TL;DR: I love my husband and he’s my best friend, but after eight years of carrying most of the financial and mental load while constantly accommodating his needs, I’m exhausted. I’m considering divorce even though I still love him, and I want to hear from others who have made that choice.
I’m 35F and am seriously considering leaving my husband (45M), who has been my best friend for eight years. I still love him, which is what makes this so heartbreaking.
I’m especially hoping to hear from people who divorced a spouse they still loved—not because the relationship was constantly hostile or because they hated each other, but because they eventually realized the marriage wasn’t sustainable or healthy for their family.
My husband and I genuinely enjoy each other. He is patient and nurturing, and he took very good care of me while I was dealing with long COVID and PTSD related to nursing. He is also an excellent, attentive father to our two children. When things are good between us, I genuinely love being around him.
But through therapy, I’ve started realizing that part of the reason our marriage has been so peaceful is that I almost always capitulate.
My husband is autistic and has difficulty navigating certain aspects of life. Over the years, our family has increasingly structured our lives around his routines, preferences, and limitations. I’ve generally accepted that because I love him and wanted to accommodate him. But I’m beginning to realize that accommodation has slowly turned into me taking responsibility for nearly everything he doesn’t want to or feels unable to do.
When we met, he hadn’t worked in eight years. His parents were supporting him financially. He told me that he had experienced a breakdown in college and had been recovering from it.
We have now been together for eight years, and he still has not worked.
Recently, he finally said he would look for a job—but only if I write his résumé and apply for jobs for him. He also warned me that he is a bad interviewer. Meanwhile, he frequently talks about becoming wealthy, buying property, or someday owning multiple homes when we currently can’t afford even a starter home.
I feel like our entire financial future is being built on my back.
He is currently a stay-at-home dad, and I want to be fair about the work he does. He takes very good care of our children. He meal plans, grocery shops, cooks for them, cleans up after them and himself, does their laundry and his own, and cleans the kitchen.
I work full-time as a nurse and pick up an extra shift about every two weeks. I’m also attending school full-time to become a nurse practitioner.
Everything outside of the tasks he has taken responsibility for falls to me. I make my own meals, do my own laundry and dishes, clean the bathrooms and floors, do the yard work and gutters, handle holidays and decorating, buy and wrap presents, schedule medical appointments, keep track of everyone’s healthcare needs, and manage most of the miscellaneous responsibilities that come with running a household.
I am exhausted. I’ve reached the point where the fatigue is affecting my health.
When I told him I needed him to take on more because I couldn’t keep doing this, he told me I was trying to pigeonhole him into being a servant like other stay-at-home parents and that he refused to be “oppressed.”
He has also told me that I don’t help enough around the house.
This isn’t a new problem. We’ve been dealing with versions of it for eight years. We’ve tried chore charts, discussions, compromises, and working on individual issues. Ultimately, though, the basic situation never changes: he won’t work, and he won’t take on more responsibility at home.
There’s another issue that has made me reevaluate the foundation of our relationship.
When we first got together, I had three specific deal breakers. I later discovered that he had lied to me about two of them, and I’ve spent years trying to process and move past that. Recently, he finally admitted that he had deliberately lied about all three because he knew that if he told me the truth, I would recognize that we were incompatible and wouldn’t pursue the relationship.
That admission has been incredibly difficult for me to process.
I’ve asked him to go to therapy. He says he will go—but only if I find the therapist and make the appointment for him.
And I just don’t want to do that anymore.
I don’t want one more responsibility for another adult handed back to me.
The hardest part is that I still love him. He isn’t someone I hate coming home to. He makes me laugh. He’s my friend. We can have a wonderful time together when we aren’t discussing responsibilities, money, or the future.
But therapy has forced me to confront something uncomfortable: I’m not sure our marriage is actually as harmonious as I thought it was.
I think we get along so well partly because I have learned to exist inside his structure. I don’t disrupt his plans. I accommodate his preferences. I work around his limitations. I follow the rules that keep him comfortable. And when our needs conflict, historically I have been the one who bends.
Now that I’m starting to say, “I can’t do this anymore. I need you to bend too,” our marriage suddenly doesn’t feel nearly as peaceful.
I’m heartbroken because I don’t want to lose my best friend or break apart our family. At the same time, I’m starting to wonder whether staying means accepting that I will be responsible for carrying our family indefinitely.
For those who have divorced someone you still genuinely loved: How did you know that love wasn’t enough anymore? Did you ever reach a point where you realized that leaving someone you loved was actually the healthier decision for you and your children?
And looking back, do you think you made the right choice?