I am 39, she is 47. We have been (were) married for almost fourteen yrs. We share two kids, D11 and S7. She is a school teacher and both go to the same school she teaches so they both live with her. The decree spells out 50/50 but with my job I can barely see them even during my time to see them due to scheduling differences.
I will attempt a nut shell version...
We somewhat skipped the dating process and moved in with each other almost immediately after only a few months. We were married about a 2 1/2 years later and had our daughter. During the years prior to our daughter things were wonderful. We had our moments when things weren't great but always found a way to work it through. Honestly sometimes we didn't even do that... we would just wait until one could not stand the silence anymore and then we go straight to make up sex. Making love was frequent to say the least (sometimes three, four times a day; sometimes days at a time only stopping to eat or drink)...
After our daughter was born the sex almost dropped off completely. two to three times a week and as time progressed it got less and less. I biggest issue I had with any of this was not so much the decrease in sex but the fact that eventually I became second to my daughter, which I did not mind except for the fact that my W completely switched beds. She was no long sleeping with me. Though, I tried to understand the need for her to care for and be close to our child, I never understood why she never came back... YES, she never came back. Our daughter is now 11 and my W (ex) is still not in the same bed as me and now seemingly will never be again. Our son was conceived four years later only with the conscious effort that we wanted another child. Now, I'm not saying our sex life died out completely but it definitely was not anywhere near what it was. There were times we'd go weeks or even months without. Each time I would grow more and more wounded, resentful. To be honest with you, I do not know if this actual manifested into other issues or if other issues contributed to our sex life. I'm sure both somehow, but it was for me a re-occurring issue I kept bringing up as it was never really resolved.
With this, many other things followed and ultimately became less and less bearable. We grew intolerant of small things and let them manifest into larger things. We became less supportive of each other, feeding off our resent and doing things passive aggressively to hurt the other. Some was intentional and other times, because we just got so use to it, was completely unintentional. Though we apologized for the unintentional, I don't believe the other ever really trusted the apology.
These types of issues carried on for quite sometime and just became the norm of how we dealt with things. Otherwise the relationship seemed fine and we always had plenty of good times. But when it got bad, there was always underlining issues that would make them extremely volatile. (Gosh, now that I think about it, there were so many underlining issues...)
Last April 2013, was the catalyst for the end however. I lost my job of ten plus years and had to come home and tell her. I broke down and though neither of us recognized it, I went into a depression. Classic depression... I took everything out on her, blamed her for my unhappiness and was not pleasant to be around at all. Though I was able to find another job fairly quickly, my depression had settled in and I wasn't happy with anything in my life. This continued for several months and within those months I believe I may have drove her into her own depression. She began going through menopause and her annual check resulted n a dark spot found in her breast. Though the spot proved to be nothing, it was enough for her to re-evaluate her life and situation in life. Her prospective about me took a complete change and for the worse. I made it easy as I was now just a big lump of self absorbed, self loathing mess. Our arguments were constant. almost every other day. Sometimes small, sometimes extremely harsh and volatile though never physical.
We both had become so unhappy and so miserable with each other and our lives. But I think what hurts me the most is what happened during our last fight. It was Jan 2nd. After our fight, I stormed up stairs to nap so I could go to work that night (grave shift schedule)... I did not sleep... I stared at the ceiling and had epiphany... "You're a jerk and you need to snap out of this. She loves you and your kids love you and you need to get back in the game and take care of your responsibilities and stop feeling sorry for yourself. And above all... LOVE YOUR WIFE... she is your best friend and you need to be hers", I said to myself.
I was so excited about coming out of my rut; excited to tell her things would be different, things would change and be better. But before, I could relay my epiphany and start making things better... she followed up the next day with "I don't love you anymore, I haven't for a long time... I want a divorce".
