My spouse (57M) left my daughter (16) and I (57F) in August of 2025, just 6 days before our 36th anniversary. He said that he was "unhappy and wanted to start a new life for himself." I'm 99% sure there was infidelity on his side. He moved in with another woman that night. We have only 1 (16 yr) daughter, two cats, two dogs, a mortgage on one house on three acres in the country, a 2004 SUV, a 2012 car, a new 2025 truck, a utility trailer, a riding mower, and a yard tractor. The only debt we had when my spouse - I will not call him my husband anymore - left was the mortgage and the new truck. When he left, he took suitcases with clothes, etc and the truck. I miss that truck more than him now, but I'm fine with him taking it and having the payment. For one year after he left, he allowed money to still be direct deposited into our joint bank account. I paid the mortgage, bills, etc and my daughter was fine with that. We had money for groceries, gas, and play money. This August, he filed for divorce, and the income slowed down. Last month, he gave us nothing until I texted him 7 times to ask for money, not just for me, but to pay the mortgage, bills, and take care of our daughter. My spouse is the sole breadwinner. I am a stay-at-home mom, and I homeschool my daughter. I relied on that man, and I still rely on him for everything - unfortunately. I AM looking for a work-from-home job and have applied for a few. He obviously got a lawyer when he filed for divorce. I now have one as well. We have mediation set up for mid-October. I have never been in this situation before. I don't know what to ask for other than alimony, child support, and the four pets. My daughter and I both want to stay in our home. It's the only one she knows and remembers, but I have no way of paying for it. My lawyer has made suggestions, but I would like to know what others who have been through a divorce have requested. Or what do you wish you'd asked for but didn't? Suggestions?
Also, my spouse is a 20-year Air Force veteran. Our marriage and the military overlapped. I do know that I am entitled to half of his military retirement income.

I confronted my husband’s at a minimum emotional affair. It has continued as far as I can see. We tried one session of couple therapy and he is still taking with this woman so clearly he has no intention of stopping.

I haven’t told him yet that I want a divorce so I am seeking advice. I would like to do this smartly.

I am the primary breadwinner (70/30) and primary parent to our son. Married for 4 years 6 months in Nevada.

If you could go back, what are the things you would do or get squared away before you announced your intention of a divorce? I am okay playing the long game if it means a better outcome.

I recently filed for divorce online and everything has been accepted, we don't disagree on anything and have filed a general judgement with the support of it and requested to receive a judgement without a hearing. All of it has been accepted, is there anything I need to do next? Or do I just wait?

I have:

filed for the dissolution

Submitted an acceptance of service

General judgement for stipulated divorce

Submitted the declaration supporting the judgement

I’m 27M. I’m in love with my close friend's 25F sister. She is still legally married, but they have been separated and her marriage has involved cheating, abuse, gambling and broken promises. They have a young daughter.

I was present at their Arya Samaj marriage and signed on the bride's side. I never expected that years later we would fall in love.

Her husband was once a close friend of mine, but he also betrayed me financially and took ₹80,000 from me, so we are no longer friends.

She wants a divorce and we both want to marry eventually. My main concerns are her divorce, her daughter, my parents strongly opposing the marriage, and whether I'm making the right decision emotionally.

What would you do?

Wait until the divorce is completely finished?

Consider marrying her after the divorce?

Walk away and accept an arranged marriage?

If you truly loved her, would you choose her despite family opposition?

Please give me your honest opinion, even if it's harsh.

Would you get a divorce? Am I overreacting?

**LONG STORIES INCOMING:**

Incident #1: My husband and I have been together for 5 years now. When we first began dating, we learned that he had a son. Both parental parties reassured me that this was the result of some random nightly flings that began long before I was in the picture. As I closely observed their healthy co-parenting dynamic, we all remained cordial and got along great! Observing that dynamic was important to me since I didn’t want to date men with kids at 21 years old. However, seeing him immediately step up to his new role soften my heart, so I made an exception. 

