r/Separation

Letting go of someone you fucking love and telling yourself to “cherish the good moments” is the biggest, fattest fucking gaslight you can feed yourself.

Don’t dress up the loss just to make it easier to swallow. Don’t tell yourself it’s beautiful. Don’t tell yourself it’s not really a loss because you still have the memories. That’s bullshit.

The reality is much uglier "someone you love is no longer choosing you". They walked away and you have no fucking say in it. You don’t get to keep them around just because you still love them. You’re forced to let go of someone you would have chosen to keep.

Yes, the good moments happened. Yes, they meant something. But stop pretending those memories somehow cancel out the fucking devastation of losing the person who made those memories with you. You can cherish them and still fucking grieve. One does not erase the other.

People love saying, “It’s okay to let go.” “Be grateful for what you had.” “You’ll find someone else.” “It’s not a loss because you’ll always have the memories.” "You guys did truly loved each other".

No. That’s just putting fucking wrapping paper around a loss and pretending it’s a gift.

You lost someone you loved. That is a loss. It fucking hurts. It’s devastating. And you don’t get to decide one morning that you’re done hurting just because everyone else thinks you should be moving on.

Think about it. All the memories you made together eventually become one big fucking lesson. Yes, a lesson. Not something you look back on and think, “Wow, that was fun!” No. It becomes a fucking lesson you carry for the rest of your life, reminding you that you lost someone special because you didn’t do better when you had the chance.

You can’t fucking gaslight yourself into healing.

All you can do is keep fucking going until time does what you’re incapable of doing right now. Because eventually time dulls it. Eventually, the memories fade. Eventually, you forget enough to breathe without feeling like you’re being ripped apart.

That’s the fucking truth.

Eat it.

I moved into my own place after leaving my partner of over three years and tonight I feel absolutely heartbroken.
I still love him. That’s probably the hardest part.
We didn’t break up because the love disappeared. We broke up because our relationship had become unhealthy. There had been so much arguing, resentment, hurt, poor communication and emotional reactivity from both of us. I got to a point where I knew something had to change because neither of us seemed capable of changing the dynamic while we were still living in it.
So I moved out.
We’re planning on having a period of no contact once everything with our shared house is sorted. We’re technically single, but we’ve also talked about using this time to work on ourselves and not immediately move on from each other.
Part of me feels strong and knows I needed to do this.
Then there are nights like tonight.
I’m sitting in my new home and I have this horrible deep sadness that I can physically feel in my throat. I miss him. I miss our home. I miss having my person there. And more than anything, I think I’m grieving what I wanted our relationship to become.
It’s such a strange feeling knowing you can love somebody deeply and still know that the relationship you had with them wasn’t okay anymore.
Has anyone else walked away while they were still completely in love?
How did you cope with those first nights alone?
And did the space eventually give you clarity about whether you actually wanted the person back, or whether you were grieving the life and familiarity you had with them?

My wife (40f) and I (40m) have been together for 22 years and married for 12. We have an 8 year old son. Over the years we have drifted apart. Little to no communication, no intimacy, we don’t do anything together etc. We have been nothing more than roommates for probably the last 10 years or so. I have fallen completely out of love with her. I don’t want to live the rest of my life like this. My mental health has not been good, at all. The other day I brought this up to her. Now she’s being all lovey dovey and telling me she wants to fix things, and that she loves me so much. She’s also said I can’t leave because it would hurt my son. She’s also said I’d be breaking vows I made. My son is happy, he’s smart, he’s doing well in school. She seems to be content living like this. So I’m feeling guilty now that I’d be ruining both of their lives if I left. I’m struggling with what to do. I’m not in love with her anymore but I care about her and don’t want to hurt her. Do I just suck it up and keep them happy? I don’t know.

Without going into the long story I 38F cheated on my 36M husband a couple of years ago. After everything we got divorced and that was me taking accountability. We still live together and things at this point seem unfixable. Will he ever see me as anything other than what I did? I don’t know if I could have forgiven him if he did what I did. So in some ways I feel I’m getting what I deserve. I am not allowed to spend money and if I even buy groceries I get bitched at. I haven’t worked in 10 years and I’m afraid now I’m in the worst position. I’ve gone without insurance and just got gov assisted after the divorce I was able to qualify. I feel helpless and at the time I did it to myself and now I’m dependent on someone and I never wanted to be here. He was the best thing that happened to me and I hurt him very badly and I’m afraid there is no recovering our relationship. So I’m at a point of do I even want to stay after all that’s happened and punishment I’m getting.. not saying what I did was okay ever but do I put up with being treated this way still? I know it could have been way worse and he could have kicked me to the curb when it happened. My thoughts are everywhere because yes I am responsible for my part… please anyone with some insight? Or advice?

