[Charliewool]

Lots of valid opinions here, and some still very raw emotion and hurt from some recently affected!
I think one important thing to consider is NOT so much the vengeance and ultimate family court experience, but how a marriage to someone you obviously once loved actually got to this stage?
Once the initial (and, sometimes long drawn out pain) subsides, I found it was valuable to take a really deep unbiased look inside myself to consider MY input into the “failure”!
As Lessa pointed out... a woman can get to the stage (without us men actually realising) where she has thrown the towel in and basically given up on the marriage!
This usually comes well after the “nagging”, the complaining, and the repeated requests for the man to alter his damaging behaviour has ceased!
To the man, he’s casually taken these “cries for help” as meaningless in the big picture!
“It’s that time of the month” or “she’s battling the dreaded menopause”!
Her response, once it’s got to this stage, can be to seek “comfort” from elsewhere, it can be an extra burdening of the household and child duties onto the man.....
Ultimately, it is irrevocably broken and well beyond over in her eyes!
When the divorce request comes, it hits the man like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere!
He, in his hard-working, “bringing home the bacon” frame of mind, simply cannot fathom where this has all come from?
However, in my case, it had been staring me in the face for years, and I was totally oblivious to it!
So, after 27 years, it rocked the bejesus outta me, and totally shattered me!
End result was financially quite a huge kick in the guts as well!
Over time, (a long time!) the resentment turned into almost a quiet reverence toward my ex for having the intestinal fortitude to end the unhappiness!
My now view is she bloody deserved every single cent she received for tolerating my sh it for all those years!
Funnily enough, even though I’ve been remarried for 10years, my ex and I probably get along better nowadays than the last 10 years of our then marriage!!
For those still going through the hell and pain... Take it from me.. It DOES get better!