She loves it when a plan comes together.

Ok, so this is my first divorce, yesterday was my first live webchat (thanks, guys) and today is my first blog. So I guess I'm forcing myself out of my apathy and general numbness and back into the world, albeit virtual.

On Monday I found out that my wife wants a divorce and it came as a shock even though we've been kind of living semi-detached lives for a while now. I'm her secondary carer and in the few years that we've known each other she has reached her target weight for the first time in her life, took on her first employment in her life and ceased self-harming. I'm proud of the part I've played in all this.

 It wasn't all plain sailing and I've had to deal with her various physical conditions, a sometimes problematic family and her depressive psychosis. In fairness, as a depressive myself she has sometimes supported me too when she has felt able.

 I can't get from her why she's not "in love" with meany more while she still reckons she "loves" me and I don't think she knows. Some of it might be the "7 year itch", almost certainly the lover she has taken on has been significant(!), but I think that mainly her health has improved so much that she no longer feels she needs me and maybe the relationship was defined much more by my caring than I had imagined.

 We still have many things in common; sense of humour, types of music, love of animals and she says she is still sexually attracted to me but it's obviously not enough. Money was the presenting issue in the end.

 I took her out on Sunday for a great meal and dropped her at her mum's where we had a real laugh, the three of us. On Monday she demanded a couple of hundred pounds from me and, when I asked what it was for, she became quite irate. Her lover sounds like a real user and I figured it was for him, so i stuck to my guns. Eventually she phoned and said that she owed her Mum £117 for cigarettes, taxis and rail fares to see her Dad (who is ill in hospital). I asked when her next benefit will be paid and she said £60 on Thursday. So bearing in mind I was buying all her shopping etc I figured she could pay this to her mum, I was already repeatedly offering to take her to see her dad and elsewhere so taxi and rail fares were an unnecessary expense she chose to take on ( she had other offers of lifts too). I wrote a cheque out to her Mum of £57 and took it over. I didn't get a thank you! My ex to be told me where I could stick it and seemed highly offended that I wasn't giving her the money. my attitude was "well, if your just going to pass it over to your mum I'm saving you the trouble." I gave the cheque to her mum who looked nervously at my ex who told her to take it.

 Later my ex to be phoned again to say that the rest of the £200 she owed to her Dad, she wouldn't say what for but I'm guessing it wasn't a present for me! That would be £83 which seemed like an odd figure to come out of the blue. Anyway I told her I'm not paying for something when I don't know what it is and if she wants money so much she could get it out of me in "the diorce courts". Fatal. She leapt at the suggestion and it was obviously something she'd been considering for a while.

 Since Monday my life has been in turmoil. She wants it to be "amicable". I'm looking after her dog as she can't have it at her parent's house. The council say that we will lose our two bed flat, that I will be "offered" a one bed probably in some godforsaken part of town and she will get no offers as she's made herself "intentionally homeless". If I move I won't be able to keep the dog who is our surrogate family as we couldn't have kids.

 Reading up on divorce we're quite limited on options for getting a quick resolution as we haven't been married very long (14 months). She could sue me for being "unreasonable" but I find it hard to swallow that; I could sue her for adultery but she is adamantly against that because loverboy hasn't told the woman and kids he lives with that he is playing away. I can't persuade her that the information is either confidential or priviledged. Naturally I could go ahead anyway, but then I can imagine her denying it, having to use private eyes or whatever and loosing the amicable veneer she has put on her plan.

 ho, hum. Life is like a box of chocolates - too much of it as once makes me sick! if anyone has read this, thank you for your time and your patience with my self pitying, self righteous winge.