Bekindalways

Kudos to you for keeping your cool. Just reading this makes me want to hit him . . . . okay so I have anger issues!! Please don't hit him.

It is tough to know what his therapist really said or didn't. I don't think your understanding of addiction has anything to do with the situation. You may well understand WAY more than you ever wanted to about alcoholism. Personally, the only way I want to know more about addiction is maybe a book or a documentary. I don't want to learn via living with an alcoholic no matter how much he insists he is in recovery. Hmmmm . . . . I probably want to live with an alcoholic in the first year of recovery even less than one in active addiction.

After I left my Qualifier, he called and told me that he thought I was being "selfish.". I told him, "I was being exactly as selfish as I possibly could be.". Years later he let me know I had done the right thing.

Hold the course Cookie. This is indeed tough stuff.

Cookie314

Yes, my AH has also essentially called me selfish by setting that I'm abandoning him when he needs me the most. I refrained from retorting how he had abandoned me over and over again for alcohol. He still displays a lot of that victim mentality and manipulative logic that helps keep me in check. It's a bit awkward at home right now since we're still together, and of course he's getting quite hard to be affectionate and helpful and such. Things like that keep me grounded and remind me of the motivations he feels behind his actions. I don't know if he always means it that way or thinks of it that way, but it certainly seems so to me.

Heh, if I didn't have anger issues before this, I'm sure I do now. 😏 He definitely knows how to push my buttons.

Bekindalways

For codependents, being selfish is often more of a virtue than otherwise. IMHO

Cookie314

Probably because for a codependent, the definition of selfish falls closer to "not killing yourself helping others at your own expense"

PeacefulWater12

Well said, yeah only giving them one of our kidneys instead of both!

wehav2day

Cookie,

you are doing unbelievably well. You are completely entitled to do what you’re doing for yourself.

your AH can certainly have feelings about it, but his feelings don’t need to be your feelings.

He of course needs to process it. you started to come to the conclusion you wanted a divorce while he was busy drinking. You came to terms with it while he was in rehab, working on his recovery hopefully. So it’s not surprising that he’s behind you on the processing, nor is it surprising that he would HOPE an earnest shot at recovery could save your marriage.

hope is a good thing, but expectation... not so much. If you’re done, you’re done and that’s valid. You don’t owe him anything. You’ve already given so much.

as for a different person while drinking.... yes and no. Alcohol does mess with an addicts brain more than the average bear. It changes us. But it doesn’t excuse our bad behavior. The crux of recovery is confronting our addiction and accepting personal responsibility. I hope he has that in him, I see glimmers of it through you.

but there is no excuse for what he did while drunk. Addiction is part of an explanation. The only fix is earnest recovery and time.

I hope things get easier and better for you.

Cookie314

Thanks so much. As I'm sure you can tell from my messages here and posts like an alcoholics autonomy, the thoughts about how much of a "different person" someone is while they drink is on my mind a lot. I think some of the dissonance comes from the fact that when my AH and I discuss it, we are talking about it from opposite sides of the issue. He is still grappling with taking personal responsibility for things, and probably with accepting things as something he did. I can imagine his perspective that it certainly feels like someone else did or said so many hurtful things. It's not like he remembers them personally, only from descriptions by other people.

Your point about the way we spent our time this past month or so I think makes sense too. To him the focus has been entirely on his health and recovery (or at least I think -and hope- so). It's likely he felt as if our relationship was more in stasis, while to me the time has been largely spent processing my feelings on our relationship and deciding what to do. Thinking of it like that brings a bit more perspective into feeling blindsided by coming right home to a divorce announcement.

I suppose there's no truly correct or happy answer in all this. I still feel ready to go, and hopefully we can cooperate with one another through the whole process. Maybe one day we can rekindle a friendship, or at least maybe he'll resent me a little less.

Cookie314

Ugh, this morning finds me angry and frustrated again. Last night we were filling out our financial paperwork for the divorce. It is really sinking in with me how much of his victimhood and surprise over all of this has been a sham. I feel very played.

