Need a place to share

This post will probably be longer than I intend it to but I kind of need a place to share and relate to and I just randomly found this subreddit.

I got married back in November of 2018 after dating her for 7 months and being engaged for 7 months. I'm a religious man and so was she so we moved pretty fast as I feel tends to happen in Christian communities quite often. Our engagement was difficult with the stress of planning a wedding, buying a house, and raising a puppy that I had bought for the both of us with my own money. Our wedding came and went and we loved it. Marriage was new and hard but we were still very excited to be with each other and figure out life together instead of doing it alone.

About 3-4 months in I started to see signs that something was off. After that amount time her desire to have sex of any kind almost completely vanished. As a man with a strong sex drive and desire to be with my wife sexually mostly for the connection (I found that sex was the strongest way I connected with and bonded with her as I feel it is a lot of other men) and any time I would express my desire to have sex with a simple "hey its been a while and I'm feeling in the mood if you are" she would tell me that she wasn't in the mood and that I was somehow pressuring her into it because she felt that I was expecting her to give in to what I wanted, which to be clear I never did and I never would. It quickly got to the point where we were only having sex about once a month or less and 90% of the time it ended in her being angry at me with how I performed, something I told her in premarital counseling I was highly self-conscious about, because it didn't meet her expectations or I couldn't last long enough for her liking.

After this she got promoted to a manager position in the company we worked at together and things went downhill quickly after this. She would always be at work leaving me at home all day long with our two dogs and two cats and doing all of the stuff it takes to keep up with a house. I did it all myself on top of working part time and cooking most of if not all of our meals. Life was getting really difficult as I was trying to become a freelance artist and illustrator, something I wanted to do for a while but never had the confidence to try doing. She quickly went from telling me she supported me in my aspirations to be an artist to telling me to hurry up and figure it out so that she could figure out career as well. I told her I was willing to put my pursuits on hold so that she could figure out her career first which she did and quickly stopped because job searching was "too hard" and "discouraging". By this point I started to feel like I was constantly alone and I could do nothing to make her happy and it killed all my confidence in myself and my abilities.

The first major event to happen was when she came to me after staying at a friends house after a late night of drinking and told me she no longer believed in the Christian religion anymore. This was a HUGE deal to me and it left me absolutely shattered because she rarely talked to me about her doubts so I never knew how sever they were. It made me feel as though I had somehow failed her because one of the few times she talked about doubt to me she asked me to keep her accountable and essentially to keep her from not believing which is NOT my job nor my responsibility. Faith is deeply personal and it's our own not anyone else's. She essentially manipulated me into thinking that the fate of her faith was up to me so I was beating myself up thinking I didn't do enough for her. I was clear I would never leave her because of it and we could work together to figure all of it out. After this happened she disappeared to work all day long and began hanging out with a friend and coworker of ours who I trusted.

The relationship between the two made me uncomfortable to say the least. She began coming home late into the night after work (we worked for a coffee shop/beer bar that was open late) never telling me she was going to stay out late. She would wake me up at 2 or 3 am telling me she just got home from hanging out with the person mentioned earlier and closing down a bar together "with friends". This got worse and worse but I never said anything because I wanted to trust my wife over everything else and not worsen the state of our relationship. Then on Halloween 2019 she didn't come home at all. I was scared shitless and was calling and texting everyone I knew she was with that night (I went home early because I had work at 5 am the next morning) and I finally got an answer from a coworker saying that she was at our friends apartment (the one she had been staying up late with) waiting to sober up so she could drive home and rejected the offer to share an Uber with her. I finally got a text back saying she was home and ok and she had left her phone in the car.

When I got home she told me she cheated on me with the friend I thought I could trust that night. I told her I wanted to work through it, get some couples counseling, and work on forgiving her but I no longer trusted her or him together. She then told me that her actions were positive because it made her realize that she could no longer be with me because she was so unhappy (though I was the truly unhappy one). She attempted to tell me that her cheating was my fault because of my inability to make her happy. We separated for a weekend and when we came back together on our 1 year anniversary she told me she wanted a divorce, she was taking the dog I had bought for us when we were engaged (I had zero option), and that I could have the house if I wanted it. I had zero option for fighting for our marriage, something I attempted to do whole heartedly only for her to tell me "I'm sure of this and this is what I want and I expect you to respect that" while she refused to acknowledge or respect what I wanted. She ended up leaving me for the friend I thought I had which she completely lied to me about when I asked her. In the end she got everything she wanted and I got nothing.

I was no perfect husband by any stretch of the imagination but at least I committed to loving her the best I knew how to the very end. I've learned a lot from my experience and learned a lot about myself in the process. There's a ton I've left out for the sake of not going on too long but I've hit the major stuff. I've been through intense counseling which I continue to do and I feel as though I'm finally at a place where I'm excited and optimistic about my future but covid has done a number on my mental health and the lack of social interaction has got me really down and I just really needed a place where I could share my story and hopefully relate to some other men out there. My divorce was easy compared to what it could have been since we had no children and very few assets but the pain that I've experience and the betrayal has made me so bitter and angry at the world. I'm no longer sad. I no longer miss her. I no longer find her attractive. I'm just angry at what happened to me and the unfairness of it all. I've lost friends, my job (which I quit the day she asked for the divorce because I refused to work with either of them), my hometown (she decided to stay here to be with him), and my comfort in my day to day life. I've struggled for almost a year to find work and I'm trying to get out of here so I can just get away from them. I feel as if I'm stuck here and I cant leave even though I want to so bad.

If anyone read this thank you. I know I'm not alone in this but I periodically feel as if I am because of this fucking pandemic. Thanks for letting me share.