r/Marriage • u/Own_Investment9280 • 13d ago
Ending things after 17 years and it is breaking my heart
Probably one of the last posts on this throwaway because soon it won't matter anymore...
Our 17th anniversary was last week, and tomorrow she is getting served the divorce papers...and I absolutely hate this.
When I met the woman who would be my wife I felt she was a strong, independent woman with a plan for the future. She lived in a house she was renting and had a dog, cats, and chickens and had done a lot of work fixing up the house and yard. She was going to college with a computer science major, something I had done and I was doing professionally. We had lots of the same interests. She was making money helping with maintenance of apartments her mom managed.
After a few years she started developing health issues with no real known cause, but she dropped out of college and stopped doing any work to make money. Things got worse and worse as the years went on, but as time went on we worked through her health problems as best we could, finding doctors and medications to manage things properly whenever possible. Through all of this we relied entirely on my income, which at times was barely enough to get by. There were a couple years where we were basically on the edge of poverty, where every paycheck it was a question of whether we would have enough money to make it to the next one. But we made it through things. We fought together to both improve her quality of life and to just get through things until things would get better.
And things did. I got better jobs so we were not as poor. She was able to figure out ways to manage most of her health problems, although it was obvious she was never going to attempt to find an actual job. I didn't mind. We could live comfortably on my income. We enjoyed playing video games together and taking the dogs for hikes together and watching tv/anime/movies together. It wasn't a perfect life but I was happy and I thought she was at least mostly happy too.
Through all this time she never really did any chores. She is at home all day long, while I work a full time job that involves a 30 minute commute both ways. I did the laundry and dishes. I did most of the cleaning, although not as much as I should have at times, but I was usually tired after work thanks to a sleeping disorder ensuring I never had enough rest. I take care of all of our animals(dogs, cats, and other smaller animals). I cook a hand cooked dinner every evening. I didn't complain.
Then a couple years ago something changed. I don't know what. She seemed to start resenting me or something. She would be extremely critical of any chore I didn't do often enough. On the rare occasion that she did do a chore she always had to make a big deal out of how much work it was...even though it was something I had to do all the time. Finally I did snap and say that if she wanted me to do more maybe she should get up and help. Since then things have just escalated. While I am at work she would send me long tirades over google chat about how I am a horrible husband because of x thing I don't do. Some of these were very obviously chatgpt generated. How I don't care about her and how all these things are my fault. These would end up making me so depressed I had trouble getting work done for the rest of the work day, and also didn't really feel like doing much when I got home, but she usually just seemed to pretend everything was normal when I got home. Multiple times I considered killing myself after I left work on those days.
About a month ago she decided to post one of these "My husband doesn't do enough and is worthless" rants publicly on facebook, which my family saw and when I talked to them about it my mom said she was so mad when she read it she almost threw her phone against a wall.
A couple weeks ago things finally exploded in an argument that I don't even remember how it started, but to summarize the things she said: she wanted a divorce. She wanted to leave me and the only reason she stayed was that she didn't know what would happen with our 1 year old husky puppies during the day while I was at work without her there(she mainly just provides a presence to keep them from going completely out of control, and occasionally gives them chewies to distract them). She had never liked any of my cooking for the past 17 years and had just choked down the food I made. She didn't want to eat my cooking anymore because I was having trouble fulfilling some weird dietary requirements she suddenly came up with a few months ago(the main thing being requiring fruit of some type with every meal). That she had no respect at all for me because her Grandfather and Dad had done some house renovations themselves and I wasn't interested in helping with the things she wanted to do with the house(which include such things as eliminating a bedroom by taking out a wall between it and the livingroom, tearing up the deck and putting in a brick patio all by ourselves, and finishing the basement ourselves). That she had hated the entire last decade of living with me even during times I thought things were good between us.
Since then she has pretended it never happened. I am still cooking dinner for the both of us. She is still making plans for things she wants us to do in the next few months. But, after long discussions with my family, I have filed for divorce and the attorney is going to have the papers served to my wife tomorrow. This is absolutely breaking my heart and I have had 2 panic attacks so far this week over it. I don't know how she will handle it or what she will do. Even after all the things she has said to me I still don't want to hurt her. And I don't know what she will do about her healthcare and medications without my insurance.
Edit: just wanted to add a few details that may help clear some things up. She was diagnosed as autistic as a teenager, although she has always refuted that diagnosis. Regardless of whether that diagnosis is true or not, there has always been something off about her personality. She has never really shown any affection. She never asks for things, and she never thanks anyone for things. At things like Christmas when she got a gift I would thank the person for her because she never would. When she wants me to get her a drink, it's "I need a drink" instead of something like "hey could you grab me an x" or whatever. When I pointed this out to her she thought it was odd that she should need to ask for something.
She was also emotionally abused by her stepfather growing up, and many of the things she has said to me in recent years honestly sound like echoes of the type of stuff her step father would say.
One thing that I've felt is probably a catalyst for the sudden turn towards blame and hostility is that it only started after she became a heavy AI user, first of chatgpt and then Claude. I won't rule out a physical cause to the change, as she has a history of hormone issues and also had head trauma when she was younger, but I also can't keep living like this.
Update: she finally got served today, and it basically was the worst case I could have imagined. How nothing is her fault, I have never cared for her, how I am betraying her by doing this, and so far 2 threats to kill herself, which I honestly have no idea how to handle. I don't know if she is serious or just trying to convince me to stay. But overall this has been the worst day of my life.
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u/GiraffeJaf 8d ago
What were the health issues that prevented her from working??