hi everyone. please pardon the stream of consciousness here... i come to you with a broken heart tonight and my brain isn’t working well. i’ve been made stupid by pain. my wife (28f) and i (43m) just had our 7-year anniversary, but we’re separated, and likely heading for divorce. no kids. she left me on december 19th and moved back in with her parents in her home country. (she’s a u.s. citizen but was not born here.) her stated reason for leaving is that she felt alone, although she had good friends here and had a good relationship with my family, and talked to her family every day. she told me it was mostly my fault, that i had left her alone in the relationship, that she felt like i was hiding - not emotionally present. she told me that over the years, whenever i was being distant, she had gently nudged me toward being more engaged, saying things like “remember, you don’t live alone.” and things would be a little better for awhile, but eventually the same patterns of behavior would reassert themselves. but i was too dense to understand the urgency of what she was gently telling me. and i didn’t really get it until it was too late. i wasn’t aware i was doing it at the time, and it was never intentional. but, given time to reflect, i remember the times she was talking about. we never completely “had it out” and fought constructively about it, because we’re both conflict-averse, and there was always a lot of love between us, and we liked each other’s company, and we were best friends. we were a team. but now she’s gone and it’s too late.

there were other factors, too. we were unable to conceive a child, either naturally or with IUIs (we did 5 IUIs without success but never tried IVF). that was inevitably much harder for her than it was for me. and in 2017, i had a very scary near-death medical emergency that traumatized her, and she never quite got over that trauma. she sought counseling for panic attacks and general post-traumatic stress, and soon declared she felt better. she stopped seeing her counselor although her recovery seemed incomplete. and we both have a history of depression. i take antidepressants and i had been close to getting it back under control. and she was also taking an antidepressant too - i think it was citalopram - but she wasn’t in counseling. and she stopped taking her antidepressant cold turkey, without talking to a doctor about it. it didn’t worry me too much at the time - i’m not sure why - but then in the next couple months it was like she faded away before my eyes. but you can’t force someone you love to help themselves. she knew i was worried about her and frustrated with her passivity about seeking help. finally, there was the fact that, although she had become fluent in english, she never quite got to the point where she felt ready to take the plunge into full-time employment out in the world. i always encouraged her but never pressured her, because we were always comfortable enough financially. i always prioritized her comfort and i supported whatever her timeline was going to be with work stuff. at least i thought that’s what i was doing. i think her reluctance was caused almost entirely by anxiety about her english fluency. so she was alone, literally, at home most weekdays, with the exception of the times she did things with friends during the day.

at some point in early december she sprung it on me that she was thinking of leaving. i was stunned. that weekend we visited my parents and we told them what she had told me. they were alarmed and saddened, and they urged us to get counseling. she agreed we should do couples counseling, and we even made an appointment. but in our intake session with the therapist, she (my wife) repeated the same thing she had said to me the previous week. i had thought we were going to “work on it,” but she was basically outlining why she was going to leave me. and the therapist said she didn’t think she could take us on. she said something like “it sounds like... instead of wanting to work on staying together... you’re trying to say goodbye.” so for us, she wasn’t so much a therapist as she was a midwife for the destruction of our marriage.

we’ve been in contact on and off since she left. i’m in a world of hurt, because i don’t want this separation or divorce, i still love her, i’m still completely in love with her, and she’s my best friend. and i was hers, but i guess i’m not anymore. i thought the love between us was indestructible. and my love for her was still growing. we had a good story, and people could see how in love we were, and our families loved each other. it always felt like the world was pulling for us. and i just can’t reconcile the joy of all that with the devastation and heartbreak now.

it’s been long enough now that i’ve noticed an emergent pattern: when she’s been friendly and talkative, i’ve thought “MAYBE THERE’S HOPE!” and i’ll subsist on that grain of hope for a few days. but i don’t like ambiguity, and eventually i have a compulsive need to clarify the terms again. and that leads invariably to me begging her to reconsider and come back. i know it’s pathetic. that causes her to shut down and disengage from the conversation and write things like “i thought you were clear about what i wanted. i thought we agreed.” and i’ll write “but last week you texted me out of the blue and said hi, and i asked why, and you said you guessed it was because you missed me. and this past week we facetimed a couple times, and you seemed different, and we were laughing, and we both said ‘i love you’ and...” and so on. last night i even made the emotionally costly mistake of asking her if i could visit her, and she said i shouldn’t, and that nothing would change if i did. so then, after an exchange like that, i’m in the depths of despair again, spending the next day feeling like i’m either going to cry or throw up, possibly both. and then i back off for a few days, hoping she’ll miss me again. and the cycle repeats.

thank goodness there was snow today so i didn’t have to go to the office. but being alone in this place, our home, totally alone, rattling around in this big place full of ghosts of our past, gets pretty real. so most of today i’ve just been flailing around, reaching out, looking for any relief from the pain. emailing and texting friends, talking to my parents on the phone for awhile. i signed up for a local divorcecare group (divorcecare.org - i learned about it here on reddit today, although i forgot the name of the nice internet person who mentioned it - sorry - i will try to find you and give you credit) that’s meeting this thursday. things like that. even though it sucks to be the one left behind, i’m very lucky in the following ways: (1.) i have two wonderful parents who are still alive and live close by; (2.) i also have a wonderful sister, and she and my brother-in-law and two nieces live relatively close by too; (3.) i have a lot of very good friends, far and near, including a couple renewed friendships from college - one of whom had his own much uglier divorce in 2011, and who has been helping immensely with my slow, unsteady advance through this awful experience; (4.) i have cool and understanding coworkers, including my boss; (5.) my wife is a fundamentally kind person, despite the cruelty of the situation, and she wants to do an uncontested no-fault divorce, and doesn’t want to go after my 401k or anything; (6.) it’s the 21st century and we all have access to resources like this sub, where we can tell these stories to people around the world, and respond to each other and help each other.

sorry this is so long, and if you’re still reading, thank you. i have a few pragmatic questions related to the international nature of this separation and divorce process. (1.) we’ve always filed our taxes as “married filing jointly”, and i would do the same for 2018, except that we’re thousands of miles apart so it’s hard to get her signature. are there any cpa types out there who can recommend a course of action? can i just file as “married filing separately”, or should i express-mail the 1040 to her to get her signature and then submit as “married filing jointly”? (2.) i don’t have a lawyer, and neither does she. i still don’t feel up to the divorce paperwork yet. all i know for sure is that it’s easier to get divorced in the state where i live - and where she and i lived together - than in her home country, where it’s a much longer process. it’s important to note that we got married in her home country - both a civil and a church wedding - before she had immigrated to the united states. for almost all of 2012 we waited for the immigration gears to turn, and then she was finally able to move here, and our marriage was recognized by the u.s., so we didn’t have to do anything else when she moved here. but does that affect our divorce process, and if so, how? (3.) does anyone who has gone through this before - especially anyone who didn’t want the divorce and was blindsided by it - have any advice on how to get past this stage, when all you want is for this daily and nightly hell to end, and all you want is for the other person to change their mind and come back? everyone says it gets better, but how do i get from here to there?