Who are these guys who want to support you?
And how can you support them?
Hey there,
We’re two guys who met in college. We landed in different places after graduation, and our wives left us around the same time–about a decade after we’d settled down to be happily ever after.
This whole blog, then, is written from the perspective of two guys who had to get divorces because of their wives’ decisions. It is written for other guys facing divorce–especially those who got left by their wives. (Unfun fact: Two out of every three divorces in the US are filed by women.) We know we’re not alone, and we want you to know that you’re not alone either.
We’d agree that our ex-wives aren’t bad people, but we’d also say the situations leading to our divorces were total bullshit. Our ex-wives flipped out on us. We didn’t have control, and we didn’t want to end our relationships.
In fact, we found our situations pretty damn confusing because we were both supportive and upstanding husbands. We’re 21st century, woman-loving dudes who wanted to help our wives to feel empowered. We are the kind of men who, back when we were dreaming up this website, were psyched to see the ladies of the #metoo revolution on the cover of Time because we respect women as our equals. In that spirit, we’re guys who worked hard to keep our marriages together and healthy, but we just didn’t get it right.
With all that in mind, we couldn’t find jackshit on the internet to help us out with our dilemma of feeling dejected, self-loathing, and baffled about what to do first, next, or at all–especially because doing what we had thought were the right things had left us traveling down a lonely road, one that headed back into the wild world of single people.
Fortunately, we had a common friend from college who had kept in touch with both of us. He shepherded the two of us together, and we hit it off. From there, we got to talking, and we managed regular trips to visit each other. When we did we drank a lot, smoked a lot, and talked a lot. We decided the world needed this blog a lot. So here you go, world.
We go by “Sad About It” and “Mad About It” for lots of reasons. One reason is that we both felt sad and mad at times during our divorces, but we felt these two key feelings with different levels of intensity. This difference between us led us to think about issues surrounding divorce in complementary ways, and although the timelines of our marriages coincided, we faced different life circumstances that made our complementary takes on the divorcing lifestyle helpful as we explored these things together. So we’re “Sad” and “Mad” on this website, but we’re not being caricatures of these emotions when we blog; rather, we’re authentically conveying ourselves and our experiences to help others who might feel alone or without any bearings as they make their way through–and beyond–divorce.
We like our anonymity, and we believe it serves the blog. There is no deep shame in what we have to say, and–when writing on this site–we are careful to avoid bashing people or identifying any of the people who actually exist in our lives by offering up too many details to you, dear reader. In fact, some things we describe are closer to historical fiction than the straight truth because of our desire to remain anonymous. That said, we’re painfully honest at the same time. Almost across the board, we try to write about issues in ways that make all of this helpful for any guy who gets left by his wife–or, more broadly, any guy who’s surprised to find himself going through a divorce.
Why all the caginess then? Well, we don’t want to be defined by our divorces anymore than you do. But we made this site because we wanted to help you. You’re welcome.
Feel free to tip us or email us. (See the buttons below–either they’re there or they’re coming soon.) If you write us then we won’t spam you. But if your email to us is solid gold or it helps us think about something in a new way then we may include some anonymized version of your message in one of our blog posts down the road.
Finally, know that we are going to try to keep ads on this site to a minimum. In discussing this blog, we both agreed that many of the divorce websites out there seem scammy because they are weighted down with pop-ups and other such bullshit. We know you don’t need that crap right now, but something’s got to pay the bills, so you may see some ads and, very importantly, we include links that go to sites where you can buy things. To be clear: we use lots of links that don’t have anything to do with us making money, and we don’t recommend things that we don’t actually consider relevant to our stories and advice; the point of this site is to help you out more so than to create income for us. On the other hand, we definitely recommend products and services, and we definitely invest time and money into this site. So we hope you follow some links from this blog to sites where you can buy stuff that might help you along; buying that stuff through some of the links found on this site will keep us eating, sane, and up-to-date on our alimony.
Last things worth saying: Hang in there, brother. It does get better. Much better.
Genuinely,
Sad About It & Mad About It