What are your experiences?
Lessons learned?
How is your life better? Or is it?
Any good advice?
Thanks in advance for your honesty.
Most of you are expats in Switzerland. Let's say you've gone through a separation / divorce of your partner here in Switzerland.
Experience: painful, plain and simple. Confusing, lots of back-and-forth and a long, long period of hoping the situation would resolve itself. Of course, it never did. On the plus side, our friends never took sides, always treated this as our private issue but made it clear we could talk with them at any time, and about anything. We were able to maintain our community of married friends and their children without any feelings of being less worthy or having "sold out".
Lessons: if you can agree on terms, you really don't need a lawyer unless children and serious assets are involved. We were flummoxed by the contradictory advice we got from the few lawyers we consulted. They all told us it would be complicated and that we had to defend our rights. But in the end, we just brought it straight to the judge and she did the work for us.
Life is better for the decision being made. Like wondering whether or not to get married, wondering whether to split is much more agonizing than actually getting it done. You may lose an outward identity which brings you comfort, but you gain a new one which is the true you.
Advice: it's hard to give advice - sorry for that old chestnut, but it is hard. I guess the best legal advice we got was "if you divorce, you can always remarry (each other)".
My life is definitely better after moving out of the marital home, though having said that, it has been pervaded by sadness about how things have turned out.
I am a strong believer in doing the best you can for yourself and being honest to yourself.
I think then (in the long run) you are also best to the others in your family. If you are not honest, it just leads to a big mess later.
It is incredibly hard to give up the security of home, but you have to stick at it.
Your emotions will definitely ride the rollercoaster but the highs will be really high (and the lows likewise), so you need to be strong and determined to see it through.
Yes, speak to others who have gone through this - it helps. I have had some good advice and support - both practical and emotional. It is important to know who your friends are, and who may have their own agenda. Be selective and above all, listen to your gut feeling.
If there are kids involved, try and keep things as balanced and as "normal" as possible for them. Very important.......!
I moved out of the marital home 15 years ago and moved to Geneva where I was working.
My husband was a volatile, violent, drunk (Swiss). I had had enough. Then the phone calls started - firstly at work, then on my home phone (not many people had cell phones then).
I made the right decision because I feared for my life. Luckily we had no kids.
So, life went on. We both got on with our lives. We both met new partners. But we never got round to divorcing.
Then 10 years ago he called me and asked to meet to discuss our divorce. I said yes of course etc. We made an appointment for the next week.
He died, falling off a balcony, three days before our meeting. It wasn't suicide, he just slipped planting plants in those big planters they have on balconies.
So, instead of a divorcee I became a widow...
As a child from divorce,
My parents divorced when I was 5 years old. My dad left with my brother to his mom and didn't tell me anything. I came home and found my mom crying and the 2 toothbrush gone. I understood.
From this moment, it was hell for the kids. The parents tried to get at each other by the kids. At this age, I heard my mom being a cheater with a certain Uncle Toni, my dad with a collegue. I was with my mom and I could see my father every second weekend and my bro was with my dad and the other weekend it was him coming. Where ever I was, I had the story of the other one.
At my dad's I had my brother, my dad and my grandmother talking against my mother and calling her names. I was bad threated by that grandmother because I looked a lot like my mom. I ran away from my dad 3 times at 7 years old because I couldn't handle the bad mouthing about my mom and the hate from the grandmother.
At 15, I stop talking and I cut all bridges with my dad for 8 years because of my mom's btadmouthing and the awefull position they both put me in. I was sick to hear my mom telling me how much like my father I was when for the last 10 years I heard her telling me how a cheater, lyer and hypocrits he was.
So my advices,
If you divorce, do it as civilised adult and NEVER put the kids into your anger. NEVER badmouth the other parents and his/her family.
At 5 and 10 years old, we didn't have to know what our parents did or did not to each other. We were too young and it was definetely not our place to know those kind of stuffs.
Today, I still don't know what was a lie or not. I can't trust any of them about my past and I still hear them saying they didn't do anything wrong and it is all the other's fault... more than 20 years later.
