I'm not really looking for a lot of response on this. This is more of a cathartic post than anything else. It's a long one but still not everything. Skip it if you're looking to solve someone's problem. It's just a dump.

On December 19, 2023, I (M56) filed for divorce. Happy anniversary, me. I have not laid eyes on my STBX (F53) since September 29th, 2023. On September 30th, I was starting the day to help my adult children (26F and 24M) into a townhouse together with the son's GF. My daughter still lived at home and was the last one to leave the next. My STBX had left early that morning for her usual weekend nursing shift (7a-7p) and I'd arrived home late from a business trip so I didn't see her. I went looking for the oatmilk coffee creamer I'd bought the week before and came up short. That's where it all took a left turn.

I looked in the kitchen fridge and the garage fridge but it was nowhere to be found so I sent a text to the group asking if anyone knew where it had gone. My son walked in the door that minute and said the STBX had given it to them for their apartment. That pissed me off because just the week before she had been loading them up with stuff for their new place and had thrown in some items I was still using. At that time, I'd politely asked everyone not to transfer anything else unless they checked with me... just as a courtesy. So the creamer being given away felt like a big "F U" to me. I sent a (still) polite text to the group and asked again for checking before gifting. I literally used the word "please". The "kids" were apologetic, said they'd return it, etc, but I said just let it go.

My STBX, on the other hand, began flaming me in a private text. I said that it did make me feel unimportant in my own house but that I was over it. I had things to do that day. (From work,) She kept going about embarassing her in front of our adult children, but I stopped responding. We did all of the moving. Fast forward to the evening when she was finished with her work shift... I received a text that said "You better be gone when I get home." I replied that she must be kidding. She assured me she was not, and I declined. I said that we could avoid each other until she cooled off in a 4k sq ft house. She informed me that she was making hotel reservations... but not before she came home, slamming doors, slamming luggage, tore an anchored cork board off of the wall, scared the dog so badly it climbed under me, and sped off. Except for about 15 minutes to repack one day, she stayed gone a week.

When I left on my next business trip, she returned home. As I was flying away on my birthday, she let me know that she would be consulting a counselor and an attorney the next morning and "let me know" what would happen next. She spent the 3 next days in the home, texting me angrily about what she didn't like about me. When I was on my scheduled flight home, she texted me the rules. She had moved all of my personal effects to the basement (man cave). Clothes, shoes, toiletries, etc. She'd set up the Keurig in the landing area there. She said I was not allowed on the main floor or the upper floor unless she was gone AND it was an emergency. She said she would walk around the block to get to the garage in the back so she didn't have to pass me in the basement. She suggested I get a microwave to put next to the coffee maker because I wasn't allowed to use her kitchen. She also suggested that if I didn't like it, I should get an apartment.

Over the next couple of weeks, it became clearer that she felt she was in a superior position. I found anniversary pictures in the garbage. I found gifts from me to her in a construction dumpster in the neighborhood. And she kept demanding conditions and scenarios. For about a month after that, she texted my extended family, telling the usual lies women tell about men when they want to countersue for "cruel treatment" grounds. The more I refused to do what she wanted, the more comabtive she became. She terrorized our adult children demanding their loyalty... well... except for our oldest (35M) because he'd already cut ties with her to protect his wife and children. She "broke up" with her oldest friend because she tried to talk sense into her re: our 35 year marriage, my contributions and patience toward providing her a comfortable lifestyle, etc. For that she accused her best friend of having an affair with me. At the same time, she spent hundreds of dollars via my credit cards on sex toys, scheduled an in-home masseuse and taunted me saying I paid for another mad to touch her in my home (she actually covered the Ring camera lens when he arrived and left), and she used our joint checking account to sign up for elitesingles.com only to find out you need a bachelors degree to participate (I waited a week to let her know I saw it at which time she claimed someone had hacked her email to sign up. Strangely, she sent me a screenshot of the profile page that was in Edit mode... for which you'd need creds used to create the accout to access). I finally told her that I haven't cared what she did with her vagina since the night I returned from my business trip and she'd moved my things to the basement.

I moved out on November 5th while she was at work. I rented the apartment like she suggested It sits halfway between my oldest son and the other two adult children who moved in together. During that first week, my daughter, son, his GF, and I had a cookout with her ex-best friend and her husband (of 10 years). I'd recommended that they turn off Location Services on their phones but they hadn't seen the crazy I'd seen so far and left it on. When I was about to take my first bite of steak, the STBX began ringing the doorbell of her ex-best friend's house like a pinball machine. We figured out later that her vehicle was not operational and she'd walked the 1.5 miles from our townhouse to our friends' house partially on a busy, dark, country road with no shoulder. When no one immediately opened the door for her, she began knocking aggressively, and eventually just tried to open the door herself. I have a Ring video of this. It was locked so she marched around to the back deck stairs close to which we were all seated inside. When the friend's husband denied her entry, she stomped back down the deck stairs and upended his still smoking charcoal grill into a pile of leaves next to his house. The friend's husband hurried to deal with it and my youngest son yelled after her from the deck. She didn't respond. The texts flew all night from there while all of us in the house tried to calm things down and support each other. The STBX first apologized to our children, then got ugly when the youngest agreed that she didn't behave well. I retained an attorney over the next week.

On December 18th, 2023, I was on another business trip and talked to my youngest son in the evening. He let me know that the STBX had invited herself into their townhouse in one of the evenings preceding and followed him around his kitchen, clutching her purse up in front of her, and badgering him to side with her against me. I think this went on for an hour. The GF thought it was odd that the STBX kept pushing her purse in front of her throughout the "conversation" and thought she must be recording it... so the GF decided to record it herself. They shared it with me on the night of the 19th. It was a lot of dramatic tripe that had no legal bearing on anything so none of us understand why she would be recording it other than to seek her own vindication. A week or so after that, she called my son's GF individually, and after she assured the STBX my son wasn't home (he was and she was on speaker so he heard every word), began to trash the youngest son as a loser and told the GF to "use him for everything she could get out of him and dump him".

That actually pissed me off so much that I filed for divorce while out-of-state at the quarterly business meeting. Our company general counsel actually notarized the complaint for me, which I promptly scanned and sent to my attorney. My STBX was on a Christmas trip to NYC when she was served through her attorney.

That was a year ago. Plenty else went on during that time. PLENTY else has happened since, but I made sure to screenshot every text conversation we had privately and in group, the conversations she had with her ex-best friend and her husband, bank records of the sex toys, the massage, the dating site membership, pictures of the house and contents while she was in hotels that first week, the damage she caused to the house the night she left, the items she "threw away" but made sure I saw, etc, and included them all in our Discovery submissions.

She's dragged her feet at every turn. We've had one round of mediation which went so badly the mediator never brought me/us her starting point. My attorney has finished our side of the pre-trial consolidation order required by our county in GA and advised her attorney that the clock is ticking. Not long after the holidays, we will file for a motion to compel and hope to get her to participate in the divorce more quickly.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that she's on her 3rd attorney. Her first one quit her because of "a conflict of interest". He'd represented her half-sister. My STBX told me at the time (before our separation) that her half-sister and the attorney were sleeping together. Not sure how that evolves into a COI for my STBX though unless she also opted for the same payment plan... The second got caught up in a non-compete scenario regarding paralegals she brought with her to the firm my STBX retained after the first attorney. That attorney resigned the firm and the STBX started over. None of her attorneys have seemed to have had a good grasp on the details of our case.

That's where we are 1.5 years in and 1 year since filing. Your mileage may vary.