TL;DR — My wife and I have been together for 10 years, married 5, we have two sons under age 4. I've noticed disconnection and potential incompatibility since the earliest years, but always tried to focus on the good. We've been going to couples therapy on and off for 6 years, and we've also each been going to individual therapy to work through our respective anxiety and depression issues.

Even with all that work, I feel like the issues between us have only gotten worse. We care about each other, but I feel like I do not get the love and connection that I want in a relationship/marriage, and I no longer feel like my true or full self. Rather I feel I have edited and curated my personality to make things work. The more I try to live in alignment with my core, the more I recognize how much I don't like my marriage or the connection my wife and I share. This marriage feels mediocre at best and completely dysfunctional and low-grade toxic at worst. I've effectively told her that I want to end things, but the idea of not seeing my boys every day is crushing me.

Right now, I'm just seeking any insight or support in navigating this situation.

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I recently posted about this in r/daddit (post here), but I'm looking for more advice and support from this group. I'll restate my situation and hopefully be a bit more articulate and direct in what I'm processing and what advice/support I'm seeking.

My wife and I are both in our late 30's, we've been together 10 years, married for 5 years, and we have two sons who are under 4 years old. We've had issues for a long time; truthfully I have had doubts about our connection since year one, but I always tried to see the good and was hopeful we could make things work.

Our story looks like this: I met my wife coming off of my first serious, long-term relationship. I was in a 4-year relationship with someone who I had a very strong attraction and connection with, who I experienced the highest highs and lowest lows with. That woman was unfortunately also extremely toxic, verbally abusive and on a few occasions physically abusive, and clearly was not someone I wanted to spend my life with.

I started dating my now-wife two-months after that breakup. I was hesitant to get into anything serious, but there was an initial attraction. We laughed a lot together when we first met and she represented a sense of calm that my prior girlfriend didn't. Admittedly I was eager to get laid and put the previous girl out of my mind, and my wife was very into me from the get go, so we dove right into dating.

There was a lot of commonality between us — similar education level, similarly (distant) relationship to religion, similar politics, relatable family issues. We both had/have goofy sides that allowed us to laugh a lot together, and the first several dates were fun.

But it wasn't long before aspects of her personality rubbed me the wrong way — negative quips / harsh sarcasm, a type of faux-ditziness (as in, she's not actually a ditz but she likes to play the role), joking about "delusions of grandeur" in a way that made her sound like she lacked groundedness / seriousness. Overtime other significant differences were revealed:

  • We converse and connect with people in very different ways; I'm more of a talker, she is more quiet and introverted (in the true sense — she is drained by group activities where as I love group trips, outings, etc)
  • She is much more of a materialist/consumerist
  • She has much less energy than me
  • We generally don't have much overlap in interests / hobbies / how we spend recreation and leisure time

A lot of these things can be worked through, and we've tried very hard over the years. But dating back to year one I have distinct memories of feeling "wow, this is a really great person, but I just don't feel the connection with her". I have always had self-esteem and self-confidence issues, so I always had a hard time trusting my gut. And so I always persevered.

I proposed after a year of watching my friends get married — I knew I wanted that too, and I figured this relationship had enough to build on. But it was only 6 months later that we were on yet-another trip where I felt immense disconnection, enough to bring it up to her and nearly end the trip early and end the engagement. 6 months after that I nearly broke up with her AGAIN, but STILL didn't go through with it.

Every step of the way I've come up with some excuse: "this is just my anxiety causing me to over-analyze our connection", "we're going through a rough patch", "we're moving to a new city; let's wait til we settle in". Now in marriage the excuses are: "we're dealing with a lot of house issues to sort through", "we've got a difficult, reactive dog", "young kids make life hard"... etc.

But now I'm done simply believing that and trudging forwards. I've been working very hard to improve myself in the last two years, getting mentally and physically healthier and approaching life with more clarity as a result. I started a new job earlier this year and the difference with who I am and how I feel with my new coworkers and my friends is night-and-day compared to how I feel with my wife. I feel more like myself, cracking jokes with people, talking about things that make me feel alive, feeling people actually listening to me and valuing my input.

At home with my wife, I have to debate and convince her of even the most minor opinions. Despite me doing 50-50 child and household work (sometimes more since she works a demanding job too), she is often too drained to chat with me. She has become more money-hungry than ever, clearly values her own job and career ambitions over mine (even though I am the one who helped her discover her new career path). She brings her competitive edge home, which results in me feeling like I don't have an actual partner in anything we are doing. She often resorts to tough love (that is how her mother treated her).

We've also had a mostly-dead bedroom for 4+ years now. That does include 2 pregnancies, but it's at a point where she wants it but I don't even initiate because I'm just not feeling attracted or connected (it's not a libido problem).

Ultimately, I feel like I have gradually given up more and more parts of myself to be with this woman. She has many good qualities but it feels she has a hard time letting those shine and reducing the bad. She desperately wants to keep trying, but we've been going to couples therapy on and off for 6 years now — it started after those near-breakups during our engagement, before we even got married.

At this point, the kids are the only real reason I am staying. The idea of not being with my boys every day is absolutely soul-crushing. But I also feel that this relationship has worn me out and is preventing me from being the full man and full father that I can be, and after working through these issues for years on end, I'm not sure I see how things are going to completely turnaround in the way I need them to.

Can anyone here relate to this sort of gradual degradation of a connection and have it result in separation/divorce? If so, did you proceed with separation even despite your wife wanting to stay together?

And for those who went through this with kids, how did that impact your decision?