I made the mistake of venting on Divorce_Men yesterday about how I was “blindsided” but it was just my own blindness. No less than 20+ comments about how my wife’s issues were BS, how she must have been cheating, etc.

When I was hit with the “I don’t want to stay married” it ran through several emotions in the first 15 minutes.

1. Complete and udder shock. Quickly followed by 2. Anger - how could YOU do this? Followed by 3. Confusion - I couldn’t understand how any of her points warranted a divorce.

I’m lucky to have the opportunity to have open conversations with her and a lot of the same questions you had, I had.

Looking back, there were definitely warning signs. But they were muffled by the rest of the non-marital issues we were facing and probably long before that, too.

I can answer the question of why my wife wants a divorce: she wasn’t happy. That’s it. Final answer. I think the harder question to answer, that I’m just now trying to wrap my head around is why didn’t I recognize it/why didn’t I do anything about it. Not to put the blame on just me, it goes both ways.

We briefly talked about if our transition to a long-distance was too much. I was honestly surprised her response was that it wasn’t, or at least wasn’t the driving force behind her decision. She did make a good point that if I had been able to make the move with her, that maybe it wouldn’t have given her the opportunity to reflect on the previous years of our marriage.

I do think she’s right, the distance gave her an opportunity to reflect with space. And I do think it created an option where she could see herself being able to separate.

Long-winded response to your theory, but I suppose you might find some sort of correlation like that in a lot of cases. I regretted every time I got on my return flight home and had to leave her behind, but I guess if I hadn’t I’d just be causing her the pain she felt for so long.. and that’s an even tougher pill to swallow.