For those who filed for divorce, at what point did you decide to cross the proverbial Rubicon?
For me, (M-45 married 10 years) I am at my wit's end with my wife 42. My wife had always been hostile, but when I broke up with her initially a good while ago, she promised change and she did change. There's always normal things that come up and here and there, but nothing that I cannot deal with.
Well her mom got a stroke and died about 3 years ago. In the months leading up to the death and the death saw my wife struggling, understandably. I allowed myself to become a punching bag for her verbal abuse and disdain.
Well, during this time, my wife became a spendthrift. She blew through all of our savings and now we live paycheck-to-paycheck. I cannot talk to her because she becomes hostile. There is no intimacy. I refuse to date her because the few times I tried, she was either hostile to me or at best, just going through the motions until she could get home and do what she truly wants to do, play on her phone and chainsmoke.
A year ago, I tried to get intimate with her and she said that I grossed her out. A few days later, she talked to me about it and pretended that it either didn't happen or it wasn't a big deal. I offered her marital counseling but she refused.
What really gets to me is that she can be so nice to everyone else. She goes out of her way to help neighbors, acts super friendly to friends. I just do not get any of this kindness. All I get is a wife who overspends and chooses cigarettes over me.
I know she cares about me. When I cut myself cleaning the house, she rushed. But that is the extent of her caring.
My question is that at what point did you feel the need to end the marriage? How bad was your headspace before you got to that point? I don't want to hear how I messed up because I know I never held her accountable for her ways and her defensive mechanisms of acting hostile when I would try led me to choosing peace over holding her accountable. Again I know this and I accept my character faults. But at current pace, the years of disrespect, lack of intimacy, and no end in sight to the spending have really gotten me so upset and unable to concentrate.