Wife is in the process of leaving me after 9 years together. We have 2 young boys who have been hard to raise because the oldest had infant botulism aftercare which was draining, on top of me working 3rd shift to watch the boys during the day so we didn't pay childcare.

You can imagine how draining that is mentally and physically, plus add in grad school and I was just scraping by. Yet everytime I asked her to help out with something so I could sleep (4 hours was the average during the week, and only about 1/2 of that time was in a row and not naps) she refused. When I'd bring up how exhausted I was, she'd basically mock me and say I did this to myself, even though it was a decision we talked about. And I thought that decision would come with the understanding that things would be difficult for us, but she only saw it as hard for me. So when I started to get upset about how little she was helping me, she put all the blame on me as if I just up and decided to work 3rd shift for no reason. Forget all the sacrifices I made.

Cut to last April when she first said she was done because I had snapped about her ignoring my well-being (she'd get upset if the boys napped at 4 in the afternoon because it meant she'd have a harder time putting them to bed, but nevermind the fact that that was sometimes the only nap time I could get during the day, plus the 2 1/2 hours when she was home). In spite of nothing about my work at night/stay-at-home dad during the day situation changing, I just sucked it up and made changes to never complain. I sacrificed even more sleep to spend time with her, and she was happy. She promised she wasn't leaving, she talked to me like normal, and she made future plans with me like normal.

Then suddenly that changed again. She was acting cold and distant and spending entire weekends with her friends, and got upset when I shared how that bothered me. She'd often lie about coming home, saying she'd be out for 3 hours max, but staying out for 7. The whole time I have our boys (so now I'm watching them all week and all weekend by myself for 80% of the time).

Her values had changed before the conversation in April, but at this point they were all entirely different. No care for me and what I did for the family. No issue with lying and staying out which put more stress on me. No issue with ignoring all of our vows. And no issue with going back on her word of not leaving me unless we had nasty fights again (which we didn't, I made sure of that). She even wanted to celebrate our wedding anniversary last September, and had a great time.

Then a month after that says she's done. She never wanted to try counseling. Never wanted to talk with me about our issues. Never seemed to care to acknowledge that we put ourselves in a very stressful environment with our schedules and whatnot. When we first started that, the shared understanding was that it would be a rough 3-ish years, but we decided to go ahead with it. And now this. She's not even just ambivalent towards me, she actively loathes me. Twists everything I say, lies to her friends about me, and even had the nerve to demand I stay on 3rd shift for her sake (even though she's divorcing me).

She's so utterly different from who I knew that I almost killed myself because I couldn't believe this was reality, and I struggled to cope with her just switching up like she did.