I have been in a relationship with DP for 12 years and we have two children, 9 and 7.
Things have been crap for years, and I have gone in and out of thinking I should end it except my circumstances are tricky (we are in London in a HA place) and also I just feel somehow that I should stay with him, because all the things I really don't like I already knew about and had children with him. He hardly earns but doesn't like doing childcare (to be fair, I didn't know he'd be so shit with childcare because just assumed he would accept he had to do some with me doing all the earning). He is an arse to live with, huffy, sometimes won't speak to me for days because I haven't done enough cleaning, he is not great with the kids and very critical of me and DS9. I think he is pathologically self interested, he can't hear anything except in how it relates to himself. So hyperthetically if I said 'It would be nice to have more space on the floor' he'd take that as meaning I was having a go about him not making enough space or something. It's beyond boring and I can no longer be arsed to explain my good intentions, he just thinks I am a harpy out to attack him. I had a miscarriage last year and he was awful, he admitted he thought I was trying to manipulate him by crying (he couldn't imagine my crying was not about him, iyswim). We are on completely different wavelengths, I am booky with PG degrees and he left school with no qualifications.
All this is the bed that I made. I didn't expect him to earn, I didn't have a conversation about childcare, he was criticising me on our first date, he was always behaving like I was just a convenience rather than something he valued and I accepted it. We have had some awful rows. If I want anything out of the relationship I know I have to engage in making it happen, so over the years he has accepted doing more childcare and tried to earn more money. He has gone to counselling and some of his most glacial huffs have become less and less frequent.
But I just can't be bothered any more. Every tiny interaction needs such vigilance and I am exhausted and bored of it all. However I feel massive guilt about ending it, like I should stay and work at it. And when I say that some of the work would be getting him more engaged in stuff so he changes some of his behaviours and some of the work would be for example accepting that we are never going to have a great conversation about something I am interested in and he will always be late and I should organise my life to minimise the impact of that on me.
It just takes so much out of me to get just basic level respect and being treated like an equal, He's not an evil man, he is just basically uninterested in me (he has literally never asked about previous boyfriends or my life before I moved toLondon, for example - he is just not interested. If I do talk about this stuff it's all one way until I stop talking). He doesn't want to be horrible but he also doesn't want to put in any effort. I think with effort we MIGHT make it all work (but the different wavelengths stuff is significant) but it will only be me doing it and if I don't we will just run on inertia barely speaking until we die. I feel humiliated that he sees so little value in me that if I want the relationship I basically have to do my bit and his bit.
Is it okay to end a relationship and cause so much turmoil for the children and him (he will take it very badly). Or should I stay and make it work or at least not trash it given than I don't really have the capacity or inclination to make it work any more?