Just days short of ten years when we broke up last April. She was cheating on me in our own bed, and "our friends" knew it and thought it was funny to keep it secret. Obvious they were her friends, not mine.
It's bad when it's a divorce. When you don't have the convenience of a marriage-divorce system like heteroes, it becomes a legal nightmare.
Miranda and I had interlocking wills, powers of attorneys, and legal partnerships in place for our joint property to make sure our wishes were carried out in case of incapacitation or death. Miranda had a power of attorney drawn up with her brother (Helen's father, it made sense at the time but has since proven disasterous) so that she could sign as Helen's parent despite being only legally an aunt. All those agreements had to be legally dissolved. A divorce would have been simpler and cheaper.
So while all this is going on, stupid me starts up a relationship with Payne, Helen's father and Miranda's brother. After four months of fucking and fighting and fucking and fighting some more, we mutually decided that we couldn't stand being under the same roof and that Helen deserved better than this. It didn't help any that we were taking out our gripes with Miranda on each other in addition to the other stupid shit we would fight about. (He was suddenly faced with 18 years of child support when his
"darling sister" had previously agreed to take care of it.)
When I was younger, I was always the one walking away from a relationship, head held high and sashaying off into the sunset with red hair blowing in the wind. This time it's eight months and three months respectively and I'm sitting here still hurting while Miranda's off in her new life and Payne's getting stuff reasonably patched up. Ain't Karma a bitch?