How do you make decision to leave?

[OverandDone]

When things aren’t awful what is the prompt?

Long marriage, school aged DC we can rub along OK but I’m not happy and he’s not either.

I feel like a frog being boiled in water. I’ve been tolerating things for a long time now and periodically they get incrementally worse but it’s such a slow creep that making the decision to end it seems absurd.

So much disruption and for what gain?

When I realised that if we stayed together there could be another 30 years of it and I felt suffocated by that thought. I needed to be happy

How do you make any decision? You consider the pros and the cons. Write yourself an actual list, and then make a decision based on that.

There were numerous "last straws" for me which, painful and frightening though they were, was an advantage in many ways as it crystallised things for me. I think its harder in your position as you lack a catalyst to make you do it.

I think for me it was a growing consciousness that my being married to him was making me into a person I increasingly didn't recognise or respect and I didn't want to spend the rest of my life like this.

Things like:

• lying to my friends about the degree of control and chaos to save face (for example making excuses for him when I stood them up at very short notice because he had refused to "babysit" his daughter or not come back from the pub on time)
• having to drink far more alcohol than I was comfortable with just to keep up with him and not to be embarrassed or frightened by his behaviour
• feeling that I had had a really excellent weekend if I managed to persuade him to go to the park with us because I would have to beg and bargain to get him to do anything other than watch TV without a row
• fearing having guests around because I was scared of how he would behave when they were there
• Automatically doing all the housework and childcare without question because I knew asking him for any support would prompt a row

Yes there’s no “one thing” and whilst I know I don’t need one I’m at the point where I’m starting to think I wish there’d be some dramatic event to make it easier.

As for the list it feels like the only positive is I’d likely be happier. Everything else feels monumentally more difficult.

The process of dismantling a life together, where do kids live, who gets what seems impossible to contemplate

@OverandDone

As for the list it feels like the only positive is I’d likely be happier. Everything else feels monumentally more difficult.

The process of dismantling a life together, where do kids live, who gets what seems impossible to contemplate

I’m in the same boat and keep endlessly trawling MN boards for stories of women in “okayish” marriages who don’t regret leaving. Like many people my decision to separate is now badly complicated by the ongoing lockdown situation. It’s really hard. It’s going to be utterly painful and awful to separate as my husband does not want to. I feel your pain.