Dating After Divorce and Life Transitions

I have poor boundaries... I am working on it.

It’s not easy. I often worry about what others think of me or the situation instead of focusing on what I need or what I think. I get it.

It’s a work in progress. We can still be kind and cordial and yet not bend backwards for people when it’s completely unnecessary and those aren’t even deserving people. All we can do is learn from our mistakes and do better next time

I think it’s coming from how we were brought up. We think if we bend backwards and subjugate ourselves, people will like and respect us. But in reality it’s the opposite, people don’t like and respect those who don’t respect themselves. Focusing on making other people liking us gets us no where. We all learn it at some point, not an easy lesson

Here's what your getting in your desire to have an amicable divorce... you are getting manipulation, bribery, drama, emotional blackmail and anger. Just like you couldn't force him to be the man you wanted while married, you can't force him to be who you want him to be in divorce. He isn't capable of being amicable.

In the future, if you bump into him, there is no requirement to linger. You don't want it to be awkward but what's wrong with awkward? I'd rather spend 2 minutes in the future being awkward than waste hours now experiencing anxiety and stress worrying about something that hasn't happened yet.

Don't let him control you by telling you not to tell anyone about his threats of suicide. If he threatened to hurt you, would you report it? If he threatened to hurt someone else, would you report it? He doesn't want anyone to know what exactly... to know he's manipulating you. All you will be doing by telling his family is reinforcing your boundry of not being manipulated anymore.

You actually have other things that are important to you that are of a higher priority than communicating with him. If he has a therapist (which I don't believe for a minute he does) he has help and if he dares to call you saying he's going to do something, you hang up with him and call 911 and send them to his house.

1. Job
2. Roommate

Just tell him you have things to do or you're busy with applications, online learning, advertising for a roommate, anything.

I’d call his bluff. “So you planning on killing yourself and don’t want your brother to know yet you want your ex wife to know? What kind of logic is that?” “As your ex wife I have no access to your will or to your place of residence. It’s not my business about your will. Tell your brother”

I’d call his brother and 911 every time he threatens suicide, which he’s been doing many times. It would put stop to it. He’ll stop

Also I don’t know why you think you must maintain relationship and regularly communicate with ex spouse (your divorce is being finalized so it’s as good as done). You only have to maintain connection (within reason) and be amicable if you have to co parent. And that’s life long connection that never ends, eventually there are grandchildren etc There is no reason for you to worry about kind of relationship you’ll have with him after divorce. You’ll have none. In absence of children relationships with exes are over. You could be polite in public but relationship is done. You already date someone else and you still talk with ex.

Do you plan talking to him for years to come? If being nice to him and amicable means so much you can never really stop talking to him. How will it play in your future relationships? You were upset he was talking with his ex wife a lot while married to you. Do you think your partners/boyfriends will like you talking with your ex so much and for no reason?

If you run into him in bars it’s full of people, dark and loud and people dance and drink. Are you planning on having meaningful conversation with him beyond “Hi”. Why? And you go to these venues with other people. Will you two leave your companies and go talk to exes? No. Then why go through this torture in case you must talk with him at concerts.

Also if you could be friends and have this great communication you desire, you’d remain married. You are divorcing for a reason. And yes some people remain friends. But he abused you and mistreated you and is manipulating and disrespecting you now. You want friends like that? Is this a healthy “friendship”?

I do get all of everyone's points here. I DID tell him it's not healthy for us to be in close communication. I told him this the other day, also saying we both need to move on. I also think that he has told his brother he feels suicidal because he told me he did. Perhaps he did tell him, and perhaps he didn't. I do think he still sees his therapist. He's told me things that the therapist has said to him.

I will figure out a way to stop the communications. I may have to block him again.

MOST importantly - what do I tell prospective employers about what happened in my last job, the next time I am interviewed?

I was laid off after 11 months because my skill set wasn't the best fit for them. I didn't come up to speed quickly enough for them on how to do a website audit the way the company wanted me to do them. I excelled in blog topic ideation, and created a backlog of articles for them for the entire year, very quickly, efficiently and effectively. I also did very well with creating highly detailed, well researched, and in-depth content outlines for the freelance writers. And I wrote a couple of professional articles that are published on my employer's blog.

