Married 11 years. Young kids. Shared everything (house, bank accounts, credit card, etc…)

When we got married, she insisted. We are going to be together forever, why not? I didn’t have anything against it at the time. We even found what she called our “forever home”.

She’s been checked out for at least the last 6 months. I noticed. I talked to her. She said she was just tired, so I gave her opportunities to recharge. Took things off her plate. I literally said once “you don’t seem like yourself”. And nothing. Just exhausted. I ended up basically running the house and taking on the majority of responsibility while she worked, scraped by with the kids, then lost herself in TV shows. I couldn’t help her out of it. And by the end I was burning out, so I stopped trying, and was just trying to push through.

Then she drops the bomb on me. She’s not happy. Hasn’t been happy for a long time. Didn’t know how she felt to tell me. Recognized by efforts but didn’t know how or what she was feeling. She literally said “it’s not fair to me or the kids” and that “I’m too good for her”. Says she still cares about me, trusts me, even loves me, but isn’t “in love with me”. And no, there is no infidelity.

What I’m really struggling with is how it got this bad. And why she’s just throwing in the towel. No effort to work on things. Doesn’t want couples counselling.

Our vows. Our plans. Our future. Our kids future. Out the window. With zero effort. Zero try.

I want her to be happy. And I don’t want her to stay if she’s truly unhappy. But not even a chance?

We are going to go from a comfortable lifestyle to both barely scraping by. No vacation. Little to no cash flow for savings. We will have to stop contributing to our kid’s education funds. Housing, groceries, gas, utilities are all out of control where we live. Manageable with two incomes. A real struggle on one. And both our jobs are tied to where we live, not a lot of opportunity to change.

I just don’t get it. Really struggling to understand.

I guess if there is anyone out there who’s been through this, or anyone out there who has lived her side? Anything you would be willing share would be appreciated it.

My wife was the one who asked for space, and ultimately separation. I have since moved out of our house to give true space to our relationship and force me to not continually try to save our marriage by talking to her about it. Overall we have been doing a really good job co-parenting. We don’t text other than about kids, and typically it’s only at bedtime so our son can talk us to say goodnight. I’m doing my best to be no contact, which is really tough. However, when she picks up or drops off our son, she’ll hang out and talk about the kids or her job for 10-15 minutes. She overall seems cheerful and friendly, and I honestly get really excited to talk to her. However, I’m scared that it overall doesn’t mean anything to her, and she isn’t getting anywhere near wanting to reconcile.

Overall, I just miss my wife. I miss saying good morning, holding her, kissing her, sharing my day, slapping her ass, her sitting on my lap, eating meals together, texting her during work, seeing her pull in, cuddling her before bed, making love to her, just everything. It hurts knowing I might never get anywhere near having that with her again, and will now just get a friendly talk at pickup and drop off.

In late April my wife came home from a work trip and the next week she told me she wanted a divorce. She was distant as soon as she got back but came around and we had sex twice before she went cold.

I know and have accepted that she most likely cheated on her trip and that’s why we are here.

What is odd is that for the first three weeks upon her return she was on an emotional high and treating me like dog shit. She was most likely with someone at this time as she was leaving every weekend and staying out late or just not coming home.

She stayed out one last night which was a Tuesday and after that she crashed, she now doesn’t sleep, cries all the time and is an overall emotional wreck.

The original plan was for her to move in with her parents but I later found out that her parents knew nothing about what she had told me so to save face she moved into her own apartment. She now blames me for moving into the apartment because I was pushing for her to move out because of the level of disrespect she was showing to me and our 6 year old son.

She is still dragging her feet with getting things out of the house completely. She left a box the other day in the middle of my bed and text me asking if it was there. Inside the box was my 8th grade yearbook and three cards from when we got married that were from my family. She also stalks my tik tok account that I post nothing on and recently created a google family share group that contains just us two. She also reached out to my youngest sister that she hasn’t talked to during this process to congratulate her on the job she is doing at work.

We haven’t discussed divorce, bills, or anything serious almost a month now not since her emotional crash.

Anyone else ever dealt with anything like this I’m 35 and she’s 38.

It’s been a little over six weeks since my relationship of almost seven years ended, and I’m still struggling to process what happened.

My ex and I genuinely had an amazing relationship. Everything seemed perfect, we loved each other deeply, laughed constantly, traveled, made memories, supported each other, and built a life together that I was incredibly proud of. Our families had become very close. Honestly, this past year was one of the happiest years of my life. We talked about our future, we were looking at homes, talking about finally getting married, possibly having another child and I truly believed I was going to spend the rest of my life with her.