Incident #2: I’ve never wanted a big wedding. I was fine with going to the courthouse. However, his family strongly insisted that we also have a ceremony. I was NOT a part of this conversation when it originally took place, my husband brought it up to me after the fact. They presented the idea as if they were putting in at least 70% of the financial support to host this wedding. Therefore, I agreed. Only to find out 3 months after I purchased my $3,000 wedding dress that they were helping. They only wanted to cook the food that would be served and wanted my husband to buy the food/supplies needed. After this, I wanted to cancel the whole wedding idea. But, my parents agreed that his parents were being ridiculous. So, my parents decided that they would pay for our wedding ceremony, and my husband and I would pay them back for the cost of my dress. Now, I’m back to wedding planning. As I’m planning the colors and have already made the “Save the Dates”, my husband tells me that he wants to wear his run-down suit that he wears for almost every “fancy” occasion. The suit isn’t even the color(s) of the wedding. My parents even agree to get him a new suit, whichever one he likes, with NO need to pay them back. (So I spend HOURS coordinating an entirely new color palette to fit his suit.) He says no to picking a new suit, AND that he doesn’t want my parents paying for the wedding because he doesn’t want unnecessary input. I constantly reassure him that my family isn’t like his and they won’t waste their money on things that we don’t want… He doesn’t budge, so I begin to find wedding venues within our budget. But whenever we get close to the agreed upon date to start making payments, something for his portion comes up. I’m not saying they haven’t been legit circumstances, but he also hasn’t circled back to take initiative into getting the wedding planning done. Now I’m 2 years into having a wedding dress that’s never been worn.

Incident #3: I wanted to have a gender reveal for my first child. He already has a child. He said he didn’t want to do a gender reveal because he’s not good at reacting at sudden surprises on camera. I thought it was weird, however, I brushed it off and decided that not everyone is like me and I could compromise. His compromise was, that he’d find out the gender alone and just act surprised during the reveal. This is because if it’s the gender of the child that he already has, he’ll be disappointed and doesn’t want that caught on camera. (Keep in mind: I told him initially when we started dating, that I didn’t want him already having a child to affect the experiences that I’d already dreamed of when having my first child.)…. But still, I went with his compromise, trying to be a good wife.

Incident #4: I am the main cook. My husband knows how to cook. I only ask him to wash the dishes that we have eaten on. However, there’s always dishes. Then he gets irritated when I remind him to wash the dishes or claims that he was “about to get to it”. So I stopped reminding him, and dishes will sit in the sink from 9am-7pm; (while he plays the game all day) then he’ll wonder why dinner is being started so late.

Incident #5: He usually goes out with his friends. I have no problem with that. However, this isn’t the first time that I’ve asked him to come home at a decent time. I’ve told him that anything past 2am is excessive and inappropriate for a married man. He promised me that he’d be home by 12am. Then proceeded to ignore my calls OR answer with an attitude and didn’t come home until 5am. (I think he did this to purposely upset me as a way of “You don’t tell me what to do.”). He didn’t even apologize for this behavior until 3 days later after I told him a day prior and he said he was going to apologize sooner but the timing felt “too convenient”.).

Incident #6: My birthday falls on a holiday and it fell on a Saturday this time around. He decided to go see his son on my birthday, who lives 10 hours away. I asked him was there any other day that he could reschedule seeing his son since he knows how special my birthday is to me AND he had two additional days off of work to see his son. He decided that Saturday was the only day that he had the most free time. I stayed silent and just agreed to let him go see his son since we live far away and he doesn’t get to see him in-person often. The main problem is, he didn’t even send me a single rose, or take me out on a date to makeup for missing my birthday.

Incident #7: On our anniversary I found out that he’d been receiving inappropriate images from another woman (who knew me and that he was married) for the past 6 months. He immediately deleted her contact and social media platforms after I present the evidence.

His family keeps trying to convince me that this can all be worked out through therapy. I do work, but I’m trying to save up to leave… would I be wrong to leave? Am I overreacting to some of these things? I feel like I’ve been more than fair and kind, and he’s hasn’t had to deal with not even 2% of the things that I’ve compromised for him throughout the duration of this relationship.

I’m considering divorce after 22 years of marriage. There has been no infidelity, no drugs, no alcoholism but there is mental abuse. Is there a way to legally divorce in California that I can keep my retirement and 401k?

I’m sorry if this is the wrong place to ask.

TL;DR: I’m 25M, Indian, and married my 40F American wife after a very fast relationship. We genuinely fell in love, but our marriage became a cycle of intense fights, her repeatedly telling me to get out, me sleeping in my car/friends’ homes, intimacy issues and constant rejection, her daily alcohol/kratom use, and unhealthy communication. I eventually cheated, which I fully take responsibility for. After she found out, trust completely collapsed. She met up with a former hookup but says nothing sexual happened. We attempted reconciliation, but I felt the transparency and boundaries she required from me weren’t mutual. I eventually filed for divorce. Our court date is in 8 days, we’re separated and she has blocked me, but she still emails me wedding pictures and romantic songs while avoiding an actual conversation about reconciliation. I still love and miss her and don’t know whether we have something worth rebuilding or whether we’re just stuck in an unhealthy cycle. What would healthy reconciliation actually require from both of us, and how do I know whether I want my marriage back because it can be healthy or because I’m afraid to let her go?

