Thank you all for the hard advice. I am on mobile and will respond later with more thoroughness.
My preference is to bring this up in our next MC which is unfortunately not until mid October. I want to tell my W this is not working for me - the custody and the finances. Is it a mistake to avoid confronting her until MC? I know I shouldn’t fear her but she will absolutely flip out if I do this outside of MC. I guess that’s her problem though right? Alternatively I could move up the appointment to an earlier date?
This is exactly the opposite of what you should do - fear driven avoidance. What you do with your life is up to you, but I think that at every single decision you have made up to this point, you have taken the absolutely worst option. So you need to learn to question and overcome your instincts.
I think you need to step back, don't think about your wife, think about yourself. Imagine your worst possible outcome 5 years from now. Maybe this is that is you are an every other weekend babysitter, your ex lives off of 60% of your paycheck with an unemployed guy with neck tattoos, and your kids call him dad. We will call that outcome 1. Now think of an alternative outcome 2- you are divorced, you have 50-50 custody, you pay her reasonable amount of child support but you can afford to do fun things, and you have a cute girlfriend who is absolutely smitten with you. Now think of outcome 3: you reconcile with your wife.
Now, ignore outcome 3 because there is absolutely nothing that you can do to make that happen, that is not a choice.
Your Choice is literally between outcomes 1 or 2. These are your options. Right now you are actively choosing Option 1 based on your actions. If you want to, you can change your track and choose Option 2. The steps are easy - don't go to MC, retain a lawyer, instruct them to file for divorce or legal separation with 50-50 custody, fixed period of spousal support, and force the sale of the house, and communicate with your waw solely through email, cc'ing your lawyer.
Now, after you have thought all this through, you can give yourself permission to briefly think about the options facing your wife and what is driving her decision. Right now her choice is between Option 1 and Option 3. You are handing Option 1 to her and right now it looks way better than Option 3. Now, if you take away option 1 and instead give her the choice of Option 2 versus Option 3, well, then her choices will probably start to look different.
(PS I don't for a second buy her story that she is scared of you, I have seen that story over and over again - most of the guys I see have heard this story and often there is a visit from the cops and restraining order to go along with it. Meanwhile their waw or ww is yucking it up with their friends or OM. The common denominator in these cases is a submissive or nice guy husband, and a waw who figured out this is the best method to control them. I would suggest you never acknowledge anything she says on this subject)
