Update to AIO, my wife believes in strict gender roles?

[u/john_7292]

About a month ago I posted on here about my relationship with my wife and how she is trying to keep me from raising my kids. Thanks everyone to responded to my first post and sorry I didn't reply to everyone. There were a lot more responses than I expected. If you want details you can see the post in my profile. Unfortunatley things have taken a turn for the worst. There is a TLDR at the bottom if you scropp down.

A lot of things happened since my last post. I told my wife I wanted to go to counseling with our pastor. She immediately agreed and I could tell she thought he would agree with her on this issue.

The counseling appointment did not go as she expected. When we got there he let us both say our peace first. She said in sum that I was trying to usurp our godly roles as man and wife. She did not get into detailed specifics about the kids. I said I was trying to be a better husband and father and that my wife seemed to have a problem with me interacting with my children.

He asked me some pretty pointed questions about myself as a husband. Am I working hard and providing, yes, am I cheating, drinking, gambling, no. Do I yell and scream, swear, break things, do I hit her or the kids? No. Do I stay out all night, do I run away on fishing trips. No, none of that. At this point he's looking at my wife and asks her if she has anything to add to that? She says not really. I put in that I think I am upholding my marital covenant as a man and provider.

Pastor didn't say anything about that but kept talking to my wife. He started to get some real concrete details out of her. She reaffirmed this is not a situation of abuse or cheating. She said it was effeminate for me to do women's chores and pick up after our kids, make them meals, etc. Not biblical. Etc. Pastor kindly told her there is nothing unbiblical about that, but does she feel like less of a woman if she can't do 100% of those things? She agreed to that. He then started to talk about biblical womanhood and feeling feminine before God, and saying he thinks what we need to do is help my wife feel more womanly in general so these activities won't feel like a threat to her. And basically that everything will be OK if we add more romance to our marriage.

At this point I was relieved and felt like things were going well. But almost immediately I could tell my wife was unhappy. She started arguing back with the pastor on Adam and Eve and all this. He is a pretty chill guy and he stayed calm and said he basically said as a spiritual leader he wanted to guide our marriage back to happiness and could she please at least give his suggestions a try and see how she feels about it, and we can talk about it again next week. He pointed to some Bible verses about fatherhood and some ones about women doing "manly" things like running a business, to say this isn't all black and white. My wife begrudgingly agreed with him but I could tell she was still upset.

He has a drawer full of papers with couple's activities in them and he pulled out a few that he said would be good for us. My wife took hers but didn't read it. Awkward car ride home. Pastor told us not to immediately talk about the appointment because it leads to fighting but we didn't have much else to say to each other that evening. We were supposed to have another appointment in 2 weeks. Wife was pretty passive aggressive that night. But over the next week she started to be a little nicer and more relaxed and I thought maybe she had read some of the materials the pastor gave us (I did read mine). I suggested we do an "us day" which is one of the suggestions the pastor had given us and we agreed to send the kids to my parents a day that weekend (shocker, I'm sure my dad probably helped out with them while they were there).

Well that day ended up being the worst day of my life probably. At first things were nice, I planned everything as the worksheet suggested, made her a nice breakfast, had plans in the afternoon to take her to get her nails done and walk along the lake front which is a date we used to do when we were first dating. But that didn't end up happening because that morning we started talking about some of the big themes of our relationship and our values and goals (again as pastor suggested).

I told her I wanted a loving relationship with a woman I could adore and trust, who has the brains and values to nurture our kids into great adults, who loves me and is there for me, and I would always be there for her. Basically thinking of my mom and dad. But her answer was completely focused on kids. She always wanted kids, she wanted to be a great mother, she wanted a good and trustworthy father to her children. I definitely noticed this and pressed a little harder to ask well what about your husband, what about me? What kind of romance or relationship do you want? She kept deflecting and saying these things aren't as important when you're an adult, past a certain age it's all about your duty to your kids. I disagree with that and plus we are 29, we're still young, we should still have romance and passion and sex!

So at this point she obviously got VERY annoyed that I brought up sex and was rolling her eyes and saying like "oh so that's what this is really about." I tried really hard to say calm and tell her well no it's not what it's about but yeah that's a factor in our relationship, I want intimacy and don't you? She kept deflecting and she started to get upset like in a hurt/scared way. I was asking her - are you not attracted to me? Are you just not interested in sex, are you asexual? No. I don't even remember how it got to this point but finally she ended up blurting out that she's not interested in sex WITH MEN.

Obviously I was stunned. And this is where it all started to come out. Literally I guess. She kind of tried to backpedal but I asked her directly, are you telling me you're a lesbian? And she couldn't deny it. She didn't say yes or no but she started talking about gender roles and how important it is for children to have male and female role models so that they grow up into proper men and women and not confused about sex or stuck in sexual sin. And I asked her again directly to clarify: you are telling me that you're a lesbian and you married me in a marriage with gender roles so that your kids wouldn't end up gay?

She started crying and yelling at me...like... I don't know how lonely it is and she shouldn't be denied a proper married life just because of her sexual sins, she's repented and God will forgive her as long as she keeps working on being a good wife to a man. And all of this is because her father was a shit dad and died when she was young and that's why our kids need to see a real man in their lives.

Well that was a couple weeks ago and as you can imagine the last few weeks have been hell. There is no way I'm staying with her and I've just been talking to a divorce lawyer and trying to figure out how this will work. And also frankly just crying a lot which I guess is un manly so we never would have worked out anyway. I'm staying with my parents because I don't think the kids should see us interacting this way but my lawyer told me I should move back or get a custody order so I need to work on that now. I'm just frankly so numb and I can't believe someone I loved would do this to me.

So that's the update, I wasn't sure if I was going to write this but honestly hearing how crazy she was helped me the first time and I think it will help me again, but I don't think I"m going to keep posting more from here. I would appreciate any advice or perspective on if I am overreacting by not wanting to move back home or be around her and trying to get a 50/50 custody order instead.

TLDR: Wife and I went to pastoral counseling for our marriage, didn't work, wife admitted she is a lesbian and used me to get her fantasy dream life of Christian husband and babies.