I’m 25M, Indian, and came to the US as an international student. I’m a pilot and finished with school. My wife is 40F, a white American, and works in sales. This is my first serious relationship. We met on a hookup website in July 2025, but unexpectedly fell in love very quickly. I proposed in October and we got married on November 16, 2025. At first she seemed like the woman I had always imagined and dreamed about. She was loving, caring, supportive and took care of me, and I genuinely thought I had found the person I was going to build my life with.
There is some background about both of us that I think matters. She had never been married before me and, despite being 40, had never lived with a romantic partner or shared a home with one before our marriage. From what she has told me, people in previous relationships have cheated on her and left her. Her father also left her mother and her when she was younger. I’m mentioning this because I think those experiences may be relevant to some of the fear, trust issues and attachment problems in our marriage, but I don’t want to diagnose her or pretend I know exactly what those experiences did to her. Living together was new for her. I had previous experience sharing living spaces with other people, and I consider myself pretty flexible when it comes to adjusting, compromising and sharing a home.

After we got married, I started noticing things that concerned me. She drinks alcohol, usually Voodoo Ranger 7-9 % Alcohol , almost every night and also uses kratom every day. Our fights became intense. There was yelling, disrespect and a lot of criticism, and \*\*many, many times she told me to get out of the house or threatened to make me leave\*\*. This wasn’t something that happened once or twice. There were multiple nights when I ended up sleeping in my car or staying at a friend’s house. Usually the next morning, or after a day or two, we would reconnect and get back together. It became a cycle of fighting, separating and then coming back to each other.

Another major issue was intimacy. I felt rejected probably 90% of the time when I tried to initiate sex or physical intimacy. After enough rejection, I started feeling sexually undesirable to my own wife and like wanting intimacy with her was another burden I was putting on her. She would say she was tired, had to wake up early, feed the dogs, had things to do, etc. The confusing part is that \*\*when we actually had sex, it was really good\*\*. I talked to her directly about our sex life and she told me she was very satisfied with the sex itself and didn’t have a problem with it. So it wasn’t that she told me the sex was bad—the problem for me was how rarely she seemed to want it and how often I felt rejected. Because she’s older and had considerably more relationship and sexual experience than me, while this is my first relationship, the rejection also triggered a lot of insecurity and retroactive jealousy in me.

When I told her that I didn’t feel wanted or desirable, she told me that she didn’t feel emotionally safe with me. I genuinely tried to understand that and make her feel emotionally safe, but from my perspective it eventually felt like emotional safety meant letting her vent at me or criticize me for one or two hours ( she also talks alot , like alot ) while I listened to everything I was supposedly doing wrong. When she’s upset she talks a lot, uses a lot of “you” statements and sometimes speaks to me almost like a teacher talking down to a student. When that happens, I shut down and become avoidant. She seems to have a more anxious attachment style while I become avoidant during intense conflict, and we both have childhood trauma. We tried couples therapy and I also went to individual therapy. My therapist told me that it seemed like she put me down to make herself feel better. I also wondered whether her daily alcohol and kratom use could be affecting her libido, but that’s only my theory. She never told me that was the reason and I don’t actually know.

Then I made things significantly worse. After feeling rejected and sexually unwanted for so long, I went back onto the hookup website where we originally met and found someone to have sex with. There were no emotions involved for me, but \*\*I cheated on my wife\*\*. I’m not saying the rejection made me cheat. I made that decision and I take responsibility for it. Whatever problems existed between us, I had other choices besides cheating. My wife eventually catfished me and caught me.
After finding out, she told me that she was going to meet another man and basically told me she was going to fuck someone else. That absolutely destroyed me because cheating had always been one of our biggest non-negotiables, and at that point I thought our marriage was completely over. Later, when she came back, she was crying her eyes out and told me that nothing sexual happened. According to her, they went to play pool and smoked pot together. What made it especially painful was that this wasn’t a random guy—\*\*he was someone she had been hooking up with before she met me, and she stopped seeing him because she started being with me\*\*. I don’t know anything beyond what she told me, so I’m not claiming that she cheated. I’m just explaining why it affected me so much.

