I'm guilty of trying my best to make a difficult situation bearable. To exit a complicated and compromising relationship with grace, integrity, and overwhelming awareness of the pain my actions caused somebody I still care about, even though all evidence indicates they never really cared about me, my well being, my needs, and my intentions.
Yes, I called time out. Yes, I called out the failings and hypocrisy of a dysfunctional and unhealthy relationship, as you did routinely, calling out my computer as my 'wife', pointing out how we didn't have a connection, sex, communication or a normal relationship. I concurred and, standing in the kitchen in early 2013, after parallel visits from family lamination their own dysfunction, and called out the fact that we were simply living a lie.
I "broke up our family" but I never let a shard drop while doing so. As it fractured, I spent every night after moving out returning home, to have dinner, be with the kids, put them to bed, then leave in order to sleep in the back room of a friends home for a year +, until I could afford to move to a 1br apartment less than a mile away.
I compromised our financial circumstances. After enabling you to quit working full time within a month of our marriage, funding your obtaining your masters degree in counseling psychology that never got utilized as was intended, supporting your never returning to work, funding moves, changing jobs, struggling through layoffs, supporting every move and the purchase of a $1million dollar home, and fielding the routine inquiries as to how we might make more or how it was the neighbors were able to upgrade their homes while we were not. I compromised by continuing to put ~88% of my income into supporting the home, contributing bonus funds in the $2k-$3k range to put the kids in summer camps so you could find employment doing something that was of interest instead of necessity.
I "betrayed you" by befriending with your ex-sister-in-law. After 2+ years of absence while focused on the friendship I'd already built with your Brother, listening to and supporting him through their divorce, working to share with him my own experiences 'on the other side' of the coin. I accepted her offer to invite our son to fish at a private lake at her friends company outing at the cost of your incredulous response that I'd even consider accepting her kind generous offer out of consideration of our son's interest in fishing. I was the 'snake' per your sister, for even talking to his ex, even though there was no rational reason for my eschewing her other than your own sense of tribal obligation that doing so was wrong. And when blocked by mediation direction from having my kids routinely stay with me, accepting her offer to share a home affording me the necessary space to given them each a room of their own per the agreed terms to do so, I was deemed a horrible person to my children. And I have that on video, too.
Almost 5 years later, as I capitulated to an agreement I later found to have tax ramifications I could not survive with, I became the reasons we were going to court. Yet the court battles only exist because we are unable to come to an agreement, unless I capitulate to something I can't sustain financially.
In no manner have I, at all, abandoned my children or failed to step up and live up to my responsibilities as a parent and adult. Have you? I've struggled with my own frustrations yet worked to routinely demonstrate and support them having a positive opinion and view of you, regardless of their struggles with your emotional turmoil, hoarding, and negative comments about my character and choices. Have you? I've shed endless tears of guilt and grief over the knowledge that my needs to stop pretending and my efforts to ensure we both had a positive life experience ahead of us, as well as models of something healthy, have failed to be achieved and the grief you've held onto has been attributed solely to my actions as being selfish and irresponsible. But have you not seen our own positions in the same light?
I've worn myself down, emotionally, to a stub of an individual at the pressure of your continued stance that I somehow should own the sole responsibility for maintaining not just the lives of our children, but for you as well. You said once in mediation that you 'had a right to what you deserve' from our marriage, while you can't tell me one sacrifice you made, other than enduring the dysfunction of our marriage. Which you called out routinely, until I reached enough of an agreement to call out the hypocrisy. You marry me, you quit your job, I put you through college, I spend tens of thousands on adoption then fertility until we have the kids you desperately want, I let you stay at home for 15 years without providing any income, I spend over $2 million supporting us for 15 years, I concede to living in a hoarding environment that you know full well is debilitating to me, and you somehow feel that I owe you something? I put you through college with the expectation that you would eventually be practicing out of the back of a home we would eventually own, and nothing's ever done to follow through on your end of the bargain.
Today, as the court battles ensured and protests were made as to how the guideline support of $5000 would not be enough to make ends meet, your contributions of your own income and the bonuses you get more than 1/2 of after taxes that ensure you're fully capable of making ends and staying in the house, which you get 50% of when it sells, along with 50%+ of my 401k, made me realized that in your selfish twisted entitled mind, it's not enough. 50% is not enough. 75% is not enough. 90% is not enough. Fuck, your declaration of expenses total was more than I make in a month, and not enough.
God forbid you have to take any responsibility for yourself and your obligations as a parent and a homeowner. That's all on me. And you somehow see that as fair and reasonable?
You never cared about or for me. You just wanted from me. And I tried for far too long to give all I could as the dysfunction grew, thinking somehow that it might someday suffice.
Sadly, to this moment, it breaks my heart to realize how little my efforts really meant, and how little your recognize all the things I did and tried to do for the sincere efforts they were. Because they were never what you really wanted, and never enough. I hate being the cause of pain, but you are incapable of recognizing how much you have to be grateful for. You're just lost in the role of being the victim and me being the monster.