Posted: May 8, 08 2:19pm
My wife (45) and I (42) are at the crisis point. About five months ago, she informed me that she was no longer "in love" with me. Since then, it has been a slow, steady march toward divorce. First, there was no more sex. Next, separate rooms. Now, I am moving out. Actually, we are looking at the separation as a positive thing, a chance to spend some time getting to know ourselves. I am going to go back to school in a town about 7 hours away from "home," a decision that we arrived at together. She has been extremely supportive of me, in fact, and I have done my best to be supportive of her. We both still care.
She asked for a divorce a few weeks ago; I persuaded her to wait until next summer. We have been married 16 years, together 20. Our kids are 5 and 7, and I was able to convince her that our children and our history deserve the respect of moving slowly on this.
We are great friends, good parents together, and generally speaking, we get along well. Obviously, there were problems, to which both of us have admitted responsibility. Were it not for the children, I would be ready to move on, but because of them, I want to at least try to work out our problems and see if we can make it go again. We have access to quality counseling, we're both intelligent (intellectually as well as emotionally), and both of us are great communicators. I believe that we could make it, if both of us would try.
So I wonder, those of you who have divorced, would you do it again? If you believed that you could work out your problems, if you still liked your partner, if there were no trust/addiction/abuse issues, would you still get a divorce? Is "I'm not in love anymore" enough reason? At what point do you give up? Most of my friends are saying to get out, let it go, etc. But I'm not ready, even though she is. Advice?
