A.J. Wylder's blog

For those of you who commented on my last post, thanks so much for your words of encouragement. You’ll also be happy to know that I, as one person put it, bit the bullet. I signed the contract to sell the house and am now packing! Yeah!

John (my ex) initially told me that he wouldn’t accept the latest offer because the couple was clearly jerking us around. I told him that I would be the one to make that decision and luckily he gave in without much of a fight.

I know that there are still many steps in the process, (the buyer’s mortgage commitment, a home inspection, etc.) but I’m relieved. I feel as though a ton of bricks has been lifted from my shoulders and I’m now free to move forward.

With the ink on the contract still fresh, I booked an appointment with an agent to start looking at apartments in Manhattan, placed ads for the furniture I’m selling and began packing. I only have 30 days before the closing. I never thought I would be so excited about buying cardboard boxes!

It’s been a long eight months that the house has been on the market. Finally, the end is in sight and I’m on the brink of a new beginning.

Some people have a lot of nerve!

I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record but I lowered the price of my house again the other day. Hours after the price change took effect and was broadcast to all the local real estate agents via what they’ve coined the “hot sheet,” guess who calls my agent? The agent for the family of three.

In case you forgot, this is the family that I’d been negotiating with for weeks. Finally, after a lot of back and forth, I agreed to their price only to be told that they were no longer interested.

Now, it seems, they’ve returned to the negotiating table and obviously smell blood in the water. They’ve now offered me a price that is $10,000 lower than the “final” offer they presented to me (and I ultimately agreed to) just weeks ago. Their reason: The housing market continues to decline and that’s what they believe the house is now worth. It also doesn’t help that the comps paint a grim picture as prices of surrounding homes continue to drop.

There’s no doubt that these people are jerking me around. They can sense I’m desperate to sell and they are playing the game.  read more »

So, the other night I was watching Nancy Grace’s show on CNN and couldn’t help but wonder what is wrong with people today.

That night, Grace’s show was primarily an update on the murder of Jessie Davis, the pregnant Ohio woman whose married boyfriend is now a suspect in her death.

As I listened to this very disturbing story, Grace turned to a breaking news story that I hadn’t yet heard. Chris Benoit, the pro wrestler, allegedly strangled his wife and suffocated his 7-year-old son before hanging himself with a weight-machine pulley, according to authorities.

And who can forget about Laci Peterson?

An expert who was interviewed by Grace said that homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women.

What are people thinking?!

While each of these cases, among countless others, vary in the details, it reminds us that divorce and separation (and affairs) are so emotional that you can never really be certain how people will react in certain situations.

The sad and scary fact is, that you can never really know a person, even a person you devote your life to and have children with. Gee, it kind of makes you think twice about who to list as a beneficiary on your life insurance policy.

 

The other night my friend Jen and I attended an event in Manhattan at which there was a tarot card reader. We figured we would check it out and see what our future holds.

So, I sit down with the tarot reader—who only has my name and birth date—and she says, “Oh, this isn’t good.” Not exactly the words you want to hear from someone who supposedly can read your future.

She tells me that it is a year of endings. I tell her I just got a divorce in March, as she nods her head to confirm her reading. “Was he cheating?” she asks. Did she see that in the cards or was she just taking a lucky guess given today’s statistics?

She goes on to say that I will meet my next husband by the time I am 35, which is three years from now but there will be a few guys in between. She also said there will be an international guy in my life (not sure if this is husband No. 2 or an in-between romance). My mind briefly wanders, imagining romantic walks in Paris or dinners in London.

I reluctantly snap back to reality as she says that I am old soul and that I tend to let the wrong people into my life. Well, that one is apparently true!  read more »

Will this real estate fiasco ever end?

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going back and forth with a family who’s interested in buying my house. We hit a financial impasse when they refused to come up with another $10,000 (which would equate to an extra $30 a month on their mortgage payment, my agent tells me), and I told them I didn’t have the additional funds to further lower my price.

At that point, the deal appeared to be dead.

Well, John (my ex) called me the other day to inform me that he has come into a bit more money, and if we can get the deal done quickly he can use that money to put toward helping pay off the bank. I, of course, jump on the phone to call the real estate agent.

Finally, after throwing a few more numbers back and forth with the family’s agent, I agree to their final offer. Now, it’s time for the family’s agent to pass on the news.

After waiting nearly a full day for their response, I am told that the family has decided they are no longer interested in the house. What the #$!@# !!??

Looks like I’m back to square one. Anyone have any ideas?

