‘You’re selfish’: Man Orchestrates His Divorce to Be at the Right Moment For Him, Her Family Comes After Him in Response

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Briana Viser • Writer and Editor
Sep 12, 2024 12:00 PM EDT

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen of the internet. Manipulation can look like many things. It can be under the covers of the obvious, not necessarily very noticeable. That's how it works so well when it does, because it comes when someone least expects it. It sneaks up on you, adding to the frustration and anger when you notice. 

Divorce can be ugly, and it usually is. It's not always mutual, and there could be issues with court cases, splitting custody, and finances. At some point, it will all be over, but until then it's a pain. 

In this Reddit thread, the man has been wanting a divorce for a long time. His wife refuses to go to counseling, and he feels like he's fighting for them alone. He's picked up a lot of the chores and other responsibilities between them, and he reaches the point where he can't do it anymore. Although he didn't favor the timing of his decision, he waited until it felt perfect for him. 

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  • 01
    This changed when my oldest went to high school. My wife got a new job that was both very demanding on her time and was 50% travel. This meant that I had to handle everything about 2 weeks per month and when she was home she wasn't holding up her side of the work with agreements. I did my best to be
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  • 02
    r/AITAH • 14 hr. ago Prudent-Composer3500 AITA for waiting to divorce my wife until it was a good time for me?
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  • 03
    My ex wife and I were married for over 20 years and have 2 children together (22M and 20F).
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  • 04
    For most of my marraige, things were pretty balanced. We both shared housework and childcare responsibilities. We were each stay at home parents for over a year after each child, her with our son and me with our son and daughter. We always had agreements on how we wanted to divide work and generally had decent communication.
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  • 05
    This changed when my oldest went to high school. My wife got a new job that was both very demanding on her time and was 50% travel. This meant that I had to handle everything about 2 weeks per month and when she was home she wasn't holding up her side of the work with agreements. I did my best to be
    via u/Prudent-Composer3500
  • 06
    acommodating and we worked through redistributing chores/house work a few times to make it fit her schedule better, but a lot of the work just kept falling to me. When the pandemic happened, things got worse, but I tried to just suck it up because I knew the lockdowns were temporary. Finally, when things
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  • 07
    opened back up things continued to decline and I asked to go to counseling. She missed a lot of our meetings and just didn't commit to it. At this point I decided that I wanted a divorce.
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  • 08
    Unfortunately, it was a really tough time for the family. My son was getting ready for college in person after his freshman year being remote which was both financial and logistical challenge. At the same time my daughter was also having some issues with depression and I had become her
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  • 09
    main support person with my wife gone half the time. I made a decision to wait until my daughter was in a better mental state and our family was in a financialy stable place before I filed for divorce. I did my best to continue to contribute and was essentailly a single parent for three years. On a few occassions I
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  • 10
    brought up counseling again, but my wife said "things were good" and wouldn't go. We pretty much didn't have for that period of time and there was one summer where she essentially moved to North Carolina for 6 weeks for work (she came home on some weekends).
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  • 11
    Last year after my daughter started sophomore year of college and she was in a better place mentally and emotionally, I sold off some of my stock investments to create a trust for my kids to ensure college was covered then I filed for divorce. At first my wife was really then she left to live in North
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  • 12
    Carolina again. When she came back 4 weeks later, she said she wanted to work through it, but I told her I had made the decison to leave years ago and wasn't interested. We eventually worked through mediation and got an amicable divorce. My kids live with me now and support me, but all of my in-laws and even most
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  • 13
    of my family outside of my sister think I'm . They believe I should have forced the issue more when we started counseling and either divorced or made it clearer to my wife how important counseling was to me. They've called me selfish and some of my in-laws are refusing to interact with my kids when they're at my
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  • 14
    house (for example my daughter facetimed her grandmother once this summer and she hung up once she saw that my daughter was at my house). They also created a bit of a scene at my son's graduation in the spring, refusing to acknowleding me and demanding that my son choose. to celebrate with them or me
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  • 15
