To want to split with DH after 25 years together?

[stoviesfortea]

I have had thoughts of leaving DH on and off throughout our marriage but it’s always been too difficult. Kids too young, finances etc. We are very different and I actually don’t know why we even got together. It feels like it just happened and now 25 years later and 18 years of marriage, here I am.

We generally get on and have had many good times but the same old arguments and clashes come up time and time again. It’s hard to get compromises and when we argue we both just seethe and hold resentment, push it away, ignore it and then things go back to normal. But then a few months later the arguments appear again.

A big issue is I think DH has ASD (which he doesn’t believe) as one of the things we’ve always clashed over is his avoidance of people and socialising, I can count on one hand the amount of times he’s gone out with me and my friends in the 25 years together. We do separate activities and I actually avoid going out with him as he’s so awkward if we bump into anyone. I have learned to live an essentially separate life apart from the things we do at home with the kids. I’m actually fine having this sort of life so a life without him might not feel much different. He also lacks empathy and insight and this really gets to me.

The latest argument was that he blew up when I said I wanted our kitchen done up (it’s literally falling apart) and he said no as has a total issue with workmen being in the house. We’ve had house stuff done over the years but he’s always said it’s ‘hell’ and has major issues with workmen being in our house.

We are also clashing over money. We’ve always been independent finance wise (own accounts but have a joint account too and split all bills), fairly comfortable (not rich but not poor) and mortgage now paid off. I recently got a decent amount of money so we can totally afford to do the house up and go on some nice holidays. Although I’ve said this is essentially family money he has this weird male pride thing where he says HE can’t afford these things so we can’t do them. Even though the money is sitting there! It’s bloody bizarre and feels a bit controlling. We had a huge argument over this with me saying I’ll pay for holidays and the kitchen and he’s saying they don’t need done and he can’t afford them anyway. AIBU to think that’s weird?!

We also clash over sex- he would happily do it every night whereas I cannot be arsed. We do have sex about once a week but if there’s a gap of even a few weeks he goes in a weird mood and we’ve had major arguments about this in the past.

He also says I constantly nag but he is so untidy and messy and I’m sick of running about after him and our kids. We have 2 daughters who are nearing the end of school and the thought of them going off to uni and me being with DH for another 18 years does not fill me with joy, the opposite in fact 😢

He has some pluses too but the minuses always seem to trump these.

I’ve said before we should split but I’ve never followed through with it. This time though feels different as the kids are older, I think they’d be OK and maybe not majorly surprised, I could potentially buy him out of the house, and I am getting no younger (we are in our 50’s)

AIBU to finally split?!!

OP he sounds like the most awful selfish arsehole.

My husband is autistic, as is my son and daughter.
They have all the markers and my husband is aware yet untested, as are my daughter and son.

Your husband is a thoroughly selfish arshole who may be autistic.
His primary diagnosis is as a totally selfish arsehole that you will never change.
He is not your project to fix.

You have one life, don't waste any more time on him.
You will never regret leaving him once you are out.
You can do it.

I’ve just read all your posts OP and It’s made me so sad. I really hope a better future is waiting for you, you sound like a lovely person who deserves happiness and you have wasted enough precious life already 💐

I’m already doing the equivalent on my phone, I am jotting down all the things that are tricky or that make him an arsehole. The list is absolutely huge while there’s barely anything on the nice gestures / pros list just now.

@stoviesfortea seems it’s high time you got up after a meal, and walked away, telling him it’s his turn to clear away. Though I bet he’d stack the dishwasher all wrong to spite you….

