The latest divorce in my neighborhood

[Julia]

My 7 year olds best friends' mom has decided to leave her husband. I do not know the woman well at all. Other than arranging play dates, we have had coffee a couple times. I knew she was "unhappy" in the marriage and yet...... she admitted she is attracted to other guys (all the time) and is a sober alcoholic.  She talked to me for 2 hours today (picking my brain about divorce and young kids) and couldn't come up with anything more than "we are friends, we parent well together, the sex is good, but I feel there should be something MORE."

Now I am not coming out and calling her an N, it is just nearly impossible for me to imagine leaving your marriage for that reason when you have 3 kids (5, 7, 11). Their finances are a mess since both are self-employed and business is way down. They have to sell their house and the future is very uncertain.  She has said  that she is more like my NH and her husband is more like me based on what I have described.....That he wants work together and doesn't have such high expectations, that he is loyal and she is just.....flighty and picky.

He is a very nice guy. Good looking too, at least to me. Unfortunately I could never make a move on him because I do not believe in dating former BFs or spouses of "friends". It does give me hope that there may be other good men who have been ditched by somebody like this and are looking for a real relationship.


Julia

[honeybearII]

Interesting, isn't it, Julia, to hear someone talk about their marriage and divorce in such really selfish terms?  So many of us put up with so much during our marriages and yet refused to acknowledge we needed (not WANTED) more.  And there most definitely is a difference!!

It sounds like this woman is like a lot of people - men AND women.  When things are not going well in their life, instead of looking inside to see WHY they don't want to stay with what appears like a normal, hard-working, average person, they keep thinking there is a magic bullet out there (read:  new man/woman) who will suddenly Make It All Better.  The truth is, if we don't get ourselves into therapy FIRST - before we trash our lives - we will just take our issues into the enxt relationship.  it sounds like this woman believes the "more" she is looking for will be found in a new man.  Not so.  That feeling, that ache for more, is what we feel when WE need to grow, change, mature, learn about ourselves.  If we do that FIRST, before we throw over the marriage and family, we might just find that what we were looking for was beside us all the time.  We might also find that leaving the marriage is something we need to do, but not before exploring ev ery avenue to fix OURSELVES first.

do not believe in dating former BFs or spouses of "friends"

If, in time, this nice man DOES become available, why NOT date former bfs or spouses if the friendship was not a deep one??  If, as yoou have said, this woman is really only a casual friend, is her friendship more important than discovering a possible person of the male persuasion who might be a BETTER friend?  I mean, it is along way down the road from this woman talking about leaving her husband and an actual divorce, but I would rethink your statement in light of the fact that sometimes hard and fast rules are kind of silly, LOL.

IMO,
Honey

[Cornfield]

Without appearing to be a negative person, I would just like to say that my personal life reached the point where I had no hope left to yearn for a normal relationship with a man.  Just reaching the point where I could be free and alone in peace was enough joy for me to last the rest of my life. 

Now that I realize I never was in a true bonded relationship all those years, it doesn't seem necessary for me to look for a new relationship because, in retrospect, I loved and did all the things you would expect in a true marriage.  I had three children, I made a successful home life, I worked, I bonded with other people, I experienced everything I had hoped to do for my part.  There was just no reciprocal person on the other side, other than fake compliance for the sake of appearances.  We looked liked the ideal family to others.   It is my husband who lost so much, or he never experienced it in the first place.

For myself, I experienced the joys and pain that goes with the whole show.  But that's all it was, a show.  I am old enough to enjoy the peace of a job well done by me, and to wait for the chance to rock my great-grandchildren.
The grandchildren say they plan to bring their progeny here for the loving and the rocking.  I am ready, and it is enough for me.  I can still enjoy playing the piano in the meantime.

Cornfield

[CZBZ]

Hummmm...putting my N-dar sleuthing skills to work.

WoN is, after all, the Number One Ladies Detective AgeNcy specializing in spotting love-thieves and holding heart-crimiNals accountable for their misdeeds.

""...admitted she is attracted to other guys (all the time) and is a sober alcoholic.  She talked to me for 2 hours today (picking my brain about divorce and young kids) and couldn't come up with anything more than "we are friends, we parent well together, the sex is good, but I feel there should be something MORE."...it is just nearly impossible for me to imagine leaving your marriage for that reason when you have 3 kids (5, 7, 11). Their finances are a mess since both are self-employed and business is way down. They have to sell their house and the future is very uncertain." ~Julia


Messy finances (spending more than is reasonable), attacted to other guys while focusing on SEX with a man she wants to leave, I'd say she's confusing Immediate Pleasure with delayed gratification leading to overall life satisfaction & happiness. Maybe she's also displaying some Magical Thinking about the 'next' relationship since she's in the process of devaluing the one she has. (An Idealized relationship REQUIRES devaluation of the existent relationship).

Plus, it's easier to run from responsibility than it is to stick around and clean up the MESS she helped create, which is an example of 'escapist' behavior also typical of people with substance addictions (even while sober if she hasn't worked through her underlying sense of emptiness).

What really sticks out for me though is her lack of empathy for her children and how a 'frivolous' divorce from someone who isn't abusive or irresponsible, would impact her kids. That kinda leaves me speechless, because like Honey said, most of us went above and beyond to protect our children from divorce. To not be as concerned about the way her children would feel but worry MORE about satisfying HER emotional needs, says quite a lot about' narcissistic parenting.' The kids are used to meet her needs, not the other way around. In other words, they'll have to adapt because whatever makes mommy feel good is everyone's highest priority. Kids need to feel safe and secure and that should take precedence over HER feeling safe and secure in another man's arms.

Unless she's hiding something about her current marriage, i'd say this woman is typical of our selfish, selfish and did i say selfish American society where the highest good is what makes somebody feel good. That somebody is usually the ADULT. Who cares if the kids feel good??

I don't have any problem saying there's signs of Narcissism in this woman's thinking, feelings, and behavior. She might want to check out bipolar. What bipolars are trying to do is change the way they feel but once the 'mania' wears off (and it always does), they have done so much self-destruction that it throws them in despair. Bipolars are constantly playing catch-up with their most recent self-destructive phase; but the saddest thing of all, is that bipolar can be TREATED. Not that you can tell them that if they're having a mania though.

And it's my understanding that getting an official diagnosis is imperative since the combination of bipolar and NPD can be dangerous, very dangerous.


Hugs,
CZ

[CZBZ]

Just an afterthought for discussion if anybody wants to talk about this:

When women have sex with a man, they 'bond' to him because of the hormones released during lovemaking. Women make the mistake of wanting sex with a partner because it makes them feel 'more connected' to him. We ran a thread about two years ago on the MSN forum describing Sex Hormones and Women. Let me see if I can find it and repost the article on WoN.

When someone does NOT feel the love bond to someone they are having sex with, we might wanna consider it a sign of pathological behavior. Sex is all about Power and Control to pathological people because they are incapable of developing a deep and lasting emotional bond to their partner. This information puts a whole new spin on those Free Love Promoters out there in our society who blame 'bonded' folks for being prudes. Fact is: pathologicals do not bond in Sex. They use sex to gratify themselves or maintain dominance over a partner. This new research certainly changes how I view people who are willing to have sex with anything or anyone.

Dr. Sandra Brown and Dr. Liane Leedom describe bonding, sex and pathologicals in their book, Women Who Love Psychopaths

Don't ask me why I took off on a tangent...LOL...blame it on the flu.


Hugs!
CZ