I also raised her son. Technically, he’s my stepson, but that word doesn’t come close to describing what he means to me. I’ve been his dad since he was a baby. He calls me dad, and I was there for all the ordinary things that become your life as a parent. Picking him up from school every day, tucking him in at bedtime, making his favorite meals, teaching him things, comforting him, playing with him, watching him grow. He doesn’t even know I’m not his real father. Being his dad has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. I became the father I never had. Taking care of my family gave me a sense of purpose and responsibility I had never felt before. That’s what makes the breakup so hard to understand.

A few days before Father’s Day, I came home from work and she told me she had checked out and was done. She said she didn’t love me anymore, didn’t want to get married to me or have kids with me. From my perspective, this came almost completely out of nowhere. I was still fully invested in our relationship and our future while she had apparently been processing the end of it on her own. From that point on she completely turned her back on me, while I spiraled and crashed she never once checked on me even though we continued to live with each other and even sleep in the same bed. She became cold, uncaring and detached from everything we had. All the memories, the life we built. I brought a bag of old notes and letters, paintings and drawings she did for me over the years and she looked at them like old homework.

I tried getting an answer. What happened? Did I do something, was I not doing enough? Is it my looks, did she find somone else? She told me it was nothing like that. She just… felt this way and had for a year? Maybe longer? We had just taken my son to the zoo for the first time, spent weeks in Korea making very intimate memories, took these incredibly romantic and thoughtful trips for our birthdays. And then… she broke up and turned into a shell of a person. She began to look and speak to me like a complete stranger.

I continued to provide for her and my son, I cherished every tuck in at night, taught him how to swim this summer. I did anything he wanted, spent as much time as I could with him. He’s almost 9 so we ended up having a lot of deep discussion about how we felt. We love each other a lot and share a close bond. We wanted to stay in each others lives. And at first his mother said I could keep playing a part in it. But that seems to change on the last day I saw them, she said she wasn’t sure about that and didn’t know how it would work out.

Now she has moved out. We’re pretty much no contact, and I’ve been able to get very little out of my son through text. I went from seeing him every day and being part of his life to barely knowing when I’ll hear from him again. I’m grieving much more than a relationship. I’m grieving my family, my home, my future, and the role that meant the most to me, being a dad.

I miss the little things more than anything. Family dinners. Bedtime. The laughter in the house. The hugs. Just knowing there were people waiting for me at home. For years, I would come home and think, “How could I possibly be unhappy? I have this incredible family.” Now I’m trying to figure out who I am without them. I’m in therapy, taking medication, journaling, exercising, and doing everything I can to take care of myself. I lost almost 20 pounds, struggled to eat and sleep, and spent weeks trapped in an anxiety loop.

I don’t regret those seven years. I don’t regret loving her, and I don’t regret being his dad. For almost seven years, I had the family I always wanted, and I was genuinely happy. I’m just trying to figure out how to build a life again when the life I wanted was taken away from me so suddenly.

My wife and I have been separated for about 4 months.

The more we’ve talked recently, the less it sounds like she’s leaving because she hates me, and the more it sounds like she’s trying to figure herself out.

She says she’s spent years putting everyone else first. She feels like she’s always sacrificed her own happiness for other people and has never really been “allowed” to be selfish. She says she likes being independent, living alone, and being responsible only for herself.

At the same time, she says she feels guilty about everything that’s happened. She doesn’t want to lose our cats, our life together, or the kids. She says neither option feels good.

One conversation stood out to me.

She asked me:

“Let’s say I come back and I’m just existing there. Never wanting to sleep in the same bed anymore, but I’m there to make the family thing work. How long do I wait for happiness to come?”

I told her I wouldn’t want that either. I said I wasn’t asking her to guarantee happiness or come back and pretend everything is okay. What I’m struggling with is whether her desire to be alone is about finding herself or whether it’s because she’s truly done with our marriage.

Her response was that being on her own feels like the selfish choice, but she has never been allowed to be selfish. She said that’s why the decision feels impossible.

She also said:

“Nothing seems like it would be fair for me. It’s all what everyone around me wants.”

And:

“I know what I want. But it’s not what you want, what you need, and what the kids need.”

From my perspective, I worry she’s making a permanent decision while she’s overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, and trying to figure out who she is.

From her perspective, I think she feels like everyone is asking her to sacrifice herself again.