Hi OP..I have read through your thread and wanted to share as I was in a similar position to you a few years ago but I’m also neurodivergent (late diagnoses as autistic and ADHD).
I was married for 15 years. Like you, it wasn’t all bad but gradually got worse over time. He became more and more withdrawn, declining to interact with me, avoiding occasions. I felt like the writing was on the wall. I remembered a friend suggesting we did a ‘date night’ and he deliberately sabotaged it. He didn’t want to spend time alone with me 🤷🏻‍♀️ I came to realise it was too late. I had individual counselling which helped me make my decision to leave, helped me vent but keep calm until the opportune moment (it was after Christmas for me but I think you’re wise to wait until after your DC’s exams). He was also rigid in his thinking, reluctant to make changes unless it benefitted him, negative mental filter on everything anc it dragged us all down.
Quite honestly. ending the marriage was the best thing all round. Despite implying that we were a burden, he jumped straight into a new relationship (4 weeks after we split!) and is now living with her and her 3 teens! I spent the first week after he moved out sighing with relief. It was like I could finally breathe again! DD was a lot younger than your DC and found it tough at first but she’s so much happier now. Makes it all worth it.
One thing to say about finances - if you’ve always kept money separate and not shared your inheritance - I’m in England and shared my inheritance. My solicitor said if I hadn’t shared some of it, it wouldn’t have been classed as shared money..get legal advice on that but you might be okay.
I’m surprised at so many posts saying ‘You can’t leave because he loves you.’ You can leave for any reason you want. You can leave if he makes you unhappy. Sounds like he gaslights you as well, he rewrites history to paint himself in a more favourable light.
I ended my marriage, not in the hope I’d meet someone else, but because I believed I would be happier on my own. I did meet someone else after a year but that was the icing on the cake. Honestly, 3+ years down the line I’m so much happier and most importantly, so is DD.
Take your time. Grey rock him for now. Have your counselling. Get legal advice about finances. But ultimately, chose what will make you happiest.

I’ve always been OK with clearing up after dinner as he cooks every single meal and from scratch as well, really good food. It’s felt shared that way so if he cooks I’ll tidy up (kids clear table but they really should be stacking the dishwasher too!). But there’s disparity in many other places, I can’t remember even once in our whole time together when he’s cleaned the bathroom. Or done ironing or dusted (not that I do those often, but still). I’m the one who organises everything, I don’t think he even knows how stuff at school works like paying for lunches etc. He only started doing hoovering last year and does it on the same day each week even if it clearly needs hoovered on other days. He doesn't even do it well and leaves loads of bits 🙄

Ive shown him several times how to load the dishwasher and he still does it wrong so I’ve given up there. If I say anything I’m ‘nagging’

@ThisWormHasTurnedthank you and you sound in a far better place now! He is very negative indeed, always seems to have a bad word to say about people, has zero compassion, I wouldn’t even say he’s kind. He puts himself first most of the time and doesn’t even realise or see beyond that. Or would deny it. As you say it’s like gaslighting, he paints things so differently and then I wonder if I’ve got it totally wrong or are exaggerating it. Like saying he’s been out with my pals ‘hundreds of times’ eh WTAF you’ve been out with them about 5 times EVER. If that!

Once you're free, you can go out with your pals as often as you like. I still remember the joy of going out and then letting myself into my own empty little house at the end of the evening where I encountered nothing but peace and tranquility.

Yes I really am! Got promoted (twice, once into a training role then up to the next level when I completed a course), lost a couple of stone, got into weightlifting again (had to stop for a bit due to health problems). I’m stronger, fitter, happier than I ever could have hoped for. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been tough at times but now I can look back and see it was all worth it.
It sounds so demoralising. Like living with a dementor, that’s how I described it. Suck all the joy out of life and are almost resentful of you trying to enjoy yourself. I’d suggest that when you do reach the point that you’re ready to have the conversation (and I had thought about it many times before I actually did it), make sure you have a clear plan, like saying to him ‘These are the financial details, I propose that I move out and rent/buy a property here and this is how I propose we sort the split’ because otherwise I expect he will just panic and refuse to chat about the options. Someone who is change averse will benefit from you suggesting a structure to the change.

I think that’s where some of my biggest fears lie- I don’t want to be the one to move out. This is my home, my DC’s are happy here, their school and friends are here. I do the majority of the parenting and running a household. He wouldn’t even know how to put the washing machine on! (Must teach the kids!!!)

I’d want him to leave but he would be against that I think. He has so much shit in this house and also works from home so would argue he needs the phone line and address blah blah. (Mobile signal is bad here so we use the landline).

Urgh it just seems like such an uphill struggle but as I read the other day- ‘choose your hard’.

By the time I decided I wanted out of my marriage I had got to the stage where I was prepared to walk away with nothing but the shirt on my back and the children in my arms.