I find myself questioning his motivations behind everything. He's known the ship has been sinking for a while, (what with me constantly trying to tell him so and communicate with him for ages) and I think he made maneuvers behind my back even during his binges. For example, he and his brother have been pooling money aside for years towards a retirement fund for their mother. I don't know when he did this, but last night he mentioned transferring that large sum fully over to his brother "a couple of months ago" while we were going over the financial paperwork. He brought it up I think to minimize it, since idk how much money it was and have no access to the account, but he knows a transfer of wealth that large would definitely draw attention, and is likely hoping to explain it away. He doesn't say why he did that transfer last night, but it seems clear to me that it would have occurred while I was talking about divorce with him before. So I don't know how that sort of thing will affect everything, but it angers me. I'm not sure if there's any recourse either, since if it was a couple of months ago, it was well before I filed and the restraining order against just such a transfer placed.

He also talked about how he refinanced his student loans again to reduce payments "a while ago" because of "how I was acting" when i brought up how he should only have a couple years of payments left, and he said no, now its up to 5. So clearly he's not been so "blindsided" by all of this, since even in his time between binges and hospitalizations he's done all this maneuvering behind my back. What's worse, I don't know if there's any way to actually prove that it is in fact "maneuvering" vs him explaining it away or trying to undermine me and make me sound greedy or paranoid.

It's all very frustrating to me. There are moments of peace and tranquility while together, but they all feel tainted by the knowledge constantly coming forward about his deceptions. I like being in the house by myself, but with him there it feels a bit more like being trapped. If I transfer the mortgage payments over to him, then I'm giving him the power to stop payments and hurt my credit. But by continuing to pay it, I cannot afford an apartment, and he can drag his feet on setting up the refinancing, which keeps me there longer.

Idk what to do. I've notified my lawyer of what he said, and have been keeping records as best I can. I reached out to my real estate contact about finding an appraiser for the house (because ofc we can't finish the paperwork without knowing the worth of the house, and using a range or market value calculator is "unfair to me", so it'll just have to wait till we find someone). I'm trying to do as much of the paperwork and contacts and such as fast and well as I can, but idk how much he can get away with through delaying tactics.

So the house is calm for now, but there are definitely constant undercurrents of tension. I often feel outmaneuvered by him when he brings up things like that retirement transfer. I don't know what else he's hiding from me or if I'll ever find out. I can't wait to get out of this house.

dandylion

Cookie.....I know that many divorce lawyers will have some trusted professional Financial Advisors that they refer client to---when finances are complex...or, dealing with a slippery type person like your husband.
I understand that you might be afraid of spending the money---but, when you don't know where all of the rocks, in the water are, it can save you a lot of time, mental anguish, and loss of money.
There are lots of articles on the internet that can be googles by----"financial planners in divorce issues".

Bekindalways

Yikes Cookie, this is tough stuff. Money so so gets at the root of our insecurities, failings and sense of security.

Keep taking that next right step to do your best.

Cookie314

Thanks you guys. Dandylion, I'll ask my lawyer what she thinks. She mentioned she didn't think we really had much chance on accessing that money he mentioned, which is fine. I'm not doing this to bleed him dry, but I also don't want to get screwed over. I wanted to point out to her that he's clearly more capable than he has been acting, and we'll have to be mindful on the likelihood that there's other surprises we don't know about.

trailmix

Well isn't that lovely. Geez. I would ask him why. He might just answer you. Ask him if he intends to move half that transfer back so that you can have it, since you didn't agree to financing his Mother's retirement (seriously!?).

It may be the only answer you ever get and if nothing else, you may be able to negotiate him returning some of it. I really like the idea of a financial advisor that deals with divorce.

Never feel like it will make you sound greedy or paranoid. Courts are only interested in the facts. Money is business. I approach money as a business matter, whether lending a friend money or getting a mortgage (or getting divorced). In fact I've been told (and it is true) my voice becomes businesslike when discussing money, it's not even intentional.

Greed, paranoia doesn't come in to it, he can think what he likes.

Cookie314

You know what's funny is on our walk tonight while we were talking, I did ask him about it. He had started by reminding me of how he still holds resentment towards me (he really likes reminding me of that) and asking if I held the same. I told him yeah, it was very painful to me that time and time again he chose alcohol over me. He apologized and asked if there was anything else, but I didn't really feel like going down the road of creating an itemized list for him, so I simply said I get a lot of different thoughts about things that upset me but spend more time assessing if they're fair to be angry about. While technically true, it skirted the question (see, I learned from the best!). He naturally agreed about the importance of not being hasty and angry, etc.