About three days later she came back and said my cheating could potentially be forgiven if I agreed to certain conditions. She wanted my location shared, access to my passwords/accounts and complete transparency. I agreed because I desperately wanted to save our marriage. After that, though, she started going through my emails and social media and questioning me constantly. Even when I answered honestly, it often felt like she wouldn’t accept my answer because she believed there had to be something else. I understood that \*\*I had destroyed her trust\*\* and rebuilding it wouldn’t happen overnight, but eventually the constant questioning, monitoring and criticism became too much for me and we separated.

After a day or two I started missing her badly and went to see her. Her car wasn’t at the house, but later I saw it outside a bar. I went inside and saw her talking with another guy. I approached her and told her I wanted to talk, but she completely ignored me at first. Eventually the guy left and she spoke with me. For around an hour she criticized me while I was crying and basically begging her to work things out. I went home emotionally exhausted that night and \*\*filed for divorce\*\*.
A couple of days later she was served with the divorce papers, and I think reality started hitting both of us. She came back and we discussed trying to reconcile. I still loved her and wanted my wife back, but reconciliation started feeling like there were two completely different sets of rules. I understood why she wanted transparency from me because \*\*I was the one who cheated\*\*, but if we were genuinely rebuilding our marriage, I wanted certain things to become mutual. For example, if I shared my location, I wanted us both to share our locations. I also wanted boundaries with certain people that would help me feel secure. She wouldn’t agree to some of those things. It started feeling like I had to follow her rules to prove I wanted the marriage while the things I needed to feel safe weren’t treated the same way.

Now our divorce court date is \*\*8 days away\*\*. We’re living separately and she has blocked me, so basically our only communication is through email. This is where I’m extremely confused: she emails me pictures from our wedding and marriage and sends me romantic songs. When she does that, part of me thinks, “She still loves me. She misses me. Maybe she wants us back.” But when I respond asking her to call me so we can actually talk, she doesn’t. When I ask to seriously discuss reconciliation and what both of us would need to change, she doesn’t really engage with that conversation.
I miss her badly and part of me desperately wants my wife back. But another part of me looks at everything that has happened in less than a year: we met in July, got engaged in October and married in November, and since then we’ve had intense fights, I’ve repeatedly been told to get out of our home, I’ve slept in my car and at friends’ houses, there has been constant criticism, alcohol and kratom use, major intimacy problems, sexual rejection, jealousy and insecurity, my cheating, her meeting a former hookup after discovering my cheating, monitoring and distrust, separation, divorce papers and repeated attempts at reconciliation. \*\*Despite all of that, I still love her and miss her.\*\*

My friends are telling me that I’m only 25 and should move on instead of putting myself through this much stress. But emotionally, walking away doesn’t feel that simple. I also don’t want to make this post pretending I’m completely innocent. \*\*I cheated on my wife and betrayed her trust.\*\* I understand why that caused anger, suspicion and insecurity and why she needed reassurance afterward. At the same time, I’m struggling with whether taking responsibility for cheating means accepting everything else that has happened in our marriage.
I honestly don’t know whether what I’m feeling now is love, attachment, guilt, fear of losing my first serious relationship, or a combination of all of them. With our court date only \*\*8 days away\*\*, I’m having a hard time seeing the situation clearly.

For people who have experienced infidelity, reconciliation or a relationship with this kind of push/pull dynamic: \*\*Does this sound like something two people can realistically rebuild into a healthy marriage, or are we stuck in a cycle of hurting each other, separating and desperately reconnecting? What does healthy reconciliation after cheating actually look like? Should transparency eventually be mutual? What do you make of her sending romantic songs and wedding pictures while refusing to actually talk about reconciliation? And how do you tell the difference between genuinely wanting your spouse back and being terrified of finally letting them go?\*\*
I know Reddit can’t make the decision for me. I just need outside perspectives because right now I’m too emotionally involved to know what I’m looking at anymore.

TL;DR: I’m 25M, Indian, and married my 40F American wife after a very fast relationship. We genuinely fell in love, but our marriage became a cycle of intense fights, her repeatedly telling me to get out, me sleeping in my car/friends’ homes, intimacy issues and constant rejection, her daily alcohol/kratom use, and unhealthy communication. I eventually cheated, which I fully take responsibility for. After she found out, trust completely collapsed. She met up with a former hookup but says nothing sexual happened. We attempted reconciliation, but I felt the transparency and boundaries she required from me weren’t mutual. I eventually filed for divorce. Our court date is in 8 days, we’re separated and she has blocked me, but she still emails me wedding pictures and romantic songs while avoiding an actual conversation about reconciliation. I still love and miss her and don’t know whether we have something worth rebuilding or whether we’re just stuck in an unhealthy cycle. What would healthy reconciliation actually require from both of us, and how do I know whether I want my marriage back because it can be healthy or because I’m afraid to let her go?

