While you are sorting through the anger of maybe joy of getting divorced, there are many things that men fail to take into account when physically separating from their spouse. This is made more complicated if you have kids and even if you have more money than most men, you dont want to burn through it unnecessarily because you are just getting in to the big costs of the lawyer and child support hell. How you handle this is very important for both your mental and financial sanity.

Conventional wisdom says don't leave the marital home until you have at a minimum a parenting agreement in place. A big mistake men make it to think their wife will actually negotiate fairly and allow for a friendly separation. She will not and do not think otherwise. In most cases, she isnt leaving the home especially if you have young kids and she does not have a man lined up. Issues of domestic violence, infidelity, and other deplorable behavior can change that but assuming most people just want to be separated, the trick is how will you do it without showing the court that you are abandoning your children or some other garbage which reduces your chance at equal custody, which your wife refuses to give you.

Until you separate, the assets you earn and the debts incurred belong to both of you. Once separation is clearly going to happen, you dont want to deal with your wife stealing or eliminating marital or premarital assets while also running up debt. It will happen. While you are at work, anything can happen. I know men who have come home from work and the wife had emptied the home and left a note. You can document and take pictures all you want of these personal items before she does it, but you wont get the financial value of what was stolen when it comes time for equitable distribution. Do you also want to spend more money trying to argue what asset that was taken was not used for a marital purpose or sudden charges are not for the marriage. The time and money spent fighting this is not going to put you back to where you were before your wife started acting poorly.

While you are in the home at any time a woman can make false allegations of violence. All she has to do is call the Sheriff and you will likely be arrested. The Me Too movement is real and do not think your wife will not play that card no matter how passive of a blue pilled man you are.

My point is dont be afraid to leave if your wife is going to play hardball and not agree to equal custody of the kids. You have too much to risk and you are simply delaying the rebuilding of your life. Once you come to this realization, you are now trying to set yourself up to show the court that despite you leaving your home, that you are still a worthy parent deserving of equal custody. 

I give this advice based on personal experience. I left my home because I saw my personal items disappearing and because I had a job, I could not be at home to protect my interests. I made the mistake of telling my wife I wanted a divorce and I was willing to leave the home which was a mistake, but that analysis will be for another post. If I was going to leave, the longer I stayed the more I was going to lose, I wasnt getting to see my daughters each day because as soon as I got home, they were whisked away, given a bath and put to bed before I could even settle in. Any attempts by me to keep them up for evem just some brief time sitting with them on the couch was met with physical confrontation where they were literally pulled from my arms and told they were going to bed. I could either escalate to keep them up or back down and accept I what I was married to and add one more stone to my pile of belief that leaving my marriage was the right decision. When I would later find recording devices in my home that the wife had placed to tape me as she tried to provoke me into violence, i thanked God that I had the intelligence not to yell or threaten my wife so she could call the Sheriff and play the tape to get me arrested costing me my freedom and professional licenses. This happens guys to many men and even the most mellow guy can be pushed into a single act of violence or threat to the point that he will be arrested because his woman knew how to push his buttons and set him up with it all being on tape. This is just one example of why leaving the home before a parenting agreement is in place has to be done once you realize your ex will not agree to equal custody.

Once you leave, you need to get a place that provides the same environment that your kids are used to in the family home. I left my home and proceeded to rent a house that basically looked like mine knowing it was a temporary place. If you sign a lease, sign one for no more than 6 months. If you have any savings, you want to as soon as possible try to get a place as close to where your ex lives so the kids are not having to travel too far while the custody issues are sorted out. If you have the financial means and plan on continuing working where you live, if you are a believer in home ownership versus renting, do all you can to buy a house. This will take some work and it may not be the easiest thing to do, but one of the best things I did to help me win equal custody when the trial came about 9 months post separation was to buy a home in the same neighborhood as my marital home. The 6 months in the rental home was really a waste of money and I probably could have lived with my mom during that time as I was only being given 4 days a month visitation by my ex and there was nothing I could do. You do not want to rush into a home purchase but do not be afraid to do it. The court wants stability for the kids and I basically got an equivalent house in the same neighborhood and combined with my constant emails to the ex asking for more time with the kids, I had done everything possible to show the court I deserved equal custody and would be in the kids lives. I lived around the corner from my ex and still do to this day and despite not speaking to each other since the day I left the home, it is very hard for her to argue abandonment and I showed the court I wasnt going anywhere. This helps you win equal custody of your kids. Staying put in your home and creating stability once I won equal custody has helped me survive her attempt to change custody and take my equal time away.

