Chip Chick
Three years ago, this 32-year-old man married his wife, 33, and they have a 2-year-old daughter. Only two years into their marriage, his wife told him she wanted a divorce, so he moved out.
However, he continued paying the mortgage on their home, and his wife continued living there with their daughter. That way, their daughter’s life wasn’t completely upended with a huge move.
His wife started a Nurse Practitioner job to pay her monthly expenses. Eventually, he filed for bankruptcy, so they stayed married since neither of them could afford the divorce proceedings.
Now, he’s financially stable enough to pay a lawyer and go through the divorce process, but his wife told him that she might be receiving a health diagnosis.
In response, he told her he was content to stay married until they learned more about the upcoming diagnosis. Plus, she could continue to use his health insurance. He fixed her home well pump and gave her a lot of money because he believed it was his obligation as a father to do whatever he could to provide and fix things around the house.
“We recently found out her medical diagnosis is a rare form of bone cancer, but it’s in a low-risk level called SMM (smoldering multiple myeloma),” he said.
Even though this was awful news, they learned that her cancer could remain a low risk for years before escalating to a higher risk (called MM) when they’d advise treatment. His wife took time to process the news and distanced herself from him.
“She tells me she doesn’t want a relationship with me, which was fine because we already discussed that,” he explained.
His wife was recently offered a position with a salary starting at $65,000, and she could work just three days a week. He’s an electrician who works more than 40 hours weekly for $70,000 a year.
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