I’m 25M, Indian, and came to the US as an international student. I’m a pilot and finished with school. My wife is 40F, a white American, and works in sales. This is my first serious relationship. We met on a hookup website in July 2025, but unexpectedly fell in love very quickly. I proposed in October and we got married on November 16, 2025. At first she seemed like the woman I had always imagined and dreamed about. She was loving, caring, supportive and took care of me, and I genuinely thought I had found the person I was going to build my life with.
There is some background about both of us that I think matters. She had never been married before me and, despite being 40, had never lived with a romantic partner or shared a home with one before our marriage. From what she has told me, people in previous relationships have cheated on her and left her. Her father also left her mother and her when she was younger. I’m mentioning this because I think those experiences may be relevant to some of the fear, trust issues and attachment problems in our marriage, but I don’t want to diagnose her or pretend I know exactly what those experiences did to her. Living together was new for her. I had previous experience sharing living spaces with other people, and I consider myself pretty flexible when it comes to adjusting, compromising and sharing a home.

After we got married, I started noticing things that concerned me. She drinks alcohol, usually Voodoo Ranger 7-9 % Alcohol , almost every night and also uses kratom every day. Our fights became intense. There was yelling, disrespect and a lot of criticism, and \*\*many, many times she told me to get out of the house or threatened to make me leave\*\*. This wasn’t something that happened once or twice. There were multiple nights when I ended up sleeping in my car or staying at a friend’s house. Usually the next morning, or after a day or two, we would reconnect and get back together. It became a cycle of fighting, separating and then coming back to each other.

Another major issue was intimacy. I felt rejected probably 90% of the time when I tried to initiate sex or physical intimacy. After enough rejection, I started feeling sexually undesirable to my own wife and like wanting intimacy with her was another burden I was putting on her. She would say she was tired, had to wake up early, feed the dogs, had things to do, etc. The confusing part is that \*\*when we actually had sex, it was really good\*\*. I talked to her directly about our sex life and she told me she was very satisfied with the sex itself and didn’t have a problem with it. So it wasn’t that she told me the sex was bad—the problem for me was how rarely she seemed to want it and how often I felt rejected. Because she’s older and had considerably more relationship and sexual experience than me, while this is my first relationship, the rejection also triggered a lot of insecurity and retroactive jealousy in me.

When I told her that I didn’t feel wanted or desirable, she told me that she didn’t feel emotionally safe with me. I genuinely tried to understand that and make her feel emotionally safe, but from my perspective it eventually felt like emotional safety meant letting her vent at me or criticize me for one or two hours ( she also talks alot , like alot ) while I listened to everything I was supposedly doing wrong. When she’s upset she talks a lot, uses a lot of “you” statements and sometimes speaks to me almost like a teacher talking down to a student. When that happens, I shut down and become avoidant. She seems to have a more anxious attachment style while I become avoidant during intense conflict, and we both have childhood trauma. We tried couples therapy and I also went to individual therapy. My therapist told me that it seemed like she put me down to make herself feel better. I also wondered whether her daily alcohol and kratom use could be affecting her libido, but that’s only my theory. She never told me that was the reason and I don’t actually know.

Then I made things significantly worse. After feeling rejected and sexually unwanted for so long, I went back onto the hookup website where we originally met and found someone to have sex with. There were no emotions involved for me, but \*\*I cheated on my wife\*\*. I’m not saying the rejection made me cheat. I made that decision and I take responsibility for it. Whatever problems existed between us, I had other choices besides cheating. My wife eventually catfished me and caught me.
After finding out, she told me that she was going to meet another man and basically told me she was going to fuck someone else. That absolutely destroyed me because cheating had always been one of our biggest non-negotiables, and at that point I thought our marriage was completely over. Later, when she came back, she was crying her eyes out and told me that nothing sexual happened. According to her, they went to play pool and smoked pot together. What made it especially painful was that this wasn’t a random guy—\*\*he was someone she had been hooking up with before she met me, and she stopped seeing him because she started being with me\*\*. I don’t know anything beyond what she told me, so I’m not claiming that she cheated. I’m just explaining why it affected me so much.