When you want something, there's always a price to pay. If he refuses to leave the house, what then?

These scenarios are worth thinking about.

A protracted, acrimonious divorce that ends up in the courts is rarely worth the aggro, or indeed the legal bill.

Your dh us probably even more attached to the house and his “things” than he is to his children or to you. Its true that you probably have to “choose your hard” but you can use his intransigence to also force him to let go if you and the children as his “hard” is different from your hard.

Use the house as a bargaining chip to get your freedom.

I think what I am saying is that you need to free yourself of clinging to this or that thing. The only way to win is to walk away and begin again in your own terms. Even Hermit crabs walk away, after they have decorated their shells, when the shell gets too small.

This life with this man is destroying you. I think you have lost sight of what normal expectations are in a human relationship: kindness, courtesy, turn taking, sweetness, thoughtfulness. These are all everyday occurrences in a good marriage or relationship. The attunement between you and your partner make things like refilling each other’s drinks or choosing your favorite food for a celebration a pleasure not a duty. You have been suffocated so long you forget you are entitled to air.

I think I have actually lost sight of what’s normal. The little things matter sooo much. Someone was telling me about their male friend last week who unexpectedly became a widow when his wife passed away (only in their early 50’s). They said he is still connecting with his wife by lighting her favourite candles, tending to her favourite flowers in the garden, putting on the fairy lights and soft lighting she had to make their home all cosy, kissing her picture good night every night.

I noticed such envy arise inside me. That widowed man is taking more care of his wife who is dead compared to my DH who wouldn’t even think of doing any of those things for his wife who’s alive.

When I’ve said to DH before that I’m always the one left to tidy up before bed (not that he even sees it needs tidying and all I mean is to fold the throw and put the cushions back on the sofa (that he throws away cos he doesn’t like them…) put the glasses in kitchen etc), he said to me ‘it’s you who insists on all the stupid lights so you can turn them all off!’ meaning the lamps and fairy lights and candles. He would happily sit under the harsh big light and thinks all the other lamps are pointless (indeed, that’s what he does when he’s home alone). He always goes up to bed while it takes me about 10 mins to tidy up downstairs.

It’s those small acts of kindness and connection that I am missing. I like doing those things for others and for my kids and they thankfully do it to me. Our last holiday (which I paid for and it was ££££ as it was a big holiday when my inheritance came through, nothing like we are normally used to) my kids both gave me lovely thank you gifts after it, totally their own idea. The gesture melted my heart. What did DH give me? Fuck all. (He did say thanks, but still!!)

@stoviesfortea I totally get it. The little gestures that mean so much. The hope that he might - and the cold disappointing reality that he doesn’t. And won’t. No point in asking for the ‘sweeteners’ cos then it’s not from the heart. Sadly, this is him and part of why you are planning your exit.

Just coming back to this point ie that he'll clutch onto all sorts of nonsense about why you want to divorce. He'll argue that you don't know your own mind (akin to sixtysomething) because you're perimenopausal, missing the kids, having a midlife crisis etc. Of course it could not be that he is a selfish arse.

Just reminding you - you don't need to convince him or for him to agree to divorce. Let him think what he wants.

I had a boss once, a horrid little man. He invited me to dinner with him and his wife once. There was so much tension between them, you could cut the air with a knife. I was privately very much on the wife's side because I knew what a selfish, passive aggressive, controlling little prick he was from working with him. A few months later, he told me his wife had just received a breast cancer diagnosis and he wasn't looking forward to all the treatments, etc!! He moaned about how she'd have to have surgery and he'd probably have to drive her for all her radio and chemo appts... I could not believe what I was reading!

18 months later, he said they were going to sell their apartment in a famously beautiful European city (her country), and she was going to move with him to his country. Several months after that, he sent me pictures of the beautiful house on the sea in his country that they had rented. He had just moved in, and was waiting for his wife to join him.

A few weeks later, he told me his wife wasn't coming and in fact had just sent him divorce papers. She had clearly been very strategic about the split, making it so that they sold the flat without him machinating and manipulating and drawing everything out to spite her.

