For over a decade, my wife and I have been suffering. We were both sick (she still is), but I got better.

We flirted with divorce as my wife was riddled with anxiety.

I posted about it in /r/Divorce_men.

Anyway, before all of this, before we were parents, my wife was my submissive. I was her dominant. It worked well. We were mostly in softmaledom, in part because of her issues with pain and my own issues with the fear of abusing her.

Still, we went to dungeons, and played in public; we notably did CMNF, and in our local community, she was renowned for being nude at BDSM events, wearing only a collar and wrist/ankle restraints.

We did some sharing; it was fun. We even had, for a short while, another girl I was dominant with.

But we became parents, our daughter was a lot, and slowly, our marriage collapsed for YEARS.

I felt guilty but also alone. I grew tired of just masturbating on my side or watching porn alone, and well, I bought a chastity cage about 7 years ago. It was at first just to stop masturbating; it's not like we were having sex anyway.

But the longer I wore it, the more submissive thoughts I had.

I slowly stopped seeing myself as dominant and more as a submissive.

However, here is the thing. I think it was more to punish myself for my failed marriage.

And yet, 3 years ago, we realized that our daughter, now an adult living with us with her boyfriend, was manipulating us. Putting fears in my wife's head for us to divorce.

She left when we put our feet down, and my wife is slowly getting better.

Enough that, like, a year ago, she told me, "If you remove that chastity cage RIGHT NOW, we'll have sex"

Sweet! I removed it, and we did have sex for the first time in like, 6 or 7 years!

I didn't put it back afterward, and the next day, we had sex again.

But then, it stopped. After a week or two, I put it back on, and a fight occurred about it.

In short, she thinks that I was never submissive, only ever dominant, and a good one. She was the problem. As proof, I have no problem with the other girl I dominated.

We had to move soon after, the cage went into a box, and I never put it back on.

When I am more assertive (and thus more dominant), chances of sex increase, my wife's stress lowers, and I feel less like a piece of shit.

The problem is that she is still sick. We suspect perimenopause, and so it's not a 1-to-1 causality.

In the past, 25 years ago, being assertive and dominant would DEFINITELY give me what I wanted. "Get naked", "It's cold" "I said, slave, get naked" "Yes master"

Now, when she is having a good day and I am dominant, it produces a positive outcome. We both feel better, but if I try being dominant and she is having a bad day, it backfires and I feel like shit. I wonder if I shouldn't be submissive and put the cage back on.

It's like misplaced feelings of guilt. But I don't have to feel guilty; it's not my fault her hormonal system is out of sync and doctors can't help her (she tried everything).

How can I keep that feeling that I should be dominant, that I had growing up, that I had as a teenager, and until perhaps 2005, was deep-seated, with only the last 7 years or so having other thoughts.

I mean, being in chastity for, like, 6 years didn't make me happy, but being dominant back then did make me happy.

In the past, I would watch BDSM videos and feel excited; now I feel guilty.

How do I undo the bad ideas formed at our lowest so that I might return to my best?

SHIT I meant might NOT actually divorce

I posted this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/1678528/so_my_wife_decided_that_enough_as_enough_we_will/

As we were about to move, stress was at its highest.

Well, things were better at the new house. I ended up only painting my daughter's office, and the move really did go relatively well.

My wife's stress was that she was seeing that I was telling my daughter's friend it would be "easy" and it was relatively easy.

Now, that isn't 100% true. He sucked, but I ruled. My daughter and her boyfriend were supposed to help, but they kept going on breaks.

I undid our boxes in record time, including the books that stressed her out, and our daughter and her boyfriend took MONTHS to undo theirs.

Slowly, my wife began to see that her #1 cause of stress wasn't me, but rather, our daughter.

Our landlords, after only 5 months, begged us to leave: his business went bankrupt, and we needed to move again (3 months later). I kid you not!

But things were different. My wife was more aware of which stress was caused by me and which by our daughter and her boyfriend (both lived with us).

She couldn't emotionally blame our kid; they are our kid, so she blamed me.

Well, at that new house, my daughter's emotional balance collapsed. We began to notice weird behaviors and realized something.

Our daughter is BPD... and is pushing my wife and me against each other to do nothing.

Whispering comments to my wife (her mother) like, "Don't you think Dad has too many books?"

My mother-in-law died. She said before dying that she wanted to help her granddaughter get a car. My MIL suggested to us to give her like $5000 from her money to help get a used car.

Our daughter learned of it, and began feeding fears into my wife that a used car can break down, and if our kid gets stuck on the side of the road, she might be raped or something. Feeding fears in her mother.

To me, she would feed me how responsible she is (she isn't).

All so that she would get $35,000 for an electric car.

We soon realized that not only if we talked to each other, my wife and I, could we see through it, but we saw in our daughter's discord that she was bragging to her friend about how she was manipulating us and how she had been doing it for years

This was eye-opening!

We stopped reacting to her attempts and began sticking to each other. Things got worse with our daughter as she began calling us all sorts of names (calling her mother a bitch, and me an idiot for putting up with her).

Well, we put our feet down, and she stopped talking to us and, a few months later, moved out.

We moved twice since then (in one move, it took her and me only 90 minutes to load all our boxes, and we realized that a lot of the junk she thought we had was our daughter's), so things are slowly going up.

I quit the job I had and resumed our (my wife's and my) former company, and I am doing well! My wife was shoved into another department at her job, one that was very hostile and toxic, and she decided to quit and now is working with me at my company.

She is still sick, but we work well together. Before all our problems, we had our company, and I only switched because we were both sick.

But I am not sick anymore, and I am doing well enough for both of us to live on our company.

She is still sick, and her own output is perhaps 20% of what she could do, but every bit helps.

We even have sex a few times per month!

BUT, we lost our daughter. Zero contact, zero messages. We are all alone, with only a few friends we barely see.

I am in therapy for that. My wife tried it, but her issues are still too strong, but her anxiety is dropping quickly.

I don't have my old wife quite back, but she is in a better mood, and we are still sleeping in the same bed.

So, hopefully it's progress?