Every situation is going to be different and not all men have extra money lying around when they leave and are hit with child support and alimony etc. Dont give up or delay a decision so she can start removing assets and personal items while creating more problems for equitable distribution. Make a plan with your lawyer and dont be afraid to suddenly move out and take what you want to take. Telling my wife I was willing to leave the home was a huge mistake but it felt good when I pulled up with a moving truck and took my stuff and left to her surprise one morning. For all I know she had plans to empty the house the next week taking everything I owned, most of which I owned before I met her. It is a stressful time but you need a plan and the goal is to extricate yourself which saves your finances as much as possible and allows you to take what is yours without losing your personal items, which she will take and play dumb like some ghost just showed up and took them at the same time your marriage started falling apart.

If your ex is refusing equal custody, this decision is made easier for you. You cannot stay in the home. If you have relatives or friends that can help you, you may not need to rent an equivalent place immediately and can save that money to buy a new house that shows you are not abandoning your children so you can have it in place when in 6-9 months you are arguing to a judge for equal custody. While the Judge in my case probably didnt like me and hated my aggressive nature in court, I do not think he felt that I abandoned my children because I left the home. Judges understand when men leave and it can come down to asset protection, threats of domestic violence allegations, or just the desire to move the fight forward when a wife thinks she is the sole caregiver of the kids and you should have minimal access. Ids getting a parental agreement in place ideal before you leave? Yes. Doing nothing when you arent getting that is not the answer however. 

Men need to assess their situation, give no hint they are willing to leave the marital home until custody negotiations will not allow for equal, and then leave. You cant take your kids with you and try to dictate to the wife how often she sees the kids like she will do to you. You must take the high road and spend the next 6-9 months documenting via email to your ext that you want to see your kids and to set up a new home near where your marital home was. While you dont have to move around the corner from the ex like I did, you cant go very far if you expect to get equal custody. Kids need continuity in their lives and drastic distances between parents or discrepancy in lifestyles is going to hurt the man in court.

There are things you can do to financially and emotionally to help yourself through this transition so you can find a better place to live and get equal custody of your kids which will help eliminate the financial loss that comes with only being the every other weekend dad. You will also find that being single with equal custody of your kids is more fulfilling than married to a horrible person where you take time with your kids for granted and the next thing you know they are 18 and gone from the house and you see what you are left with in a wife while your age is starting to really show.

Take action Gentlemen and the get the help you need to get yourself out of danger and rebuild your life.
 

 I am very big on nostalgia and learning from my mistakes. I want to grow as a person and as a man. When I was younger I was like most guys in that even if the girl I was dating was clearly with me, there was always a bit of jealousy if she got attention from another man or if she was friendly toward another guy. As young guys go, I was not on the worst end when it came to being jealous, controlling, or balking when she had male friends that went beyond the normal social interactions. When you are young there are guys that will want to beat you up if you look at his girlfriend and even if she talks to you while you are minding your own business. These guys controlled their girlfriends to the point it made you wonder how secure they were with themselves. Even the big and tall athletic guys who acted all tough had these pretty girlfriends were too often openly jealous and verbally if not physically abusive. We were all insecure during those days but these guys acted in a way that seemed just wrong. You never knew what made these girls stay with these guys and many of the relationships didn't last very long, but for all the negativity I felt watching their behavior, as I get older I wonder if maybe they were not on to something.

