It’s time to tell her I want a divorce. No other human is worth living a life without peace.

I am a father, and I’m a good one. Love my kids dearly, present on all their special days.

I’m not perfect. I’m forgetful, I’m selfish at times. I may not always pay attention as well as I should. I rarely read instructions.

But I’m also a provider, protector and a forgiving person.

But I lost my voice. She complained, I listened. I complained, she reminded me of how I screwed up on something unrelated. Do they really think that guys are too stupid to see when they do that. If the guy doesn’t or stops saying something when that happens, rest assured it has formed a resentment.

She shut down my voice. The one that told her early on in the marriage that when we fight I will not be ok with her way of fighting (calling people names). I drew a boundary. I stopped drawing boundaries because it was like a challenge for her to not only knock it down, but find a way to emasculate me in the process. I stopped talking. I allowed her to rule me. But rulers keep needing to find new ways to rule with more power, more authority, when things don’t go their way.

See, my wife parrots a message to my kids about “don’t let anyone take advantage of you” when she has literally taken advantage of my simp self for 20 years. She implies I took advantage of her. How? But stealing her oxygen?

I want to take my power back. I have 20 years of stuff she needs to know how it hurt me. Her ego is massive and she needs to hear how her actions have damaged us. Right now, everything is my fault. Of course it is, I allowed myself to be silenced. And since I haven’t told her her faults, why would she believe she’s imperfect. But I’m done, so as a parting gift I want to tell her soo much.

I resented her about smoking and drinking during pregnancies after she promised she wouldn’t

I resent her for asking my opinion and then savagely ripping me apart for it each and almost every time because it didn’t always align with her

I resent her for creating a culture of fear in the house, fear her wrath. Never knowing if on one day a comment you say will be received warmly and on another day it will create a toxic fight.

I resent her for refusing to go back to work and when I tried to talk to her about it she turned it on me and said why am I not a manager yet

And this list is much much longer…

I need her to know. But what damage will that do to my kids. She already sticks the kids into the middle of our poisonous marriage with her comments. Like tonight when she got mad at my son for forgetting to do something and then apologizing to him and saying it’s because your father has created trauma in me from being forgetful for 20 years.

I know, from reading some comments on here, that leaving quietly is the way to go. But is it, really? When you see her on that high ego, thinking she did everything right, and I am the failure. Even if she never believes a word I say, doesn’t it allow me to take my power back that I’ve lost or given up for so long. Isn’t that healing for me?