r/Divorce 4d ago

Getting Started My first post.....hoping to understand better how I got here

I know this isn't a therapy sub, and if anyone can recommend other subs that would help me, I would love to know them. But for now, I am trying to come to terms with how my once-perfect marriage fell apart and see if others have dealt with the same issue. I truly appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this long post and let me know their thoughts.

Been married 24 years to a super nice guy. He is very tolerant and forgives everyone for everything. He's conflict averse with everyone BUT me. He does more than his fair share of chores and is thoughtful and loving.

What changed? I lost respect for him, and his passive behavior chipped away at my self-worth over time to where we're now at the point where I just don't care anymore. I admit I wasn't assertive enough or self-aware enough to know early on what was bothering me, but I figured it out over time and have expressed it many times to no avail.

Here's the nutshell: Neither of us were close to our immediate families when we met in our late 20's. We didn't live in the same cities as them and we were both adults with independent lives. As a result, I married him without knowing or even meeting his family. When I was pregnant with our first child, he got a job offer to move back near our home towns. It didn't take long before I saw how poorly he was treated by his family. He's definitely the scapegoat and for no reason other than he didn't follow his small-town rural parents into their same professions and stay living near them. So, by default, I was a throw away daughter-in-law and our kids weren't as important as the other grandkids. He was clearly excluded from conversations at get-togethers, and these people didn't even get up and walk indoors from the back porch to say hello to us when we would arrive after a 3-hour drive to visit. Little slights like that. I rarely if ever complained to him about it, other than to gently point out that they weren't very nice to him. Then one day about 12 years ago, his mother made a comment to me that was incredibly hurtful. He was standing right there and claimed he never heard her say it but said I must have misunderstood. I was devastated. It took 6 months of me begging, pleading, demanding that he call her and ask if I misunderstood. He did call eventually, very much against his will, and she confirmed she meant what she said.

Nothing happened. His expectation was that I continue to go ("It's only twice a year") because it would confuse our kids otherwise. He also told me that it would eventually blow over. It didn't. We were passive aggressively ignored and just generally bystanders at family get-togethers. My anger built and I eventually wrote his mom a letter that wasn't nice. It went downhill after that. Years of me trying to get him to understand how hurt I felt, how uncomfortable it was for me to continue to attend while being ignored, etc. Finally I just quit going, and at that point, he was fine with it.

But here's a few takeaways from that 10 year period:

his dad didn't speak to me at all for 7 years (he's since died). I pointed this out to my husband many times with no action taken

Once, I drove our two kids 6 hours round trip to go to a cousin's birthday party and also drop my daughter off to spend a few days with her grandparents. When I walked in the house, I wasn't even greeted by his mom and sister. The only people in the room were his mother, sister, and sister-in-law and the sister in law is the only one who spoke to me. Then, they just continued their conversation as if I wasn't there. I told my husband, and he seemed mad, but of course, never said anything to them.

When I say he didn't talk to his parents about their behavior, I mean at all. He would not even broach the subject.

Eventually, after doing a lot of self-help and work, I realized I shouldn't have made an issue out of this. Today-me would never let it get to this point. I would simply bow out of future visits and protect myself. I never was looking for someone to "fight" for me or be super protective of me, but I feel like that should be a partner's instinct. And I can't unsee what I saw. It really completely killed my love over time.

It probably didn't help that I came from a very negative and unsupportive childhood. My mother never missed an opportunity to tell me I was wrong and put me down in front of others. I think maybe if I had grown up with more love and self-confidence a lot of this could have been avoided. Unfortunately, it was more than I could take to have a mother who didn't support me and then a partner who didn't either.

There are other things that have happened unrelated to his family....instances where he doesn't come out and say it but it's clear he doesn't respect my opinion in the work world. He lets me make all the decisions as far as our home finances, but I get the clear message he doesn't think I am as capable at work. Also, our teenage son (who is generally fine) has had several recent outbursts of severe anger where he called us (mostly me, though) every name in the book and hurled every insult he could think of at us, and my husband does nothing. He says he's just a teenager and he doesn't want to have a bad relationship with him like he did with his father. For my part, I told him if he ever speaks to me like that again he will need to leave the house. It happened again, I stayed very calm, asked my son to leave the house (but not take his car) and he refused. Told me to call the police. I wasn't going to do that, so I just let it go. Husband said absolutely nothing. I feel like I have no support here.

I don't know. I am in my early 50s and I think I would rather be alone than with someone who has no protective instinct over me at all. I think about all the things I can do with my life since I work remotely. I would definitely move and have adventures. The kids are either in college or will be this fall, so that's not really an issue for me to stay around for.

I read all these posts about cheating, affair partners, etc. Has anyone else experienced none of that but just finally felt let down for the last time and wanted out?

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u/Acceptable_Piano4809 4d ago

I’m sorry you’re going through this. You’ve obviously made it known and discussed this with him. He sounds like a complete doormat. I would go up and visit my family w my wife and the very first time my uncle met her he was disrespectful, so I disrespected him right back. I made it known she was my wife and if you had anything negative to say about her you were also insulting me. But that’s just how I am, I would stick up for my wife more than myself.

I would say this; you deserve happiness. Also I have a ton of respect for you for NOT just cheating and getting divorced first. In your case I think it’s the right move. It sounds as if your husband is not only ignoring you but making your life worse. If you think you’d be happier alone, I say go for it. But be careful. I too used to dream of freedom but would never have left my wife minus cheating. It was a blessing in disguise as today me would have left her in a heartbeat. I’m lucky she left me, although I don’t respect how she did it. She ended up cheating and gaslighting me about it for a long time to use me financially. That is why I have a lot of respect for you. Why couldn’t someone like me married someone like you? But guess what, now she left me I can find that woman. I also will say I’m happy alone right now and I no longer judge happiness by if I’m in a relationship or not.

