I'm very conflicted about this messy divorce. I feel like I won because I'm free and living under the fear of my wife and her lawyer for the last nine months almost put me over the edge.

My wife wanted everything. The house, my 401k, 100% custody, and over 50% of my pay. She took out a protective order on me claiming since I owned a gun....bad things. None of it was true but it's apparently the easy way to get a PO. At first I fought for my kids and said I wouldn't sign anything giving her 100% custody. After paying 3K for a child assessor who talked to me for 45 minutes, went into court and said good things about me, and then said I should get 0% legal and 20% physical but I had to do a list of ten other things included paying more to go see another specialist that my wife got to talk to first......I said screw it this is not worth 20% custody. We settled with me giving her the house, the kids, 100K of my 401K, and 25% of my pay.

I'm free and it feels great because I was really at a breaking point up until the settlement. But my kids now do not have a father. A father who was with them every single day of their lives. I didn't have anything else in my life. My wife and kids were it.

I feel so bad for them but I don't think there is much else I could have done. My wife and her lawyer were going to drag it out and bring in everyone under the sun until someone said I'm a bad person and don't deserve to be a father.

For some context my kids are 7 and 4. Other then the PO I have nothing against me at all not even a speeding ticket. I also may be vetted by a certain agency who follows everything I do for 10 years. I'm most likely one of the cleanest people you could meet record wise.

end of rant