First of all, this website is amazing and I’m so thankful to have found it. I am in the middle of a separation (April 2016) from my wife. We have 2 kids, 5 & 2. After many years of bliss, I came home on a Tuesday in April and was asked to sit down. My wife told me she wanted a divorce because of something her family said happened even before we were married. Most of it is just pure lies, but clearly her family wants me out of the picture. I thought the issue had been resolved…for eight years. For those years, I went over to her parents’ house every Sunday, at least, and never heard one word about the issue. Nobody every seemed uncomfortable, and, in fact, I was frequently the one who would stand up and walk out of the room if it seemed like a compromising situation for me. Eight years of family dinners, birthday parties…all without a hitch. So this something that “happened” 8 years ago is now destroying the perfect life that we have been creating for the past 8 years. Fuck her family. If I could steal her away with our kids to Tibet, I’d surely do that.

So, now, I’m left with this daily pain and suffering of regret for actions I actually did take, resentment and hate for all of the lies about what I did NOT do, and a wife who refuses to acknowledge any effort to bring us back together. I go to her house almost every day to see the kids and it feels normal sometimes. Until I look at her sitting on the couch on her phone, which she does for hours at a time, and she says “What!?” Any attempt I make to reconnect, be it a pat on the back or a friendly smile, is now somehow manipulative, disgusting, and I’m reminded I’m only there for the kids. She’ll come out in her underwear the next day no problem, but I’m the manipulative and destructive one.

Part of this feels like I’m being pulled by strings by a sadistic family that wants to find a reason for their own misery. Why I’m trying to make this work still is beyond me. But I love my wife and the family we had created. She won’t let the kids stay with me, saying she feels “uncomfortable” with it, which also feels like bullshit. I have never and will never hurt my children, but any attempt at saying that is me being manipulative. I feel like I’m caught in a web of fucked up people controlling my life, but i’m still the monster somehow.

The only thing that seems to work is to go focus on the kids, ignore my wife, and go to my apartment. The more i do that, the more she seems to ask me “Are you okay?” which is hysterical because if I ask her I’m stalking her and need to back off. Everything feels hypocritical on her part, and I’m feeling more and more resentful and ready to end this all. My friends advise against that given the impact on the kids, and my wife seems happy just bleeding our shared bank account dry to wait it out while she “decides” what to do.

Thoughts? How do I decide what to do? What’s best for the kids? Me? The relationship? Things to know: we suck at communicating with each other and the most successful conversations usually happen over text/email. She still expects me to comment on how she looks and if a dress works with her shoes. I feel like I’m not allowed to have emotions, or try to “win her back”, while she gets my family (she is taking our kids to stay at my father’s house, how messed up is that?), my money, my babysitting, the car on days she works, the apartment I found us, everything except any sentiment of love towards or from me. Please help!