I'm looking for some advice to try to help me reach a decision about my marriage. I haven't been happy for a few years and we did temporarily separate a couple of years ago. He made it clear that he did not want to split and made some effort but tends to slip back to previous form and have to be reminded again (sometimes patiently and sometimes not!). I am struggling to 'get over' things that have happened historically and, although I care about him, don't feel that I love him as a partner anymore.
We are both in our mid 40s and have 3 children together. He loves the children v much and does have a good relationship with them overall.
This is a simplified version. I expect some of it is a pretty common story in lots of marriages:
DH was never very supportive in the early years. I did the great majority of child rearing. He often didn't step up even when I was exhausted. He had lie-ins every weekend when he wasn't working and I would get up with the children. He would emerge several hours later and wonder why I was cross. I have made a lot of sacrifices for his career, moving areas several times, taking on the great majority of childcare and running the household, coping with being the sole parent around when he worked away for several years. I have also always worked part time in a stressful job. He doesn't seem to appreciate these sacrifices. He has, in more recent years, admitted that he didn't do enough when the children were young. However, he still tends to leave the majority of the dull parenting tasks to me. He is often the fun dad who lets them stay up late, use their devices more than I want them too, eat too much chocolate, etc. In addition, one of the things that has really upset me is that he has a tendency to undermine my parenting decisions. He will overturn my decisions without speaking to me first. This undermining has happened on so many occasions and the children are well aware and one in particular uses this fact, has a habit of running off to dad to complain and is often backed up.
In recent years, we have had to deal with a lot of stress, particularly serious illness of one DC and some health problems of my own. There have been other things to deal with too, financial problems, stress at work for both of us, etc, etc. I really struggled and don't feel that he was anywhere near as supportive as he should have been. On many occasions, he made things worse, in fact by not supporting me in parenting, etc. Given that he was hardly around, I needed to be backed up in my decisions rather than the opposite. This led to the separation mentioned.
I feel as if all this has made me gradually lose the respect, love and admiration for him that I had earlier in the relationship. I just don't have the same wish to spend time with him chatting and doing nice things. He has many good points but I seem to see more and more negative qualities. He has apologised for certain things and made some effort but, if he does something which is one of my 'bug-bears', something I have complained about previously, I seem to have extremely limited tolerance now and will get cross quickly. We disagree and argue far too frequently for various reasons. He has a tendency to shout, get v unpleasant, make nasty personal remarks and I now have a tendency to 'fight back' verbally rather than diffuse things. It's as if I have run out of patience with the whole situation so I sometimes behave badly too.
Lastly, out sex life is pretty much non existent in the past year.
I have come to the point where I'm just not sure I can continue like this. I don't want to break up the children's home and I know that they would be extremely upset if we split. I am also worried about finances and how we would afford two family homes with prices so high. However, I don't feel happy in the relationship and think that I could be much happier with someone else. I also don't think we are modelling a healthy relationship for the children.
Does anyone have any useful advice or experience? At what point have you tried enough to stay?