I’m 40 with one 3 year old. I met my wife on the first day of medical school. We married on the last day of medical school. We fell in love and continued through the next 10 years of training side-by-side in the same field. We were a force of nature. Our sex life did evaporate during our 1st year of post-graduate training after her brother died, and that was really hard for me, but We had a lot going on. We had a kid 3 years ago and that’s when all of a sudden, I couldn’t do anything good enough. When we finally became fully fledged surgeons, things were hard, but I thought improving. We did a year of couples therapy, but in retrospect, neither of us were being honest because we were trying to exercise some control of the other’s emotional state. Neither of us wanted to rock the boat. I was on guard during therapy and answered every question with the subconscious intent to move to process along so we could get out of this threatening environment. It became apparent that we couldn’t have the family we both wanted and both be heavy hitting surgeons, so I took the back seat to become the supporting partner. I took a less demanding and less prestigious career and did everything I could to support her rise. I realize now that I did harbor resentment. We moved for her career to a place I would have never selected. I lost the person I once was. I forgot about the things I liked. I couldn’t consider doing anything unless it involved her and my kid and their likes. I haven’t done anything for myself in 3 years. I felt like I was giving as much as I had to give. I became bitter about the lack of physical intimacy. In therapy, I suggested that we just define our relationship as love without sex. Not what I wanted, but all I cared about was being in a loving relationship. I became depressed, dissatisfied, and occasionally suicidal. I’d sit on one side of the couch while she was on the other longing for her. I was tired of being the sole partner to make advances. It made me feel gross. It ruined my self esteem. It made my depression worse. She would go to bed, and I would stay up and drink. I’d never get sloppy, but it wasn’t healthy. I fall asleep on the couch and join her in bed around 2am to wake up at 5am to start another day. Fast forward through the year of therapy. Things did improve from my perspective. Division of labor around the house was working itself out. She still had issues of asking for help when needed. She felt that I should somehow just know. We never fought, but that was actually more of a problem because neither of us was telling the other how we really felt. I was coming to terms with what it meant to be the supporting partner and trying to find the positives in my job. I felt a subtle positive switch in my mental state. Fall progressed. There was a conference we were supposed to go to together, but our childcare fell through. She asked if I wanted to go alone. I said I only wanted to go with her and if only one of us is going it should be her for career reasons. She went to the conference and when she came back we had our last couples therapy session where we “graduated”. She was odd the rest of the month. Interactions were strained. She was shorter with me than she ever had been. It was like she was subtly trying to start conflict now. We had a rough thanksgiving with a lot of passive aggressive interactions and on the Monday following she asked for a divorce and didn’t give a reason. I pleaded and begged. I wanted a reason. I got things like “this relationship is all about you” and “you don’t listen to me”. Nothing deeper. Then phone bill came and I saw that she sent 7000 texts. For the first time, I looked at the text message logs. They were all to a male colleague that we trained with. A married man who once told me 7 years prior “I’m goring to fuck your wife”. I took it as a joke/compliment at the time. I’m retrospect, our sex life died right around the time he said this to me. I reached out to our therapist who recommended against confronting her about the affair. I lived in the same house with her for the next 45 days watching her smile as she texted this guy all day/night. she told me “you don’t have to move and we don’t have to do anything legal” When I did confront her about the affair, she denied. “Just good friends” became an “inappropriate relationship” became “emotional affair” became “sexual”. After this, I couldn’t even look her in the eye. I couldn’t talk to her. I still wanted her back more than anything, but I just felt so much anger, grief and shame. It was so shocking because what had happened is something that I thought she was incapable of. It was such the opposite of her character as I understood it. She made statements that she had been unhappy for a long time and that she had been grieving the end of our marriage for months so “it’s not like I’m leaving you for someone else” and “he provides me with something that I wasn’t getting from you”. She also became mean. In 12 years I had seen her upset and rarely angry, but never mean. We couldn’t be in the same house anymore. We got an apartment and have been roaring out every few days for the past month. Ever she has said from November has been consistent. This marriage is over for her. I would be willing to work on forgiveness and try to rebuild a marriage if she wanted to try, but if she isn’t, then I really don’t want anything to do with her. She hopes that “we can build something different between us because there is a lot of love here.” That statement made me so angry. I have been emotionally and physically abandoned for years. This is the point in our life after a long and difficult road where things were going to start getting easier. I’m just at a loss. She took all of our friends. I don’t know what she has told them, but not a single one has reached out to me to see how I’m doing. Im in a job I don’t love, in a state I don’t want to be in, too far from the ocean/surfing. I have forgotten who I used to be. We have lawyers. Things are moving forward. She make 100K more than me. Finances won’t be an issue. I will miss our house, but that is our house together and I don’t want to live there without her in my life. I love her and hate her at the same time. She is apathetic towards me. The sweet, kind and considerate woman I knew for 12 years isn’t there anymore. I would do almost anything for a chance to rebuild our marriage, but I also understand there is no going back to what we had because it really want working for both of us. I mean, if I’m being honest, I felt suicidal at times due to lack of affection. Our kid is doing just fine. He is used to having a couple days per week with just one parent because of being on-call and having to be at the hospital all night. I feel trapped. She keeps asking me what my plans are and I am still having so much trouble getting out of bed to the couch. I asked if we could slow things down mr pick up again in June and she agreed. When my son calls her to say goodnight, I can tell that she is out having fun and happy without me. I don’t want her to be miserable and I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me. It’s just that we worked so hard together to get to where we are today, we gave up our 20s and 30s in the service of others, we were in the trenches of the trauma bay, operating room, and ICU together 100hr/wk. This divorce just seems like such a waste to me. Anyways, I’m having a really hard time. The o Lu silver lining is that I lost 50 pounds and I’m back to the weight I was before I started down the road of becoming a surgeon.