He wants a divorce; we are both turning 70

I’ve been in remission 8 1/2 years so for that I am very thankful!

Jody

@slarson14 If you mean that you have been struggling in your marriage for a long time and this is why you feel so alone, then I can understand why you feel so tired. I found great support and solace with my friends during my divorce. I also struggled for many years in my marriage but I struggled alone. After my husband told me at the time that he planned to leave I was stunned and shocked. But I also had the thought that I can now chart my own path without him telling me what to do at every turn.

Does your life include friends who shared your spiritual beliefs?

It seems like a ridiculous & frankly rude suggestion, but I started taking a watercolor class at my local Adult (senior) Community Center at 57 years old. Then I was diagnosed with & treated for cancer… that watercolor class lead to exercise classes, which led to me teaching dance fitness classes. People aren’t all as old as you think, & it may lead to connections, & work opportunities. Good luck to you. Life is hard, & health problems make it more difficult.

I didn't feel your suggestion was rude or ridiculous.

I wish I were the social type, the type who enjoyed watercolors, beading, quilting, arts and crafts, card games, pottery making.

Things I associate with senior activity centers.

I am more into hiking, astronomy, physics, science, woodworking, home design, mechanical things, landscaping, farming, and things like working on cars.

Yes, life is hard..maybe I am having a pity party...I don't know; just tired.

Oddly, I had a meeting with a contractor today and he and I had a spiritual discussion and it led me that direction, as you suggest.

Thank you. Back to searching for a church again.

Were you both living off of your money, or does he have income/savings too? Were you using your IRA for everything, or drawing it down just for the things he wanted? What will he be living on (a new girlfriend/spouse) after he is gone?
This guy is not your friend, and probably never was. Good thing you cut him off before he drained everything.
(I knew a guy who spun good tales about his wealth but lived off of at least 3 women at one time, like a lazy susan. One was a psychiatrist $$, another a physician $$, and the third wealthy enough for him to take off with and marry, after bilking the first two out of $100K with his promises. The DA would not prosecute him because the jury would not see fraud, just gullibility).

I’d strongly encourage a legal consult to get informed of your rights and responsibilities. That’s very important.

He has his own income as he is a retired veteran and has his retirement pension and some disability. When we met he was living very frugal as his income did not include SS for nearly 7 years. It seems now that he has enough to live on "well" without my income, he sees no reason in staying together.

During the first years from my IRA and SS Disbility I provided ALL the "finer things", so he wasn't living paycheck to paycheck in a dilapidated old old house with leaky windows, etc: a newer house, a new car (or two), new RVs, travel money; basically anything other than food or shelter.

I also paid for life insurance on him, until he turns 70 this year (then it just gets too expensive for me to pay). When we bought the first house I had to beg him to get life insurance because if something were to happen to him, I would not be able to keep the newer houses we bought together.

We would have rather big arguments about why it was important that if I lost him, I would have to move out of our home. He didn't offer to pay for the life insurance...that gave me a sense of unease....that he was NOT thinking of MY future, only his? Was I seeing this correctly do you think?

I guess I have been a "patsy"?
The problem is, is that he has assured me we would be together forever, so I have been spending as if that were true, loving him all the while.

This is hard to deal with in my head.

What bothers me a lot is now that we have decided to divorce, he doesn't seem empathetic to how I will now be living: like he was living when I met HIM ten years ago. I will be living paycheck to paycheck now.

I just want to die. No one can be trusted in life.

I have been trying to dream up ways to make money: bake cookies and sell them at - whatever...I truly had been looking for job all this time...just because I WANT to work, to have something to do! IT wasn't about the money all this time, it is about having something to DO!

But now I am even ten years older and have so little to live on I can't even afford a one bedroom apartment on my income.

Inflation over ten years has landed me right back to thinking about getting a small RV and truck and living the rest of my life in that, as I was doing before I met him - back then I didn't even have social security. I was disabled, and have been getting better over the years, but getting hired at my age and having been on the disabled status for 9 years...no one wants to see a blank on a resume, they want to know what you were doing...and a 9 year gap that states "I was on disability due to complex PTSD" gets rejected. Like it has for me the last 10 years.

Well, I am not going to wallow in self pity...I will move forward. We owned land (no house on it) and he gave me the land because he wanted to move back to his home state where we moved here from 4 years ago. This is my home state; he had agreed to move here if I stayed in his home state five more years, and I did; then we moved here. I thought we were building a house together - but now will have to find a way to build it on my own.

I will have to find some bank, perhaps the VA, who will give me a loan that will keep my housing under $1300 a month. That is all I can afford.