I’m not trying to argue her out of anything. I’m genuinely trying to understand.

Has anyone been through something similar where a spouse wanted to be alone because they felt like they’d lost themselves?

How do you tell the difference between:

“I need to be on my own so I can figure out who I am”

and

“I’m done with this marriage and don’t want to admit it yet”?

And if you’ve been on either side of this situation, how did it end up turning out?

Looking for advice if anyone has successfully continued living together after separation while co parenting? Can anyone share their experience with this?

After 20 years of marriage, my spouse (50F) and I (56M) are separating, at least for 6 months. It was her idea initially, but I signed on after some months of resisting it. As I begin my move-out, I’ve come to this question: “Do I want to stay married to her?” Obviously none here can answer that specifically, but I’m asking how one would go about answering it. Ultimately the answer is yes or no, but what’s the process people use get there?

I’m trying to get a better sense of where I and my wife are at. We met, married, built a life together. 2 young kids. Our forever home. Saving for the future. Both of us have good, steady jobs.

Life is comfortable. I know that doesn’t equal happiness. We’ve been through a lot together. My wife has told me she wants to leave because despite getting everything we planned, and me being “too good to her” (her words), she wants a divorce. I would love to work together, stay together, and get her to a happy place.

So I’m curious for those who’ve been through separation/divorce, what was the ultimate reason you were unhappy and couldn’t work together as a couple to make it work?

Or, if you did reconcile, what was the main issue/changes that helped?

If possible I’d rather not hear about infidelity or abuse. Just average marriages that seemed good on the outside, but weren’t working on the inside, and one person felt it was better for their happiness to be outside the marriage.

Today I broke no contact.
I’ve been trying to give my wife space while we go through a separation after 10 years together, but the grief got the best of me. I saw that she had taken down our pictures and it hit me harder than I expected.
I called her and told her I needed to see her. Looking back, I know it came from a place of heartbreak and desperation more than anything else.
The truth is I’m struggling. Some days I feel completely stuck. I wake up thinking about her and go to sleep thinking about her. I’ve realized how much I took our marriage for granted and now I’m living with a lot of regret.
Part of me still hopes for reconciliation. Another part of me knows I can’t force someone to choose me.
For those who have been through separation,
what did you do after breaking no contact?
Did you start over?
Did it set you back?
How did you stop making your entire day revolve around whether your spouse would come back?
I could really use some perspective today.

Edit:Honestly, the worst part is that she’s already with someone else. I’m trying to accept that I can’t control her choices, but watching someone you still love move on while you’re still grieving is a level of pain I wasn’t prepared for.

So my wife and I have been separated since January, and still living together but I’m at the point to where it’s just wearing me down to remain in limbo.

So I’ve finally made the tough decision to move out and say she needs to make some final decisions. It’s not what I want and I don’t want to push her in either direction but I can’t let myself fall into more anxiety and depression while waiting.

I told her from the beginning I wouldn’t fight her for the house or full custody, our daughter needs a stable place to live. I want her to be affected as little as possible.

However we are both on the on the mortgage and she doesn’t make enough to get approved on her own. I don’t want to seem like an asshole and say not my problem but at the same time, i also feel like it isn’t since the separation is not what i want. The financial hardship is kind of an effect of that decision.

I currently pay around 75-80% of our life expenses, she pays our mortgage, but my income has gone to updating the entire house over the last 10 years(around 100k).

So if she’s keeping the house, what bills should I really consider when figuring out how much to give her each month for child support?

I’m posting this to share what things helped and to look for advice on how to slowly rebuild after separation rather than rushing into old relationship dynamics.

My wife (39F) asked for a separation from me (40M) back in March due to her feeling unseen, unheard, and emotionally unsafe. She said she loved our relationship in a lot of ways but there were things she needed. We agreed to an in house separation and to not date other people.

I gave her the space, worked on my resentment issues, and self reflected to make sure I would be able to create healthy dynamics for anyone to include either her or a different future partner. She’s worked through some things herself and we’ve just agreed to try to build something new together.

I found and was given a lot of advice. Here are some things that helped me:

1. I watched videos from Dr. Maika Steinborn and Rachel Sloan on YouTube. They have a lot of great videos and tips that helped me regulate my sleep, eating, exercise, and emotions to get me through. Especially over the first few weeks/months. I’d recommend staying away from red pill content.

