I’m Happier Without My Wife and That Makes Me Sad…

In theory, getting married means finding a life partner, someone you can rely on to be there with you no matter what’s going on. After nearly 20 years, life sent me a rude wake up call and I realized how untrue that really was. Suddenly, my marriage was over and my wife was moving on.

But I was left with one surprising and unexpected realization, that I was happier. And each day since she left, I get a little bit happier. The crazy part is figuring that out has left me with a new kind of sadness, one that I’ve never experienced before and is even trickier to navigate.

The End of a Life Together

A lot of self-help books and Tik Tokers will say that women have different way of communicating, that they are more subtle or drop hints rather than outright speaking about an issue. I’ve already called out that load of bullshit at length. Sufficed to say that avoiding a real, open conversation about a problem is not healthy, regardless of who and how.

That’s quadropoly true when it comes to being in a relationship with someone. Marriage is hard work. You have to wake up every day, make the decision to be with that person, and deal with all the craps that comes from living in the same house with that lunatic. And there will be more crap coming at you than you ever could have imagined.

At some point, my wife woke up and decided that she didn’t want to be with me anymore. I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know why it happened. I don’t know how long she pretended to still love me. Honestly, I’m not even sure she knows the answers to those questions. If she does, hasn’t told me.

What I do know is that she definitely didn’t tell me the decision had been made, and that she was setting off to build a new life in secret from both me and our children. I don’t feel the need to air her dirty laundry but I will say the choices she made utterly devastated me. I’ll be dealing with the mental health issues left in the wake of those choices for the rest of my life.

It’s quite likely that I’ll never fully heal.

The decisions she made invalidated the past we’d built together, the present I thought we were living in, and the future I believed we were working towards. From my perspective, every sacrifice I made to support our life as a couple had been tossed out the window and onto a tire fire.

In many ways, it would have been less painful if she had just left me the second she knew she didn’t love me anymore.

On the upside, our marriage produced two of the most wonderful children in the world. For that, I am thankful. And they will always be worth everything I went through in the past few years. Shockingly, things have gotten better, which I definitely wasn’t expecting.

The Sun Finally Shines After a Storm

People will always tell you that healing takes time. They were right. It took time… as well as meditation, a lot of hanging with friends, therapy, a few job changes, and so much more to get to a place where I can genuinely say that I’m happy. To be more precise, I’m content.

Part of the healing process has been accepting that I’m not the same man anymore. I’ve gone from being a nice guy to being a good man, something I don’t know I would have done without my marriage falling apart. I do know it would have fallen apart regardless. Her rationalizations for making the choices she did had nothing to do with me at all.

I’ve also found my way to what might be the best job I’ve had in my entire life. I’m make reasonably good money but I like the people I work with and the work I do. I don’t dread coming into work for the first time in a decade. Again, I wouldn’t have found this job if I was married. I would have been too focused on her to find for something better for myself.

My relationship between my children and I has improved by leaps and bounds. It was good before but it’s honestly amazing these days. That’s in no small part due to the fact that we had to work together to get through the first few months of hell after their mother left.

And I’ve been working on rebuilding friendships that had fallen by the wayside during my marriage. My wife never prevented me from seeing my friends in any obvious ways but she also didn’t make it easy. She would make me feel guilty if I went out, though not intentionally. She wanted to be my focus.

Not only am I healing from the trauma, I feel better now than I did when I was married to her in many, many ways. I know I should be happy about that, and I am. But I also feel sad, regretful, and maybe even a little bit guilty, which is a whole new problem.

Better Without Them

Many years ago, I committed to building a life with a woman I loved more than anything. I truly did feel that way about her. And I do believe we were happy for a time. At some point, she stopped being happy but wouldn’t talk about it. This was incredibly difficult for all of us.

It took her leaving for me to realize what a dark presence she was in the world of my children and I. So many aspects of our lives have improved since she moved out. She is still part of our children’s lives, but she has a busy work schedule and a very active social life.

I was unhappy in my marriage. Deeply unhappy. But I didn’t realize it, and I’m mad at myself for not figuring that out sooner as well as being sad that I wasted so much time and energy trying to make it work.

The further I get away from that time in my life, the more I realize that she was not the right person for me at all. Over the years we were together, I sacrificed my dreams, my goals, my career, and even my mental health for someone who didn’t appreciate any of that. She may have loved me but she certainly didn’t value me, respect me, or care about me.

It’s kind of sad to realize that I am much better off without someone I thought made me better person. In strange way, she did. Unfortunately, she achieved that by breaking me down and leaving me to pick up the pieces. I am honestly better after that horrible experience.

Good man, not a nice guy, right?

I wish I could look back on my marriage fondly. Realistically the way it ended has made that all but impossible. So, I choose to focus on the positive. Without that relationship, my kids wouldn’t exist. And I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Everything else in my life is falling into place, slowly but surely. Part of me still wishes she could be part of that. But it’s better for me that she’s not.