She has been a SAHM for the past 12 years, I never had a say so on this decision of hers. Staying home to bond for a few months seemed fine with me for our first child, but excuses keep piling up on why she felt the need to stay home, and now years later with our second child, now 5, she has kept the status quo. Refuses to work outside the home to help me bring in income to help bolster the families finances and of course cover all of the splurges she cares about. I now feel like it's a marriage of convenience and early retirement plan for her.

Now at 15 years in and suffering from her bitterness, and likely bipolar and narcissistic personalities, I'm tired of her ostracizing me whenever she catches an attitude for usually no substantial reason at all. She gossips to her family about me (from her pov) and shares all of our family business. I shield her bad behavior from my family because I like to keep my business to myself.

She keeps track of all wrong doings that she has ever been unhappy with me about and NEVER let's it go. Even from years ago. I've never cheated or abused or anything like that, but I can't say the same for her.

I'm tired of feeling like I'm on a bumpy roller coaster with her. She'll be OK for a few weeks, then all of a sudden treats me like her worst enemy and total stranger, including verbally abusing me, throwing crap in the house, invading my personal space to intimidate me, and on occasions in the past being physically abusive. The kids have witnessed this and it's not fair or right for their mental well-being.

Every time this happens I feel ready and even told her I will file for divorce, then days or a week or more later she either tries to talk me down to "save the family" or I eventually forget about it maybe because our interactions seemed to have normalized into a more workable rhythm, or maybe I convinced myself that it's too much trouble to make this scary, complex, unknown, and expensive decision that will interrupt the lives of me and the kids. EVERY TIME, this is what happens, I talk myself out of it being lazy or thinking about how things are going better, but we always end up back in the same cycle.

Last part of it is me feeling guilty for making her have to go back to work all of a sudden and pushing my kids away from being home schooled by her all of a sudden. Don't get me wrong, I want her to work, it's just that it's going to be harder since she has refused my attempts for her to get back in the workforce. I just question where she would even live since she would likely get full custody.