If this is not appropriate for this sub, you can delete.

The path to divorce - It began with one small step

So I used to work for a company that had a pension plan that you paid into, the company also pay in and you got a percentage for each full year with the company. After 30 years you will have maxed out your pension and it is usually when most people leave. This part is important to provide context as to why I retired.

Approximately 4 years before I reached my 30th year my wife and I discussed me retiring at 30 years and we came to the decision that I would retire, stay home and she would get some education and go back to work. So she took some college courses, get her degree and upon graduation got a fairly nice job working in a retirement home as a care worker.

My wife was a stay at home wife (no kids) for the previous 10 years and was quite happy in the role (turns out she was too happy). So here we are at my retirement party and we are talking about all the things life will have to offer us in the future. When she got her job our income saw a very nice increase and even with my retirement we were pretty set since our house was paid off and with my pension income and her income all seemed great.

Fast forward a year and I started to notice a bit of resentment every morning when my wife would get up, have her shower , get ready for the day. She would come downstairs and I would have breakfast ready for her. Her clothes would be laid out and she was always able to get off to work with plenty of time to spare and no stress of having to worry about 'the house', but there was definitely something 'off' and I kept asking her what was wrong, she would say those horrifying words "I am fine".

I did everything at home, cooked, clean, fix anything that broke, pay all the bills, laundry and would actually have supper on the table when she got home. All she had to do was come home, sit down and eat. I made sure we made a menu for the week and not once was there something she didn't like, but again, something seemed 'off'.

It all came to a head when one night we got invited to a work function and I was talking to one of her co-workers and she told me that my wife was feeling really lost because everything was done at home for her and she was upset that I was able to do the job of housekeeping WAY better than she ever did. It seemed that it upset her that I was able to do everything at home and still have time for myself in the afternoons (did woodworking as a hobby and usually had at least 3 hours every day to do that).

When we got home I sat my wife down and told her I wanted to talk to her about what the co-worker had said and OUT IT CAME, apparently I was making her feel like shit because here I was getting the house spotless every day , making meals etc. and still getting time to do "MY THINGS", this was something she said that she was never able to do when she was at home, she just never seemed to have enough time to do everything. You also have to remember that when my wife was at home , I still did all the cooking, made my own breakfast and did my own laundry. We started to discuss WHY I was able to do this and as it turned out it was because my wife would sleep in until 10am, get up and by the time she had her shower and got her breakfast it was now noon.

So she felt she had to do everything in the afternoon which was about 3 or 4 hours until I got home, this left no time for her to do her own things. She inquired as to how I did laundry and everything and still have plenty of time on my own.

Well you see when I get up at 6:30 the first thing I do is put a load of laundry in the washer, go upstairs , start breakfast and about that time that's ready the laundry is done in the washer and now I just put a new load in the washer and put the other load in the dryer, this process takes a total of perhaps 5 mins. When each load is done, I fold and put way, again a process that takes 10 mins tops.

It turns out my wife is highly disorganized and she was really starting to resent the fact that I was much better at this than she was and she would tell co-workers (Mostly female) about my routine and they would say things like, 'there is no way he can do a load of laundry or two in that short period of time, it takes at least a couple of hours'. The resentment just grew and grew over the next little while. We tried counselling but that was a complete waste of time and money as the counselor just seemed like 'I hate men and since you are a man I hate you'. I asked my wife to see a different one but she really like this one because she was being told exactly what she wanted to hear.

Eventually my wife comes home one day and told me she has put in her 2 weeks notice and she was quitting. I was supportive and she did quit, that only made things worse. I kept up my routine but my wife did everything to sabotage it, she would complain that I made too much noise in the morning doing my chores and she wanted me to stop and do them when she got up, which was now around 11 each day. The problem was that with this 'new' time I never got to do my woodworking in the afternoon and if I am being honest it made me resent her too.

I tried to talk to her about splitting chores but that just wasn't going to happen because 'she was retired and she wasn't spending all day doing stuff around the house'.

After several more failed attempts at counselling, I asked for a divorce.

That's were we are today, divorced and hating each other because she simply wanted to have her cake and eat it too.

EDIT: I just realized that I used "I" and first person in this as I cut and pasted it from a conversation I had with a friend of mine without changing the 'perspective'