The Pebble Has Been Cast

Yesterday, I received a letter from Christine's solicitor confirming that she was going to pursue a divorce. That much didn't surprise me, and I was prepared.

What did surprise me was that instead of a calm quiet No Fault, No Blame separation and settlement, Christine has decided to play the blame game. The proceedings have been cited as my '...unreasonable behaviour' - whatever that means.

The one thing it does mean, is that we are into a fight and the only people who are going to win from this are the solicitors. Christine's solicitor must have seen her coming!

Every Pound we spend on lawyers, is one less Pound we have for the girls! It would seem that punishment, hurt, humiliation and possibly my ultimate destruction is Christine's primary drive and everyone else in the firing line is just so much cannon fodder.

Well Christine has cast the pebble in to the pond - God knows where the ripples are going to end up!

Separation

This year has been a particularly bad year for me. For quite sometime, I had been feeling depressed and I couldn't understand why.

Now I do!

After sixteen years of marriage, Christine and I are separating and will probably divorce.

For sometime, there had been a 'coolness' between us, but I just thought that this was a phase of marriage that every couple goes through as we all face that inevitable mid-life crisis, but for Christine, this was clearly something else.

I feel the trigger for this was her father's sudden death almost a year ago, and the depression I was experiencing was the transference of her negative feelings about this to me. This transference, I believe, became fixed as a dislike of me and a 'falling out of love'.

However, whatever the reason or trigger, the situation is real! Most of the time I am in shock, and I have no idea what to do. At present, Christine is exhibiting an amazing level of selfishness and self-centredness that I did not believe was a part of her personality.

She is also showing a high level of deviousness and deception. She took it upon herself to tell the children we were separating without bothering to tell me! Money is tight at the moment, yet she felt it was OK to spend scarce resources on two new single beds - because she wanted to!

The danger for me and the children is that the desire to separate is going to cloud her judgement and allow her to make decisions that could bring calamity upon us all. Already she is pushing to put the house up for sale, though she hasn't formulated any plan as to what happens the day after the sale goes through! Money has been tight, but it is going to be even tighter if we need to pay for two houses/flats.

The whole situation is a nightmare. So far, I've opened a bank account, though I've yet to have my wages directed to it, and I've got an initial meeting with a solicitor to look at my options.

For the children's sake, I want this to go through as calmly and as grown up as possible, but I'm not sure whether Christine feels the same.