from one hour to the next. But let's just say, I wouldn't recommend you get back in that cage with that monkey constantly on your back. It's not about looks, anyway. I repeat: it's about matching wheelchairs. You sound like he aimed too far above his head. I imagine he wants to be the peacock this time, not to mention the intelligent one. (Someone give him a pet slug and - PROBLEM INSTANTLY SOLVED! LOL) Course you don't feel it. He's spent years chipping your confidence, hasn't he. Don't worry, not only will your confidence come back but, far bigger than before. Seriously, the only way for someone coming out of a marriage that bad is up-up-UP. Yes, you will trust another man. With a better acceptance of candidate, the differences even at the first date and henceforth in terms of, compared to your husband at those stages, will ASTOUND you. Trusting him will be a piece of p*ss because you'll be on the same wavelength. As opposed to in the past when fears concerned whether he'd do this/that/the other to ruin the relationship, with one of your soulmates, your only paranoias will be whether *life* does something to take him away from you (car-crash, plane-crash, heart-attack, that sort of thing). The idea of he and you splatting or him leaving you will strike you as so downright ridiculous you'll feel too stupid even considering them. Prepare to kick yourself yet feel exceptionally *pleased* that you're even getting those reasons to kick yourself. Listen, you can't ask me what I am on a public forum but, suffice it to say I'm the long-haul merchant...and, unless I get run over tomorrow by a big fat truck, I'm not going anywhere. I work from my PC (own biz start up with my husband),...and not many big fat trucks tend to drive through my office, I have to say, LOL, ...plus visual analogies happen to be one of my "thangs". So no worries about me not sticking around or there not being more where that one came from. Give it another couple of months and you'll probably be wishing you could get *rid* of me, LOL... which actually, all in all seriousness, is always a very good and welcome sign of ones recovery and readiness to fly solo. Back to the here and now practicals: Why can't you go back to your house? Weren't you two married in the legal sense?

Thank you again Soulmate. I guess I got gotta go through this pain. I am not an outgoing person that even knows how to get back in the open market and I haven't even been entertaining this. I did request an appt with a divorce attorney. I hear all the good men are taken so I don't have a lot of hope in that area especially a soulmate. I embrace the thought of encountering a soulmate.

"I am not an outgoing person that even knows how to get back in the open market and I haven't even been entertaining this." Just like you weren't ready to leave school nor had a clue how to go about getting a job when you were still only 13 or so. And nor last time you ate a three-courser, ready for pudding before you'd even begun your starter. But you still managed these things when the time actually came, didn't you. Because by then you had cleared everything else from your plates and were READY. Worry not. This isn't Long Jump and it certainly ain't the 200m sprint, it's a cross-country *walk*. Your b**bs won't even bounce, LOL. One step at a time and any worrying will be a needlessly futile waste of energy. But do do a little power walk to get that divorce consultation underway because your legalised marriage entitles you to a heck of a lot, and time of the essence on that score. Only people who truly, TRULY WANT a soulmate get one. Have my keys analogy: You've misplaced your house keys. The reality is, they are - fact - in the house. You do know this for a fact or someone else is telling you for a fact. So you set about looking for them. You have to look diligently and methodically. Flitting all rushed between rooms and searching ad-hoc is not an effective method. You take just one room at a time, one step at a time... use your eyes, use your noddle, think about other things as you look if you like, and have patience and, overall, FAITH. Because the fact is, keys don't grow little legs and run out of the front door. They *are* there, the questions are only, where exactly and not if but *when* you'll locate them. So it's an inevitability that you *are* going to find those keys (and who knows what else during your search of drawers and cupboards you've for years failed to have a good old rummage through!). That piddly process is all it takes to find your soulmate. Toll fee: searching time and drawer opening and looking time. Big deal, right? When people fail, it's because they self-sabotaged. (In your case, Martina Navratilova chose/accepted Eddie The Eagle (crap British skiier) as her tennis doubles partner and now wonders why she failed to win Wimbledon when everyone could see she played just fine. Clever Martina, huh. ;-)) Beautiful relationships - technically - take hard, hard work for their heavenly perks, including concerted efforts to remain constantly emotionally mature despite realising they're both - technically - becoming increasingly vulnerable the closer and more in-love they get (although if you're both equally as precarious then no-one is precarious - capiche? - plus we get used to hard work whereupon it becomes our normal). You can no longer [a] accidentally-on-purpose pick a prat and/or [b] toy around with your relationship as if it were merely a drama or distraction tool. You finally grow up and get real and, to prove it, DO real. People are aware of this deep down and let it intimidate and scare them for whtaever personal reasons. If they had experience of what the perks actually *were*, however, they'd in a heartbeat say goodbye to commitmentphobia, selfishness, childishness and pratting around (including taking for granted). For example: think of a Honeymoon Period that to your surprise simply refuses to end like you were so sure it would/should/naturally does (including zero getting bored) despite all the other natural phases continue right on schedule, and think of Honeymoon quality sex that just keeps getting more and more amazing to the point of complete mind-f*ck and being unable to call it sex or love-making because those labels have become entirely, laughably inadequate - imagine that?! But you both have to be ready, willing and able for it OR nigh-on ready but as equally willing despite equally as still-wounded (preferably same wound sites) to guarantee mutual propping up without any begrudgment as you together walk up the path to HappyEverAfterVille. As you've just discovered/accepted, if one of you is significantly less wounded AND less emotionally mature (same thing) than the other, it won't work. He'll feel like the stupid underdog while you'll feel superior and short-changed. Compatibility isn't as important as the hard addiction to the love drug. You'll find happy ways around *any* incompatibility if you have to (and will see them as pluses, bonuses, conveniences, lucky breaks). And if you're addicted to him (to the healthy degree like Nature intended) (which you will because he's a soulmate), 'have to' is the operative phrase. I'm talking soulmate-grade chemistry, here... the cream of chemistry both mental and physical *and spiritual*. Chemistry is everything, and everything else plays a mere supporting role, just like if you can't inject a drug you'll snort it, etc. The ongoing supply of drug is the point. And when you've had enough (snorting and injecting of) SH*T and so find yourself saying, all you want is a GOOD HEART, that's when you can tell you're ready. PS: If you're not an outgoing person, no matter. You'll either find a soulmate who's equally not as outgoing or who is and whose ways will start to rub off on you (and you his). Styles don't matter. It's substance: how you both like to operate at home (rearing) and matching core morals. If your core morals match, the rest is mere detail because, unlike relationships forged by circumstances and circumstance-led feelings, morals don't change. Plus outside circumstances have to be *very* extreme for morals to even bend, let alone break. Morals are for life, meaning, a moral match is for life. And matching morals hosts don't care WHERE they live or HOW much money they have, etc., etc., as long as they get by and have basic comforts. Birds of a feather are compelled to flock and stay together, til death. More about all of that when you get there. For now, you're walking up the approach path called Recovery. Don't run or you'll miss important landmarks and scenery. But do trot to the attorney's office to make up for that lost ground.

How are you doing, Jannie?

Jannie stick with them in here, they are good!

(Cheers, Moody. But we're only as good as the posters. Teamwork, innit, same as any relationship. :-))