Leaving after 33 years was the best thing I ever did....& I put 2100 miles between us.....but understand the not divorced yet either. I didn't have money to finish paying for it & he is so financially irresponsible & didn't want a divorce anyway. His reasoning was that it would make him look like a failure.....ya think my leaving 10 years ago & never looking back didn't make him look the same way. that was the strange kind of off thinking I tolerated for 33 years. He actually told me at the end that he thought because I tolerated him for 33 years I would tolerate for the rest of our lives. Only way I tolerated him the first 25 years was because I had a career to hide away in. After losing that depression hit when I couldn't find any work in that career....the beginning of the economic mess that was starting. Had I only listened to the red flags I saw & felt before the wedding I never would have ended up where I did but when a behavior was normal in my growing up life it was hard to know that the behaviors weren't normal. He is still effecting me in seriously negative ways financially but my name is stuck on the home loan because he won't sell & just keeps choosing to default on the loan....even divorce doesn't save me from his irresponsible behavior. It's just nice not to see red any more every time I have to deal with his irresponsible childish behavior.....he was like being married to a child & he was proud that he was that way.

I just celebrated my 10 year anniversary of leaving him & ownership of my own little farm. Being alone is the best thing that ever happened to me. Ironic that my inheritance from my mom who was the one who encouraged my marriage to him because he was NICE (& I rationalized that he couldn't possibly be like my dad because he had his college degree), ended up making it financially possible to leave him. I had been financially trapped in that marriage the last 13 years of those 33 I was with him.

Think there are lots of us who feel this way. Sad there are so many out there who make horrible marriage partners.