(Crossposting from /r/asktrp)

First, some background. Brace yourselves, this is a long one.

My wife and I have been together for fifteen years, married for the past five. We had been best friends since high-school and eventually hooked up once we started college. Now, we’re married and have two children — I work, she stays at home — and we are on the verge of splitting up.

She and I have been growing more distant for years, and I’d attributed the lack of intimacy to both my long work hours and the kids. Sex was monthly at best. She never initiated and only accepted begrudgingly. Roughly a month ago, I noticed her acting strange and dove into her chat logs. Although there was no obvious flirting in the conversations, I found she had been planning to leave me for a while and was conferring with one of her male friends. I confronted her about it and the resulting talk was anything but productive.

Her reasons were that I’m not attentive towards her needs, I’m not appreciative of her efforts at home, I don’t spend enough time with the children, I don’t give her enough time to herself, and she feels lonely and exhausted. She says that she’s tried to get me to “understand her and fix these things” too many times in the past, feels like nothing has changed, and now she simply doesn’t care anymore, doesn't trust me, and has no reason to stay invested in the relationship. She wants to pack up, live with her mother, find a job and an apartment, and move on with her life.

My immediate response was an emotional explosion of grief and humility, and a complete 180-degree turnaround in my behavior at home. I started cleaning up everything, attending to her constantly, giving her all the free-time in the world. It probably isn’t a surprise to most of you that it didn’t do much to change her mind. It felt for a few weeks like she was responsive to my changes (in hindsight, the fact that she didn’t try to leave more quickly should have been an obvious hint), but finally upon pressing her directly enough on the issue, she admitted that she had zero intention of staying. She simply “isn’t interested anymore” and “can’t trust” me. I fell apart and did a pathetic amount of groveling. It made things worse, naturally.

This is where TRP comes in.

I’ve been aware of this sub for a while, but wasn’t interested enough to dig any deeper than just clicking through a few threads here and there. Following the breakdown in front of my wife, I’ve read through just about everything on the sidebar. It’s made me realize that for too long, while she’s been trying to find structure in her life through me, I’ve been foolishly trying to find validation and self-respect through her. It’s a recipe for disaster. I have had zero drive to really enjoy my life and better myself, focusing instead on "being the breadwinner". It’s also made me realize just how many terrible habits she has as a wife and mother, the primary of which is her almost completely hands-off approach to raising our kids while I’m at work — they’ve probably been raised more by our iPad than by her. The conclusion I've made is that as much as I would like to save my marriage, the welfare of my children and my own sense of self-worth need to take precedence.

This realization flipped a switch in my head and, in what may be the first time since we've been married, I started a fight with her. I called her out on everything she was doing wrong in our relationship, with our kids, and how I felt as though I’d always been taking 100% of the blame in every bad situation. I told her she was already fucking up our kids by ignoring them and was on the verge of doing even more damage by leaving for selfish reasons. I told her to either commit to fixing things or quit sitting around, pack her shit, and leave already. In most cases, any sort of confrontation we have ends with me backing down, admitting fault, and giving her what she wants. Not this time. After unloading on her, she snapped. But this time, I shut down every attempt to rationalize or deflect she made. I held eye contact until she looked away. I maintained my anger and stayed on point. I criticized her like a child who had been behaving badly. She immediately started throwing her belongings into laundry containers haphazardly, taking off her wedding ring and slamming it onto the table, shouting things like “Fine, is this what you want!?”, et al. All very dramatic, but I’d had enough and just powered on through. Once she seemed out of steam, I softened my tone and told her “We can keep arguing, or you can come to the table and talk to me like an adult about this.” She accepted, we talked, and it was the most productive conversation we’d had since everything started.

In recent conversations with her friends following this, she seems more open to staying, though unsurprisingly he’s subtly attempting to undermine my efforts by injecting doubt. Still, I’m feeling optimistic for the first time in a long time.

At the end of the day however, I’m going to get my shit together as a man and be a better father for my children, with or without her in the picture. That said, I’d still like to save my marriage and get my friend back. While our fight seems to have tilted her back slightly in my direction, she’s still extremely aloof and rarely talks unless talked to. So far I’ve been returning silence in kind, but I’m honestly not sure how to react to, well, “nothing” in a constructive way.

I’m open to any criticism or advice, guys. Thanks for reading.