Here I am. We decided to pull the plug on our 18 year marriage (together for nearly 27 years total) today after I suggested we seek marriage counseling and she declined. It all came to a head over the summer (2021) when I organized and paid for our family vacation to Maine. I naively thought that this would allow us to reset our marriage and give us time to relax but it almost immediately disintegrated into one of the worst travel experiences with her. When we arrived, at our destination airport our rental wasn’t ready because I had booked for 4pm, instead 2:30pm. She started flipping out berating me and calling me names. When did get our rental, I drove us to the cottage (Airbnb) on a private lake with breathtaking views and literally across the street from Acadia. She hated it and threatened to leave immediately. My eldest son also thought it was dirty, so we all chipped in a cleaned the place and made our beds, etc. In any case, things continued with her being hyper critical and I was actually relieved to get back home. From then on I started spending the night in my home office and we stopped being completely intimate (no hugging, kissing, no sex). She said we were no longer together, that we needed space and that we would do a six month separation and I needed to get counseling to understand why I abused her for 15 years?! Fifteen years you may ask? What’s ironic is that fifteen years ago we decided to have our first child and I took the step of quitting smoking. It was probably not the best timing but I did quit. I told my therapist about the two years of being on a variety of smoking cessation drugs, including Chantix (which admittedly passed eventually) and it was really hard on us. I did exhibit illogical behavior but I never physically abused her. My therapist didn’t understand how she (how wife) could make such statements. So that all passed and by the time our son was two, I had turned to running and cycling and had successfully weathered the transition. My wife evidently not as that episode was the start of the ‘abuse.’ From that time forth until recently she’s has evidently interpreted any disagreement or verbal altercation as a abuse. What’s bizarre is that we’re both successful in our respective careers, had another child, bought a bigger house, and traveled the world. Life seemed good. Did we have occasional fights? Yes, we did. Was it every about money? No. Was it about the kids? No. When the pandemic hit things started getting definitely more contentious and I could tell she started resenting me and becoming more hypercritical and just plain nasty. She also demanded that I give her more money for my half of the bills, despite fact that I’m the one who always paid my bills on time and the property taxes! I am the one who maintains the 100 year old house, garden, mow the lawn, and fix things when they break. She became more demanding in every facet of our marriage. I used to have to literally ask for sex after the kids went to bed and wait until she had two glasses of wine and was a bit more chill. Later, she would tell me that I forced myself on her?!? In any case, here I am. My plan is to file for uncontested divorce with her, buy her out of the house, and move forward with my life.