I am making this enquiry for my friend, to try and generate some
encouraging feedback.  She is 49 and has been married for twenty
years, with two kids, in their mid-to-late teens.  Divorce is being
talked of, and my friend has seen a solicitor, with her husband due to
soon.  My friend and her husband have slept in different bedrooms for
around a decade.  There was a lot of odd and I suppose largely self-
esteem-related confusion and game-playing early on in the marriage,
for example he went missing to do vocational exams pertaining to his
career, while they were courting, and told her he didn’t want to see
her.  Then he insisted on going to a bar with nude dancers on their
honeymoon in Thailand despite her obvious discomfort.  Then he had an
affair.  He told my friend that he ‘couldn’t make her happy’.  My
friend’s maternal instincts and nursing background short-circuited her
rationality and conception of best interests at the point where the
affair led to my friend’s husband being assaulted badly.  One minute
he didn’t want kids, then later he did.  He bought a huge house, put
the kids in private schools despite disagreement from my friend.  The
husband has never hit my friend, but is verbally aggressive, including
being bullying to the kids, with the odd not quite passive-aggressive
physicality, for example hitting the daughter repeatedly and angrily
with a cushion a couple of months ago because of her clear discomfort
in his presence, his blinkeredness regarding why she is not validating
his fatherly aspect.  He looks at all my friend’s mail and bills and
is generally controlling, and di once push her violently up against
the wall during one exchange.  I trust my friend’s account of things
because of how she is in my company, and I'm not naive or gullible.

When my friend’s dad died she started to wise up and snap out of it,
her fatalistic attitude to the marriage I mean, thinking at last about
what she wants from life.  She met me about then.  We have a sexual
relationship, but one we acknowledge is not headed anywhere monogamous
or involving moving in together anywhere.

My friend has found a torn up strategy list, written prior to his
solicitor’s meeting.  It has made my friend see things clearly, in
that she had felt guilty at one point.  His wording in his notes is
ruthless and cold.  Some of the remarks are a case of shooting himself
in the foot really – making himself look a bit of a pig, e.g. listing
the complaint that my friend doesn’t clean the house, when because of
its size she’d have to be a lunatic to attempt to do so without the
assistance of a cleaner, which they have had.  He also talks of things
like the way my friend stays in her own room certain hours of the
night.  He seems oblivious to the effects his manner has had on her.
Once his arguments are made in front of legal people and are countered
by my friend’s he’s going to look a bit of a pig.

My friend is overstressing her non-materialistic aims to me, but I’m
saying to her not to relent, and to get what’s hers, not to be hard-
nosed but because not pursuing her share in a settlement seems like an
admission of culpability, I.e is symbolically loaded.  He has tried to
discredit her domestic efforts when I can tell she works really hard.

I’m not especially concerned about my role – the husband seems to know
‘in the abstract’ that I or someone in my role exists.  I hope I’m not
risking her getting her share.  He was the first with the infidelity
so I would think he’s blown that plan of attack.

I would like my friend to get some strength from other people in the
same boat or further down the line, and am putting this posting in to
break the ice and send her a link to once there are replies.  We both
have an education so aren’t interested in any blinkered men’s movement
whining, legitimate though moderate and rational accounts of men’s
suffering are.  In this story, the husband is in the wrong.

Any thoughts, links, anecdotes, advice etc are welcome.

Thanks all.