When I was 18, I had my first real girlfriend. I met her the Freshmen year of college. I saw her every day on our small college campus and all the emotions from love to hate to jealousy came out over the course of the next four plus years when every test you could be put to was thrown in your face with the same small group of people witnessing it. I certainly had my share of jealousy and insecure behavior but love at a young age is a blessing and a curse. If I talked to a girl I was accused of every bad thing in the world by her but she was friends with every guy on the campus and any question I had about her behavior only fueled to further her disrespectful behavior. She knew how to shit test me and got off on it all while telling me she wanted to marry me and how great it would be when we have kids. Even back then I knew I wanted to marry young and have kids so pairing up with a woman and not handling things correctly only caused me to waste my dating youth which to this day I regret. I didn't know how to handle her behavior and I thought playing it cool for the most part was the way to keep her with me. The jealous and controlling approach probably would have pushed her away or encourage the disrespect and infidelity. I wanted to marry her and that only made things worse. What I didnt get is that she made it clear she wanted to marry me at well yet her behavior when it counted didnt seem to match her words.

I ignored the obvious infidelity and the rumors of various things because this girl was beautiful and everything I thought I would want in a wife and mother of my kids. My blue pilled oneitis looking back was cringe worthy. The girls I turned down to stay with her and be faithful would make other guys I knew shake their head. I was a man in demand by all sorts of beautiful girls but I was not going risk losing this girl that I loved more than life itself no matter how she treated me. I was in an emotional roller coaster that continued long after we broke up soon after we graduated college. As a man who believed then as I do now that getting married and having kids young is the way to go it was a real blow to lose her at the time. As a man who has experienced so much more with women in the 30 years since I graduated college, I now realize that no matter what she said she was never going to keep me. My approach should have been different so I could have found out if she was truly loyal or if I needed to find a better quality woman to build a life with if I really wanted to marry young. Better women were right in front of me begging for my attention but my lack of male mentorship and just being the nice uninformed guy caused me to think with the wrong head and do what I had to do to temporarily keep a woman who was eventually going to leave me when she was ready. Looking back now I just cringe at myself and there is a reason you don't stay friends with ex girlfriends no matter how much you loved them or what you shared at a time in life where you experienced so much unless you are still the blue pilled nice guy and have not evolved as a man. Being the nice guy I learned was not the way to go and you men need to learn this as well. If you are this guy and now getting divorced this is a big reason why. Nice guy behavior might get you laid on occasion or even get you married but you were probably sharing her with someone elsebefore and even after marriage. She saw you simply as a fall back and certainly not an alpha male no matter what confidence vibe you gave off or how many women who knew you from a distance found you to be desirable.

So what about those guys who likely peaked when they were 18-21 but for whatever reason knew that they had to keep control of their girlfriends if there was any chance to keep them for the long term. I assumed their behavior was done out of over the top insecurity and it probably was, but it was a behavior to an extreme that we all need to learn and shape if we are going to have a chance at a relationship where the woman might stay around. If I had learned this earlier I would not have dated the same girl in college and likely would have found a quality wife instead of being forced to marry someone in my mid 30s who was already damaged from her prior divorce when she chose to marry me because I was safe and I was running our of time to vet a quality women, most of which were already taken. Maybe this boorish behavior these young men exhibited was not so stupid after all even if they didn't know what to do with their inate primate type knowledge. These nice guys and these controlling men all need retraining as to how to find and keep the right woman. If you have been married twenty years and you wonder why your wife is now acting weird forcing you to a divorce decision, you need to learn how to behave so you can extricate yourself from a marriage that was dead the day you married her. It ends on her timeline, not yours and the realization sucks worse if you are starting to recognize it as you approach middle age.