A recent post on FWW titled, “Was There Ever Any Doubt That Extramarital Sex Is The Most Common Reason for Divorce?” served to confirm my deepest concerns about any future relationship. After discovering that my ex, John, was having an extramarital fling, how am I ever supposed to trust again?

I know I’m in a bitter phase right now (hopefully it will pass soon), but I’m so sick of society’s obsession with sex. Let me clarify: I’m sick of the male obsession with anything that breathes, has a vagina and bats an eyelash in their direction.

Where are the “men’s men” like my grandfather? I’m really starting to believe they are an extinct species.

I know that when I re-enter the dating world, I’ll just have to take a chance and learn to trust again but is it worth being so vulnerable? I don’t know.

I never thought that John would be unfaithful and he was. We used to be best friends and would often talk about how lucky we were that we had such a solid relationship. We always laughed, and I thought our sex life was pretty healthy. Sure, more sex is never a bad thing but we both worked long hours and tried to make up for lost time on the weekends.  read more »

There are obviously a lot of things that take getting used to when you're going through a divorce. And one of them is feeling like everyone else but you has a special someone in their life. Yeah, it was one of those weekends.

One of my girlfriends spent the weekend camping with her husband and daughter. Another girlfriend spent the weekend visiting family with her husband and their little boy; he’s adorable and despite the fact that he’s only two-years-old, I told him he had better not grow up to be a heartbreaker!

I then decided to reach out to a girlfriend of mine who is single and discovered that she and this guy she’s been dating are getting pretty serious and have spent the last few weekends together. In fact, when I called her she was packing for their next “slumber party.”

After that, I gave up reaching out to the outside world. Apparently, everyone was busy with their special someone.

When you’re divorced, it feels as though couples are just coming out of the woodwork, reminding you of what you don’t have.

But I imagine that’s how some of our single friends probably felt about John and I when we were married. While enjoying our company, there was probably a part of them that was annoyed when we were around…the “happy” married couple.  read more »

A comment on one of my earlier posts suggested that when you’re married, it’s wise to keep a joint account for bills and a separate account for your own freedom. I couldn’t agree more, but if only it were that simple!

First, let me say that during my marriage to John, and even during our engagement, when we were living together, I handled all of the finances. I paid the bills, maintained the file of important documents and dealt with all the banks, insurance companies, etc.

Yes, besides having “Mrs” attached to my name, I should have added the title “chief financial officer.” Oh, what the hell…why not tack on chairman, president and chief executive officer too!

My point: I wasn’t in the dark about our financial situation—far from it.

As a marriage progresses, it’s very difficult not to intertwine at least some of your assets and debt. In fact, John and I are perhaps less financially intertwined than many other divorcing couples, especially since we don’t have children.  read more »

It’s weird how life plays out.

As my younger sister, Anne, prepares for her wedding (it’s her first!) later this year and is in the middle of buying her first home, I’m working to put my life back together following a divorce and trying desperately to sell the home John and I once shared.

And, unfortunately, the task is growing increasingly difficult.

The family of three who made an offer on the house returned to the negotiating table. However, their offer was still too low for me to accept. I had already dropped my asking price and I can’t afford to go much lower.

And to throw salt into my wounds, John informs me that his finances are so tight that it’s likely that I’ll have to come up with twice as much money as him to pay off the bank when an offer does come in. He tells me he just won’t have the funds. It’s true, and his career situation is another chapter for another day, but what really set me off was when he informed me that he’s been approved for a fairly sizeable loan to consolidate his credit cards. And do you think he plans to set aside some of that money—even a small fraction of it—to help pay off the bank when we sell our house?

NO.  read more »

It wasn’t so long ago that a colleague who, at the time, was only a few weeks away from marrying her boyfriend of two years, asked me if I had any advice for her on marriage.

“Ohhh…where should I begin?,” I thought to myself. But I refrained from bursting her soon-to-be-married bubble of joy with my “I-am-soon-to-be divorced” cloud of doom. I instead put my own marital frustrations aside and answered her honestly.

If I had to give one piece of advice to someone about to be married, I told her, it would be never lose who you are.

Women are nurturing by nature and I think this is largely why it’s so easy for a married woman to fall into the shadow of her husband. It’s easy to get caught up in taking care of your spouse and his needs, making the house a home and, perhaps, raising children. I believe that all too often married women lose themselves.

So what happens if a woman wakes up one day and no longer has her marriage? Women may think it will never happen to them but, (time for a reality check!) the truth is that it can happen to anyone.  read more »