I guffawed when I read that, and did a long slow clap in my home office in honour of his wife. I laughed even harder when he told me the chemo "must have done something to her brain", that he'd "heard from a lot of people" [numbnut men, probably] that women "go a bit crazy" when they go through breast cancer treatment!

Yes, of course, she's not divorcing you because you're a vile little shit, it's because she's "crazy" 😂 😂

Op, be strategic too. Its probably better to give up on keeping your house, he's very unlikely to agree to move and will just use that as a weapon to frustrate you and keep you in the marriage.

This is not the first time I have heard of a split when a house was sold.
I have heard of several houses being sold and a rental being taken in his name while they continued looking. Solicitor puts the joint accound in funds and wife moves half instantly and says she wants a divorce and the rest can be sorted.
Extremely clever and strategic if half of the house is a fair amount.
One woman took her half plus the deposit which her parents had gifted her.
He was advised to accept it as he could spend serious money on legal fees fighting it.

I am liking this idea of going through with a house sale and only filing for divorce once the sale has been completed. If the husband is a decent person, then the subterfuge is unnecessary, but faced with an arse out to give you a hard time, it sounds like the perfect solution.

I suspect your DH will fight tooth and nail not to leave the house, not because he is emotionally attached to it, but because he won't want to face the logistics of all his stuff.

Only you can know whether the house is a deal-breaker for you.

@stoviesfortea

This is an old song, but it shows how easy it is to make a loved one feel loved.

As far as the house, it's not time to focus on who leaves/what happens. That's a distraction that keeps you from your prime objective; not living in the same house with him, whether it's your current home or a different one.

Eyes on the prize.

What a lovely song! Don’t think I’ve had any of those things happen to me! Well apart from calling me when he’s away… He does stroke my back and will give me a foot massage on the sofa which is nice, but very rarely hugs me or kisses me unless he wants sex. We literally never hold hands, not when out in public or on the sofa or in bed or anywhere. Or link arms or put arms round shoulders. He’s not attuned to me and there’s been times I’ve been upset and he just stands there or doesn’t even see I’m upset. He will also walk 10 paces ahead of me and the kids which is so bloody weird, and leave a restaurant before us and just stand outside waiting for us.

I’ve noticed he is trying harder now though… today he asked if I wanted to go for a walk with him. I said ‘no thanks I’m going on my own’. He then said do I want to arrange a dinner with my friends as he’s just ‘got out of the way of it since we’ve had kids’. He was never in the way of it in the first place (!) so again I simply said ‘no thanks I’d rather not!’. He then asked if I want to get away for a few days over Easter and I said no the kids have exams after Easter… he said what about even for a night with the younger DC, ‘no thanks but feel free to go away yourselves!’

He then got up from the table as he usually does after dinner and left me sitting there on my own finishing my meal. He then came back and said ‘do you want me to sit with you?’ and then sat down and proceeded to talk about a convo he had with his pal (he has childhood pals and saw one this week), his pal said how strange and difficult it is when your kids get older and move away. DH said ‘I mean I think it will be fine, I’m quite good at just moving on to the next part of my life’. Meanwhile my heart is utterly breaking at the thought of the kids moving out. Hopefully though that means he might not put up too much of a fight when I tell him we are over!

Well done that woman!!!!

@LouiseMadetheBestBroccoliPasta now that's what I call doing a thing properly, freedom and revenge all in one

Actually to be fair he does give me lovely compliments here and there but they seem quite rare and are interspersed with ‘stop nagging me!’ That’s what makes things tricky as at times he can be fine and life goes on perfectly well. But it’s when things blow up and I remember all the shitty things he does. If we are in our insular home and do our own things it’s fine, it’s when that’s threatened it gets hard. Hence the argument last weekend when he realised builders might come in to our house and disrupt the equilibrium.

No one is all bad, OP. Even my lying, cheating, sex-pest, gambling, coercive controlling ex could be a right laugh sometimes. It's about balance of life quality isn't it, and a refusal to continue to tolerate the massive character flaws existing within someone you're saddled with.

Op, if you dont love him or find him physically attractive anymore those are reason to split.

All your posts about his faults and quirks sound doable if you love him but if you don't just move on, your kids will cope as many do. Good luck.