I (35M) and wife (32F) have been married for 9 years. With 2 kids under 7. I am the one who initiated it and asked for a divorce. And there is no one big / bad reason. It’s just a 1000 little cuts. Until just eventually coming to terms with the fact that the reason we are not fully happy is us. We slowly grew to be very different people than the ones that got married. This feeling has been in me a while before I finally had the guts to say it out loud and that already felt like a relief to admit. Then after admitting it to her, then to a friend and therapist felt like a huge weight off my chest and that’s when I started to feel like it does make sense.
I really wanted to go through this cordially. We currently live in the same house, separated for all intents and purposes. Ever since then, she has been in denial that I actually want to go through with this. And then when she understood that I do, wanted to try to reconcile. I don’t think there is a path there. And I don’t have any mental capacity to do that. The denial became guilting me, shaming me, anger, frustration. I feel awful, I almost wish one of us cheated or something and it would make this process easier (yeah I know it’s stupid thing to say, but such is the mental drain of being the instigator of this process). She is in an anger phase now, eventually coming to terms with it along the lines of, “I don’t want you to anywhere in my life except as the kids’ father”. We’re still doing individual therapy and maybe have 1-2 more couple therapy to get some closure.
I don’t know why I’m posting this. Maybe to get things off my chest. Or maybe to hear views of others who have gone through a divorce for reasons of just simply growing apart and unhappy. And more so, if you are the instigator how do you deal with the guilt of “breaking the family” and get through to the other side?