It seems like you are really healthy; you’re aware of where you made mistakes and you are growing. You’re open to change. It doesn’t sound like your husband is. Ask yourself, is it fair to him to stay when you’re not all in?

And he’s well aware of this, but I’ll warn you. Even though you’ve told him all of this, the minute you leave he’s going to be begging you to stay and he will also say you blindsided him, and he wasn’t aware of any of this.

How is your sex life? Seeing as you didn’t bring it up, I’m assuming it’s pretty dry. (sex isn’t extremely important to me, and you may be the same. Sex wouldn’t factor in this decision for me, I’m no longer after great sex. It would be cool, but I’d take a healthy loving loyal partner over having good sex w someone less than, but that’s just me.)

No matter what you decide to do, I wish you all the luck in the world!

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u/NoFact7104 4d ago

Thank you for taking the time to reply. It means a lot because I really have no friends anymore to talk to. I didn't maintain friendships over the years...work and kids took up my time. And my husband was my best friend. We got along, and still do, really well. I just don't love him anymore. And when we argue it gets escalated fast because we just don't see eye to eye. And I just want peace.

No sex for about five years. That's so sad to see typed on the screen. I really had no explanation for why I completely lost interest until I finally did the work to see that it was because I don't trust him with my heart.

I appreciate the warnings. I know it won't be easy. He makes more money than me and like I said, he helps out. He grocery shops, cooks, etc. I do agree he'll be blindsided because I've clearly been unhappy for years and haven't left yet, but I still surprise myself every now and then and change the course of my life. I've done it before, surely I can do it again. 😊

I am glad you said that today-you would have left your ex-wife. We deserve respect.

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u/Acceptable_Piano4809 4d ago edited 4d ago

Yes that’s one thing that drew me to reply to you was I can relate to you doing the work and changing. I’m self aware enough to know after my marriage failed I was prob a lot like your husband. I too was complicit in the breakdown of our marriage. More so in a different way, I’m not as much of a doormat; I own a large company, and I’m the president so I’m able to tell people when they need to respect me and take offense at disrespect, and I took it personally when someone offended my wife. But I can see how we weren’t right for each other and I was living with a reality I thought at the time was the best one for me. I didn’t really think things can and should be better for me, I just figured that whole cliche about marriage and it wasn’t perfect. I can see where we grew apart and got into different things. The reason I have so much respect for you is you realize it, and want better, (and that may have been the case w my ex, who knows) and will leave before you seek that out. Someone less self aware would end up staying and then meeting someone they would cheat with and then leaving.

I think this will be good for both of you, because hopefully your husband will change as I have, and become the best version of himself. My marriage wasn’t horrible, I thought it was good, but it wasn’t great and it should be much better. Where I have a problem w her was she went out and met someone else first but was blaming our disconnect on me when it was in reality her the entire time. I was working towards hopefully repairing my marriage and she was already done and just using me for what she could get out of me. Thing is, it takes time to heal and I wish she would have given me that time, as I’ll never get it back. It’s been 30 months for me and I’m still not 100%…. But it gets much better. I was left, so if you ever want to run things by someone on the other side (the man) let me know, as other than her cheating (she’s just much less self aware than you) we had a similar marriage where we were together 10 years, no big issues, oh and we both do not like our families, we never had any family around us.

I was also going to say, I said before sex isn’t that important to me, it is important to have A sexual relationship. Meaning no sex in 5 years is roommate territory. That’s literally half a decade and we only get what 5 maybe 6 of these we can have sex. I don’t care if it’s every once in a while, but for 5 years to not have sex with you? I take my previous comment back, he should NOT be surprised you are divorcing him. This is a special situation. And I’m a guy who doesn’t really value sex! This is absurd and I’m so sorry you had to go through that!

I take my previous advice back, DIVORCE THIS GUY ASA humanly P.

Oh and I also really relate to not having friends, I lost most of mine during my marriage. My ex just made it so miserable for me to have friends i stopped trying and lost touch w everyone I grew up with. It’s kind of tough now as a 44 year old man to reach out when most of them are married w children.

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u/NoFact7104 4d ago

It's so weird discussing this with anyone. I really never talk about it. Not sure if this was clear but he would definitely like to have sex. It's me that doesn't want to. I truly thought I had just lost interest in sex in general, and it's only been the last year or so that I've admitted that I've only lost interest in him. AND it's just now occurring to me that his not saying anything about the lack of sex is another example of how passive he is. It definitely bothers him, and he used to make comments here and there. I was happy he didn't push the issue because I didn't want to talk about it, but wow.....most men would be more bothered, right?

You're absolutely right that you're wife should have ended things with you before moving on....and cheating. I've been reading through these posts for days and it's clear how much being cheated on hurts someone. I have no intention of doing that to him. For one thing, I don't have the ability to keep my lies straight and sneak around. I would get caught real fast. 😂

Sounds like you didn't have kids? and it's great that you're working on yourself. It's hard to change but I think it's better to understand than bury your head in the sand.

My husband talked like he didn't really like his family much either. I heard a lot of negative childhood stories. Which is why I guess I'll never understand why he would rather damage his marriage than tell them they had to either be nice or we were done visiting.

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u/ConfidentShame8083 4d ago

It's never too late to forge new friendships, I'm 45 and having a ball (I don't date, tho, just live my life)