That's the hard bit and the only part that really matters.

To everything, turn, turn, turn. -some hippie

I know I was born and I know that I'll die, but in between is mine. ....I am.... mine. -edward veddar


I see your situation through the lenses of my own... As we do...
And although you precede me and wisdom and in age.... I think I precede you in experience...
from the outside looking in, it seems a foregone conclusion.

you have always referred to your wife as she who must be obeyed, or described her irrational behavior....
everything I know about your relationship, everything you've told us about her..... it is all negative. I don't recall ever hearing you say how you love her.... Maybe that's just the nature of how people complain about spouses....


it is a big ugly mess, unraveling two intertwined lives. no one can know if you should, and you cannot make swmbo happy. nor she you.

Where is your center?

Homegrrl was opining about me and my failure to make her life teh fluffeh

For what it's worth, I've used this turn of phrase with several gents since you made it, and they all agree that it has weight-bearing qualities.

"I'm not happy and it's your fault." Really, now, can this condition be overcome, ever? Ever ever?

and is actively investigating finding a marriage counselor

I did that for a while with the ex. Useless. Every session caused us to fight for an hour afterwards. She was generally unsatisfied when something was not considered my fault. I cannot see how couples therapy has any benefit to anyone except the person getting paid.

I suspect this will take a while.

Rip it off like a band-aid.

Sometimes it's better to plan for the rip, as in have plans and resources ready.;)

Word.

People's experiences in this area have always fascinated me, because when my own parents got divorced my brother was really torn up by it, while I honestly could not have cared less. It was hard for me to try to understand why he was so sad.

In school, I had a friend whose parents tricked him and his siblings about their divorce. First, they said, "Kids, guess what? Dad got a big raise, so we're going to get a vacation house!" It was just some random house, but the kids didn't know any better. Then sometimes dad wasn't home in the evenings, because he was working late or "remodeling" their new vacation home. And then when the house was ready, they went to stay at their new vacation house a lot, and they would go swimming and do lots of fun stuff because they were on vacation, except sometimes mom had a headache so she'd stay at the vacation house and nap while the kids went out swimming with dad, and then she usually had a lot of errands to run too, and sometimes she was so busy that dad would pick them up from school himself and they'd start the vacation without her...

And the crazy thing was, even after the routine had settled into a typical custody arrangement, and the dad eventually moved to freaking California and the kids would get on a plane by themselves to go visit him in the summer--even then, my friend would insist that his parents weren't divorced, they were married, and that the situation wasn't weird at all. Dad was in California because that's where the work was, you know, and he didn't want to make the kids change schools, and he had this really nice friend to help him keep the house clean and cook for him sometimes because, you know, he always needed mom to do that stuff for him.

At some point the gang was back together in our 20s, and he got drunk and admitted that now he understood, and he couldn't even decide how he felt about the deception, because he was definitely happier as a kid because of it, but now he was far more bitter and jaded than he would have been had he known the truth as a kid. "It's like Santa Claus!" he yelled. "My parents made me believe in Santa Claus until I graduated high school! Who the fuck does that?" Yeah, it kind of messed him up.

WOW.

Admittedly, he was in denial for WAY longer than a normal person would be. I wasn't close to his siblings, but I'm pretty sure they figured it out and accepted it years earlier.

Sorry, foot3 ... I would get with the planning before doing any ripping. With kids in the picture there isn't any way to do things quickly anyway, so use the time to get good advice and interview a few attorneys. I thought I was clued-in but it turned out there was a ton of stuff I didn't know, stuff that made a huge difference.

If you go the route of mediation it'll likely reduce the collateral damage - but you still need all the info you can get, to help you plan.

I think you handled that really well, foot. Turn it back on HER. It is, after all, HER problem. There's a saying, "What you think about me is none of my business," and that's what you've done. "I will fight no more forever," is good mojo. Good gris-gris. Good muju. Whatever.

What I resist persists.

Be a Ghandi. Resist no more. It will work.

I think I picked a bad week to go on vacation. I am just catching up and there's no way I can do anything but read from this phone.

eta... he posted ...from the phone. durrrrr. I mean I will respond more fully later.