"Do you regret selling your house?"

A reader asks a big divorce question and I provide a 44-point answer

I have loved and left many lamps

Hello to new subscribers and OGs alike! You might’ve missed:
• This gratifyingly popular recent post: Midlife is the age of mastery. Thanks to everyone who has shared, tagged me, emailed and DMd about this one!
• My friends at Gloria adapted another recent post, Nothing Tastes As Good As Final Feels and it’s so nice to see it out there in the world beyond Substack.

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A reader asks:

“I’m currently navigating a separation and likely divorce, and I fantasize often about getting rid of this fucking house. But we have two young kids (under 10) and live in a small city that was beset by pandemic settlers, so the housing market is ridiculous. I make my own pretty good money, but I’m unsure of where on earth I would live if we sell. We have a great mortgage and paid about 1/4 of what this house would sell for now. You sold your place, right? Any regrets? Any tips?”

I answer:

1. It might help to know that we were always going to sell our house. Not that that made everything easy peasy equity squeeze-y, as you’ll see. But even if we had stayed married, we would’ve sold the house either after our kids graduated from high school or, at the latest, after they graduated from college.

2. That’s because I didn’t know what “too much house” meant when we bought it but I certainly found out the first time we cleaned it.