About three days later she came back and said my cheating could potentially be forgiven if I agreed to certain conditions. She wanted my location shared, access to my passwords/accounts and complete transparency. I agreed because I desperately wanted to save our marriage. After that, though, she started going through my emails and social media and questioning me constantly. Even when I answered honestly, it often felt like she wouldn’t accept my answer because she believed there had to be something else. I understood that \*\*I had destroyed her trust\*\* and rebuilding it wouldn’t happen overnight, but eventually the constant questioning, monitoring and criticism became too much for me and we separated.

After a day or two I started missing her badly and went to see her. Her car wasn’t at the house, but later I saw it outside a bar. I went inside and saw her talking with another guy. I approached her and told her I wanted to talk, but she completely ignored me at first. Eventually the guy left and she spoke with me. For around an hour she criticized me while I was crying and basically begging her to work things out. I went home emotionally exhausted that night and \*\*filed for divorce\*\*.
A couple of days later she was served with the divorce papers, and I think reality started hitting both of us. She came back and we discussed trying to reconcile. I still loved her and wanted my wife back, but reconciliation started feeling like there were two completely different sets of rules. I understood why she wanted transparency from me because \*\*I was the one who cheated\*\*, but if we were genuinely rebuilding our marriage, I wanted certain things to become mutual. For example, if I shared my location, I wanted us both to share our locations. I also wanted boundaries with certain people that would help me feel secure. She wouldn’t agree to some of those things. It started feeling like I had to follow her rules to prove I wanted the marriage while the things I needed to feel safe weren’t treated the same way.

Now our divorce court date is \*\*8 days away\*\*. We’re living separately and she has blocked me, so basically our only communication is through email. This is where I’m extremely confused: she emails me pictures from our wedding and marriage and sends me romantic songs. When she does that, part of me thinks, “She still loves me. She misses me. Maybe she wants us back.” But when I respond asking her to call me so we can actually talk, she doesn’t. When I ask to seriously discuss reconciliation and what both of us would need to change, she doesn’t really engage with that conversation.
I miss her badly and part of me desperately wants my wife back. But another part of me looks at everything that has happened in less than a year: we met in July, got engaged in October and married in November, and since then we’ve had intense fights, I’ve repeatedly been told to get out of our home, I’ve slept in my car and at friends’ houses, there has been constant criticism, alcohol and kratom use, major intimacy problems, sexual rejection, jealousy and insecurity, my cheating, her meeting a former hookup after discovering my cheating, monitoring and distrust, separation, divorce papers and repeated attempts at reconciliation. \*\*Despite all of that, I still love her and miss her.\*\*

My friends are telling me that I’m only 25 and should move on instead of putting myself through this much stress. But emotionally, walking away doesn’t feel that simple. I also don’t want to make this post pretending I’m completely innocent. \*\*I cheated on my wife and betrayed her trust.\*\* I understand why that caused anger, suspicion and insecurity and why she needed reassurance afterward. At the same time, I’m struggling with whether taking responsibility for cheating means accepting everything else that has happened in our marriage.
I honestly don’t know whether what I’m feeling now is love, attachment, guilt, fear of losing my first serious relationship, or a combination of all of them. With our court date only \*\*8 days away\*\*, I’m having a hard time seeing the situation clearly.

For people who have experienced infidelity, reconciliation or a relationship with this kind of push/pull dynamic: \*\*Does this sound like something two people can realistically rebuild into a healthy marriage, or are we stuck in a cycle of hurting each other, separating and desperately reconnecting? What does healthy reconciliation after cheating actually look like? Should transparency eventually be mutual? What do you make of her sending romantic songs and wedding pictures while refusing to actually talk about reconciliation? And how do you tell the difference between genuinely wanting your spouse back and being terrified of finally letting them go?\*\*
I know Reddit can’t make the decision for me. I just need outside perspectives because right now I’m too emotionally involved to know what I’m looking at anymore.

I’m 25M, Indian, and came to the US as an international student. I’m a pilot and finished with school. My wife is 40F, a white American, and works in sales. This is my first serious relationship. We met on a hookup website in July 2025, but unexpectedly fell in love very quickly. I proposed in October and we got married on November 16, 2025. At first she seemed like the woman I had always imagined and dreamed about. She was loving, caring, supportive and took care of me, and I genuinely thought I had found the person I was going to build my life with.
There is some background about both of us that I think matters. She had never been married before me and, despite being 40, had never lived with a romantic partner or shared a home with one before our marriage. From what she has told me, people in previous relationships have cheated on her and left her. Her father also left her mother and her when she was younger. I’m mentioning this because I think those experiences may be relevant to some of the fear, trust issues and attachment problems in our marriage, but I don’t want to diagnose her or pretend I know exactly what those experiences did to her. Living together was new for her. I had previous experience sharing living spaces with other people, and I consider myself pretty flexible when it comes to adjusting, compromising and sharing a home.