    rather than having dinner together as a group. I encouraged my son to go with them and we had our own celebration later, but something happened at the dinner and my son has lived with me and been almost no contact with them since.
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  • 16
    I honestly feel like I did what was best for my kids, but I now it feels like their mom's family is punishing them and I feel like a terrible father. I admit that it might have been more mature to address the issue head on with my relationship with my ex, but I felt that it was about more than just the two of us. Frankly, I feel
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  • 17
    like my lack of backbone years ago has made this divorce worse for my kids, but I also believe that if I had to do it again, I would still prioritize my kids over my own feelings and make the same choice. AITA?
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  • 18
    EDIT: Holy this blew up. First off, thanks for folks who provided feedback and comments. I really felt like and both the positive and negative comments helped me get a little perspective on things.
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  • 19
    I've seen a few comments come up multiple times, so I figure it's worth answering them here before I move on. 1. This is an account I created to ask an embarassing dating question earlier this year. I created it because my main username is
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  • 20
    recognizable and I reused it now because I don't really want to air my issues associated with a known username. 2. When my wife took the job, we were doing well financially, but the job still came with a big raise. I was making about $200k and the
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  • 21
    job she took gave her a raise from about $80k to $140k. That was enough that we could go from saving enough to have an emergency fund to having enough to pay for our kid's college outright. We both work in tech, but she works for a defense contractor and some of the work needs to
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  • 22
    be done onsite and only one of the offices related to her work is near where we live. When we originally discussed the job, her plan was to work in the high travel role for some time then try to transfer to a lower travel role based near us. She got promoted a few times and staying near our
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  • 23
    home wasn't an option unless she took a bit pay and title cut. When we divorced I was making about $280k and she made a little over $300k. Some folks were also confused by my stock comment. I'm a software engineer for a big tech company and about 20-30% of my salary comes in the
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  • 24
    form of RSUs (restricted stock units). I'm not an investor by any means, and I was just selling off stock mostly to cover my daughter's college and pay off what debt my son had. 3. I know a lot of people are jumping right to an affair, but I really doubt it. In
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  • 25
    school, my wife and I were the obnoxious kids who reminded the teacher about homework and she's a massive introvert. Her working late in a hotel room is much more likely than her sleeping around or keeping some secret family. There's a chance I'm wrong here, but I think this is more a situation
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  • 26
    where Reddit sometimes thinks all divorces end with infidelity. 4. When I say we had an amicable divorce, I mean that more in the legal sense than the emotional sense. Unconested might be better term. The only significan asset we had that wasn't easily split was our
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  • 27
    home. My wife loves the house and I frankly wanted something different, so she bought out my portion of it. Our kids are adults, so there's no custody. Our assets are mostly divisible, so no issues there. Our salaries were comparable, so there was no alimony. We each had a car. Overall, it
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  • 28
    was pretty straightforward to divide things evenly and neither of us wanted to draw things out. We didn't end the marraige as friends by any means, but from a legal standpoint it was amicable. because we decided on arrangement with a mediator and only involved lawyers briefly to actually
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  • 29
    draft the final paperwork for the judge to sign off on.
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  • 30
    Nightwish1976 • 14h ago NTA, you did your best for your kids.
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  • 31
    herefortheadvice... • 14h ago Of course the in-laws are gonna bark and and moan because their golden angel got blindsided by a divorce...a separation she cemented when she told you "NO, I'M NOT GOING THE COUNSELING WITH YOU..."
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  • 32
    Your in-laws sound not only insufferable, but incapable of accountability. It may be too much effort to explain to her family that you tried for YEARS to fix the marriage, but she was too busy...somewhere else...
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  • 33
    NTA for doing what's right for your children. It sucks the in-laws are being to them, but hopefully they'll develop new relationships and bonds with other people who aren't incapable of empathy or rational conversations surrounding major life events.
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family drama marriage drama selfish family feud relationships lol divorce love family reddit thread Reddit funny dating
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