Tammy Wynette cannot be reached for help-Divorce advice

[iceman]

And stop falling on your head.

It has been 74 days since I've fallen on my head, I think I'm gonna try for 100.

[oftpiste]

And you mine, again. Once again, you have no idea about anything I or anyone else has experienced. I wouldn't wish the shit I've been through on my worst enemy, and it certainly wasn't a result of "I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want". My introspection and self-examination has been vast. Clueless about my own behavior is not applicable here.

WTF is so hard about basic kindness? That's what is clearly lacking in so many of these comments. And it's so easy to do and costs one nothing beyond relinquishing self-righteousness for a moment or two.

You've missed the(my) point entirely. I don't really know you but the behavior you describe in your first paragraph might be why you find yourself in this fragile emotional state. Men, myself included, are pretty clueless about their behavior.

[oftpiste]

Well put Foggy. and thank you for the best wishes.

I certainly don't have the answers, and everything I keep writing is about not keeping score, ranking people or thinking one has the answers. It is about just being kind. Maybe that's the word you're looking for, and that's what's missing.

I don't have any of the answers, but I do know that when I see someone suffering I work hard to be kind to them. I don't try to figure out if they brought the shitpile on themselves or not. That doesn't matter in that moment.

Plenty of people bring a pile of shit upon themselves. That said, I do a lot better just thinking that life is hard for everyone. Bad things happen to good people all the time. I don't know if compassion is the right word, but I think we'll all be better of we just admitted that we don't have all the answers. I'm over people keeping score, ranking each other, and hypocritically justifying their own behavior. We all all imperfect and we just need to come to terms with that. Get up everyday and focus your energy on being the best person you can be.

Best wishes to all of you battling right now. Any if your not, you will be so count yourselves lucky and lend a helping hand.

[iceman]

I feel like you're reading too much into Aaron's comments, he's obviously been through some shit himself at some point. This is a really long thread and lots of people have tried to help anon, and some have given him shit, and some have goofed around and some have talked about themselves. It's TGR, it's not gonna be unanimous, take the good with the bad if you can.

[MakersTeleMark]

It has been 74 days since I've fallen on my head, I think I'm gonna try for 100.

Sig worthy.

[anonalias]

I’ve been surprised at the level of support passed on in this thread. As a long time forum member going back to the powmag days, I fully expect to be flamed and mocked mercilessly.

You guys are rad, and all perspectives help.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

I feel like you're reading too much into Aaron's comments, he's obviously been through some shit himself at some point. This is a really long thread and lots of people have tried to help anon, and some have given him shit, and some have goofed around and some have talked about themselves. It's TGR, it's not gonna be unanimous, take the good with the bad if you can.

Divorce problems, like everything in this world, can be fixed with a little empathy, common sense advice and good natured ribbing.

I have a feeling that the heat from the fire might still be a too recent memory for clearheaded thinking in this thread for oft.

[XXX-er]

I’ve been surprised at the level of support passed on in this thread. As a long time forum member going back to the powmag days, I fully expect to be flamed and mocked mercilessly.

You guys are rad, and all perspectives help.

don't listen to the sanctimonious bastards

do what you need to do

[oftpiste]

Divorce problems, like everything in this world, can be fixed with a little empathy, common sense advice and good natured ribbing.

Again with a presumption that you know anything at all about my experience. Good grief.

Wow! Empathy! There's an idea! Why didn't I think of that? Damn. Good call.

Common sense advice? Maybe, if that's what it really is and not platitudes or how their experience isn't as bad as they think it is which, sadly, is what some of it has been in this thread.

Good natured ribbing? Meh. Probably the last thing someone needs when their world is blown up, their kids are being hidden from them, their mail is being stolen and they're trying to figure out how to survive emotionally minute by minute.

I don't think I'm reading too much into anything. I don't expect unanimity. I know what goes on here. I guess what bums me out is that people want to argue about expressing kindness instead of giving unconditional support to those in need. When people are going through this shit it feels like the bottom has dropped out of the world. Giving them shit or telling them why they should feel differently than they do couldn't be less helpful.

I ask again, why does my call for unconditional kindness, compassion, empathy and support to anyone suffering anything equate to less than clear-headed thinking? That's my point, and I'm befuddled that anyone wants to argue about it.

To everyone, stop arguing about things that aren't really an argument! Stop presuming! Be kind! That's all you have to do and there's no downside. It actually feels good when you do it.

Aaron, I used to spend a ton of time at Mission 30 years ago and haven't been back since my kids were little. I love that place. Let's go skiing and then get some drinks, then show me your cool new house.

[Cono Este]

I just got back my pre digital photo collection. 10 yrs later, and some of my deceased step fathers Art work.