Thanks for your taking the time to write down your experiences. I wonder, has anyone ever separated and then got back together? Or is it really best to leave history behind you?
Thanks.
The only case I ever heard of (and it seems like almost everyone I grew up with was a child of divorce) was one couple who divorced and remarried other people. Then around 10 years later, they left the new partners and got back together (still in contact because of their children) and remarried. They stayed together for good after that until the husband died.
Sometimes I wonder... say you meet the right person, but at the wrong time. If you manage not to totally destroy each other the first time around, maybe it's possible to get back together when the personal journeys have been completed? Life is so complicated...
that's what i think happened with me. right at the start, i always thought we would be better later life partners than in the here and now. with the benefit if hindsight, i should have trusted my gut instincts. when we split up we were both much happier, but it is sad that it had to end nonetheless.
but i hope we don't ever get back together again, otherwise it would mean either: another relationship has to go wrong before we get back together, or i don't find anyone else until we get back together - neither are particularly appealing prospects.
Depends on how much you've shared and how much you've affected other people.
But...essentially, long winded, frustrating and expensive if there's no trust or common sense. Guilt ridden. Nasty. Logisitically challenging. Comical. Vague and often arbitrary in Switzerland. Confusing if you can't follow legal issues in the local language. Humiliating (don't let anyone tell you it isn't). Sad. Petty. At best, confusing for children at worse a never ending form of child abuse. Unfathomable for close friends and family.
And in our case.. a lingering conviction that we could have reconciled if it hadn't been for the appalling tactics of my ex-partner's solicitor (and, I suppose, a level of compliance on behalf of the ex).
I know of two couples that divorced or separated and got back together. One was divorced for more than 15 years and then remarried, much to the delight and total confusion of all their children.
The other couple separated, and the woman took up with someone else and even had a child with the other man. They had had two children when they were married which kept them in constant contact. I guess somewhere along the way, they realized they still wanted to be together. So when the little girl from the boyfriend during the separation was three, they got back together. Now they're very happy.
Life is certainly unpredictable!
Thanks y'all for sharing.
I got the last laugh. his life insurance.
Yippee. For all the years he beat me and put me down!!!
I went on holidays to Thailand and Kenya numerous times.
And, every holiday - sitting in the tropics - I raised a glass to his memory.
Nothing like a woman scorned..........
You mean he died??? (well, I guess so, if you got the life insurance ...)
Read the thread - he fell off the balcony.
Like Nil, my parents divorced and like Nil, I'm not in contact with my father anymore. I'd rather not go into details, but I second what she says, don't EVER use the kids against each other. Don't either stay together only because of the kids, that can be a nightmare for the kids as well.
True. If I meet my first boyfriend right now, I'd probably marry him. We were engaged, we did love each other, but I was simply too young...
Hi everyone,
Really heartening to read everyone's experiences, makes me feel far less isolated. I've been separated from my Swiss-American wife for about a year and a half now (with all the legal hassle that went along with it--got accused of entering the country on a sham marriage, had to change my permit to work-related, etc. etc.) and we're finally standing before the civil court in Zürich in a couple weeks to finalize the divorce. Anybody done this in Switzerland? Can you give me an idea of what to expect? I'm kinda terrified, but looking forward to this just being over. Hopefully it will be over. Thoughts??
Thanks in advance,
Ed
I have been separated about 10 years, and 2 years ago we decided to finalize the divorce. He lives abroad, I have been living here since the split.
We took a common lawyer to guide us through the paperwork, because we were in full agreement on the terms. The lawyer wrote it down, submitted it to us for approval; secured a court meeting to which my ex could attend (he had to travel to get here on the right date), and the judge just went through the agreement, verified it was according to common sense, it was a fair split and that the interested of our child were safeguarded.
He granted the divorce within 10 minutes, and it became final 2 months after.
Done.
I've been through this. The court appearances themself were quite well organised and they had a translator present if I had any problems understanding what was happening. You end up paying half the court costs and the cost of the translator.
