Why is it considered impolite to talk badly of your ex?

Brookswood said:
i had the wool over my entire head for at least three years. probably five.
love is blind.
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try 20.. ! terrible isn't it ?

Mine got away with it..for several reasons..
1..because I'm generally a very trusting person
2..because he worked long hours.. aside from some weekends and holidays.. I only saw him 1/2 an hour a day max...he'd come home, speak for 10 minutes, shower and bed..
3.. because when alarm bells did ring.. and I would ask questions I was accused of being insanely jealous. psychotic, need psychiatric help. etc .. so I would keep quiet about my suspicions..

I once...just one picked my husband up from work....it was meant as a surprise because his car was being repaired and he said he was going to get a cab home.. so I thought Id surprise him... and drove 30 miles to his work to pick him up..

He acted surprised, and all was fine so it seemed but much later I heard he was telling people that I was a stalker..

A stalker ! ? My own husband ?..one time in 20 years I surprise him...

It was only after we separated that I was able to put 2 & 2 together... and realise what was really going on.. that in fact he'd been telling co-workers that he and I lived separately in the same house.. and that was how he was able to get away with taking so many women out to lunch or dinner, and flirting at work...
 
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I can't say anything bad about my first wife, she was and still is an absolutely fantastic woman and it's 100% my fault that the marriage ended after five years and I'm extremely thankful that she forgave me many years ago.....because we share a son and three grandchildren together we still keep in touch once in awhile.
 
Mobilman44 said:
HollyDolly,
Your description sounds very much like my Wife's history with her first husband of 25 years. He really did a number on her and their daughter. We have been married for 21 years and she is still somewhat affected by that past.
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I'm sorry she's gone through that...it would have been horrendous for her.. and of course it will still be affecting her in some way after all these years... you can only continue to let her know you will never do the same to her...

I was only fortunate that this current husband who I'm in the process of divorcing.. was not my first husband who was the father of my child.. and that when he and I married my daughter was already grown and in her own home. She only saw a nice side of him.. altho' she was very aware that he was hiding the other side from her..
 
VintageBetter said:
"Pastors, preachers, priests: when you tell the flock to forgive are you really telling them to shut up?" There's two answer choices to that question only, yes or no.

Choose one: Either you will allow women to talk about all the hurts and ill-treatment in their lives or you will choose "Yes", which means you preach forgiveness because you want women to shut the ____ up.
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Why do you assume the pastors are only talking to the women? Pastors tell us all to forgive because that's what Jesus told us to do, and not because Jesus wanted the perpetrators to get away with things, but because he knew dwelling on what happened in the past would make us bitter and miserable, when we should be living in the now, enjoying our life.

I rarely say anything out loud about my ex because I don't want my son to think poorly of his father.

Another reason I don't often talk about my ex is that people are rarely sympathetic, instead they blame me: "Why didn't you leave?" "Why were you such a doormat?" "That would never happen to me!" "I would never put up with that." "It's your fault for making such bad choices."
 
What I regret is the bad example of marriage that my older DD saw. She has married someone just like him. He was charming, affable, smart and cruel. He belittled me and destroyed my self worth. She still stands by her man. I finally got out while the my second DD was younger, so it wasn’t as hard on her.
 
Della said:
Why do you assume the pastors are only talking to the women? Pastors tell us all to forgive because that's what Jesus told us to do, and not because Jesus wanted the perpetrators to get away with things, but because he knew dwelling on what happened in the past would make us bitter and miserable, when we should be living in the now, enjoying our life.

I rarely say anything out loud about my ex because I don't want my son to think poorly of his father.

Another reason I don't often talk about my ex is that people are rarely sympathetic, instead they blame me: "Why didn't you leave?" "Why were you such a doormat?" "That would never happen to me!" "I would never put up with that." "It's your fault for making such bad choices."
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AS I had no childen with this husband people presumed it was easy for me to walk away, and I got all the same questions...

