I am a shell of the person I used to be. Am I even that? Is that framework of an identity, the person who I used to be, even still there at all? I either cannot remember who I was, or it has truly been vanquished from me. Being a shell of who I was would suggest there is some remnant of me still remaining, a vessel of sorts that used to contain my identity. It operated as a mould that shaped my character and made me the person I was. It was a framework that I might be able to rebuild my identity upon and within, if it still existed. I'm not sure it does exist any longer. This is one of my many marriage horror stories I will write here. I think that will help me reflect on what has been stolen from me, who I used to be and what I can be again, as well as operate as useful advice and warnings for others. Here's the first warning I can provide. Never relinquish who you are. You are important. More important than your spouse, and more important than the couple you comprise. If you are married, or going to get married, understand that you should be prepared to be alone again. You cannot give up everything and then hope to make an easy transition back to being single. So here's my second warning. Don't get married. I know plenty of people will say otherwise, but plenty of those people will be wrong. Marriage doesn't work for the vast majority of people. Those who say it does are either in the small percentage of people who are married and happy, or they just haven't been married long enough for it to fall apart and fail yet. I don't want to drone on about this narrow topic, but I think it deserves more attention than people seem to give it. I'm going to contemplate which next horror story I will write about here, and be back to tell that story.

The issue of loneliness came up in a recent thread by another member, so I wanted to address that topic briefly here. To some extent I think the issue of loneliness is not given the attention it deserves, as it seems to impact the decisions people make in relationships to a great extent. Then the questions becomes more obvious, that being, is staying married and miserable the right solution to avoid loneliness. Thinking back to both of my divorces, even though I didn't realize it at the time, the potential of being lonely was affecting my decisions. At the time I merely recognized it as a desire to be with someone, possibly even staying married, but never thought of it as affecting the decisions that I made. I also never recognized it as something potentially harmful to me, something that was causing me to make irrational and wrong decisions. Looking back I realize it was harmful, and pointing me in the wrong direction. I think people facing divorce can mostly mitigate the potential harmful effect of loneliness if they merely recognize it and take note of how it's impacting them in their decisions. Moving forward after that, to answer the question regarding solutions, you need to find an actual solution to the loneliness. I think fundamentally the solution for loneliness is not to be amongst company, but to find a way to be alone and not lonely. It's like a temporary fix, or merely a bandage, for a problem that needs working on. That does not mean you are resigning yourself to being alone, but that you are strengthening yourself so that you can be alone. At the same time, you free yourself from it's influence over you so you can objectively and logically make decisions about what is best for you. That's a very short synopsis of what came to mind when the member here brought up the topic, so I hope that helps. If you have any further thoughts or questions please let me know and I'm happy to help however I can.

Hi everyone. One of the other members mentioned she was invited to join this forum, and I was also happy to accept a similar invitation. It seems the forum is just getting started now and spreading by word of mouth and invite. To start with, my username is Divorced&Happy for a reason. My thought when joining this forum was not necessarily to seek out advice, but to hopefully provide advice to other people. I went through a lot in my two, yes two, marriages, and I think that gives me some perspective and experience with which to help other people. I also found a way out and changed course on my life to find true happiness, in the purest sense. I gave advice to a friend of mine a while back as he was trying to recover from a divorce, and it made me very happy to help him. He ended up getting through it just fine and is in a lot better place now. To introduce myself in a little more detail, I first got married straight out of college, when I was 22. My immaturity at the time and not really knowing who I was, where I was, or where I wanted to go didn't set me up for success in marriage. The same was true for my ex wife. We were married for 8 years, had two kids, and tried to make it work countless times. Eventually, the core reason I think we didn't work out was because we quickly grew apart. I came to have strong career interests, but she wanted me to be home more. There's much more to it, but that's what the basic problem was. I wasn't going to sacrifice my future and my career to sit at home just to keep her company, so it caused ongoing problems and never resolved. All in all it ended when I came home after a business trip to find out my garage opener didn't work and my key didn't open the front door. I was 'evicted' from my own home without notice. From there it was a fairly typical divorce story you've heard a thousand times. My second marriage happened far too quickly thereafter. I really don't know what I was thinking at the time, although now I wonder why I would ever consider getting married again at all, much less that soon after a divorce. Well I actually do know what I was thinking. Or what I was feeling, rather. I was lonely and feeling rejected, so it was nice to have someone that wanted me and kept me company. I should have found other ways to deal with that and would have been much better in the long run. That marriage was full of a lot of conflict after just a few months of marriage, primarily because of my children from the prior marriage. My current wife at the time just couldn't get on board with the time they took, because they deprived her of my time. She was always invited to spend time with us, but didn't want to most of the time. Eventually we just decided the marriage was going nowhere and we were not happy, so ended it on agreeable terms. I hope that didn't drag on for too long. There is much more I could say to introduce myself, but I'm not sure anyone would read all that!