I'd have to say that I'm fairly heartend to see this thread here among all the chaff.
Rather than sharing just my own sorry situation, I thought I'd (hopefully) add a little light to the end of the proverbial tunnel.
June 12th 2010 I got married to who, at the time, was the love of my life. We'd been together for 10 years since we were 20-21. I met her in NZ and moved to the UK with her (I'm also a Kiwi). Whilst not without it's bumps and hiccups life was largely good although in hindsight, not great. We had a relatively small wedding with just family and some close friends in Italy for the poultry sum of around £30k and dragged family and friends from all over the world to celebrate with us.
Roll on 6 months and she heads overseas for work for a few weeks over which we don't really keep in touch all that much. She comes back and we end up going to a house party and the aftermath was a few arguments. It escalates and she goes to stay with her sister (usually we manage to figure it out). From there the details are a little blurry but the long and the short of it is that after 10 years together and 6 months of marriage we separate.
It plays out amicably enough and with my Visa being reliant on her she offers to help me get my indefinite leave to remain which after a year would have me my British passport. We go to counseling a few times but it really feels like it's a game of me saying "I could've done this better, I could do this more etc" whilst she sits there and basically says, yep, uh-huh, yep. The lady taking our counseling just seems to let this keep going until the wife eventually comes out with the cracking line "You just don't earn enough money to keep me in the way that I've become accustomed if 'I' decide to get pregnant" to which the counselor doesn't bat an eyelid.
To be clear, I had always paid my share and before we came over to the UK I had won a couple of cars, sold them and used the money to pay our way including supporting us till we both got on our feet. Never did I play the "I paid for this, you have to pay your share". I believe that when you're in a relationship you work as a team, you contribute how you can and money shouldn't be a scoring mechanism.
From here things rapidly descend into nastiness, she starts telling me that's she's been having great fun dating and there's no chance that we're ever getting back together, oh and BTW, I'm not helping you with your visa anymore because it's too much of a personal risk. Meanwhile she's also takes all of our savings leaving me with around £2k in the bank. Long story short, because I can't get my visa I have to hand in my resignation to a job that I'd been in for 5-6 years, pack all my crap up and leave the UK. Work offered to try sponsorship but that would require me leaving the country for 3 months and there's no guarantee that I'd get it.
During all of this I find out that she didn't actually want to marry me but had gone through all the hard work to set up her dream wedding so decided to go through with it - How to kick a guy in the guts 101. Personally it destroyed me. I regularly cried myself to sleep, broke down in pubs talking to mates, felt like everyone in our shared group were judging me and frankly didn't give a damn about the fact that she was totally screwing me over.
1 week before I jump on a plane for Australia (got parents here) I get my indefinite leave to remain, turns out that the lawyers for her company said yeah not a problem so they got me it. For me though it was too late, I'd sent all my personal belongings on a ship, said my goodbyes and bought a one way ticket to Aus.
It took years to get over it, I considered legal assistance to get my half our our assets but British law doesn't count whatever happens before you're married so all my contributions are largely ignored. So I had to move on. There were a number of run ins with her over the year or so trying to sort out the divorce which I said that she had to pay for. We had a storage unit back in NZ which she said she'd removed all her stuff from - turns out she hadn't and I'd been paying for it the whole time. I said she wasn't getting her stuff till she pays for the half she owes and accusations of blackmail come out. Suffice to say it ended messy but there were no kids for which I'm eternally grateful.
Roll on 6-7 years and I'm living in Aus, I have a great job, live in a beautiful country and recently married a woman who in every way is the opposite of my first wife. There are things that I didn't take note of in my first relationship that in hindsight were both massive indicators that things were wrong and that marriage should've been out of the question. Things like her telling me that she was embarrassed to introduce me to her workmates, her telling me to not walk with her in the street, constantly telling me that I wasn't doing enough monetarily. Looking back I realise how broken and flawed that relationship was and how blind I was to ignore all the bad stuff. Even down to the level of never being told that she loves me without prompting.
My take aways from 10-12 years of relationship and having it turn to ash, life is too short to settle for meh. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and if your significant other doesn't - GTFO. When things go south and it feels like the world has ended for you, realise that there is more to life than what is going on now. The world is a big place and your house, your broken relationship, your hurt, your town, all these things are moments and just around the corner is better, just around the corner is someone that will genuinely love you for you.
I struggled through dating via Tinder and a number of other sites and as awful as the experience was it gave me enough bravery to ask out my beautiful wife... of course she said no initially hah! Stick at it, ride out the anger and grief and do your best to not do anything either stupid or beneath yourself. I now have a woman that tells me she loves me every day, that smiles when she comes home and sees me and is genuinely proud to introduce me to family and friends and I have never been happier. It took till being 37 to get there but if I had to go through all the crap again to get to where I am now, hell yes I would!
Good luck all - there is more to life than now.
