46/M. I've been with her since 2009. I'm the type of person who takes the lead. I tend to know what I want and how things should be done, and I enjoy seeing success. It works for me, but not for everyone. It also means I don't get along with everyone, and I'm OK with that. I've learned to be OK, and I thought I had a partner who understood that. Nope. Big nope. She's the same in many other ways.
Before this relationship, I went through another that was already difficult; I ended up in financial ruin because of the recession, had a lot to deal with, and ended up bankrupt. Never really had the chance to recoup mentally from all of that. She came along, and it was fine and fun. I was weak and alone, and ended up in a toxic hellhole. She comes from a broken family, and I come from something in between, really not a good combo. Her demeanor is non-confrontational. I want to understand. I tend to be too direct, and she's always retreated from that.
I somehow "poke and prod."
Every job she's held, there's something wrong; everyone is to blame. Would come home, ramble for straight 60 minutes about how everyone is doing it wrong, no one is ever right. It gets progressively worse.
She got her new job last year, complains about it nonstop, hides behind the screen all day, doesn't say a word, and constantly cries. Somehow, she's responsible for everyone else, not any of us at home. I try to speak to her, and she gives me the third degree of "Why are you distracting me?" I say something about my work, and she goes on to point out every detail as if I understand her line of work instead of just keeping it high-level, and I have to stand there and just listen.
When she was unemployed for a whole year, I would pay her $2K per check, no questions asked. For the first few months, she was "the happiest she could ever be," and that lasted a few months before it turned into her sitting on her ass all day playing Minecraft. Barely lifted a finger, never vacuumed the floor, no housework.
She gave me a disease; she won't admit it, but she did, so I got stuck there. Ended up marrying her, thinking, yeah, OK, we're figuring it out. She decided she wanted kids, didn't fully consult me, so we ended up with a kid and a second because my naivete led me to think we'd figure it out. In between all of that, it was still volatile.
So now, I have my own issues, and a family to support, I buckled up, started hustling, and ended up making a good money, I start providing, I don't ask questions, pay the rent, work, work, work, deal with the high stress of the job, come home, maybe it's fine, more than enough days, it's not. She takes off, goes to her mom's in Colorado, gets in a fight with her, because her mom is the source of her childhood trauma, then comes home and dumps it on me.
She egged me on in front of her cousin at a family trip. I asked her to stop, but she wouldn't because she was drunk and high on weed. I walked myself out, waited for an apology, not an apology, but a full-blown fight, so I went back home. When confronted, she told me, "She regretted having kids with me." That was the apology I got when she ridiculed me in front of other people. Instead, I had to apologize to her family for my actions.
COVID hit, we moved to a different state, I bought a house, thinking this was the life event reset we needed. Nope. Not enough, had to complain about how the house isn't what she wanted. Bro, people would kill for a 2.5% mortgage rate in one of the best school districts. Who cares if the house isn't a mid-century modern or an exact fit? She wanted to spend more time shopping while the market was hot, but she didn't realize the time sensitivity.
With her, everything seems to require a stipulation or a negating requirement that keeps things from moving forward, less about taking a calculated risk and more about paralysis.
I'm still not doing enough. I haven't seen any feedback; it's been a series of negative comments from her. Hang out with the neighbors. I try to get involved in the conversation, and she audibly says "shh" in front of everyone, and people look in shock. In front of her family? "suck it up, teardrop." kind of comments because I said something to her mom.
Last Halloween? She's so severely depressed, gets drunk as a sailor in front of her sister and husband, and I have to deal with the embarrassment. Her sister asked me, "What happened?" I couldn't hold back, told her she's depressed, and alcohol is just not a good combo for that. She does nothing to confront her issues.
She's constantly yelling at the boy, but not with the girl. The boy is the younger one; he's her punching bag, and she doesn't see it. On occasion, I've told her to stop doing that, hoping she'd realize that a mother shouldn't yell at the boy. This is one of the many reasons dudes end up fucked up later in life. I should know; my mother did more or less of the same. I had to write her off when my father passed away. The boy wets the bed at 11 years old. The psychological impact that she's inflicting on him, in addition to whatever he had going on, is painful. He needs warmth and nurturing, not a barrage of yelling, and I can't do anything about it because if I say something, she'll think I'm negating, poking, or prodding.
I stopped putting myself in any social situation where she was next to me in front of others—asking her to go out, for example. Forget it. Once, she was asked to go to a job function. Holy hell, the level of anxiety and awkwardness was enough for me never to ask again.
I change something in the house, like the decor, her comment is "it's irritating." She'd rather do nothing but criticize everything.
I wrote her a long-winded email last September about all those issues; her response was to hurt. Fucked up, but OK, I own that.
Meanwhile, I have all these abandonment issues, which she clearly knew about, but that wasn't enough of a reason. More and more, I detached myself from it all, and her response? Blow up in the garage in my face, and when I said "I didn't have a good model to learn from," her response was somewhere along the lines of "you're just like your dad." Like, dude, you put me in an impossible position, with no possible options, and I'm not allowed to detach?
Everything ends up being "we communicate differently," and I still don't know what that means. I have never heard this person say a single thing that substantiates her feelings other than "retreat" and "push off".
Then she tried to propose a separation, for what? Seven months later, I finally told her last night that we're done. She told me she's got nothing to show for it, and she's almost 50. Tries to hold me hostage with the kids while not doing anything to at least reciprocate even an ounce of care. Meanwhile, I pay for everything while she makes $160K. I have no idea what she does with her money. I don't ask, but it seems like she's always got a bill to pay.
Oh yeah, and her actions speak louder than her words. She decided that her W4 should be filed separately last year, and when I filed the taxes? Yup, a big IRS F-you bill, so instead she texts me, "I deposited $1,000 in savings for the bill."
Nothing is good enough; she is full of negativity, everything comes with a rebuttal, and I can't speak my mind without having her counter any of my points. I had had enough. I told her last night it's far too broken, and she admitted she hadn't cared for a while. She'd rather string me along than let me go because "she still has feelings."
OK, I'll be the bad guy and tell her what she wants me to tell her. I'm sure she'll find some reasons to be negative about that as well.
I finally had a decent sleep last night. Haven't slept in the same bed for a whole year because "I snore too much," and that onslaught of complaining was enough for me.
I'm moving out, far away, to reset and find myself without her; it'll be uncontested. I'm still going to pay for the full mortgage and all to keep the kids, but I need me, I need to figure myself out. I feel empty and hollow at this point. I'm lonely, don't have friends, and I need a reset without worrying about her. It's too bad the kids end up in the same dysfunction that she lived through, and yet somehow, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, contributed to it.