When to call it quits?

This is hard for me to do but I need advice.

My wife is a great mom and can be very thoughtful when she wants to be. She is great at a lot of things. She does have another side that only those close to her have seen. She can get nasty during arguments. She can take any situation and turn it around to make it appear as if she is an innocent victim. She is overly emotional and defensive. She will take any self-perceived slight toward her and run with it. She has big-time self-esteem and confidence issues. She can be jealous and envious. She also likes things to be her way and does not take too kindly to anybody telling, instructing, directing, or even asking her to do something. I tend to be hesitant to have anything more than light conversation because it tends to end up with us not agreeing on something then she gets emotional and the cycle starts over. Me not engaging with her makes her upset. She looks at it as me ignoring her and in her book that's abuse. So I end up in this really energy-draining state, I live so as to not upset my wife who is always upset. Exhausting!

Over the years I have been conditioned to not ask her for anything. I try to avoid any confrontations with her. I have slowly felt isolated and tend to compartmentalize my anger toward her. I don't go out with friends because it's not fair I go out when she has been with the kids all day. Now I don't have any friends.

Over the years I have become more and more detached.

After our third child, a new female gets hired at my job. You can see where this is going. She was 23, and really full of life, just always happy. I enjoyed our conversations which over the next few months turned into friendly flirting. I started thinking about her outside of work. I started to feel like myself again, I was happy and excited for life. I started working out and running, went back to school, and really tried to positively improve myself. Before long we started having an affair. During this time, I never thought about leaving my wife because of our kids. I love my kids. This was an "I want my cake and eat it too" phase. It was very selfish. My wife finds out about the affair. She is crushed and angry and everything imaginable. It was a very hard time, I took full responsibility and pleaded for forgiveness. I cut communications with the other woman a took head-on my punishment. She was already emotionally unstable, she was already a victim. Now it was exponentially worse. There were years of any moment, word, song, or feeling that would "trigger" her into anything from depression to rage. Years of her berating me with her anger every time we lay down at night, followed by anger at me for not properly consoling her. This looks more like her telling me how much of a piece of shit I am while I bask in my shame. This leads to countless nights of little sleep. That mixed with the stress and guilt has aged me tremendously. In 4 years I look as if I aged 15 years, I have large bags under my eyes now and wrinkles on my face.

During this phase, I noticed something, her version of our relationship was so far off from what it actually was. She would say things like, "I would have crawled across the desert for you", "I would have done anything for you", and "I was so happy with our life". She worked part-time for the first 3 years of our marriage. The Last of those 3 years she worked an overnight shift.

During our nightly bitchfest sessions, she would say things to me like, "You forced me to work overnight and stay home with the kids". She can really embellish and play something up, like I said she has a special ability.

I also noticed she was always just "soo happy" the season before. She wasn't. She was miserable then and now. But in her mind, everything always "used to" be great.

She grew up in California, with 2 parents and an older sister. Her sister is 4 years older and was probably mean to her. Her mother worked a lot and probably didn't give her as much attention as she required. Her dad was not emotional or social, but I later found out he was very involved with his church.

From her perspective, she was abused by her sister and left to fend off the horrors of this world. Her mom was not there for her. Her dad was an absent father. I used to think she had a rough upbringing. I don't anymore. And to this day, those argumentive behaviors are still used to punish her mother. It sucks to see a 40-year-old woman tell her mom how shitty she was 35 years ago and demand answers. Her mother copes the same way I do, she waits it out in silence.

I say this because my wife changes the past, she molds it in a way to make her look like the greatest wife ever and anyone else look horrible.

I am no saint. I was unfaithful which caused a loss of trust. We decided to homeschool our kids. This meant we would become a 1 income family. In my mind nothing changed, I have always paid for all the bills, groceries, and things like that. I never knew what she spent her money on.

I have never been great with saving money, I spend too much on small things that add up. A subscription here, a soda there, and a $100 at Ace Hardware when I went to get a gallon of milk. I am bad with money. I lost a couple of thousand dollars playing online poker. Which I know is very irresponsible, (this was in 2019, and I haven't played poker since), Wife flips out! I was trading cryptocurrency in 2020. Over the course of a year, I might have profited $500. I get screwed over on my taxes, in 2022 they send a letter saying we owe 10k in back taxes, wtf! Wife flips out big time! I appeal, now it's 2700. Wife flips out, the same argument when we first find out about taxes. I appeal, now it's $1600. Wife flips out, the same argument.

It's a repeatable cycle. The wife wants something, but we don't have money for it, argument ensues.

I owe it, I suck at the money (Currently in therapy for this). I have lacked the self-discipline to save and it's killing my marriage.

It's important to note a couple of things: I transfer money into her account every month, to which I have no access. And my wife does stuff with the kids almost every day during the week. Maybe a state park on Monday, a bounce house place on Tuesday, and a baseball game on Wednesday. I have no say in anything, a lot of times I won't even know what they did til that night or a few days down the road.

Long story short. She is upset because we need new tires on our van, we don't have money to get them immediately, and we have to wait til payday. She starts nagging me...

This nagging session led to her saying she thinks we should separate.

At that moment, out of emotion, I said fine!

Over the next 3 days, she unexpectedly corners me to nag and tells me how she slaves over raising our kids while I off throwing away our money.

I don't want to ruin my kids, they are oblivious to this, I really love them and not being able to see them every day would create a hole in my heart. So I tell her "Look, divorce is the last thing I want to do",

She proceeds to tell me of the hardships of staying home with the kids and slaving over the housework (not) and laundry (which I do) and cooking meals (I cook dinner every night and do dishes).

She has been slowly wearing me down over the years, I am a shell of the person I was. I have countless examples of these like if I leave work 10 minutes late, I know an argument will happen. It will end with her telling me how I don't communicate.

Either way, I am always wrong. I I make a compelling argument, she will default to my past to justify her being mad. I feel as if I am either going crazy or brainwashed. Even in the moment, I know what she is saying are lies and very biased and embellished memories, yet I start to feel bad and believe her. I literally need to snap out of it.

It's pure toxic. There's so much more I want to say.

I don't want to tear down what we have built, despite my already trying to with the crappy stuff I've done.

But I don't know if I want to continue being the target of her passive-aggressive anger, I literally feel like she is killing me. I don't like who I am anymore, and I start to think that starting over may not be that bad.

If we separate, will the sorrow and guilt haunt me? Will the heartache of not being with my kids get me? Will the stress of financial hardship kill me (I am projecting she would take me to the cleaners in child support with 4 kids)

I know with 100% certainty when the kids get older and move out, we won't be together...

I need some advice! I have plenty of work to do on myself. Do I stay? Do we separate? I just don't know???

HELP!