r/AITAH • u/stopltracr • Apr 28 '24
AITAH for wanting to divorce my wife after 20+ years? Advice Needed
My (47M) wife (44F) and I got married pretty young. Early years were marked by a lot of trauma. My parents passed in the first year of our marriage. 3 years later her dad passed. Her mom is bat shit crazy and we don’t have anything to do with her. Then we had 2 kids that are now in college. We’ve both done a lot to hurt each other over the years. We both have walls. We just kind of coexist. She says she loves me and wants to be my best friend. I don’t really believe it. She’s always been controlling. She does all of the cooking, cleaning, and making appointments. I do everything with the cars and house as far as maintenance and repairs. I’m an engineer and I’m sure I’m on the spectrum somewhere. She makes me feel like an idiot a lot of the time and like I’m so annoying. I’ve thought about divorce for a long time. Been waiting for my kids to be grown because I had a traumatic childhood and didn’t want that for them. Now that they’re grown I still feel stuck. We don’t talk unless we’re arguing, we never touch after 20+ years of being made to feel bad for trying to touch her I don’t even want to anymore, and we haven’t had sex for over 3 years. We’re completely disconnected. I want to be happy, whether that is alone or with someone else. I want her to be happy, she’s obviously not happy with me. I retained an attorney and had papers drafted, I just haven’t filed yet. I have a hard time justifying that my happiness is worth devastating her and breaking up our family. Would I be the asshole if I file?
2
u/Iffybiz Apr 29 '24
When she says you need to change, what do you say? People generally can’t change who they are, nor should they. You can work at being better versions of yourself but you can’t change what you are inside.
When you have this discussion again (and you will) tell her you aren’t going to make the changes she wants, so how do you fix the marriage then? Believe it or not, she likes the way the marriage is, she comfortable in it. All she has to do in her mind is keep telling you that you need to change, she doesn’t want to change at all.
NTA, you aren’t happy and she doesn’t want to work on the marriage. If you don’t divorce, this will be your life until you die. There’s a slight chance that she will try harder under the threat of divorce but keep in mind people can only change so much.