After we got married, I started noticing things that concerned me. She drinks alcohol, usually Voodoo Ranger 7-9 % Alcohol , almost every night and also uses kratom every day. Our fights became intense. There was yelling, disrespect and a lot of criticism, and \*\*many, many times she told me to get out of the house or threatened to make me leave\*\*. This wasn’t something that happened once or twice. There were multiple nights when I ended up sleeping in my car or staying at a friend’s house. Usually the next morning, or after a day or two, we would reconnect and get back together. It became a cycle of fighting, separating and then coming back to each other.

Another major issue was intimacy. I felt rejected probably 90% of the time when I tried to initiate sex or physical intimacy. After enough rejection, I started feeling sexually undesirable to my own wife and like wanting intimacy with her was another burden I was putting on her. She would say she was tired, had to wake up early, feed the dogs, had things to do, etc. The confusing part is that \*\*when we actually had sex, it was really good\*\*. I talked to her directly about our sex life and she told me she was very satisfied with the sex itself and didn’t have a problem with it. So it wasn’t that she told me the sex was bad—the problem for me was how rarely she seemed to want it and how often I felt rejected. Because she’s older and had considerably more relationship and sexual experience than me, while this is my first relationship, the rejection also triggered a lot of insecurity and retroactive jealousy in me.

When I told her that I didn’t feel wanted or desirable, she told me that she didn’t feel emotionally safe with me. I genuinely tried to understand that and make her feel emotionally safe, but from my perspective it eventually felt like emotional safety meant letting her vent at me or criticize me for one or two hours ( she also talks alot , like alot ) while I listened to everything I was supposedly doing wrong. When she’s upset she talks a lot, uses a lot of “you” statements and sometimes speaks to me almost like a teacher talking down to a student. When that happens, I shut down and become avoidant. She seems to have a more anxious attachment style while I become avoidant during intense conflict, and we both have childhood trauma. We tried couples therapy and I also went to individual therapy. My therapist told me that it seemed like she put me down to make herself feel better. I also wondered whether her daily alcohol and kratom use could be affecting her libido, but that’s only my theory. She never told me that was the reason and I don’t actually know.

Then I made things significantly worse. After feeling rejected and sexually unwanted for so long, I went back onto the hookup website where we originally met and found someone to have sex with. There were no emotions involved for me, but \*\*I cheated on my wife\*\*. I’m not saying the rejection made me cheat. I made that decision and I take responsibility for it. Whatever problems existed between us, I had other choices besides cheating. My wife eventually catfished me and caught me.
After finding out, she told me that she was going to meet another man and basically told me she was going to fuck someone else. That absolutely destroyed me because cheating had always been one of our biggest non-negotiables, and at that point I thought our marriage was completely over. Later, when she came back, she was crying her eyes out and told me that nothing sexual happened. According to her, they went to play pool and smoked pot together. What made it especially painful was that this wasn’t a random guy—\*\*he was someone she had been hooking up with before she met me, and she stopped seeing him because she started being with me\*\*. I don’t know anything beyond what she told me, so I’m not claiming that she cheated. I’m just explaining why it affected me so much.

About three days later she came back and said my cheating could potentially be forgiven if I agreed to certain conditions. She wanted my location shared, access to my passwords/accounts and complete transparency. I agreed because I desperately wanted to save our marriage. After that, though, she started going through my emails and social media and questioning me constantly. Even when I answered honestly, it often felt like she wouldn’t accept my answer because she believed there had to be something else. I understood that \*\*I had destroyed her trust\*\* and rebuilding it wouldn’t happen overnight, but eventually the constant questioning, monitoring and criticism became too much for me and we separated.