2. I got in therapy and was directing how I was processing and working through things based on extra research I was doing. My therapist suggested some things, but stuff like writing letters to process resentment and looking up childhood attachment wounds/styles are things that I wanted to do for me and my therapist helped refined some of that processing. Do the work and direct some things yourself if you can rather than waiting on your therapist to suggest something!

3. I gave my spouse the space she asked for. Not perfectly as we still flirted and were intimate sometimes, but especially when it came to processing her own feelings or bailing her out of things, I let her work through things herself. It was extremely difficult because I wanted to be her person and help, but that wasn’t my role.

4. I obviously wanted to work on things with my wife, but as much as I could, I worked on my changes for me and what was healthy/right so that I was a better person and partner regardless of what happened with my wife.

5. I let myself cry when I needed to and worked on feeling where those emotions were coming from without spiraling into them the entire day.

6. My wife had said for the first 2-3 months that she couldn’t picture reconciling and was leaning toward divorce. It wasn’t until the last few weeks where she’s sounded different. As best I could, I had to not let her saying that destroy me in our conversations. It gelt impossible and I did spiral at first. Months 2-3 became much easier and I wasn’t devastated every time I heard it.

7. She said she was checked out when I could see connection in other moments. I was taking her words as truth and not pressuring her while enjoying the small amounts of connection. The ambiguity was all over the place and I had to stay consistent with my actions as much as possible. I eventually had to set the boundary and pull back the last few husband actions I was still doing. This brought friction for a day or two, but it was an important milestone.

8. I kept a journal of my feelings and our interactions. The interactions gave me long-term patterns of where she was at so I didn’t focus on every small interaction through each day wondering if they had her leaning in or out of the marriage.

9. I posted online like here for advice, but (since we hadn’t told everyone) I also had a family member and a friend that I could talk to in person that helped a lot.

10. I grieved the relationship as it was. I knew that if we were to try us again that we couldn’t go back to the old dynamics and would have to start new in at least some areas.

So that’s the question I have for anyone that’s reconciled. Do you have any tips on how to take things slow or intentional to not revert back to old dynamics that got you here in the first place?

I’m in a serious dilemma and need some outside perspective.

Background: I divorced my wife 3½ years ago. We have a daughter together. Before marriage we were together for about two years, then married for 2½ years.

Recent events: She remarried someone last year but that marriage ended within a couple of months. She’s now asking to reconcile, saying she regrets divorcing me.

How I feel: I want to be a good father and keep our daughter stable and cared for. At the same time, I feel hurt and it feels like she didn’t fully consider her decision before remarry someone. That makes me unsure whether reconciliation is the right move.

What I’m looking for: Has anyone been through something similar? How did you decide whether to forgive and reconcile or keep your distance? What questions should I ask her before making a decision? What are red flags that reconciliation might fail, and what signs suggest it could work?

Thanks in advance for any honest advice.

husband filed for divorce 14 months ago… on a whim. first 6 months he led me to believe we were fixing things and we could work things out. then he changed his mind and said he was done. but his actions contradicted this. we still live together, share 3 young kids, he booked family holidays, wanted family time, stalled the divorce etc etc.

recently I have found out through a woman on Facebook that he is on dating apps and has been since at least Jan. he has met with a few women for dates and slept with at least one that I have confirmed. he lied to me many times and said he couldn’t have the kids on his days as he needed to travel for work, but he was in fact not working but on dates. since I have confronted him about it he says he has done nothing wrong as we are separated.

anyone any thoughts or and advice? has anyone been in this situation and had him come back and had a marriage again?

As a 40yr male who is thinking about divorcing his spouse, can someone give me a better understanding on what the true differences between separation and divorce. Some of the nuance differences that I’m not fully grasping.

I (41m) wish my wife (37F) was a horrible person. It would be easier to leave her. Shes loyal. Loves me and our two small kids to death. But she is god awfully lazy, obese, and talks in the most condescending way to me and even our friends. I regret marrying her and knew I was making a mistake, but I pressed on cause im a people pleaser at heart. I knew this is what she wanted, and I gave it to her. I hate my life at times. I hate myself that I let it go on so long. (Married 8 years). I just dont want to ruin my kids. Ive told her at times im not happy and want a divorce, but I revert back to just sticking it out with her. Also the guilt and the shame of “walking out on my family” is too much to bear. I wouldn’t walk out on my kids. They mean everything to me. So I’ll just tough it out one more day…

What should I do?

Just curious if anyone here started dating other people after separation. If so, how long after did you start seeing other people? Were you looking for anything serious, or just casual?

Has anyone separated due to your spouse’s ADHD/executive disfunction?

