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[quote=Anonymous]OP, I have (kind of) been you. My ex and I had a very passionate early relationship, but in retrospect, I should've said no when he proposed. On our wedding night, we didn't have any sex, much less the kind of passionate madly-in-love sex that many people say they had on their wedding night. Our honeymoon was relaxing, but basically passion-less. We were moving for his job. He wanted to buy a house in the suburbs ("because buying is better than renting") and so we did that. We moved. We settled into DC. I loved him very much, but it just was kind of spark-less. We had sex less often than he wanted, and I tried to make him happy in that arena. Sometimes I psyched myself up for sex when I'd really rather just read and go to sleep. He wanted to have a baby, and while I was initially ambivalent to the idea, when I got pregnant, I was actually excited about it. I think that honestly, my pregnancy and the approximately 6 months after DD was born were the closest we have ever been. Never had I felt so supported, so loved as I did then.

We had practical issues like you have, though they were different issues. For someone who had been pushing for 5 years to have this picture perfect family life, where he was really engaged in that family life, where we did things together, etc., he wasn't particularly engaged with home life. I made most of those decisions. He worked a lot. He's always been professionally successful and really intense about it, but since he'd been just as intense about getting married/buying a house/having a baby, I assumed that he would find some balance. He never did. The practical issues may not be the root of the problem, but they certainly exacerbate the other things, in my experience.

I spent a year in therapy, trying everything I could thing of and everything my therapist recommended to get my head back in the marriage. My therapist initially tried to figure out what I wanted. I think that if I had given her indications that I wanted to divorce, and needed help figuring out how to do that, she would have provided that help. But since what I'd asked for was help fixing my marriage, she tried to give that help. The only thing I really learned in therapy was that our family life, our relationship as a couple and everything associated with it was completely broken. We performed well in public. We had a wonderful child. But that was it. When DD went to bed and the dinner party was over or whatever, we literally had nothing to say to each other.

I told him that I wanted to separate, and he surprised me by being completely devastated. He did NOT want to separate and he REALLY did not want to divorce. The mean parts of me thought that this was at least partially because without me around, he would have to make decisions about the house, take care of the middle of night wake ups that occasionally still happened at that point (DD was just 2). But over the course of those conversations, it became clear to me that he was just really, really bad at demonstrating how much I (and the family) meant to him. I think a lot of men have this problem.

At the end of the day, though, it was too little too late. My feelings had already completely changed. After a couple weeks of intense talks about our marriage and our future, we agreed that the separation was permanent, and drew up a separation agreement. It was not contentious at all. We have had maybe 3 or 4 major differences of opinion in the 18 months since that separation agreement was finalized, and they've all been resolved pretty quickly. We've both moved on to new relationships and have been able to take lessons learned in our first marriage and apply them to our new relationships. I've watched him become a better father as a result of increased responsibility. He is more involved and engaged than many married fathers I know. He and DD have an amazing relationship, and she doesn't really remember what it was like when we lived together. She gets really excited when we do things together - like come to her holiday party at school or whatever - but she is basically a happy well adjusted child whose parents both love her very much and prioritize her needs. I have a new, more exciting job, and hobbies that I actually get to be involved in. I feel 100% better about myself and my life and my future now than I did 2 years ago.

All of this is a very long winded example of how you can divorce and have that be actually better for everyone involved, including the child, who gets to have two parents who are actually happy with life.[/quote]

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