Dusty scrote whines to advice columnist in fake letter after ex-wife is living her best life (yaaassss, gurl! :sassy clap emoji:)

Dear Prudence,

My first wife “Trish” and I divorced about five years ago. She didn't want to have s*x after the birth of our kids, so I found s*x elsewhere. I was very discreet, but she found out after several years; then she informed me “what's good for the gander is good for the goose” and she started seeing other people too. That was fine with me, as it gave me more freedom and less paranoia about getting caught cheating. Trish asked for a divorce within the year, and since my girlfriend of two years, “Annie,” had been pressuring me to leave Trish, I thought it was the best outcome for everyone. Annie and I got married soon after the divorce was final.

I see Trish every week when we hand off the kids, who are now teenagers, and I dread it. Not because she's mean or rude … she is warm and generous and funny. I recognize that she hasn't really changed; these traits were always there, but they were buried under my resentment over the s*x thing, the nagging, the financial stress, etc. On top of that, her career took off almost as soon as we separated, but not soon enough for me to ask for alimony. She's earning more by herself (thanks GlassDoor) than our combined household income when we were together. Her live-in boyfriend (she has told the kids she'll never marry again, which feels like an attack on me, her one and only experience with marriage) is a well-known writer and together they travel to exotic places, eat at fancy restaurants, and have a crowd of well-known writer friends. They're even taking the kids to London this summer while he teaches a workshop there.

I am struggling financially and having some health issues—the recent loss of a visible tooth I can't afford to replace hit even harder than the diabetes diagnosis—and my now-wife Annie has health issues of her own that make her tired and irritable, and affect her ability to work. I used to be mostly content with my life, even when married to Trish, as long as she wasn't nagging me. Her new life makes me feel terrible. Like the spotty overweight kid at a high school dance. I feel like in the game of divorce, I lost big, and it's eating me up. I'm resentful that we had money problems when we were together because she didn't work very hard—she said she was focused on the kids and the home. I hate that my daughter showed me a picture of her mom beaming happiness with her boyfriend on a mountaintop in Patagonia.

I hate the idea of therapy, and can't afford it anyway, and the antidepressants my GP prescribed don't seem to be doing anything. Can you help me re-frame this so I can get over it? How do I live in the life I have now, maybe even improve it, instead of going around and around about all the ways it could have gone differently for me?

—Me: 0, Ex: 100

Dear Ex: 100,

This reads like the fantasy of anyone who's been in Trish's position: Leave a cheating spouse and immediately begin thriving in every way, while your ex looks on, full of regret and delayed appreciation for you, with a missing tooth.

But if this letter is not in fact the work of a scorned wife using creative writing to envision a just outcome for her relationship, and is actually your request for advice, I have a few thoughts on how you might begin to feel better:

1. You should grapple with how your relationship with Trish began to go downhill. I don't perceive even a hint of regret for the infidelity that started all this. It seems to me that before you get to making peace with the mistake you made by looking outside your marriage for s*x, you should actually acknowledge to yourself that it was a mistake. You probably felt like you didn't have any other options and I get that, but there were steps you could have taken before betraying your wife's trust.

2. Once you've had a chance to sit with that, you can forgive yourself and also remind yourself that you weren't actually that happy with Trish. You didn't have any intimacy, you felt nagged, and the most positive word you used to describe your relationship was “content.” So you actually never had the option of being with the current, jet-setting, high-earning, happy version of her. That wasn't on the table for you. My guess is that a lack of connection between the two of you made your marriage a place where she was unlikely to thrive the way she is now. It's possible things started falling into place for her after you split because she had the partner she needed, and all of his unconditional support. Maybe, for example, when she was asking him to pick up some household duties while she was in the midst of an intense job search, he didn't accuse her of nagging but instead happily agreed and also offered to do mock interviews with her. I'm not saying that to shame you, but to suggest that the right spouse can bring out the best in us—and that kind of dynamic is available to you, too!

3. Even as you try to let go of the idea that it could have been you married to Trish 2.0, give yourself permission to feel jealous. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it definitely eliminates some of the things that can make happiness tough, and you're not wrong to wish you had the financial security Trish has, especially as you struggle with things like affording healthcare. But then maybe try to replace the jealousy with a different way of looking at your ex's seemingly charmed new life: What if it's not an indication of your failure, but proof that a major change in fortune is available to all of us, including you? If Trish went from financially struggling, not working (and I assume being pretty devastated that her husband was cheating on her) to beaming at the top of a mountaintop on an expensive vacation, isn't that proof that this kind of change is possible? Could you start to imagine it for yourself and maybe look at her as inspiration rather than competition?

4. Keep trying new antidepressants. All the reframing in the world won't make you feel better if your brain is insisting that your life sucks, so medication might be the most efficient remedy. Also, commit to finding a therapist with a sliding scale and meeting with them for six months. You don't have to love it! Just try it. Worst case scenario, it will be a place to share all the thoughts you've shared in this letter repeatedly, week after week, until they don't feel as overwhelming.

5. Don't make the same mistakes with Annie—being critical of her limitations instead of working on your own—that you did with Trish. Two thriving ex-wives would be too much to handle! But on a more serious note, you have someone who loves you, which is more than a lot of people can say. Even if you aren't thrilled with your life at the moment, you can make it a point to make hers better through simple things like being understanding when she's tired, trying to cheer her up when she's irritable, listening to her and affirming how tough it is to live with health conditions, and assuring her that things will get better. In other words, invest in this relationship in the way you didn't in your first marriage. In the short term, it will take your mind off other people, and in the long term, it could lead to a partnership and life that excites you.