Shortly after that I asked him directly when and why he transferred that money to his brother, he told me June 7th, and "because you filed section 35 on me, and I didn't want then to lose access to the money". (Don't you love how he sneaks that loaded assumption that I had filed in?) For those of you who don't obsessively track my rambling posts on here, (shame on you if you don't, I'm a delight) the 7th was the Monday I referred to when he had returned home from going to stay with his mother and brother to drink (sorry, to "reduce his consumption by half every day") for the weekend in response to me telling him I couldn't handle any more binges. Me saying that was in response to the fact I had needed to call the police on him Thursday night from being so drunk I thought he was having difficulty breathing, then he refused to go to the hospital with them, and berated me before storming out of the house to stay with his sister. Then he returned home Friday and continued to drink.

Anyways, that Monday he continued to berate me and be upset over my discussion with a mediator about her services, and say how his mother was right about me trying to steal his 401k, etc. I took the cat and left. So! If he's telling the truth about the date, either he A: had already transferred the money before I'd arrived home from work or B: did so immediately after I left. Mind you, at that point I wasn't even mentioning section 35, I had mentioned divorce. He said he'd thought the police were for section 35, and had his dates confused (apparently at least) etc, but it's clear he wanted to hide that asset. Idk if he thought of it, or if his mom did (hence the comments about how right she was about me) but yeah, he clearly acted with forethought there.


True, I hope they think of it that way. He's just really adept with finances, and it's hard for me to know how much he's done without my knowledge. I worry about him manipulating the situation to come out on top. I hope that he really means it when he says he wants to work together amicably, but it's hard to believe it when the things he's done (like transferring the money) are already finished with no recourse. It's much easier to be helpful and apologetic when he's already tucked his aces in his back pocket.

trailmix

Yes isn't it. I wouldn't trust him about money anymore for one second. Because he's sneaky and took your money and pocketed it, yes, but also because when it comes to finances he is not on the same page you are, not even in the same book.

Did it occur to you to move dollars to some account he couldn't touch, ever? When you were talking about divorce?

In my first divorce which was pretty darn amiable, my exh said to me that he would pay off the visa card (I think it was around 5k), good, great, thanks! He never did. He was not an alcoholic and he was really trustworthy about such things. As time goes by and he thinks about it and his own emotions start to change, he may well become less amiable.

What he did was incredibly underhanded.

Cookie314

Wow, what an a**hole. No, it didn't occur to me. I wasn't even trying to go with the divorce when I was first talking about it! I wanted him to refinance the house loan to remove my name from it so if he lost his job I wouldn't be drowned by debt. Then of course he got so aggressive and defensive (can you be aggressively defensive? I think he pulls it off), I left the house, he refused to communicate with me, and everything happened with the police. By that point I thought divorce was the only way to protect my health and finances. As all this had progressed, I've come to see how much he "cries out while he hits you" in all this. His assertions that I'll steal his money seem to coincide rather closely with the times he "moves" his.

I agree he'll be less amiable. He already is in some ways. As I've become increasingly emotionally and physically distant, he has become more sullen and quiet. Hopefully we'll still be able to keep peace in the house until I can leave.

sage1969

Others have commented; I'm friends with most of my Xs because I felt I was responsible for 50% of everything and that I needed to make amends as well as allow them the opportunity to make amends . . . as for the XABF and why I'm now in this forum, only time will tell. Right now he is upset with me and using mean language he'd never used before.

There is such a thing as "wasting assets," depending on which state you're in. Hopefully your atty can help with this part. With the records you're keeping, you can prove to the judge that he has been removing assets from your estate and hiding them or using them. Basically the judge really just wants to see basic monthly living expenses. It's possible he could be ordered to repay you and / or the estate, or the value of what he moved or used is offset in the calculations. Again depending on the state, usually what was acquired or incurred during the marriage is shared, so it doesn't matter if he thinks it's "his," it's still part of the estate.

Another thing you should talk to your atty about is setting up separate bank accts so you are the only one using the accts in your name. You still have to provide financial records, but it means you have your own accts going forward. And of course get your name removed from the mortgage and any common credit card accts, etc. Once you have the divorce papers you can contact each creditor, and make certain your name is removed. Another thing to look for: my first X agreed to pay off all the credit card debt, but then turned around and settled each one for a lower amount. That did 2 things: it caused my credit score to drop and it listed on my credit report that the card debt had been settled at a discount, which is a negative remark.