Saga continues, Wife is finished.

[Boglehead]

A man back again to annoy you all.

Wife told me she wants a divorce a month or so ago.

I then said that she’d have to tell the children she was blowing up the marriage and I wouldn’t be going along with any stories to whitewash what’s really going on.

She then changed what she said to she’s “done” and is saying she never used the word divorce.

She’s now pushing back on couples counselling, refusing to meet the therapist I have found after much effort.

I have some important work meetings this week that I’m travelling to Europe for. I feel shit & said to her today I didn’t want this hanging over me all week. I want to know for certain that she’ll go to counselling and we can try and work on things.

She’s refusing to commit, saying all I need to know is she’s done and she needs time. She’s so aggressive, angry and is treating me with contempt. I really feel there some psychological back story here. Maybe I’m a total clown and deserve to be treated this way 🤷‍♂️

So I have to head away on Sunday with this hanging over me for the week and try to perform, run C level meetings, present etc.

I feel she’ll serve papers when I get back from this business trip or at the very least in the summer when our children finish exams.

Unless she has an epiphany over the next week it sounds to me like she’s out?

I hope she’s got lots of empathy with her DH when she’s home, I wonder how often she away and leaves him to deal with the DC and work full time.

But the OP says it's their important meetings away... indicating that their partners work is not as important.

It would depend on how she framed it. Genuinely.

Yeah, there aren't too many of those around. It's always, "I love my H so much blah blah great father blah blah but he does nothing with the kids, nothing around the house, doesn't work, coerces me for sex, and calls me a fat slag all the time. I want to leave but feel so guilty. I don't want to hurt him, and he'll have troubling finding a place to rent. What should i do?"

It doesn't sound salvageable as you're unwilling to take responsibility for your part in the marriage breakdown. Marriage is a partnership, it has to work for both people in it. It is coercive to make her lie to the children and tell them that she is fully to blame.

Yep. He's likely going around saying to everyone, "My wife is crazy". He doesn't realize that it's showing him up and that most women at least will think privately, "yeah sure buddy".

Zawn Villines wrote a post about exactly this recently:

"'She's just a crazy monster': What I've learned from following father's rights groups
Why men would rather frame women as monsters and men as heroic saints than look at their own behavior.

...Father’s rights groups have lobbied hard to depict divorcing women as crazy monsters. In this framing, women are completely irrational, unreliable, and most importantly, stunningly abusive. It flies in the face of everything we know about women and men. Every woman has a scary story about a monstrous man, but how many women have you known who are sociopathic and irrational monsters? None? One?

...Women aren’t allowed to leave

The foundational belief upon which all other men’s rights activism is built is that women are not allowed to leave men. You’ll hear constantly about how their wives left for no reason, or didn’t try hard enough, or left once they “got what they wanted.” You know what this language all reduces to?

Their wives left. They were unhappy. And the men think a woman’s unhappiness is insufficient reason to leave. The reason the woman left is contained in the man’s bullshit: He didn’t think her feelings mattered, or that she should have the freedom to decide when the relationship ends."

zawn.substack.com/p/shes-just-a-crazy-monster-what-ive

No. He refers to the meetings with regard to the timing of his wife's disclosure. That it's thrown him for a loop just at the point where he's got to have his head together for some really important meetings, and also won't be at home to discuss it.

If you normally work from home, but have to travel abroad for some meetings, they're not going to be trivial ones. I imagine a woman would feel exactly the same of her husband dropped this bombshell just as she was headed for a career important set of meetings. And they're are plenty of women on this board with careers at that level.

Let's not read more than there is, to that bit of his post.

I agree too. I would not want my sons to post on here hoping for help. There are some vicious replies as usual.
OP I hope you are doing okay and that you can find a way out of this sad situation that is healing for you both.

Surely she didn’t just take the job without consulting with the OP though? If not then that is not acceptable. But if they did have a conversation about how that would work then he can’t complain about it now.

Ffs she wants a divorce. This isn't 1950, she is not a chattel.

I've no doubt there are two sides to this, there always is.

Don't, just don't threaten her with the kids. Your wife is most likely very down, her marriage is over, she's not loved, not listened to and yet now you are threatening her with hurting your kids. That's why she's stepped back because she's thinking of her kids. You are beyond contemptable for threating to hurt your kids.

Be careful how far you push her, there's only so much a person can take. You need to be considerate now of your children's mother's actual wellbeing.

And yes, I am speaking from experience.

He’s not complaining, is he?

My pilot friend who works the London US routes is away for about 11-14 days per month. The other days he’s at home not working.

I find OPs implication that he looks after the DC FT whilst he also works from home FT unlikely.

He said in the other thread they're all teens, so it's not like he's supervising toddlers.

Oh yeah teens are super easy it’s not like you have to dropping them here, there and everywhere or you have to be on top of the homework set, or where they are with friends!

Give me toddlers any day!

I’ve had 4 teens at home - it’s busy: lifts, shopping, cooking, laundry, talking them down, talking them up, attending their events, orthodontists, hair cuts etc etc. my guess is mum does most of that in her downtime because doing it whilst working FT in a 9-5 type job is virtually impossible

I'm not saying there's no work involved in having teens FFS 😂

Just it's not impossible that he's WFH and in charge of the dc while his wife's away - they'll be at school or college during the office hours.

You can't sit in a home office all day with toddlers. Unless you're doing a poor job of both.

@category12 you seem to be struggling with comprehension because I didn’t suggest you had 🤷‍♀️

I find it unlikely that OP is super dad and looks after them “24/7” as per other thread whilst his wife is in fact off work at least 60% of the month.

Of course it’s not impossible! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

He does it, it’s not one of the criticisms of his STBEW!

I think you’ll find, that toddlers go to a things like childminders or nurseries when parents are working full time, be it from home or not.