Long term relationship grown apart advice

[FunAquaUser]

Hi everyone

ive been in a long term relationship for 20 years and have 2 kids age 2 and 6, I’ve been unhappy
in my relationship for the past year. Things haven’t always been great in relationship but we’ve worked through it but the older I’m getting I just feel like we are growing further and further apart. We have no common interests, we don’t spend any time together and I’m just fed up of carrying all the parenting load without feeling like I’m appreciated.

we are both unhappy but partner is happy to continue as things are for sake of kids and the reality of breaking up. Having to live in 2 houses, the financial impact and the impact on the children.

i really dont want to disrupt the kids lives by moving them ( we would need to sell and both buy something else) so it would be a whole new house for the children and i know it would really affect my 6 6 year old she’s very close to her dad.

has anyone else been in this situation and split up when things weren’t terrible but also wasn’t great. I feel like I’m putting everyone’s else happiness before my self and I feel like it’s starting to weigh me down each day. I just don’t know if I can continue just wasting years and years of my life feeling unhappy and knowing I’m not in the right relationship for me anymore. Our sex life is pretty non existent (on my part I do it now and again only because I know he has needs but it’s not something I want to do I have zero sex drive).
I’m only 35 and I just feel like do I really want to carry on living like this until the kids are older so I don’t disrupt their childhood and cause them upset.
it’s such a horrible place to be in when things aren’t really bad or nothing specific has happened to make that decision when you have children :( I just don’t know how many times I can go through these periods of us falling out and not speaking for weeks on end. It seems to just be getting worse all the time and I don’t know how much longer I can just keep trying to keep it together for the sake of the kids.

Please please don’t waste your life for the sake of others. You only have one short life.
Your kids will adapt, and surely they are better growing up with a happy mum and dad, rather than what they have now. If they think your relationship is normal they will look for that themselves in the future.

Do you want your kids to grow up thinking this is what a normal relationship looks like and therefore end up in this situation too?

my ex left when I was pregnant with our 2nd child - I have no regrets at all, I was always going to end up doing all the parenting anyway.

Sorry you're feeling this way.

The way you describe it, it doesn't sound like you've grown apart, it sounds like you have two specific things in the relationship you're not happy about (him not pulling his weight and not appreciating you; toxic arguments where you don't speak to each other). This is much more fixable than a general feeling of falling out of love.

Could you try couple's counselling? Would he go if he knew the marriage was on the line? It's easy for posters here to throw out the line that children want to see their parents happy, but when there's no abuse it's far better for the children to keep their family together.

Also, please don't have 'duty sex' in this scenario, that's going to do you a lot of psychological damage if you keep it up and it's unlikely he'll want to have sex with you anyway if he knows you feel that way about it.