There is little explanation for the behavior of some, we live in a world where many can live with some kind of entitlement to do harm to others. Wether it be an ex spouse, or your car mechanic. We flip the coin all the time on who we trust, everyone does.

Sooner or later, age or experience will teach us that.

[oftpiste]

I bet it's interesting going through those after so much time. I was pretty much the sole photographer for 30 years and most of my pre-digital pics went out the door too.

I don't believe that most, even the most narcissistic, sociopathic and entitled of the bunch actually intend to harm others. They do it completely unconsciously and when confronted with it dismiss it or toss the blame elsewhere. That's where I find the behavior so perplexing.

Unconsciousness is a big problem in the world today.

I just got back my pre digital photo collection. 10 yrs later, and some of my deceased step fathers Art work.

There is little explanation for the behavior of some, we live in a world where many can live with some kind of entitlement to do harm to others. Wether it be an ex spouse, or your car mechanic. We flip the coin all the time on who we trust, everyone does.

Sooner or later, age or experience will teach us that.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

Again with a presumption that you know anything at all about my experience. Good grief.

Wow! Empathy! There's an idea! Why didn't I think of that? Damn. Good call.

Common sense advice? Maybe, if that's what it really is and not platitudes or how their experience isn't as bad as they think it is which, sadly, is what some of it has been in this thread.

Good natured ribbing? Meh. Probably the last thing someone needs when their world is blown up, their kids are being hidden from them, their mail is being stolen and they're trying to figure out how to survive emotionally minute by minute.

I don't think I'm reading too much into anything. I don't expect unanimity. I know what goes on here. I guess what bums me out is that people want to argue about expressing kindness instead of giving unconditional support to those in need. When people are going through this shit it feels like the bottom has dropped out of the world. Giving them shit or telling them why they should feel differently than they do couldn't be less helpful.

I ask again, why does my call for unconditional kindness, compassion, empathy and support to anyone suffering anything equate to less than clear-headed thinking? That's my point, and I'm befuddled that anyone wants to argue about it.

To everyone, stop arguing about things that aren't really an argument! Stop presuming! Be kind! That's all you have to do and there's no downside. It actually feels good when you do it.

Aaron, I used to spend a ton of time at Mission 30 years ago and haven't been back since my kids were little. I love that place. Let's go skiing and then get some drinks, then show me your cool new house.

Let me know when you head this way. I kept the house in the divorce, so I'm in the old one.

[Cono Este]

I bet it's interesting going through those after so much time. I was pretty much the sole photographer for 30 years and most of my pre-digital pics went out the door too.

I don't believe that most, even the most narcissistic, sociopathic and entitled of the bunch actually intend to harm others. They do it completely unconsciously and when confronted with it dismiss it or toss the blame elsewhere. That's where I find the behavior so perplexing.

Unconsciousness is a big problem in the world today.

I have no desire to look through them. They are from another life.

I ask myself sometimes are some people bad, or just stupid? I classify the self centered as stupid. Because when, and only if it happens to them, then they grow a brain.

[zion zig zag]

Good natured ribbing? Meh. Probably the last thing someone needs when their world is blown up, their kids are being hidden from them, their mail is being stolen and they're trying to figure out how to survive emotionally minute by minute.

You haven’t lived until you’ve been through a divorce as a rookie at a busy city fire station. Poor timing on my part.

[oftpiste]

Jebus. That must have been brutal. And probably somehow strengthening at the same time.

You haven’t lived until you’ve been through a divorce as a rookie at a busy city fire station. Poor timing on my part.

[KQ]

She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes by the Sink



It seems so unreasonable when you put it that way: My wife left me because sometimes I leave dishes by the sink.

It makes her seem ridiculous; and makes me seem like a victim of unfair expectations.

We like to point fingers at other things to explain why something went wrong, like when Biff Tannen crashed George McFly’s car and spilled beer on his clothes, but it was all George’s fault for not telling him the car had a blind spot.

This bad thing happened because of this, that, and the other thing. Not because of anything I did!

Sometimes I leave used drinking glasses by the kitchen sink, just inches away from the dishwasher.

It isn’t a big deal to me now. It wasn’t a big deal to me when I was married. But it was a big deal to her.

Every time she’d walk into the kitchen and find a drinking glass by the sink, she moved incrementally closer to moving out and ending our marriage. I just didn’t know it yet.

But even if I had, I fear I wouldn’t have worked as hard to change my behavior as I would have stubbornly tried to get her to see things my way.

The idiom “to cut off your nose to spite your face” was created for such occasions.

Men Are Not Children, Even Though We Behave Like Them

Feeling respected by others is important to men.

