Hi all, I was wondering if someone can help me with some advise of how to get through my divorce. Mentally I am really struggling at the moment. Lots of suicidal ideation. Here's a brief story of what happened:
I met my partner 7 years ago and things moved very quickly. She moved in after a couple of months, bought 2 dogs over a couple of years and got married. My wife (soon to be ex) suffers from ADHD but we had no idea. The house would be a mess, mould growing in various places, laundry all over the place and she had a lot of debt. I worked a lot as a doctor, invested most of our money for our family and we had a child 3 years ago. My ex is entitled so doesn't appreciate working hard for nice things whereas I grew up in a deprived background where I had to work hard and try and not waste money.
As soon as we had child, life turned upside down. My ex struggled, I worked a lot but only Mon-Fri and she refused a lot of help (nanny). Her parents lived 5 minutes away and didn't help. I suffered from sleep apnoea, anxiety and depression and did as much as I could as a home-maker albeit in hindsight not enough. 6 months of hell got better when our child went to nursery and I paid for a cleaner. I've come from a culture where my dad worked all of the time and my mum was the home maker. My ex's dad was pretty much the home maker when she grew up and she wanted 50-50 home maker type set up but also nice things that can only be earned by me working more. My ex struggled to communicate. So if there was an issue where she was overwhelmed she would be nasty instead of discussing things to make life better. Fast forward to just before Christmas.. my ex suddenly filed for divorce. At this point she communicated of what made her unhappy. I dropped my work load and did everything she wanted but she said it was too little to late and that she isn't in love with me anymore. She left with my 2 dogs and child. Her friends (1 is fairly toxic) encouraged the divorce and advised her she can take half of the money and find someone else. 3 years I saved and invested all of our money so we could have a good life. It feels like the divorce was planned a) for money and b) due to her mother retiring (child care help). She left 1 week after her mother retired.
Since then i've been broken. I feel like a sledge hammer has hit me. I was already depressed and self-referred for help due to difficulties at work. I signed posted to my ex that I apologise for being irritable, my mood is low and im going to get help. The low mood was precipitated by my ex terminating a pregnancy that I wanted and she didn't. Initially she said we could keep the baby and then she discussed pregnancy with her toxic friend and then her mind was made up to terminating the pregnancy. I was devastated and my ex declined counselling to discuss it further. Looking back now, I see how much she struggled with her ADHD and child care and understand why she chose to terminate our child.
Currently my ex has moved on, has all of her friends and family around her. Her parents are now helping with childcare and didn't before and she blames me for everything. My ex has taken our child to an area of poor schooling and is only thinking about her happiness. I worry my daughter's future is going to be significantly impacted given the 3 years of hard work was to move to an area with nice schools/community.
It's been 2 months now since the separation - I'm isolated and 350 miles away from family and 200 miles away from friends. The only reason I am here is for my daughter. I miss my dogs, barely eating and wake up having night mares. My ex has changed into a new person - cold, cruel but also elated. Many times in our marriage she betrayed me with lies & stealing but I always forgave her. I found out that for 6-18 months she was slating me to her toxic friend whilst being secretive with her phone in effect killing her love for me/divorcing me slowly. If I had known there was issues that were so significant I would have done anything to put it right. A lot of our issues could have been solved and I feel a lot of the problems were due to her ADHD and my depression (under treatment). My ex has refused to consider reconciling & shifts all of the blame for her unhappiness onto me. Has anyone been in a similar position before? How did you recover? I feel I am a point of no return. I'm trapped, I don't want to live here anymore but I need to be in my daughter's life so doesn't follow in her mother's foot steps (sleeping around, debt, dishonesty, stealing etc)