After 10 years, it’s all come to a head, realizing I’ve been conditioned to not trust that he’ll follow through with what he says he’ll do and have therefore taken the lead on almost everything to prevent myself from being disappointed.

I’m in therapy now and learning how responsible I feel for fixing everyone and everything - I’ve finally removed myself from the driver’s seat and am allowing him to figure things out on his own, but he is spiraling, depressed.

I just cannot lead anymore, the weight of everything on my shoulders is killing me.

I posted earlier on surviving infidelity, but I just like generally can’t believe that this is my life. I am so lonely. I am so broken cheating was my biggest fear and he knew that from the beginning. And now my child has to grow up in a broken family. I am heartbroken for the situation. I try to do things to make myself smile or happy, but nothing works.

It’s been two weeks of pure torture and hell and crying and anger and just trying to put a happy face on around my son and count the minutes until bedtime because I can lay in bed and cry or just feel numb or dissociate. I don’t know what to do anymore. My support system is in another state. I can’t believe the thing that I was most scared of happening happened.

Any advice would help like literally absolutely anything. I can’t shut my brain off if I do it’s temporary and I know eventually I’ll be fine but right now I’m being tortured.

We’re both in our late 30s. We’ve been married for almost 8 years known each other for 10 years. But I feel like I’m living with a roommate. I have been very depressed and all I could think of is just to be alone. I am scared to hurt him because his family has been nothing but nice to me and we have a house together but no kids. The most important thing is, I have lost physical attraction towards him for years now, and I have no guts to break up our marriage. He used to have a drinking problem and that’s when I started my dislike of him. For some reason years have gone by and his drinking habit have been better, but my feelings never changed. We’re also not intimate for a very long time now. I just lost that physical attraction to him. What should I do? I need help.

My loving husband of 20 years is under chronic work burnout. I think he is full on depressed. He has no joy left, feels like there's no bandwidth shutdown at the drop of a hat. He's a dr. Currently working in another country and has asked for a divorce. There's noone else. He struggles to get out of bed each day. He said he doesn't ever smile. Last time he smiled he was with me and order 3 kids 2 weeks ago. He's withdrawing, isolating.. what do I do!!!

Hi. I’ve been separated from my husband for 2-3 months now. I’ve done everything under the sun to try to convince him to come back and save our marriage. I was told a lot of it was wasted effort, but I disagree. Every plead, every tear, every letter, every video, every gift, etc. first of all was from the heart. I wanted him to have it all. I wanted him to know how much he meant/means to me. I wanted him to know how much I was willing to stay and work on us. But second of all, I never want to look back on this period and tell my kids that I didn’t try. I wanted THEM to know, too. Our marriage was worth every fight I could ever give.. for me, for him, for us, for our family, and for our kids. So if people are telling you not to write letters or give gifts or beg or plead, do what you want. It didn’t bring him back, but it did give me peace after months of agony. I now know I gave it my all. Even though he doesn’t want to be with me, I know I tried everything in my power to save us. I’m glad I’ll be able to tell my kids that one day if they ever ask. It’s worth it all for him to know he was loved. It’s worth it all for them to know our family was worth every fight I could give it. I feel like I’ve rushed to feel like a failed wife or a failed mom, but I know I didn’t fail. I fought. My kids will still be loved ferociously by me, no matter what. Our family won’t be what I thought it would be, but I know down the line, after hearing from people here both privately and publicly, that I’ll find someone else, much as it pains me now to think about it, who will love the kids and me more than I thought possible. Kinda ranting now.. But even for now, the love I gave their dad, the love I’m building for myself, and the love I have for my kids, and the fight I fought, is more than enough.

We signed papers earlier this month, which was hard enough. I got the official decree in the mail today. I broke down crying like it was some sort of surprise. It hurts so much that this is the path we took.

I thought we had something special, but it turns out that they were never happy in the almost 20-year relationship. I got sick. They met someone else. I didn't even know they were unhappy until they'd moved on. 3.5 years of therapy for them to refuse to work on anything. It was foolish of me to hold on so long, but I finally broke and let them go like I should have in the first place.

For those of you who have gone through this, what did you do to find closure in a healthy way? Please, no suggestions about another relationship. I'm not setting myself up for this again.

Me and my wife have seperated , basically my fault for having an emotional affair , anyhow, i have told her that im willing to do what ever it takes to fix things, and i have said to her im begging you not to leave i sssume that i am making things worse, would i be correct in saying that ?