...but for one reason, you're so downtrodden by it all.and you really think it's You that's causing the problem......my husband would come home from work and deliberately press my buttons.. and then when I reacted.. he would say ''You've spoiled my day I was soo looking forward to coming home ''.... not true, he wanted an excuse to escape to his office to contact whatever woman he was attracting.. and at the same time make me feel guilty, for ''causing'' the issue... ( I only realised this after the fact)

..and another reason for not leaving is that when he was nice, he was verrry nice.. and again I thought if we could only deal with his demons ( alcohol) it'll all be alright... and also.. who was going to help me pay the bills, and 2 houses if I left ?
 
hearlady said:
I guess I think that's ok but I wouldn't talk bad about them to his children unless he was bad enough that he was a danger to them.
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My mother talked badly about my father when we were kids. She vented to us. I think it really poisoned my opinion of him forever. I now see he did as lot of good and right things too. He didn't abuse my mom but was very frugal. He also didn't want her to work way back then in the 60s.. That's how a lot of men throught then.

Anyhow she divorced him and remarried and divorced again.. Later in life my mom and dad became best friends .
 
I think that there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to ex-spouses and divorces, as far as what is alright to say about them. My first husband was the father of my 3 children, and even after we were divorced , we remained close friends until he passed away a few years ago.
I didn’t want the kids to think poorly of their father, although they knew what he was like from growing up with him. However, a lot of his problems came from drinking and drugs, and inside, he had a very good heart, and dearly loved his family.

When you tell your kids that their dad was a bad person, over and over, it has to affect how they feel about themselves, and make them wonder if that carries over into how you feel about them; so I did my best to reinforce the good things about their father to them.
Also, eventually, I could see that although the drinking was the cause of much of our marriage problems, my reactions to it were not good either, and I began to see it as both of us throwing fuel into the fire and keeping it burning.

Some people are abusive, or just cheaters, and have never tried to make a marriage work, and that is a whole different thing than what happened with me , so I think each person knows their own life story and makes the decision what to say about their ex.
 
hollydolly said:
Unfortunately yes....this was a week after the last beating... I was 66 at the time.. I was just horrified, never expected to have a beating at 66, it had been about 5 years since the previous..
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That's horrific! I hope he got charged with domestic abuse. Did you say that it was a no fault divorce? Have you taken legal advice about that? I am struggling to understand how it could be no fault when you have a violent and unfaithful partner.

Obviously, if you prefer to say no more, that's understandable. I'm just so shocked by that photo!
 
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I used to blame my mom for "just walking away" (how I put it for too many years) from us kids when my dad told her he wanted a divorce but wanted us kids to live with him. (No he didn't, not really; he was mainly doing that to hurt her.) It was in later years I discovered--since she didn't want to badmouth him to us kids...hmm, maybe not always a good idea; I know I didn't like being kept in the dark all those years--that he told her that if she kept us kids, he'd go to jail before he gave her a dime of child support. And back in those days, it was even harder to get child support out of some fathers/mothers than it is now.

Also I didn't know for years, that she asked her parents if she and we kids could move in with them for a while since she wouldn't be getting any child support money; her father's reply was a resounding "No! I didn't want you to marry that SOB in the first place! You made your bed; now you can just lie in it!"

Should she have fought harder? I wish she had but understand more as the years went by why she didn't. (Still wish I had been born into a better family, though.)
 
Trish said:
That's horrific! I hope he got charged with domestic abuse. Did you say that it was a no fault divorce?
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yes it is a no fault divorce because when he attacked me last time, he had 2 friends/colleagues who backed his story.. ( he's their friend as well as their boss) and the police said it was 3 people's words against mine so no charges could be brought

I could write in more detail but I'm not going to do that on the open forum... so despite the beating..( I had him arrested twice during our marriage )... the lawyers said that it would be very difficult to have anything other than a No fault Divorce..
 
hollydolly said:
yes it is a no fault divorce because when he attacked me last time, he had 2 friends/colleagues who backed his story.. ( he's their friend as well as their boss) and the police said it was 3 people's words against mine so no charges could be brought

I could write in more detail but I'm not going to do that on the open forum... so despite the beating..( I had him arrested twice during our marriage )... the lawyers said that it would be very difficult to have anything other than a No fault Divorce..
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I have a feeling his new partner will one day wish she had never met him. I hope your divorce goes smoothly and you enjoy a much better life than he ever does. x
 

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