Feeling respected by one’s wife is essential to living a purposeful and meaningful life. Maybe I thought my wife should respect me simply because I exchanged vows with her. It wouldn’t be the first time I acted entitled. One thing I know for sure is that I never connected putting a dish in the dishwasher with earning my wife’s respect.

I remember my wife often saying how exhausting it was for her to have to tell me what to do all the time. It’s why the sexiest thing a man can say to his partner is “I got this,” and then take care of whatever needs taken care of.

I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.”

But she didn’t want to be my mother.

She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.

She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.

I wish I could remember what seemed so unreasonable to me about that at the time.

Men Can Do Things

Men invented heavy machines that can fly in the air reliably and safely. Men proved the heliocentric model of the solar system, establishing that the Earth orbits the Sun. Men design and build skyscrapers, and take hearts and other human organs from dead people and replace the corresponding failing organs inside of living people, and then those people stay alive afterward. Which is insane.

Men are totally good at stuff.

Men are perfectly capable of doing a lot of these things our wives complain about. What we are not good at is being psychic, or accurately predicting how our wives might feel about any given thing because male and female emotional responses tend to differ pretty dramatically.

‘Hey Matt! Why would you leave a glass by the sink instead of putting it in the dishwasher?’

Several reasons.

I may want to use it again.
I don’t care if a glass is sitting by the sink unless guests are coming over.
I will never care about a glass sitting by the sink. Ever. It’s impossible. It’s like asking me to make myself interested in crocheting, or to enjoy yardwork. I don’t want to crochet things. And it’s hard for me to imagine a scenario in which doing a bunch of work in my yard sounds more appealing than ANY of several thousand less-sucky things which could be done.

There is only ONE reason I will ever stop leaving that glass by the sink. A lesson I learned much too late: Because I love and respect my partner, and it REALLY matters to her.

I understand that when I leave that glass there, it hurts her — literally causes her pain — because it feels to her like I just said: “Hey. I don’t respect you or value your thoughts and opinions. Not taking four seconds to put my glass in the dishwasher is more important to me than you are.”

All the sudden, it’s not about something as benign and meaningless as a dirty dish.

Now, it’s a meaningful act of love and sacrifice, and really? Four seconds? That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing too big to do for the person who sacrifices daily for me.

I don’t have to understand WHY she cares so much about that stupid glass.

I just have to understand and respect that she DOES.

Then, caring about her = putting the glass in the dishwasher.
Caring about her = keeping your laundry off the floor.
Caring about her = thoughtfully not tracking dirt or whatever on the floor she worked hard to clean.
Caring about her = taking care of kid-related things so she can just chill out for a little bit and not worry about anything.
Caring about her = “Hey babe. Is there anything I can do today or pick up on my way home that will make your day better?”
Caring about her = a million little things that say “I love you” more than speaking the words ever can.

Yes, It’s That Simple

The man capable of that behavioral change — even when he doesn’t understand her or agree with her thought-process — can have a great relationship.

Men want to fight for their right to leave that glass there. It might look like this:

“Eat shit, wife,” we think. “I sacrifice a lot for you, and you’re going to get on me about ONE glass by the sink? THAT little bullshit glass that takes a few seconds to put in the dishwasher, which I’ll gladly do when I know I’m done with it, is so important to you that you want to give me crap about it? You want to take an otherwise peaceful evening and have an argument with me, and tell me how I’m getting something wrong and failing you, over this glass?

After all of the big things I do to make our life possible — things I never hear a “thank you” for (and don’t ask for) — you’re going to elevate a glass by the sink into a marriage problem? I couldn’t be THAT petty if I tried. And I need to dig my heels in on this one. If you want that glass in the dishwasher, put it in there yourself without telling me about it. Otherwise, I’ll put it away when people are coming over, or when I’m done with it. This is a bullshit fight that feels unfair and I’m not just going to bend over for you.”

The man DOES NOT want to divorce his wife because she’s nagging him about the glass thing which he thinks is totally irrational. He wants her to agree with him that when you put life in perspective, a glass being by the sink when no one is going to see it anyway, and the solution takes four seconds, is just not a big problem. She should recognize how petty and meaningless it is in the grand scheme of life, he thinks, and he keeps waiting for her to agree with him.

She will never agree with him, because for her, it’s not ACTUALLY about the glass. The glass situation could be ANY situation in which she feels unappreciated and disrespected by her husband.

The wife doesn’t want to divorce her husband because he leaves used drinking glasses by the sink.

She wants to divorce him because she feels like he doesn’t respect or appreciate her, which suggests he doesn’t love her, and she can’t count on him to be her lifelong partner. She can’t trust him. She can’t be safe with him. Thus, she must leave and find a new situation in which she can feel content and secure.