What made my experience painful was that my ex dragged it out for as long as possible as this worked out better for her financially. If your ex is similar then be prepared for some pretty outrageous demands and don't expect it to be complete after one court date. If you and the ex are pretty much in agreement about the stuff then it should be fine.
Don't let your pride or any sense of fair play cloud your judgement. The judge is there to broker a deal between the two of you and will not pass any kind of judgement. Paying an extra few thousand can save you a lot of legal expenses and many more court appearances. Only take the moral high ground if you can afford it.
Good Luck.
I have decided to continue this thread; it is about a year since my last post on here
(2 years now since separation).
I have been berated before for bringing my real life into this virtual world, but have actually found many of the insights on EF to be very helpful and supportive, despite the usual bumfluff which comes along too.
So here goes.
I think these days, it is hard to admit you get lonely without someone suggesting you are unmotivated. I know the usual things to do and I have done them and try to get out and about as much as possible. Meet new people.
The friends you had as a couple drift away - through disapproval or simply because they were his friends when you came here as the trailing spouse.
Making new Swiss friends is not easy - and I am a very sociable, confident person. But everyone is always very busy. It doesn't seem normal for a person not to be busy these days. And Swiss circles are hard to break into as they are established early on in life.
It is also hard to admit that you would like a new relationship - like it shows weakness or something. I would like to share my life because I know that's where happiness lies
(at least for me) but after being let down time after time by men, I am starting to lose trust.
It is like being in limbo and you are not sure whether to continue struggling forward, give up and go back or stay a while in the fog, hoping it will clear.
I think I was certainly more positive one year ago.
I was highly pregnant with my second child when I decided to leave my husband last year, he was very agressive (verbaly) and my first son was getting a very bad reaction everytime he was yelling at me and he had me almost captive. I left to a woman shelter gave birth and started to live without him and started to be happy, then because he is the father of my kids we started to see eachother again and he was a different man he was again the man i met. The thing is that as I have shared before, he has a decease that is killing him so for me is dificult to deal with the situation, I decided to give him a second chance, it seemed to have click on him that he lost his family once and i really doubted he wanted to loose us twice if he has so little time to live. By this time I was already living alone starting to integrate, have managed to make some friends even tho' having 2 little babies makes it difficult, but i have decided to believe that this time was going to be diferent, better.
We were still living separated, but looking for an apartment to reunite the family again, he was coming everyday from morning to night to my apartment and was againg taking fully care of him. 2 months lasted the honeymoon before he started screaming and the namecalling again. I was not allowed to have friends anymore, he needed me 24/7 and I was doing it because that what a wife does for her husband, right? I needed 5 more months to accept that he never changed, and him being sick is not a reason to turn me insane and asked him to finish all. He had all his things still in the apartment we were practicaly living together at that point and what made me go is that he was able to do absolutely all by him self. I was his maid, his nurse all this time because he told me he couldnt do it, but then he showed me he just wanted me to be under his shadow. The first day he didnt came back I was just sitting in my couch and was not able to move, inside i felt great relief but at the same time i didnt know what to do, like i was just a robot following orders and without the master i had no idea what was to do anymore. the shock lasted 2 days, then i took my kids and went out. I bought the monthly pass and everyday i wake up, get prepare, pack food, etc take the kids and just go out somewhere, diferent parks etc. I have remove the dust from the address book and started calling my old girl friends little by little. Its been only a month but im better now, my kids are better now. I hope soon I can start working because is horrible to live by the state, even if i only make the same amount that they give me, but the stigma and the look of people when they learn you live by the state its really not nice.
To answer the post above, I now learned that if you separated once its better just to leave it behind. Reencounters will paint the best future you could imagine, but its an ilusion. Im no-where near to be ready to start dating again I need to remember what did i like to dress, to eat, to do, what my favorite tv shows were because i still find myself doing the things he used to like.
Should be good to open a separation support group
Wish you all a great week/end