A
female
age
51-59,
*rissypro89
writes:We have a great relationship and he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I don't like giving him an ultimatium, I never do but maybe this time he needs this. He told me finalizing his divorce of 18 years ago is really not that important to him and he said he is honest about it. After giving him 14 years of my life to him of love, of trust, sharing, great sex, everything I have to offer and he does love me I am still a bit shocked that he is still procrastinating over this. He has not been together with his ex for over 18 years and the kids are in their 20's. He knows how I feel about this and also we did get married years back in Vegas. To him it is only a piece of paper getting a divorce and he is still friends with his ex (doesnt see her only if we go meet the kids and run into her ) but this is 2 times out of the year. He said even when he gets this done he still will call to say hi because she will always be in his life (a long time friend) there was many years that went by that they didn't speak now for 3 years he has been calling because his daugther (23) still has a hard time dealing with her father isn't with her mother but he hasn't been with his ex since his daugther was 5. (he didn't leave the ex for me, it was someone else)I am going to tell him this weekend that it is deeply in my soul every day that we found out a few years ago she never finalized the divorce and if I am not important to be legally married too then why is he important to stay around all these years and have the relationship we have. And please do not say the bigamy thing because it can be corrected and that is so played out with that word. I just don't understand him.
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
female
reader, Jackie63  +, writes (7 February 2009):
My mother was in a similar situation with her first husband. When she was a teen, she was friends with a number of people, you know the way you have a group of friends you always hang around with. There was about ten of them and they adored each other. It was the best time in her life, that time when she was young, and successful with guys, and still quite naive and full of illusions because of course then life passes and you lose that. She married one of the guys from the group of friends. It was in the year 1970, she was in her early 20s. They lived in Israel, and married religiously in a synagogue and a synagogue only, because you don't have to go to the city council or whatever and get married non religiously when you live in Israel. About two years later, my mother and her husband moved to France for work reasons and she met my father. She married my father in 1986. Her first husband and herself split, but they never divorced because in France religious ceremony doesn't count as marriage, you have to go to the city council to be married, the religious ceremony is non compulsory, as France is a lay country. As far as French law was concerned, therefore, this synagogue ceremony had never existed, she'd never been married.
Believe it or not, my mother and her first husband divorced religiously (in Israel, as in France's eyes, they never were married) last April, because her first husband wants to marry his partner of sixteen years religiously now and if he goes to a rabi in France he'll know from his records the guy is already married. My mother's first husband cried bitterly as he divorced her. They're best friends, always were, I know the guy very well myself, he's family to me. But he's been with his new partner sixteen years, they have a fifteen year old daughter together and I KNOW he's not in love with my mother anymore.
Some people find it very hard to let go of the past. When that guy married my mother, he was young, better looking than he is now, more popular, more inclined to party, life was easier in those days and so on and so forth. My mother represents all this in his eyes, a time with no credit crunch when he felt the world belonged to him, with the innocence of a twenty year old in love for the first time. Mind you, his new partner never understood that, and she hates my mother bitterly, thinking they have been having an affair all those years, even though they haven't. My mother's former group of friends always kept in touch in all those years, and you should see them when they are together. They see each other, mock each other, are jealous of each other as if they were seventeen still. Time did not pass for them, and the proof of that is that one of the guys from their group of friends still calls my mother by her first husband's last name TO THIS DAY, even though she took my father's last name when she remarried in France.
People don't like time passing. I think you should talk to your partner and try and see what it is in his former life he doesn't want to divorce from. I wouldn't say it is his wife now, rather the past she represents, that form of innocence that goes with a first true love, that one that brings you down the aisle. When your partner tells you he doesn't mind divorcing her, I guess he's telling the truth, this is not about her, but this is about opening a new chapter of his life. Of course, that chapter HAS been open for years since you are as good as married to each other, but this divorce is a symbolic rite of passage he might not be able to come to terms with. Rather than setting an ultimatum to which he must abide "or else", I would talk to him, and in the process reassure him all happiness is not only in the past and in youthfulness but that the present can bring its own happiness for the two of you.
Hope this helps. Jacqui.:.)
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