u/YourLocalGod

A very long post, but I just have to get this off my chest.

English is not my native language, so I want to apologize in advance for the strange sentences.

I need advice from real people who have gone through the same thing or are going through it now.

Since my wife is only 39 years old, I also don't know if this is a real midlife crisis, but the stories here sound all too familiar to me.

A brief outline of the situation:
This is my version of the facts, of course, but I'll try to tell them as objectively as possible.
There is no point in lying to strangers on the Internet.

We met 12 years ago. Everything clicked instantly. We never argued and we agreed on everything. We had a blast. 9 years ago we had our first child. We were also in complete agreement regarding the upbringing. Eventually, we had two more children. They are now 7 and 2.

I always gave her freedom. If she wanted to travel with friends, I took care of the children.
If she wanted more responsibility in her job and was home later, I was her biggest supporter.
She always said that she had found the best man in the world.

We hesitated for a long time about having the last child because we knew we would be back in diapers and that there wouldn't be much time for eachother. Nevertheless, we made it a point to go away for a weekend at least twice a year without the children, just like we did before.
Everytime, we came back even more in love.

In short, I think we had the perfect relationship, and I was convinced that we would make it.

Until last year. When our youngest was 10 months old, my father was told that he had lung cancer. Eventually, he passed away in mid-September. I needed time for myself.
Meanwhile, my wife started working out maniacally whereas in all the years we had been together, she had never shown any interest in sports.
She got a nose piercing and talked about getting big tattoos.
From one day to the next, she wanted to quit her job and go back to school. (I was even planning on using my inheritance to let her pursue those studies). Eventually she didn't quit her job. It just went away.
But then she became ice-cold towards me. I have to honestly admit that I let it happen. I was focused on myself. I was grieving the loss of my father.
I did the household chores and took care of the children, but besides that, I needed time for myself.

At the end of December, one of my best friends came to tell me that he was separating from his wife. They had been together for about as long as us.
When I told my wife, she started crying. Things weren't going well between us either.
She told me that she had started a countdown clock in complete silence just waiting to let it run out.

I had noticed the cold attitude, so it didn't come completely out of the blue. We still loved eachother, so we decided to go to relationship therapy.

The relationship therapy started well. Initially, it was about the fact that she felt neglected and unappreciated. I fully agreed. I should have given her more attention over the last two years.
Around the same time, I was got over my father and had my old energy back.
I planned dates, a weekend...
But she soon indicated that she wanted peace and be left alone.
She didn't believe me either when I told her thing had changed.
It was in my nature to neglect her, and she didn't want to change me.

The topics at the relationship therapist's soon changed. She felt that she had lost herself because of our relationship. I was holding her captive; I was micro-managing her,...

From there, things just went downhill. Everything became my fault, even the most absurd things.
To her, I am now a selfish person and a narcisist...

We decided to seperate because it was clear that every fiber in her body was screaming to be free. It was becoming too much for me as well. It was like talking to a wall.

We told the children, and they are currently handling it well (although the youngest doesn't quite realize it yet).
We are currently rotating the house week by week so the children can stay here while we see who buys the house and who moves out. For her, it isn't happening fast enough, and it's all my fault, even though I'm not holding anything back.

In the meantime, I am seeing a therapist, and she started seeing one last week.
I'm pretty sure she won't be honest to her therapist...

My therapist is convinced she is going through a massive personality crisis, but our friends all believe her and mainly just feel sorry that our relationship is ending.

Towards them and her parents, she is still perfectly her old self.
Is this normal, or am I just imagining things?
This hurts so much. How did you deal with this?
I know I shouldn't hope that things will work out, but are there couples for whom it did work out later? How long did it take?
Did your partner realize later that it wasn't all your fault? I guess I'm afraid that she will always remember me as a total monster. That she always will feel like she wasted 12 years of her life and will never be able to remember all the good times we had. This feels so unfair.