I am honestly not really sure how to get my needs met in my relationship
I have been in a relationship with my partner (now 40s) since we were in high school. We started as friends and chatted frequently. I was not much desired by girls at the time, then I found a girlfriend-ish and my now wife scared her off and then confessed her love for me. We got together. Prior to this I was aware of her SA history. She was promiscuous from a young age and had more experience than me. She spent the next decade trying to figure her stuff out while I succeeded in college, went to professional school and started a career. She nearly failed out of school, changed majors and redefined her career plans. We were married and moved to a new city for my job and had 3 great years where she was doing yoga, getting her masters and had sorter out her sexual issues where we were having regular sex and she felt good about it. I felt like I had supported a good person. I went to couples therapy with her during this time around sex and our mismatched sex drive, I was patient with her when she was sick or run down or depleted; i provided the financial stability she took care of the house hold.
Then we had a kid.
She would need my help getting the kid ready in the morning when she wasn't working and I was off to work. She spent nearly two years at home and working on her masters while I generated all of our income, working nights and weekends. She was resentful because I had to work so much compared to our peers. I told her it was because she made much less money than my peers spouses but that was ok because I was happy to provide for her, she felt like I was weaponizing a financial imbalance. I felt like she was contributing to the relationship because she was thinking about childcare, clothes, daycare etc she felt like she was carrying all the emotional work.
Then we had another kid. And COVID happened.
My job got harder during COVID and I also received several promotions which allowed us to put away money for me to buy a home for a single family on a single income. It was possible only because of the decisions I made to take on work and projects that she resented me taking on because it was taking me out of the household. She was anxious about COVID "are we going to be ok, are the kids going to be ok, is it safe to take them to the park?" I told her I can't provide reassurance around this everynight and she needed to seek some support. She requested couples therapy. She spent the 3rd couples therapy session screaming at me about all the things I didn't do. I shut down and got mad at the therapist for not stepping in an mediating the session. I was so happy with where we were living and our life. She was not happy and we moved to a house that has been nothing but a nightmare into a community where i don't feel connected with a commute that makes it hard for me to go into work without her feeling like she is carrying all the emotional work of supporting the kids alone.
Then I had a friendship with another woman that she was resentful about.
I met a female colleague who I connected with. We got coffee daily, talked about life and work and kids. Shared sense of humor, shared interest in media and deeply supportive of each others career. We would text regularly. I would always tell my wife when I would attempt to spend time with this woman outside of work. I sent my wife a text "I'm going to get drinks is that ok?" Her response "if you have time to spend with this woman maybe you should try to make time for your wife". I spent years trying to go out with my wife, she didn't have a trusted babysitter, she didn't want to go out, she didn't want to go into the city it was too stressful. I was hoping that this friendship could bridge the gap of what I was missing from my life, fun and playful observations about life instead of stress and worry. Instead I was accused of having an emotional affair, all the texts that i had with that woman are saved on my wifes phone as evidence. None of them have anything to do with me leaving my wife or belittling my wife. I miss this friendship every day, I don't have many connections in my life that feel authentic, when I tell my wife she tells me it was an inappropriate relationship.
Then my brother in law was outed as a pedophile and killed himself.
And here we are at the end. My BiL was caught looking up underaged stuff at work and killed himself 2 days later. My family, in the fog of war, was trying to collect information for clarity because they knew I didn't like my BiL. They were waiting for the investigation before they told me anything, and honestly I get that in the spirit of innocence until proven guilty. They told me once he died. I found out that they hadn't told me for the first 48 hours with intent and I told my wife that in the spirit of being completely open with her about things. I regret this honestly as she completely spiraled throughout this whole process. She was despondent, tearful, thinking she let her children down by having a pedo so close to her children. I assured her that we were very careful with the children, she told me you never know what happened and even a few minutes he could have done something or AI'd our kids pictures onto something and they could be out in the dark web. Sure I guess anything is possible but what are we going to do about it, where are our shortcomings in this?
She has now been in EMDR since I was accused of the emotional affair 3 years ago. I feel her constantly being defensive with me. She is always trying to stand her ground because she feels I took advantage of her with my career, and my relationship with that woman. She cannot be around my family anymore unless she is on lots of ativan and it makes her nasty the next day so I no longer ask her to interact with them. She is focused on her own career and now I do most of the childcare, she feels like its finally even even though I make 10x as much as her and she still finds emotional work to complain about.
It honestly never felt like she loved me enough to be there for me to to do what I needed, just that she was working on it but not meeting my needs had to be good enough. The sex had to be good enough. The effort towards time together needed to be good enough. The career support while also resenting my career had to be good enough. That she still lets me and my kids interact with my family has to be good enough. I don't feel like its enough, and I feel like a bad person for not feeling like its enough. I'm tired. This is not a relationship I would have married into if this is how things were before we married, and now separating is really going to hurt my kids future financially because I can't afford to support our lifestyles. I am unhappy about everything in my life and I feel like its because she keeps pulling me into her world view around all of these things.
I have perspective around trauma, and what it is an how it impacts people but I need to figure out how to get my needs met with all of her baggage and I feel like I'm drowning.