I'm sure someone might come and say DB is for you, it's not to save your marriage, and to focus on yourself but we all know that the reason it's called "DB" and the reason we turn to it is because we hope to save our marriages. In your case though I kind of think at this stage it's not that your 180 is backfiring but that nothing you do would make a difference in your husband's plan. Sure you could make it worse by being more obstinate but it doesn't seem anything you say or do will magically, instantly turn your husband back to the nice guy he used to be. I do believe, however, that once he's living alone he'll initially love it and then slowly he'll start to realize what he did. We can only believe and hope that he'll regret what he's done. If your 180's become permanent then hopefully your husband will see that you've changed over time and he'll start to see you in a new light. It doesn't appear that he's doing this because of you or how you treated him. Don't we all have good and bad points about ourselves? The vast majority of husbands, even when they have their kids, still love their wives and stay committed. So what's happening to your husband must be something deeper within himself that's wrong or he's having an affair which you don't suspect. Are you sure in 15 years there was never any sign of instability in your husband? My husband had a mini-episode two years before he left the first time. He almost had an affair, started talking about needing time alone, ignored me, and became hostile for about three weeks. I was devastated. Then one day he came home and said he was sorry, he loved me, and he was wrong. He said he would stop acting that way and he did and everything went back to normal. I blamed it on certain circumstances in our lives at that time (he was hanging around a younger crowd at a school he was attending, we had just moved to a new city, etc..). At that time I thought it was an isolated incident but now after he left two times I know that something is seriously wrong. Has your husband demonstrated any kind of this behavior in the past? If so, what fixed it? Maybe that would give you a clue. Otherwise maybe the pressure of working with two young children caused him to snap but what he doesn't realize is that this is a temporary phase. In a few years the girls will be at school. In 18 years they'll be away at college. He's obviously just thinking about himself right in this moment and wants to get out, but he hasn't thought at all about the long-term. One of my friends from your region made the point that it'll be harder for her daughter to marry a good man if she gets divorced because people in your culture care a lot about someone coming from a good family. A broken family might turn away some suitors. Has your husband thought about that? If he loves his children, doesn't he want them to have the best life possible? And what about your finances? Won't you both have less resources to offer your daughters living in separate households? Won't your husband be sorry when you don't have enough money to give them certain things? It doesn't seem like he's thought about this at all. He's just thinking about himself and how miserable he is and how this is all your fault but I'm sure you're not that bad or you wouldn't be here on this forum desperately trying to save your marriage! If you were that bad you'd be like the wayward wives we hear about from the men on this board. But no, you're working hard, doing everything for your family. Even if you're too controlling sometimes or have a temper your husband could have asked that you go to counseling together to work on managing it better. That's not the case. He just wants to leave. Just like my husband - he just walked out without a care in the world about how it affects us.
My impression is that you're doing the best you can do right now and unfortunately even if you change your strategy it may not help just yet. But I bet within a year the situation will be quite different. I bet within a year you'll start to see changes in your husband even after divorce.
I hope you can just make it through the next few weeks and then the worst will be over and you'll get a chance to breath and hopefully grieve this loss and then wait to see what happens over time.