Being the nice guy is the wrong play if you are a quality in demand man. Learning this after the age of 30 is a real hit to the ego. We were taught to treat women with respect and be nice. We were the guy they could count on and the guy they could marry when they were through blowing the baseball team over a two year span or four years if there were some basketball players or older men to meet their fetishes. When they were ready to settle down, you would be there. Stupidly you waited and she may have even pretended to be your girlfriend while she enjoyed her life. You the nice guy tolerated it and eventually married her. Her lack of respect for you is obvious and only now have you realized it as she has sucked your resources dry while you figure out how to get divorced with mimimal financial damage. This is a real knock to the ego knowing you have been the nice guy, done everything right, and yet your wife has no use for you and is fooling you just like the girl you knew and dated in college who didn't marry you because she simply wanted to fool around. Maybe you would wait or maybe you wouldn't. There was always going to be the nice easy guy for her when she was ready. It is understandable because a halfway pretty girl is in demand. Only 20% of men get to have kids. Think about that. You have always known this deep down and your blue pilled mindset would do anything not to be the guy who didn't get to have kids and is now middle aged addicted to porn and alcohol posting pictures of your cats or giant boat you cant get anyone to ride with you on your Facebook page. 

If you are the nice guy who has followed this pattern and got married and have kids you are lucky in one sense. For all the negativity I felt when all this kicked in for me years ago causing me to leave a horrible marriage and the emptiness that came with being a nice guy, I still have my daughters. They are awesome beyond words. I got kids later in life that I should have had when I was younger from a woman who cared only about the money I made and the security I provided. Her wedding ring came off the day after we got married and it was never on her finger again for over 8 years but me being the nice guy I had it on ignore because I wanted what I didnt create for myself 10-15 years earlier. I woke up for a variety of reasons but it is still painful. Are you that man who has followed a similar path and is now in a loveless deceptive marriage that isnt going to get better while you age and your wife shows you more and more disrespect? You need to take action and its tough. The gray divorce is the final nail in your coffin and you need to crawl our like I did before she pounds that final nail and fake cries at your funeral while everything you worked for is spent by her. Her fake tears are better witnessed above ground in divorce court than they are in at a funeral by those who get to see how fake she is and how she fooled you all the way to death.

Being the nice guy isnt the way to go. Young men need to be taught how to channel their aggression and insecurity into controlling their women at a young age so you see that she respects you and can make a good wife at a young age or so you can see she will never be marriage material. Women need to be lead and not be the leaders. This does not mean you abuse or demean her but instead let her know you can leave her and not think twice about it if she behaves disrespectfully. We need to teach young men this and if you are that young man you need to learn how to do it. If you are the father who has failed in marriage because you were the nice guy but is blessed with a son, you need to teach him through every stage of his life. There are young successful men who have a beautiful wife or girlfriend with plenty lined up to take their place and these men know how to control these women. They don't let them socialize with other men or allow them to take jobs and be around men who would try to win their favors in a heartbeat. Men dont respect other men especially in high powered environments. You need to test your woman with boundaries. She is human and she will  stray no matter how high powered you are. This does not mean lock her in the basement of her house and only allow her to come out to make babies. You have to assert control and dominate the narrative because if she is wife material she will follow you. As you bond you adjust your behavior. Not all men can pull this off and you must be an in demand man to do it otherwise the woman will want no part of you if you behave like a control freak. My point is the nice guy mindset is not going to work and will put you in a place that you dont want to be long after your prime has passed you.

If you are that guy who was nice and married a woman who you know does not respect you but finds you to be safe until her agenda is met, you need to ask yourself whether it makes sense to stay in your marriage or leave and rebuild with the right mindset even if that means being alone. If you are the young nice guy wondering why you date nothing but damaged or controlling narcicists then you need to be taught how to search for and handle the right girl while being able to move on from the bad ones who cannot give love or be loved. Learning to get away from the nice guy mindset does not mean you wont get divorced, but it does give you a chance, albeit small, to build the relationship and have a family that even in todays messed up world is still desired. Men still talk to women because family and children means everything. 

Ill teach you how to do it.