My marriage has been shit since our daughter was born. We agreed to quit our jobs and travel with her to focus on our marriage and family after 13 years of fighting and getting nowhere in marriage counseling. After 2 years of planning and starting to feel like I could believe in us/her she bailed just 2 months before pulling the trigger so she can pursue her career. I was all in on this plan and have no plan B. None. I expected my family would be in Baja now, with my daughter pursuing her interest in ocean life. My wife won't communicate any plan with me. She has us scheduled for some counseling but I know how that goes--I reaffirm my commitment and my wife does whatever she wants. I've been contacting lawyers, but...

My daughter is already in the middle. As part of our family plan she has been traveling with me for months in an RV we bought for the trip. My wife is trying to get us back to the house (our daughter's room is currently rented--that's how gone we are) and "make it my daughter's home base". My wife is a bully, and she has always put our marriage and me on the line over the littlest of things. And she makes 4x what I do and will flat out buy my daughter--I am the one that has to take her to school, review her homework, do home schooling with her, make sure she eats. Wife opens presents, gets her phones and iPads, buys her gifts, and watches TV with her. So I'm the fun police and my wife is happy fun time.

My daughter expected to go to a homeschool conference where she has friends in a couple months--this was originally my wife's idea. Now that I'm schooling my kid, we go to museums, aquariums, hiking, all over and man does she seem happy. She's caught up with math after being neglected by the monessori school my wife wanted her to go to. She reads all the time and is hardly on her phone. My wife wants to put her in school back at the house and I know how that will go--I'll be the nagging nanny and my wife will make my life as difficult and miserable as possible, then blame it on me being an authoritarian. I know my daughter wants both or either, and in a normal family my wife and I would make a decision, stand by it, support our daughter, and she'd do great. It's not which of the 2 choices that is the question, it's do I stick with and fight for our original plan or do I roll over and let my wife do what she wants? At this point, we both have our selfish reasons for going one way or the other. My wife wants to pursue her career and will tie down my daughter and divorce me to do it--I get big fucked in that scenario (financially, emotionally, it's 100% what my wife knows I don't want and I can't afford it). I want to show my daughter the world, be active in her education and her life while she matures and ventures out...but I don't see this being feasible solo. Either way, I don't know how to navigate this...I ask my daughter what she wants and she's going to tell me one thing, my wife asks and she says another. The only semi-independent feedback I have is from a very bitter, anti-male, divorced "friend" who talked to my daughter and said she said she wanted to go to boarding school or go live with her aunt. Yeah, she wants to escape the shitty homelife my wife and I have made for her. I have consults with lawyers Monday but I just don't see how this will work out any way but with me going back to work to pay for what my wife wants.