Look, Im willing to be disparaged as a guy who just wants to bail out because his wife is grumpy. But it's not that simple. YES, I have spoken to my priest (and bishop) many times over several years about this.
For the sake of the children? Even if she uses them as a punching bag or scandalizes them with her screaming like a demon at her husband in front of them? Even to the point with the 10-year old running away when there is a registered sɛҳuąƖ predator in the neighborhood?
I don't believe my points have been addressed. More than anything I want my wife's sanity back. Yes, there is a spiritual problem. And I have been praying my Assumption novena to release the spirits that dominate her.
Truly she has the "animus delendi". I just spoke to my mom about NOT empowering her narcissism. Pray she gets help and sees the brutality of what divorce actually is. I truly want a happy marriage but she has clinical problems with her hormones and most likely her lyme disease, both of which affect the brain, from paranoia to irritability to mania and schizophrenia. This is a spiritual battle unlike I have ever seen. And yes, she accused me of unspeakable violence to the police and not only went to jail. I may be gone for 6 months thanks to this destructive spirit of hers.
OK, so your OP of "I know someone" = mental reservation for yourself (as in "asking for a friend"). I kindof suspected that, and that's why I spent more time on a man wanting to divorce his wife.
Your quote:
For the sake of the children? Even if she uses them as a punching bag or scandalizes them with her screaming like a demon at her husband in front of them? Even to the point with the 10-year old running away when there is a registered sɛҳuąƖ predator in the neighborhood?
Yes, for the sake for the children. Even if ... ? YES. ESPECIALLY IF she does what you describe to them. What do you think ? ... that you'll get custody and get the children away from her? If so, you're delusional. 99.99% chance naturally speaking, without a miracle, that she'll get custody, and then because you mentioned (as I alluded to) that she has accused you of abuse, she'll not only get primary custody, she'll likely get SOLE custody of the kids.
What I wrote applies very clearly to your situation. You have children. Your only consideration must be how the divorce will affect the children. And you also have to face reality. You can go into court and assert that your wife is abusive, but she just has to show up there and cry a few crocodile tears and accuse YOU of being the abuser, etc. ... there's 99.99% chance that SHE will get custody of the children, and even sole custody because she'll accuse you of abuse ... and she'll be believed and your claims dismissed. Unless you can prove a drug addiction, you have zero shot (apart from a miracle) of getting custody of the children. Then you're out of the house and you're no longer in a position to run interference between your wife and kids. You're basically throwing them to the wolf while you high-tail it out of there. That would be extremely selfish and cowardly.
I wrote from experience. I've known exactly that type of situation, where the wife clearly suffered from narcissistic personality disorder and was abusive (mostly emotionally) with the children.
What exactly do you think the "divorce" would accomplish? For the children? Sure, you'd get the heck out of there, where you wouldn't have to deal with it. But you're hanging the children out to dry. You need to suck it up and bear this heavy cross of being with a woman like that, to do the best you can to help the children in that environment, run interference for them, etc.
Probably your only hope is this, that the wife will consider the children a burden and not WANT to have custody of them. That also happened in one case, where the husband said, fine, I'll even pay alimony and child support so long as I get custody of the children. She said fine. So he paid the price by paying HER the child support, to splurge on herself and her new adulterous live-in boyfriend who moved into their home (which she also got possession of), but the husband sacrificed all the money to have custody of the children. That was a member of my extended family, so I am well acquainted with the details.
None of this is speculation on my part. I've had two members of my extended family go through this (neither one of the initiated the divorce). But in both cases the wife accused the HUSBAND of abuse and got sole custody of the children, even though she was in fact the abuser. In both cases, they used the Traditional Catholicism of the husband as a weapon against them in court, with both of them claiming that this was tantamount to indoctrinating them into a cult, and then laying out the politically-incorrect positions held by most Traditional Catholics and thereby winning the judge over to believe that this was in fact a cult. In both cases, the wife got sole custody. But, in the one case I mentioned above, the husband struck a deal where he would pay her child support and alimony while actually having sole custody of the children and paying himself for all the expenses of raising them.
You can't bail on the kids because you find the situation intolerable. You need to such it up and bear that cross.
Topic: Traditional Catholics who have DIVORCED? (Read 2800 times)