We’ve been together for almost three years and living together for one. Everything seemed totally fine, until last night when I was checking my email for a receipt and saw an automated Uber trip receipt sent to our shared account

It was a ride at 2 AM on a Tuesday to an apartment complex on the other side of town. The same night she told me she was working late at the office and slept at her female friend's place because she was too tired to drive. When I checked the dates, there were like 6 other trips to that exact same address over the last few months

I brought it up this morning and she completely froze before coming up with some weak story about helping a coworker move. Now im just sitting at work unable to focus on anything. It's the fact that she was so calm lying to my face for months that scares me the most

How do you even start processing that the person you trusted most lived a completely double life?

My (34F) husband (38M) of 12 years (4 years married) randomly blindsided me one day and asked for a divorce out of nowhere claiming we “argue too much”. This made no sense to me because I felt we had a very loving relationship with lots of happy times. We had just got back from a vacation two weeks earlier and were still going on date nights every Friday and Saturday and still intimate with each other right up until he decided to make this decision out of nowhere. When I asked him to go to counselling with me, he refused. He’s an alcoholic but says he’s not. Yet he gets wasted drunk every weekend and he says he just likes having fun with his friends.

He told me he was depressed, numb and broken and had demons in his head. He blamed me for his unhappiness and said he needed to leave the marriage to find his happiness. He also said he hates he is balding, hates his job, has a fear of death and aging, and recently took out a $30,000 line of credit behind my back for his mom who has gambling issues. He said he couldn’t tell me about it because he knew I would say no. His alcoholic father stopped talking to him because we wouldn’t let him live in our house after he got out of jail and my husband blamed me that his dad doesn’t talk to him anymore.

My husband decided to separate from me and wouldn’t even let me work on anything or fight for me. He had been going to the bar til 3 am with a single girl from his work and claimed they were just friends but I was suspicious. I recently discovered a couple months later that they are in fact in a relationship now and my heart is broken. I don’t understand how he could do this to me and just move on so easily. It feels like he discarded me like trash. We had a great life together and I don’t understand why he is choosing to purse a life with her instead of me. What did I do wrong? Why wasn’t I enough? I don’t know how to get through this and I am heartbroken. Looking for people who have gone through this and for some advice please and thank you!!

So as it says it's been 49 days since me and my wife separated we have a beautiful daughter that i love very much i also still love my wife very much so but after seeing how she was dressed at the drop off of our daughter and how she was acting standoffish towards me which isn't anything new through all of this but it felt different this time and i have my speculation that she went on a date last night with someone and possibly slept with them. I never wanted this separation nor do I want a divorce which brings me to my next point, no papers have been signed or filed yet. I still would like to reconcile with her and at this point there is no just getting back together, it would have to be a complete start over between us and for good reason to, she's a different person now and so am I.

I am planning on filling as soon as I can but I guess the advice or question im asking is, am I being crazy for still loving her as much as I do even if she is dating someone else already or sleeping with someone else already?

Hi all-
I am looking for some stories or experiences of people going through similar situations…

I’m currently married with 2 young kids under 5. Things are not going well with my husband. He had a traumatic childhood and is in denial about it. He brings so much toxic thinking and behaviour into our relationship as he is modelling what he saw his parents do. I feel like I am constantly walking on eggshells- anything that I say will set him off into a bad mood. There are also the constant insults and belittling. There has been no physical violence at least. He keeps refusing therapy. I am doing 90% of all the house work and mental load. We both work full time jobs.

I want to divorce but we live in an area where he would probably have 50-50 custody (I am going to meet with an attorney to confirm).

I CANNOT let him have the kids 50% of the time. I don’t think they would be taken care of well enough and don’t trust his judgment when it comes to his toxic family dynamic…

At this point I am thinking of officially moving into another bedroom until the kids are older and divorcing once they are teenagers….

Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did it turn out? For you and the kids? Did it bother the kids that mom and dad had different rooms?