My last interview was a total bust regarding what happened in my last role. He hyper focused on it and didn't even want to hear why I am qualified for the position. He asked for my supervisor's name! The second time this has happened in a recent interview. People never have asked me for my supervisor's name, not in my history or past interviews. AND, I got flustered when he became overly focused on my last role, and didn't sell myself well after that point.

Also, I had told my interviewer that I had had to take a medical leave of absence, and that my doctor recommended I return to a modified position, and that's how my responsibilities changed. I felt I had to tell him this, because he asked directly: what were you hired to do?

The complete opposite scenario: two executive partners of a digital marketing agency firm did NOT focus on what happened in my last job at all. One of them had told me my resume was fantastic. I got rejected for the job in the end because I didn't have enough experience working on enterprise-level websites, or sites that are hundreds of thousands of pages. Or so they said. At the same time, this is when I was lying on my resume & had given my last role a made up job title - SEO Content Manager, which matches the job responsibilities that I ended up with. My original job title - SEO Manager - does not match the job responsibilities I ended up carrying.

I decided recently that I shouldn't lie on my resume. IF I change my job title and they find out it's not the right title when doing background checks, I could get fired for lying or rejected for the job.

I am soooo at a loss as to what to say to employers about what happened in my last job. If I say I was laid off, they may ask, what were the circumstances of the layoff? If I say that my skill set wasn't the best fit for them, I have to explain WHY. And that opens the door to explaining that my job completely changed, after having taken a medical leave of absence.

I am so afraid that I am royally screwed.

What do I tell employers?

The threats of suicide.....emotional blackmail. Narcissists rarely commit suicide.

Recruiting agency? Ask them to find you content job. Not SEO managing. Those, not content, tasks were not going well for you even before medical issue. If asked what happened, you were hired to do SEO management but realized that your talent is in content. They didn’t need content person long term though so you had to leave. You are now looking for content positions.

The issues with questioning arise possibly because you are looking for positions that you were let go from. That’s why they are questioning and rejecting. Usually if you were let go because you didn’t have skills they wanted, it’s problematic if you go look for the same type of job in similar type of companies unless you did something to improve your skills. Take a class? Have a record of you getting additional education.

Otherwise look for a different job. If content jobs aren’t there, what type of jobs could you go for? Is there something else?

divine and dont emphasize medical leave. It sounds out of control? It might be better to say you had alcohol issues instead of making it mysterious?

Wow.

What he's doing sounds like hard core manipulation to me. If it's dragging you back to him, and keeping you attached in some way, it may very well be nothing more than manipulation. It sure kind of feels like it.

Even if the whole tone of it seems negative, that doesn't matter to a manipulator as long as they feel like they have you on a hook

I wouldn't even engage, acknowledge, or take action towards his threats. You don't need to take care of him, he's a grown man.

What's he done to take care of you? If he'd taken care of you in a mutually meaningful way, would you even be in a situation like this?

I say detach, detach, detach. And go take care of yourself.

Don't worry about the possibility of someone listing you as an executor or some other agent on legal paperwork. You would have the right to step back and refuse to do it. I know because I was in that situation with a family member at one point and had to do exactly that. Usually there will be an alternate listed, or else the state can appoint someone. If you're still legally married at the time, that might be different, but in that case, you would still have right of survivorship and most things would probably be rather straightforward. But, I too, think it's all a bluff.

(((Hugs))). Being jerked around emotionally isn't fun.

Medical leave is appropriate information to share under circumstances. If it causes you inability to perform certain task and explains why you left your job.

My husband is RN and had a total shoulder replacement in the midst of pandemics. Long overdue replacement. He was on medical leave (short term disability) for 3 months doing physical therapy and stuff.

At the end of his leave surgeon refused to give a release to return to his specific position and his hospital (due to danger of reinjury). He gave a permission to return to work but not to his position. My husband asked for light duties. His hospital had no light duties.

