Serious here, so please don't respond with "never get married again", we always say/hear that as the knee-jerk response.
Here goes...
I fully expect to be married again. I am in my 50s, divorced from a 30 year first marriage, no children (or family), and I don't want to live life alone.
I've met a beautiful, sweet, loving, and caring (also divorced) woman, and she definitely wants to be remarried some day as well.
How do I move past the PTSD caused by the financial wreckage of the first marriage/divorce, where I lost more than half my retirement and nearly all of my home equity, together a substantial amount, because I had applied myself, worked hard, and dramatically increased my income while my ex was lazy, codependent, and refused to do the same?
At the beginning of the marriage, we made the same income. In the last several years, I increased mine to almost 3x hers, and I paid dearly for that during the divorce.
My current girlfriend earns even less than my ex, and while income is not important to me (wasn't important in the first marriage, but was a weapon used against me in the divorce), I am now suffering from PTSD with the thought of the potential impacts if I get remarried and later find myself in divorce court.
After all my hard career work, I don't want to end up in a food line during retirement, but I also don't want to live life alone, either.
Anyone have experience with this PTSD?
Other than limiting relationships based on income, which I don't want to do, or not remarrying, how is it possible to move forward?
And, prenups...what I have read about prenups seems they're really only worth the paper they are written on since judges have a lot of leeway.
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