WAW is angry and filing divorce

[SH_]

sandi2 I have read much of your info on the forums for sometime and you are somewhat of a legend from what I can see. Your input and feedback is very helpful for many and I appreciate seeing you reply.

In response to some of your questions, I believe her doubts of me are based more on my failure to fulfill promises throughout our relationship. I know that I have never had an affair and I am 99.9% sure she has not either. We have both worked full time jobs and been home with our children so that is not an issue.
When I say I have failed on many promises, this stems from my over cautiousness in life and making big decisions. I am very tight with money and I believe that this has created an environment that she perceives as very controlling.
Some quick background on that. In the first half of the marriage I was in school and working and then we had my D17 early on and so we struggled financially. I let her make a lot of the spending decisions and we were constantly in debt trying to move forward. Once I finished school she had dreams of big things and convinced me to move from Utah where we lived to Arizona and she came down and left me and my D who was 3 at the time for about 3 months. It was a challenging time and we got further in debt while I played single dad and worked and tried to job hunt in Arizona so we could come down and be a family. My W goal was to buy a house at the time and go from there to live our dream life. Long story short we both ended up with poor jobs , making poor money and working odd schedules that kept the family even more separated as my baby girl age 3 was in a lot of day care. I started struggling with depressive episodes and struggled to make big decisions and backed out of purchasing a home due to our debt and unstable jobs. I also holed myself up a lot at home when not working and did not spend time with my W and D.
So fast forward, and over the past several years I got tired of the debt and other poor choices and depression so I started taking control of many aspects of my life and the family decisions. It started to look controlling to her and while I dug us out of debt, I have struggled to get moving forward with a new career and move into a home instead of the apartment that we have lived in for 14 years.
Now that she is proceeding with a divorce, I believe that she is paranoid because she is now fearing her financial ability on her own and that I am trying to short change her in the divorce proceedings. She has mentioned many of her friends that are divorced tell her horror stories of how folks become mean when divorcing. So that is one of my theories.
My coach has shared that her anger may also stem from her seeing me do so many things that she wanted me to do in the past and that is adding to her anger. He coaches me not to read into it, and maintain my cool. He advises to look at her more like a sister when speaking to her to offer her assistance and comfort, but if she rejects it, I know I still love her and it will not sting as much as when I see her as my wife. Simple yet effective advice so far.