About 6 months in to separation from my wife of 6 years. No kids. Divorce attorneys are already working on things. Long story short, in our relationship, I did everything —I was the breadwinner (about 4x her pay and about 60 hrs a week), the cook, the cleaner, repairman, yardworker, planner, accountant—everything. For our entire marriage we’d have emotional arguments about how I needed help with life and nothing ever changed. Those became more frequent with my new job 4 years ago, and there was never an effort to help. Talk of “I’ll try” became “I’m just not wired that way”. I didn’t ask for much —cooking dinner once a week, doing the bills. Never any movement on her part. I’d cook dinner, eat, get some work done, clean the dishes, and the whole time she’s just be watching tv or playing video games. Over the years it built up an immense amount of resentment. In addition, we had zero sex life since marriage (maybe 2-3 times a year. Terrible and unemotional). That wasn’t THE major issue, but it was another concern that I had brought up quite a few times and she refused to addressed. We also didn’t have any shared interests anymore and lived sort of separate lives. When the time came, we both went to individual counseling. I avoided couples counseling because in my therapy sessions I realized I didn’t want to be with her anymore. I had tried asking in the past many times and she never even tried. Talked with pastors, friends and family about it too. She was devastated. I moved out and genuinely haven’t missed almost anything of our life together. Still feel immense guilt and the sinking feeling that I didn’t do “enough”. Not sure if anyone ever feels that way. Maybe once we sell the house completely and finish the paperwork that will be the closure I need.

Haven’t heard anything similar on this subreddit. It’s the guilt more than anything. I’ve worked hard on self- and relationship evaluation since then, and feel like I can see 100 ways things went wrong and how not to do that the next time. Is that the real lesson for us? Just use the failure as a learning experience? Sorry for the rambling but just needed to vent.