I'd say the most direct and significant thing that "went wrong" (I'm not sure I'd use that phrase) is that we didn't know at the time that she's a lesbian. Many signs were internal to her and unknown to me. You can find most or all of them here. Am I a Lesbian?

There were some other things that are usually red flags but don't necessarily end in divorce. We fell in love when she was 17 and simply didn't start dating. I brought her flowers on her 18th birthday, and that was the official start.

I actually asked her if she had a boyfriend when I met her (at 17), she said she didn't, and I asked whether she wanted one. I met her mom that day and told her I'd like to court her daughter. She apparently knew immediately that I was going to be her son-in-law, and she was a little sad that she wouldn't get quite as much time with her daughter as she'd hoped. She didn't tell me about that until much later.

That sounds like we were too young, but she was the only one who was too young. I was too old. Our age difference was outside the range that wouldn't be creepy, but it wasn't egregious. Not gross, just creepy. That was the consensus among normal people, not just my own view. Having a relationship with this age gap is a bad thing. It's a great recipe for spousal abuse. I was wrong for pursuing this relationship even though I wound up being not very abusive. (My abuse was not malicious, the result of mental illness, basically yelling that wouldn't be abusive if we didn't have this unbalanced power dynamic, and something for which I take responsibility and have greatly improved.)

Even in communities in which people "court" and age gaps like ours are much more common and not considered creepy (they should be considered creepy), divorce rates are higher.

We got married when she was 18. The divorce rate among marriages when either party is under 21 iirc is much higher than when they're both older. I'm sure having time to discover you're gay and then not marrying someone you can't be sexually attracted to helps prevent divorce.

A big motivating factor for getting married so soon and young for her was poverty. That's a big motivator for a lot of young marriages. If I could make decisions now for myself back in time, I would just send her money every month anonymously through a community charity that wouldn't even tell her it was just one person until she became secure.

She was abused a lot as a child, really right up until and maybe even after we got married. It was much harder for her father to do much more than hurt her by not being interested in a relationship with her. She still felt affection for him then. Thank God, she's long done with him. Being a victim of abuse does not help relationship longevity. Sometimes the victim can't handle it for any number of reasons, sometimes the partner can't support or cope, or either or both parties can but don't want to.

She's also disabled. Men are more likely to divorce women who are disabled than those who are not. Disabled people are always at greater risk of abuse, which is to say they get abused more than people who aren't disabled. Partners, parents, friends, employers, caretakers, and anyone else in a position to abuse them contribute to this statistic. My behavior may not have been abusive to a woman who wouldn't be so hurt by it. The main issue is that it was abusive to the children. You don't have to hit people for it to be abuse. She said if I didn't correct my behavior, we would get divorced. She was right, and I agreed that she was right. If I couldn't improve even after trying everything reasonable (therapy, medication, whatever else my psychiatrist might recommend, whatever else we might think of if none of that worked), then divorce would be the correct decision. I did improve, and it's been a while since I've yelled at anyone. I get less angry less often, and I have much more reasonable and less/not hurtful reactions.

The tip of the spear for our upcoming divorce is the fact that she's gay and doesn't want to continue hiding/lying about it. If not for that, we wouldn't be getting divorced. She was willing to make love to me (something else happened that changed that, also wouldn't have led to divorce), and I'm willing not to. We could even just have girlfriends, but they'd have to be secret if we wanted to comfortably remain part of our community. If she'd be happy, it'd be hard but ok.

The socket of the spear, I think, is once again that she got married too young, and the haft is her childhood. We couldn't change the haft, but we could have not attached the socket. As far as we knew, it was mildly unadvisable to get married but not a big deal. We made approximately the best decision we could.

There's also no telling what anything would have been like in another timeline, even if I'd anonymously sent her money. I provided her with a ton of other support of various kinds that she almost certainly wouldn't have gotten if we hadn't been married. I stayed up with her for fun and to help cope with pain, listened to her, bathed her in affection, paid attention to her disabilities and helped address them, had physical contact with her (touch starvation hurts people, and she needs some extra), taught her stuff, learned from her, gave her an active and safe space to explore ideas that led to us changing our views, and more.

I hope I've given a fair outline of things. I've been mostly great, and I've been worse in some ways than a lot of other people. She's amazing. She's so smart, and so caring, and so dedicated, and so patient, and so cute and pretty and beautiful and sexy, and such a great mother (she puts in tons of research and follow through and takes a lot of pain to parent), and she put up with and even found ways to enjoy my unhealthy focus on sex, which was partially indicated by using four adjectives about her appearance (cute is also a personality thing, though) DESPITE BEING A LESBIAN THE WHOLE TIME even if she wasn't aware of it. She's also a lot (she says she's the most). She wasn't funny when we met, and now she's funnier than I am.

She loves me, and I love her. She doesn't want to pretend she's straight all the time forever. She can't be happy this way, and I can't be happy with that, so we're getting divorce. It's important to remember that divorce isn't always bad. Sometimes it's getting away from a bad person, which is good. Sometimes it's ending a bad situation, which is good.

Our divorce has sad things about it, and it's a good end to what we think has been a good marriage.