Thanks in advance for your responses!

I feel like im falling apart, i cant get over it, everything i do reminds me of her, i still love her so much, i dont want it to end. I dont know what to do anymore.i feel like i lost half of myself.

Please be gentle with me. This is very new, I’m deep in the grief/attachment stage, and I’m genuinely looking for perspective from people who have been through something similar.

My partner (42M) and I (45F) recently ended our relationship after more than 13 years together. We share children/family life and built a whole adult life together. There was no affair or dramatic event that suddenly ended everything. We still love each other very much.

Ultimately, he decided that he believes we are fundamentally incompatible.
One of the biggest issues is alcohol. He is several years sober and feels that alcohol has caused too much hurt and anxiety in our relationship. His position eventually became that he cannot feel emotionally safe in a relationship with me if I drink at all.

I rarely drink anymore, but I have struggled with agreeing to complete lifelong abstinence. For me, there is a difference between choosing not to drink most of the time and agreeing that I can never choose to have a glass of wine or a cocktail again. For him, that distinction doesn’t really matter anymore.

Neither of us seems able to find a compromise that doesn’t leave one of us feeling unsafe or controlled.
So we separated.

For the last six weeks we’ve been “nesting.” The kids stay in the family home and we rotate in and out so their lives have remained remarkably stable while we figure everything else out.
And honestly, we’ve accomplished an enormous amount in six weeks. We’ve worked through finances, housing, parenting schedules, belongings, logistics and what our lives might look like going forward. I’m looking at houses. We’re trying incredibly hard to protect the kids and treat each other with love instead of turning this into a war.

But emotionally? We are a mess.
We keep coming back to each other.
We still call or text when one of us is hurting. He is still the person whose arms calm my nervous system when I’m overwhelmed. I’m still someone he turns to when he’s sad. We talk deeply. We cry together. We hug and cuddle. We still have an intense physical connection and continue having sex—sometimes multiple times in a day or multiple times in a week. We have fallen asleep wrapped around each other and then gotten up the next morning and gone back to being “separated.”

Then we try to pull away again.

Three weeks after our separation, he downloaded Tinder. He says he was on it for about four hours, matched with one woman, deleted it, and they’ve now been on several dates. They’ve become physically affectionate/intimate.
I’ve also tried finding connection outside the relationship and have slept with other people.

Neither of us is technically doing anything wrong. We’re separated. We both understand that.

But somehow, despite dating/sleeping with other people and intellectually understanding that our relationship is over, we keep finding our way back into each other’s arms.

This week alone we’ve spent time together, parented together, looked at a house for me together, texted a lot, had sex several times, talked for hours and eventually fell asleep holding each other.

The next day he texted me saying he was incredibly sad and couldn’t figure out why until he looked back at how much contact and intimacy we’d had during the previous week. Basically: “No wonder.”

And I feel exactly the same way.
My brain understands the separation.
My heart and nervous system absolutely do not.

After 13+ years, this man still feels like home to me. And I think some part of me still feels like home to him, even though he is the one who believes we cannot make the relationship work.

So I’m asking people who have actually lived this:

How long did it take you to emotionally detach from a long-term partner you still loved?

Did you continue sleeping together after separating? If so, for how long? Did it eventually help you say goodbye, or did it just prolong the agony?

How do you stop using the person you’re grieving as the person who comforts you through the grief?

How do you create emotional distance when you share children and genuinely want to remain close, loving co-parents?

For people who nested after separating, how long did you do it before establishing completely separate homes?

And has anyone ended a relationship because of a fundamental incompatibility like sobriety/alcohol despite still being deeply in love? Did distance eventually make the incompatibility clearer, or did you eventually find a compromise you couldn’t see while you were in the middle of everything?

Finally… how fucked up are we? 😂

Because sometimes I look at this objectively and think, “You two broke up and apparently forgot to actually break up.”

But from inside it, it doesn’t feel casual or reckless. It feels like two people who spent more than a decade being each other’s home trying to figure out how to stop being that without destroying each other or our family in the process.

I know “go no contact” will probably be some people’s answer, but with children that isn’t entirely possible, and I’m not sure either of us is emotionally capable of going from 13+ years of being best friends and partners to cold, businesslike co-parenting overnight.

I would especially appreciate gentle advice from people who have gone through a loving separation where attachment and attraction remained strong. I’m only six weeks into this, and I’m very much still in the thick of the grief.

