SHE SAID, HE SAID

I was recently asked if I would share my experience in response to a post by, @Spunkycumfun. He asked in his post “Is all fair in love and war? I am sure there are many ways to look at that question but based on my personal experience @hippiechick1967 asked if I would co-write. my experience along with hers.
I will say that when I hear that someone had a amicable divorce, I say good for them but quite honestly I believe those a a few as opposed to everyone else.

We will put up the identical post on our respective blogs, so you can read it on my blog and slam women, and then go to her blog and “tsk tsk” men.

HE SAID by @CallMeMrWrong69

The topic of ‘Is all is far in love and war’ is something that I truly believed in and, to be quite honest with you, prior to going through a divorce, I never really gave it much thought. After what I went through in my divorce, I became a changed man. Don’t get me wrong- I always believe in doing the right thing. For me, integrity is the essence of a person, for if a person has no integrity I see them as rotten to the core.
I was married to the first woman I had a relationship with. Although I had many female friends, my ex was my first in so many ways. Looking back at myself in those days, I was so naïve. What did I know at 24? I had no idea what I wanted in a partner. I needed to learn so much about myself. I dated my ex for almost two years before we got married. I felt that we would be together a lifetime much like our own parents. In hindsight, that relationship should have ended two years after our wedding but instead we were together for ten years. We were not compatible at all.
As I became unhappy with her, I became frustrated and resentful. At the seven-year mark, I finally told her what I was feeling and that I fell out of love with her. I told her that I would leave the house we bought and move into my parents’ home. She told me she would go back to her parents who lived closer. So I stayed and the next day she cleaned out the bank account.
This was the beginning of me realizing that no matter what, I could not trust her. I went to our place of worship and asked for help to get through this. I told my ex how I felt and that I didn’t want to end things without trying to make things work between us. I discussed where we both needed to improve. After 3 years and seeing no improvement, I knew I would have to divorce her. I dealt with a guilty conscience of ending my marriage. My faith looked down on divorce and I didn’t want to seem like a failure before my parents.

What was my decision? I pretty much said fuck it to all. She was being secretive although I am sure she may have thought the same with me. The bank that she worked at got bought out by a bigger national institution and she took her severance pay and said she was looking for another job. She would be home all day and wasn’t going out looking for work.(this was in the late 90’s before the internet became the norm) As you recall I didn’t trust her and I had no idea what she was planning.
I ended up going to a Spy Store. A place that would sell cameras and recording devices. I bought a small recorder that I can plug into my land line and every time the receiver would be picked up it would record the call. I would switch out the tape every morning and listen to the calls on my way to work. Now, understand, I was in no way going to use anything said on the tape in court. It was only for me to hear and learn what she was doing while I was at work. It was the best $80 that I spent.
I found out that:
-She was not looking for work because she thought if she wasn’t working, that I would have to pay her alimony.
-She found a lawyer to represent her and the lawyer told her that because she had always worked and was recently unemployed, she was not entitled to alimony.
-She wanted to get pregnant by me so I would have to pay her child support. (She apparently had a pattern of wanting me to pay her in anyway that would benefit her)
-She would tell me about mutual acquaintances who were going through divorces and how bad things turned out for the husbands, only to learn from discussions she had on the phone that it wasn’t like what she was saying.
-She was talking to all the women that I knew as well and just bad mouthing and getting such bad and horrible advice from them.

Upon listening to the recordings, I was so hurt. If I thought things were bad before, now I’m feeling this hurt and realizing I was so alone in this that I had to figure out how was I going to protect myself and survive. Every time I would listen to the tapes, I would just want to scream. I do have to say that I did get some sort of revenge and she and I were discussing some things and I told her that I learned that she was lying to me about the divorce issues our acquaintances were going through. She asked how she was lying? I just told her….don’t trust your friends. One of them simply informed me the truth about the bullshit you are feeding me. I also told her that I know she has been talking to a lawyer as well and the area his office is at.

Boy! Did that get her panties in a bunch. I heard her say to a few of her most trusted friends that someone is talking to me and telling things that she had discussed and who her lawyer was. That sure made me laugh when I heard that. I soon met with my lawyer and he proceeded to tell me what to expect and suggested my point of action. I got out of the house and rented an apartment.
I could have fought her tooth and nail for the house but upon realizing how sick the constant fighting was affecting me. I didn’t want the house and stipulated that I would walk with a certain amount of money and that she would not get any of my work benefits of pension and retirement. That latter was a big deal for me that I am enjoying today.
What I learned about my ex before we divorced.

She is not a forgiving person.
She is money hungry.
She is not an affectionate person.

So is it fair to say that it is that way, when it comes to love and war? I still believe a person has to have or try their best to have integrity. But divorce is a form of war and war is hell. There is no such thing as a fair fight and I had to do what I had to do to survive. My ex was not the right person for me. I believe it was because of the lack of experience on my part with relationships and not knowing myself and what I needed and want in a partner. Why does one person have to step on another’s head to come out on top?

SHE SAID by @hippiechick1967

I was with my ex for 22 years, and married the last 16 of those. Those that know me know I had good reason for wanting the divorce, as the relationship was over. I think he, on the other hand, was planning on settling, and staying married, because he actually acted surprised when I asked for the divorce.

I think we’ve all heard horror stories about divorces, and it’s common for couples to each hire their own lawyers to each get the best settlement possible. Unfortunately, most of their assets can simply get diverted to lawyers then! I wanted to be smarter about it. We were cash-poor, but had acquired a house with a small adjacent lot with some equity, and some property in the form of cars and boats during the marriage. We would have had to sell what we did have to hire separate lawyers, which would have been foolish. So I decided to hire one lawyer as a mediator for us, which cost a fraction of what two lawyers would cost. We interviewed a few before settling on an older woman in town, mostly because of her convenient location. He was slightly nervous about it being a woman, as he thought she might be biased toward women, but I think, if anything, she actually favored him.
I thought about it. I think the person that doesn’t want the divorce should get a little more for their pain and suffering. So, after we figured out half of the equity for the property, we agreed to let him keep the truck(4 years old with no payment) and me keep the van (3 years old with 4 years of payments left!) with no financial impact. Then I gave him the boat (a 1978 31’ Silverton), the jetski (4 year-old Waverunner), and the Boston Whaler. He loved those things, and I couldn’t pilot the boat anyway. I also got to pay off my student loans too. (It’s important to note that I won lots of essay contests and got academic scholarships, so most of my education was paid for. I took out student loans to cover the mortgage payment and other bills when our trucking company was getting off the ground.)

Anyway, we were almost there, ready to sign, when he decided he wanted my pension. He hadn’t been all that supportive when I was going to school and working full time managing the business, dispatching drivers, and filling out fuel reports for 13 states, all of them in different formats. And I hadn’t been working in my career job that long, and wasn’t even vested yet, so I dug in my heels about that, on the damn principle of the thing. We were at an impasse, and I was beginning to think I would have to hire an attorney after all when my luck changed. I had taken his name off of my auto insurance policy when we split up, and he had never gotten his own policy. He came to me one day, and asked me for a favor. He explained that he had gotten pulled over and found to have no insurance. If I could get my company to say that he had, indeed, been insured the whole time, he could avoid thousands of dollars of fines and a potential suspension of his license, not a good thing for a man who made his living driving a tractor trailer. I should have just done it for him, as any decent human being would for another, but I used it to my advantage. I told him I’d be glad to help him just as soon as he signed the divorce papers. He signed them the next day.
So that’s why I’m thinking maybe I should change my answer to yes, that all is fair in love and war, because I did act with less than integrity in that moment.