My reddit posts happen IRL on average 2 months ago. It takes me that long to post up, and TBH it takes me that long to come to peace with what happened. I try to post when my brain is calm, and emotions are in check.

65 days ago I filed for divorce from my wife of 13 years and my high school sweetheart. Things have not been the same since Nov of 2016 when I had my breakdown between job loss and Xanax dependency which put me in a detox place for two weeks. While I was in there she took our kids and ran home for two months, I got sober went and got my kids flew them back and she came back a few weeks later.

I knew to not dig thru the trash, but I wasn’t ready then. I needed to fix myself – I caused this so I can fix it. If I can fix me, then I can fix US.

But I was not stupid, I never trusted her again. The sex was good at times, but at the end of the day she simply was not interested in rowing the boat with me anymore. She was too busy drilling holes in it to see that I was fixing what issues I had, and becoming a highly valuable man in terms of SMV, career and overall life.

The decision was made a year ago, but it wasn’t until I sat with my lawyer, calculated my “cost to fuck” and realized that I would rather buy her out then deal with being around a negative person for the next X number of years. I think we still love each other, but her turn is over. She has burned way to many bridges with me, and even when I lost my shit in Nov 2016 it really was self-inflicted. 18 years we were together, but it took 2 months to burn it all down. She has never looked at me the same, nor I her.

An Alpha can never be a Beta to his women, even for a minute and hope to survive, anymore than a Beta will ever been seen as an Alpha in his woman's eyes.

Two weeks ago she moved out of the marital home. For three months I have been carrying a voice recorder with me 24/7 and I upload it to Dropbox nightly. I have arguments on there, but more than that I have 3 months of overall positive interactions with her on recording.

I did this because I am not a fool and like /u/Red-Curious said – women will always try and pull out the DV card, and my wife did that. After she was served she ran to the cops and asked them to keep an eye on the house. A week later they show up at our house, pull her and I outside and did a wellness check and found nothing. Two weeks ago she moved out for “fear of her safety” and I have just LOL’d at it all. Go ahead and bury yourself. Her lawyer advised her to leave the marital home. Yeah, not the best advise even since we have not had the official temp orders hearing yet.

The kids are with me. They have slept with her one night in two weeks. She gets them during the day when I am at work, but they sleep with me, in the marital home in their beds. How can a woman who is so afraid of her husband be OK with leaving her kids with him essentially 24/7? It is all rubbish and she knows it. My lawyer is one step ahead always. His favorite line is to "be nice, be professional but have a plan to kill everyone in the room." Yep, he is a good Texas old boy, and I love him.

I do not want her to not see her kids, but I am going for primary custody and a 50/50 split (probably a 2/2/5 roll) of kids. For now, she is on the receiving end of a SPO which means she gets them Wednesday night and every other weekend. I hired the best $400/hr lawyer in town and he is already setting me up for EXACTLY what I want. We are talking about months of careful planning and execution. The money is nothing to me. My kids are all I care about. She is a good mom, but I am a better father. And I will be the 1/10 father that the 9/10 fathers talk about when it comes to divorce and how men get fucked over.

I worried for days about sitting them down and having "the talk" with them. I cried in my closet, in the bathroom, on the side of the bed and tried to think of how I can spin this conversation. But then I personally sat them down and explained to them “mommy and daddy time” and all that. They are 9 and 8, and not stupid. It was the easiest conversation I have had in a long time. I could see it in their eyes - they ALREADY knew. I pumped myself up for nothing. All the stress was my hamster and my own ego. All those tears, for nothing.

Now we get to live how we want, do what we want and not have what is essentially a BPD wife ruining our bowling evening, or Dave and Busters fun. We sleep better, we eat better and there is zero drama with her gone. I have crossed the bridge. The last two weeks have been the best weeks I have lived in a long time. My kids are happy and accepting.

I now cook and do all the household stuff that she used to. I have a maid out every 2 weeks. What I cannot get from Amazon I get delivered to my car at Kroger. It takes me less than 30 minutes a week to get food. I have put the kids to work with more of their own chores (putting their own clothes away, etc.) and it has gone over very well.

I went thru the main level of the house and took down all family pictures and replaced them of just the kids and I. I am slowly tweezing her out of our life and her presence from the marital home.

But what about sex?

I called it off with Shelly a while ago. She is too close to my wife and I do not need that kind of drama, so for now it is a dry dick. But at the same time I have been on Bumble and Tinder for 2 weeks. Already met one woman for coffee, and I get 2-3 matches a day. There is absolutely no shortage of woman out there. Be a high SMV man and they will come. Just putting myself out there to kick the tires.

You cannot buy happiness. You cannot fake it till you make it in marriage when the other person sabotages you daily. If you are not both rowing in the same direction, you will never get anywhere.

It is going to cost me a lot of money to buy her out. But it is worth it to be happy, and to raise my kids in 1.5 happy homes, as there is no way I can be happy with her again.

I also know that I am going to save myself a lot of money by doing this now, vs later. And I am likely saving years of my life as well. It gets to be a point where when you are with a toxic person you can feel them sucking the life out of you. And it is like an anchor pulling you deep into a deep ocean.

I am an extreme example.

We tell people all the time on here to be ready to burn the motherfucker down if you have to. I am doing that. When you get to the point of DL10 and higher, you just do it, or you fucking don’t. There is no fucking talking about it. But it took me 18 months to get to this point, and it has taken me 4 months to start to accept it. But once I did it, it was like dropping a 100# rucksack off your back.

I have cried myself to sleep, I have gone days without sleeping. My hardest month was when I fucked up my back doing PR’s of squat and dead in the same week. Well now you know why.

I had no outlet for the stress. Nothing for the pain, and nothing to keep my mind busy.

I fought the urge to find a Xanax. I fought the urge to drink myself to sleep. I fought the urge to go get anti-depressants. Every fucking day I had to pull myself up out of bed, and go to work and look myself in the mirror and realize that I am alone in this. I have to do this ALONE.

And it was a long month brothers. A long month.

I channeled all my anger, frustration, rage, hope, planning and excitement into the Iron. The Iron did not lie, it showed me the way and it finally convinced me to man up and do what I need to do. That a single person can only give so much, before they just say FUCK IT!

I am not perfect, and I accept that. But I can only fix me. And since I cannot force her, nor motivate her to fix herself, it is time for her to leave.

And that is where I am brothers.

You make your own future. You define yourself on a daily basis. I love and miss my wife, but the woman I am married to now, is not the woman I married. And I am not the same man either.

I am a man who knows what he wants, and will not accept anything less than that.

A main event does not just happen.

This is how you execute a main event.