I hate my wife, and I hate what I have allowed our marriage to do to my life. At the same time, I hate myself for what I have done to hers.
We had children even though, deep down, I did not want to. I should have been more honest with myself about that. I resent her for not finishing her degree, and I resent myself for not recognizing that she was never going to take it seriously. I hate that she spends far more than we can afford, and I hate myself for allowing that to continue.
I do not know how I would financially survive a divorce, and I honestly do not know how she would cope emotionally or mentally. She really has no one besides me and my family. Her mother passed away. Her father was abusive and we have no relationship with him. She has no aunts or uncles, no real social circle, and no siblings she can rely on.
The difficult part is that I know a lot of my resentment toward her is probably unwarranted. She nags me, but sometimes I deserve it.
What scares me is my physical reaction to her. When I see her name come up on my phone or hear her come home from work, my entire body becomes tense. I cannot think straight when I am around her.
I love our children more than anything, but I feel like we have cursed them with horrible parents.
I have tried talking to her calmly and rationally, but those conversations usually end with her accusing me of guilt tripping her or gaslighting her. At this point, I feel like I cannot talk to my own wife.
I do not know what to do anymore. Where do I go from here?
Your first problem is not whether you stay married. Your first problem is that you are drowning in resentment, shame, fear, and responsibility for everybody in your house. You are so flooded that seeing your wife’s name on your phone puts your body on alert. You are not going to make a wise decision about the rest of your life from that place.
And you need to own something important.
You keep saying you hate your wife, but almost every complaint about her is followed by something you hate about yourself. You resent her degree, but you blame yourself for ignoring what you saw. You resent the spending, but you blame yourself for allowing it. You regret having children when you did not really want them, and you blame yourself for not being honest.
That matters.
This marriage may have serious problems. Your wife may absolutely have things she needs to take responsibility for. But you have spent years saying yes when you meant no, staying quiet when you needed to speak, and apparently hoping things would somehow become different. Resentment grows beautifully in that kind of soil.
So stop keeping score for a minute and start getting your own life back under your control.
Get a counselor for yourself. Not because you are crazy. Not because this is all your fault. You need one place where you can tell the entire ugly truth without managing your wife’s reaction. You need help separating what belongs to you from what belongs to her.
Then get painfully clear about the finances. Know exactly what you earn, what you owe, what you spend, what assets you have, and what divorce would actually mean financially. Right now you are afraid of a financial catastrophe that you have not fully measured.
And stop making yourself responsible for whether your wife could emotionally survive without you. Her history is heartbreaking. Losing her mother, having an abusive father, and having almost no dependable family is brutal. But those things cannot become a life sentence for you. You can care deeply about what happens to her without agreeing to remain married solely because you are afraid she cannot function without you.
Your children also have not been cursed with horrible parents. They have two parents in a marriage that is in serious trouble. What they need now is at least one adult who stops spiraling and starts acting deliberately.
Do not announce that you hate her. Do not unload ten years of resentment onto her. Do not threaten divorce during another terrible argument.
Get yourself steady. Get individual help. Get the financial facts. Then decide whether you are willing to make one serious attempt to rebuild this marriage, preferably with professional help, or whether you are finished.
And if you are finished, eventually you are going to have to say so.
You cannot spend the next decade hating her for a life you keep choosing every morning.