STBXW moved out a few weeks ago, we’ve been separated since June. We decided I would stay in our home until my daughter graduates high school in 2025.

Staying here is tough because of all the memories since we moved in here in 2010. It was our dream home, new construction. What is killing me is all the blood, sweat, tears and money I’ve put in to make it truly our home. All the things I built; finished basement, mudroom extension off of laundry room, all the electrical and plumbing I did myself, all the landscaping, garden, all the new fixtures, lighting, all of it. Everything we both wanted to do for us and our family. I did it all basically by myself.

I thought I was doing the right thing, being the man of the house, building, creating, making a better home. All these decisions we made together. Thought we had a true partnership but in the end none of it mattered.

In her own words she changed and needs to focus on her happiness. I’ve posted numerous times about her journey since the fall and her devouring self help books and podcasts, the obsessive exercising that took over her life.

We had issues that we talked about and I thought we would overcome. Not once did I think ending the marriage was a possibility. I stuck with her and supported her as she was working through her process to becoming who she is now is who she’s supposed to be.

Who she’s supposed to be now completely shut me out, was vindictive and downright cruel to me leading up to the day she dropped the bomb on me. Truly remarkable how instantaneously she turned against me once she said she was done, it was too late to work on things and she didn’t want to be married anymore.

There was no affair as I asked numerous times for her to tell me if there was because I think it’d be easier to forget about her if there was.

I have a good friend that I have completely opened up to and told him everything we had issues on, both my faults and hers, and what she said and did during that time. He’s bewildered that I’m still thinking about her and am upset simply because of how she utterly disrespected me with her actions and words and the outright selfishness she’s embraced to walk out on our marriage and break apart our family so she can focus on herself.

My ego and self esteem are wrecked because of the rejection from the woman I fell in love with and married, and that’s who I’m holding onto in my head. I still am having a hard time separating her from then and her from now. Her now I have utter contempt towards, but her then is who I want back. I know it’s not going to happen because that person has been buried and replaced by a self centered thing I don’t recognize.

So as I walk around this house and see all that I did to make it our family’s home, it’s very hard to reconcile that none of it meant anything. I get satisfaction from the work I put into it, but I did it for us and she disposed of us with such ruthlessness that it seems like such a waste.

Were my instincts to provide and create misguided? Did I focus on the wrongs things? I’ve read how women see their husbands as betas after time, and I don’t mean to come across as pretentious, but I don’t know how much more alpha I could have been. I’ve always viewed myself as a man’s man and took charge when I needed to, had my own separate hobbies and interests fixed whatever was broken, in shape, good job.

I don’t know, I continue to be confused that my marriage is ending and this is my life now. I was not strong after she told me with the crying, begging, pleading, all of it. I wonder if that’s how she sees me now, the broken man that cried for days trying to reconcile.

I am ready for the fight ahead as we work through the separation agreement and have become as resolute as she has been since all of this started. But it makes me sad that after almost 20 years of marriage she is viewing me simply as a paycheck because she’s entitled to it.

I have never read more truer words that the woman you marry is not the same person you divorce.