He interviewed for a different position in other hospital. He explained what happened and why he needed to leave. They wanted to make sure he’s able to do the job and gave him physical evaluation and he passed and has been employed there since

He’s RN in a local hospital in post surgical unit now with normal duties while what he did before was high danger extremely physically strenuous RN position.

In his situation medical condition and medical leave was the only way to explain why he left his job and the only honest way because that’s what happened

I don’t know if Hope had to mention medical leave. Probably not. It’s hard to explain it being direct reason as there was almost a year passed between the events. If medical condition was the reason, it would have to be more immediate. If you let go a year after returning from medical leave it’s harder to explain and it might not appear related.

I am applying for content jobs and am not getting any responses for those positions. I stated that in a prior post.

I cannot lie.... I have to somehow tell employers that I got overwhelmed, that I was not trained in doing lengthy 30-200 slide audits, and my job changed as a result of being overwhelmed. Perhaps I don't need to mention the medical leave of absence.

@ArmorPlate108, thank you.... yes, I am being emotionally toyed with by my husband. I am detaching for certain. It is very manipulative, and I fall prey to it easily.

Of course lying isn’t acceptable.

But telling them you became so overwhelmed with the tasks that you couldn’t do them and had to take medical leave to cope isn’t going to land you a job. You can’t tell them that making 30 slides power point presentation is beyond your capabilities and made you sick. No way no how anyone would offer you a job in the field. Now if you tell them you didn’t know how to do XYZ but now you took these classes or are enrolled in class now and show them documentation, they might appreciate it.

If you are applying for essentially same job position that got you so sick you had to go on leave, how do they know you wouldn’t get overwhelmed again? And they’d be afraid to hire someone who could be pushed to illness with tasks they assign. They’d not offer you a job. They don’t want the liability. Essentially you are telling them that job made you sick yet you apply for the same type of job again.

I know you stated that you weren’t getting responses for other positions but something has to give. Do you work with recruiters? Vocational services? There have to be other jobs out there

I am applying for anything I qualify for, and not necessarily the same exact position with the same exact requirements. I've worked in several agencies, and no one required audits like my last agency did. I am steering clear of positions that require audits to sell the company's services to prospective clients. And, I am applying for positions that are different than my last - within companies, and not just agencies.

And yes, I have spoken with several recruiters. I just talked to my mom, who has offered to pay for a course, which I think will be my next step.

I don't see a problem as long as you are steering clear of positions with the requirements that you found overwhelming in your previous job.


That's great that your Mom will pay for a course. A recent skills upgrade always looks good on a resume I think.

Thank you.

I am steering clear of those jobs, but since website audits is where I faltered in my last job, I found an 11-hour professional course from Udemy on site audits. so I will shore up my knowledge and skill set where I am weakest. That should help me to land a job, I would think. The course was heavily discounted to just $20 last night. Now the course cost is back up to $119. So I got a deep discount - yay.

Thank you to all who have suggested taking a course..... this may just be the ticket to a new job. Heck, I got laid off because my auditing skills were not up to par, so I am taking an audit class to shore up where I am weakest. I think this should really help. At least I hope it will in interviews once I explain that I am taking a course to improve my skill set and knowledge in an area where I am not strong.

Also, Jay seems to be backing off slightly from me, and when I asked if he has another woman that he's interested in, he told me no, and that he just wants to take things slowly. I told him I was good with that, but....

last night hanging out in my apartment feeling very lonely, I ALMOST contacted my husband to ask if we could hang out. THANK GOODNESS I did not do this!!!!!!! I was at a weak moment and a vulnerable moment, and for a few mins thought how nice it would be to just have someone hold me, cuddle me and comfort me, like my husband used to do. But he's not my security blanket, so thank God I had the wherewithal to stop myself from reaching out to him. We've already done this once, and if I did it again, it would not only confuse HIM, but it would make the leaving process that much harder and difficult. So, there's that.

Also, I paid him back for the earrings he bought me recently and for the cat carrier he also recently bought for me. So, I do not owe him anymore.

When it comes to your ex-husband, try to remember you are important and deserving of self-care. You are more important than he is !