In theory, the man wants to fight this fight, because he thinks he’s right (and I tend to agree with him): The dirty glass is not more important than marital peace.

If his wife thought and felt like him, he’d be right to defend himself. Unfortunately, most guys don’t know that she’s NOT fighting about the glass. She’s fighting for acknowledgment, respect, validation, and his love.

If he KNEW that — if he fully understood this secret she has never explained to him in a way that doesn’t make her sound crazy to him (causing him to dismiss it as an inconsequential passing moment of emo-ness), and that this drinking glass situation and all similar arguments will eventually end his marriage, I believe he WOULD rethink which battles he chose to fight, and would be more apt to take action doing things he understands to make his wife feel loved and safe.

I think a lot of times, wives don’t agree with me. They don’t think it’s possible that their husbands don’t know how their actions make her feel because she has told him, sometimes with tears in her eyes, over and over and over and over again how upset it makes her and how much it hurts.

And this is important: Telling a man something that doesn’t make sense to him once, or a million times, doesn’t make him “know” something. Right or wrong, he would never feel hurt if the same situation were reversed so he doesn’t think his wife SHOULD hurt.

“I never get upset with you about things you do that I don’t like!” men reason, as if their wives are INTENTIONALLY choosing to feel hurt and miserable.

When you choose to love someone, it becomes your pleasure to do things that enhance their lives and bring you closer together, rather than a chore.

It’s not: Sonofabitch, I have to do this bullshit thing for my wife again. It’s: I’m grateful for another opportunity to demonstrate to my wife that she comes first and that I can be counted on to be there for her, and needn’t look elsewhere for happiness and fulfillment.

Once someone figures out how to help a man equate the glass situation (which does not, and will never, affect him emotionally) with DEEPLY wounding his wife and making her feel sad, alone, unloved, abandoned, disrespected, afraid, etc. ... Once men really grasp that and accept it as true even though it doesn’t make sense to them?

Everything changes forever.

[skiballs]

^ that's nice and all, but let's be real here. The goal posts are moved over time.
At first, fun and cool, with great sex is all that is required. Then the children come along. Being a good father and spending time as a family, is the measurement of the day. Then middle age sets in, roughly 45, and now it becomes why am I with you (she thinks to herself). Facing old age and many more years, the answer often is I don't know. Then every short coming and perceived thoughtless act, is seen as disrespect. It becomes easy to end a marriage, when you've convinced yourself that you are being disrespected.

Just a thought, not a sermon.

[liv2ski]

^ that's nice and all, but let's be real here. The goal posts are moved over time.
At first, fun and cool, with great sex is all that is required. Then the children come along. Being a good father and spending time as a family, is the measurement of the day. Then middle age sets in, roughly 45, and now it becomes why am I with you (she thinks to herself). Facing old age and many more years, the answer often is I don't know. Then every short coming and perceived thoughtless act, is seen as disrespect. It becomes easy to end a marriage, when you've convinced yourself that you are being disrespected.

Just a thought, not a sermon.

After all that time together, both partners need to be trying to make the other happy and let a lot of shit go that annoys them or they will not stay together. Been with my girl 38 years now, so trust me on this one.

[skiballs]

Yes, and congrats. Sometimes things aren't meant to be. Sometimes they are.

[frorider]

People who have a functional level of self-esteem don’t tend to feel ‘disrespected’ all the time.

[My Pet Powder Goat]

Fucking chicks!...Amirite, boys?

[Elkhound Odin]

Fucking chicks!...Amirite, boys?

I'm not really into bestiality. But, I won't judge other's predilections.

[Marshall Tucker]

Well, Anon and others, I learn a lot from this thread. things are far from perfect at my house.

Sorry for what you are going through, hope you get through it intact and without bitterness.

[Kinnikinnick]

After all that time together, both partners need to be trying to make the other happy and let a lot of shit go that annoys them or they will not stay together. Been with my girl 38 years now, so trust me on this one.

This.


It’s very easy on both sides to let yourself feel disrespected or undervalued or misunderstood and a lot harder to look at yourself and find your irrationalities and insensitivities and do better and appreciate what you have.

It always COULD be better and that is easy to convert to SHOULD be better. If only he made more money. If only she wasn’t so sensitive. If only he didn’t go skiing with his friends so much. If only she was prettier or thinner. If only, if only.


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[MagnificentUnicorn]

People who have a functional level of self-esteem don’t tend to feel ‘disrespected’ all the time.

People who have a functional level of self esteem don't tend to disrespect their partners all the time.

Two sides to every coin.