Grounds for divorce

Hi.

I'm feeling tearful. I was caught 'off guard' this morning by a letter from the court. My husband has acknowledged the receipt of the petition & is not defending in any way. He told me he wouldn't defend it - I showed him the petition before I sent it to the court, to avoid any to-ing & fro-ing, & to be my usual up-front, out--in- the-open self- but since December, I have difficulty in trusting anything he says to me. I suppose I should be pleased that he has signed without any fuss.

I am divorcing him on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour but we both know now that I could have divorced him on the grounds of adultery. He, I feel, despite knowing that I knew about her, would not fully admit to adultery until I had sent the petition to the court, & even then he only admitted it after being backed into a corner. I feel that his cowardice throughout this has been apparent. An example of this is that the day he moved in with her was the day he told his father that he had just started seeing someone! I could be picky & change the grounds for the divorce but I see no point in doing this. It would only end up prolonging the situation.

There is a part of me that would like to see her name written as co-respondent, if only to have an acknowledgement that she played some part in all of this & this wonderful bubble that they are clearly living in at the moment has real consequences, not only to me but also to his son. But I won't do this. What has happened has happened & what has gone has gone. Plus the fact that my stbx threatened to 'make things difficult' for me financially if I went anywhere near the word adultery or naming her.

I am just sad. I never thought that we would part. When I married, I meant forever. I truly believe that he did too. Obviously, for him, things changed. I wish he had talked to me when he first started to feel discontented. Perhaps we could have identified what he felt was lacking & worked to rectify things. I would like to have been given a chance at least. I will find it hard to forgive him for not giving us a chance.

Anyway, my apologies for rambling. I'm going to go now & wash the tears off my face & get on with the day. My son & I are going out & I will not let my stbx spoil our  time together.

Thanks for giving me the space to offload yet again.

Iwillbeok x