I’ve held on to a molecule of hope that we’d be able to work through our differences.

That hope has been the only thing that kept me going.

Last week she told me that there’s nothing left to save. I’ve begged for years to go to marriage counseling. She flat out refused every time I brought it up. I told her she could pick the therapist so she wouldn’t feel like I was hanging up on her.

The double standards and ultimatums were tolerable at first, “just part of the problems we could address in counseling” I thought. It was her ultimatum that I see a personal counselor nearly ten years ago.

There’s been no physical intimacy since we conceived our daughter over 7 years ago. Not even so much as a hug I haven’t had to beg for.

I asked her why she was even still with me.

“I have nowhere else to go.”

She’s a SAHM who only worked retail before. She’s grown comfortable with the stability I’ve provided. She was comfortable staying that way.

I took a job in another city 100 miles away. I rent a little shitty apartment and deal with the crime and fights and arguments in my complex because she said maybe living separately might give us both some space. I’ve been driving that route back and forth every single weekend since I started in January of 2021.

I did all of this because I held on to a scrap of hope that maybe we’d resolve to make this better.

When she dropped the bomb on me last weekend that she wasn’t in love anymore and didn’t see me as a romantic partner, I emotionally collapsed. I told her I needed space to come to terms with my world shattering. She seemed more concerned about her future than with me coming to terms with the fact that I had almost my entire existence upended.

I put myself through all of this because I still clung to hope. Hope is a bastard.