The title says most of what is going on. My husband has essentially gone non-contact with me. It’s just killing me. I know it’s driven by his mental unwellness.

I miss him like a missing limb. This has been the hardest thing I’ve been through.

I’m just miserable today. I’m supposed to spend the afternoon with my brother, which I don’t want to do, but I know it’ll be important to be around people today.

Weekends sucks since Hubby left. I’ve literally got nothing to do. I tried to go out and get dinner on Friday, I lasted about 45 minutes until I had to leave and then cry in my car on the way home.

I’m just tired of this. Him being fine, him assuming I’m fine, because his delusions have told him I have a long term boyfriend, that I was cheating on him with. Which of course is false.

The no-contact is killing me.

What are the chances of an insecure individual ending a relationship in anger, continuing contact but with conflict, then pure silence for 3 months, ever reaching back out again?

I’m posting anonymously because I genuinely want outside opinions from people who have been in a similar situation.

I’m 24 and have two young kids. I’ve been with my fiancé for a while, but lately I’ve been seriously thinking about leaving. I don’t even know if I’m at the point where I want to fix things anymore, or if I’m just exhausted.

I’ve been working basically nonstop for the past 6 months. I was working the week I had my baby and went right back to working after I came home. On top of working, I’m taking care of the kids, cleaning, cooking, appointments, household stuff, etc.

Today I cleaned the entire house while my fiancé laid on the couch. Later we went to give the kids a bath. He ran the bath water, but the bathtub was filthy. I said it needed to be cleaned, he got upset with me, and I ended up cleaning the tub, bathing the kids, and getting them dried and dressed myself.

And honestly, the bathtub isn’t even the issue. It’s the fact that I’m in a relationship but still feel like I’m doing everything by myself.

His older brother also lives with us. Neither of them currently has a job. They spend a lot of their time playing video games and smoking weed, while I’m paying for the household and basically supporting everybody.
I’m only 24. I have two kids. I don’t want to spend my 20s feeling like I’m somebody’s mother instead of having a partner.

The hardest part is that I have my kids to think about. I don’t want to make a decision that negatively affects them, and that’s honestly what’s kept me here and made me question myself so much.
I’m not saying I’m perfect or that he’s a horrible person. I just feel completely unappreciated, exhausted, and resentful. And lately I’ve been wondering if I’d actually be happier and less stressed raising my kids on my own than continuing to carry a relationship and household like this.

For people who have been in a similar situation: how did you know when it was time to leave? Did things actually get better when you stopped over-functioning for your partner, or did you eventually realize you were better off leaving? I genuinely want honest opinions, even if they’re not what I want to hear.

2 weeks ago my wife (9yrs married 11yrs together) got fed up and moved out while I slept.. it broke me into a million pieces because I lost my favorite person.. non stop crying.. couldn't eat, lost weight.. i started making changes with my body and seeing a therapist to help me become a better person..

Yesterday she asked if I wanted to go see our favorite movie at the local cinema (drive with ryan gosling lol) I agreed. We ended up kissing talking for 3 hours instead then went to see the movie lol

Today we talked on the phone for 4 hours about everything. She basically wants to make sure I will change and stop doing shenanigans that hurts our marriage. Big part of it was my gas lighting and mocking her like a pos I was and being a fat slob..

She wants me to better myself and get healthier for our future..to continue seeing a therapist etc..

I agreed and will not fail my wife and myself because i love her with all my heart. The fact that she is willing to work things out with me instead of just divorcing me makes me happy..

Thank you to all of you for helping me through this, because i spoke to many of you in DMs. You helped me get through a dark time in my life..

My ex and I were together for six years. We lived together and were genuinely best friends. He was incredibly caring toward me and helped me through some very difficult periods. He was my person and my home.

Looking back, he had been having doubts about our relationship for 1–2 years. But around the end of March, he became involved with another woman. She is married, has two children, and is now going through a divorce. Her husband is extremely angry about the situation, which doesn’t help their relationship, especially since 2 little kids are now involved.

They developed feelings while we were still together, repeatedly said they should stop, but continued. He kissed her while still with me and still telling me he loved me. He hid the affair and initially denied anything physical. I eventually found out through her husband. We broke up a few months ago, and he is now with her.