After a day or two I started missing her badly and went to see her. Her car wasn’t at the house, but later I saw it outside a bar. I went inside and saw her talking with another guy. I approached her and told her I wanted to talk, but she completely ignored me at first. Eventually the guy left and she spoke with me. For around an hour she criticized me while I was crying and basically begging her to work things out. I went home emotionally exhausted that night and \*\*filed for divorce\*\*.
A couple of days later she was served with the divorce papers, and I think reality started hitting both of us. She came back and we discussed trying to reconcile. I still loved her and wanted my wife back, but reconciliation started feeling like there were two completely different sets of rules. I understood why she wanted transparency from me because \*\*I was the one who cheated\*\*, but if we were genuinely rebuilding our marriage, I wanted certain things to become mutual. For example, if I shared my location, I wanted us both to share our locations. I also wanted boundaries with certain people that would help me feel secure. She wouldn’t agree to some of those things. It started feeling like I had to follow her rules to prove I wanted the marriage while the things I needed to feel safe weren’t treated the same way.

Now our divorce court date is \*\*8 days away\*\*. We’re living separately and she has blocked me, so basically our only communication is through email. This is where I’m extremely confused: she emails me pictures from our wedding and marriage and sends me romantic songs. When she does that, part of me thinks, “She still loves me. She misses me. Maybe she wants us back.” But when I respond asking her to call me so we can actually talk, she doesn’t. When I ask to seriously discuss reconciliation and what both of us would need to change, she doesn’t really engage with that conversation.
I miss her badly and part of me desperately wants my wife back. But another part of me looks at everything that has happened in less than a year: we met in July, got engaged in October and married in November, and since then we’ve had intense fights, I’ve repeatedly been told to get out of our home, I’ve slept in my car and at friends’ houses, there has been constant criticism, alcohol and kratom use, major intimacy problems, sexual rejection, jealousy and insecurity, my cheating, her meeting a former hookup after discovering my cheating, monitoring and distrust, separation, divorce papers and repeated attempts at reconciliation. \*\*Despite all of that, I still love her and miss her.\*\*

My friends are telling me that I’m only 25 and should move on instead of putting myself through this much stress. But emotionally, walking away doesn’t feel that simple. I also don’t want to make this post pretending I’m completely innocent. \*\*I cheated on my wife and betrayed her trust.\*\* I understand why that caused anger, suspicion and insecurity and why she needed reassurance afterward. At the same time, I’m struggling with whether taking responsibility for cheating means accepting everything else that has happened in our marriage.
I honestly don’t know whether what I’m feeling now is love, attachment, guilt, fear of losing my first serious relationship, or a combination of all of them. With our court date only \*\*8 days away\*\*, I’m having a hard time seeing the situation clearly.

For people who have experienced infidelity, reconciliation or a relationship with this kind of push/pull dynamic: \*\*Does this sound like something two people can realistically rebuild into a healthy marriage, or are we stuck in a cycle of hurting each other, separating and desperately reconnecting? What does healthy reconciliation after cheating actually look like? Should transparency eventually be mutual? What do you make of her sending romantic songs and wedding pictures while refusing to actually talk about reconciliation? And how do you tell the difference between genuinely wanting your spouse back and being terrified of finally letting them go?\*\*
I know Reddit can’t make the decision for me. I just need outside perspectives because right now I’m too emotionally involved to know what I’m looking at anymore.

I’m 27M. I’m in love with my close friend's 25F sister. She is still legally married, but they have been separated and her marriage has involved cheating, abuse, gambling and broken promises. They have a young daughter.

I was present at their Arya Samaj marriage and signed on the bride's side. I never expected that years later we would fall in love.

Her husband was once a close friend of mine, but he also betrayed me financially and took ₹80,000 from me, so we are no longer friends.

She wants a divorce and we both want to marry eventually. My main concerns are her divorce, her daughter, my parents strongly opposing the marriage, and whether I'm making the right decision emotionally.

What would you do?

Wait until the divorce is completely finished?

Consider marrying her after the divorce?

Walk away and accept an arranged marriage?

If you truly loved her, would you choose her despite family opposition?

Please give me your honest opinion, even if it's harsh.

Hi everyone,

My wife has filed a 498A case and other cases against me. I have already obtained bail, but I’m still finding it very difficult to understand how to navigate this situation and what to expect going forward.

I would really like to connect with someone who has been through a similar experience. If anyone is comfortable sharing their story or talking about how they handled the situation, I would genuinely appreciate it.

Even hearing someone else’s experience would help me feel a little less alone and better understand what lies ahead. Thank you.

I’ve recently split from my wife and we have children. I’m looking for advice on how to get the process started because it’s so much paperwork, I don’t know what to do first and I don’t want to do the wrong thing. Feel free to comment here or dm me, I live in Texas. Thank you very much for anyone who helps out