Today I collected my last belongings from our old apartment. I had lived there for six years. Seeing the completely changed apartment and even her underwear in the laundry basket made it painfully real that he is already building a new life with her.

And I keep wondering:
How can someone go from six years of love, friendship and shared life to simply moving on? Did I really mean so little? Will his get the backlash later? How does this work????

I understand that he had doubts and is extremely infatuated with her, but I cannot imagine that six years can just disappear emotionally. He really seems to genuinely not care, and is only focused on telling his side of the story, while I am left with scars and trauma.

Hello everyone, I am writing to update you on the situation following a post I made some time ago right after the breakup, when I was completely desperate.
My ex-partner (M 34) and I (F40) have now been broken up for nearly two months. After an initial phase where I begged him to get back together, a month ago I decided to take charge of my life and start a total No Contact. So, it has been exactly one month since we last spoke.
While I was trying to recover, an incident occurred: while doing the laundry, I found some of his clothes in the dirty laundry basket that he had forgotten during the move. To avoid any kind of direct contact with him, I packed them up and left the package directly with the doorman of his building, specifying his name.
Even though we were already two weeks into no contact, when he received the package he sent me this message on WhatsApp (quoting verbatim): "Hi, I received this package, was it you?"
Obviously, I didn't answer such a stupid question. The next day, not satisfied, he wrote to me again: "Did I forget these clothes in the dirty laundry basket? I don't understand why my name is written on the package"
Another nonsense provocation to which I did not respond, given that it was obvious I had put his name on it only so the doorman could deliver it to him.
In the meantime, I am trying to move on with my life. Lately, I have been hanging out with a girl whom we had befriended when my ex and I were still together: she is helping me go out, enjoy evenings, and meet new people. Recently, we posted some stories together: in one in particular, we were at a party with a lot of people, I was all dressed up, in short, the classic "singles' night out" kind of evening.
At that point, he had a reaction. I believe the combination of my silence regarding the package messages and seeing those stories made him lose control. The next day, he contacted this friend of mine on Instagram and, using an excuse, asked her to go to an event together, blatantly hitting on her via message.
Fortunately, this girl reported everything to me immediately, dismissed him by refusing to go out with him, and considered his behavior absolutely petty. Discussing it with my psychologist, the interpretation was crystal clear: he manipulated this poor girl just to get the message across to me, to hurt me, shake me up, and provoke a reaction that would allow him to regain control over me.
The reaction did happen, but only inside me: I never reached out to him, I didn't call him, and I didn't write to him.
The saddest part, which devastates me given my values and moral ethics, is coming to terms with the fact that he did all this solely to hurt me and out of ego, not to restore things between us or to salvage the relationship. The harsh truth I am facing now is that after 3 years of a relationship, he no longer cares about the respect that was once there, but only about dominating and not losing control.
How do you come to terms with the fact that a person with whom you shared years of your life would resort to such low games just to gain control and have no qualms about hurting you?

i’m 24m and my girlfriend and i broke up on 30th august after almost 4 years together.
i honestly still don’t know how to process the whole thing.
she was a massive part of my life. i don’t want to sit here and act like she was a horrible girlfriend or that the entire relationship was toxic because that simply isn’t true. she stood by me through a lot, we had a lot of genuinely happy memories and for a long time i was convinced i was going to marry her.
the last 6 months of the relationship were pretty bad for me mentally. i started having severe anxiety and panic attacks, mostly related to my health, and i was constantly worried and overwhelmed. i know that affected me as a person and definitely affected the relationship too.
on top of that my business/career and finances were stressing me out badly.
there was also some financial pressure within the relationship that i don’t think i really acknowledged while i was in it. sometimes i felt like there were expectations around spending, gifts, going out, lifestyle etc that i was struggling to keep up with while already dealing with financial pressure.
i’m not saying she was with me for money or anything like that. that wouldn’t be fair at all. but i did sometimes feel pressure to provide or spend in a way that was difficult for me at the time.
and i’ll admit that instead of communicating that properly, i would sometimes bottle it up, get frustrated and react badly.
we had other issues too. we fought a lot at times. there were unhealthy patterns from both sides. she says she felt pressured and that she lost herself in the relationship.
i can accept that i made mistakes. there are definitely things i did that i regret. there were times i was controlling, reactive and difficult.
i’m actually trying to work on those things now.
but one thing that has been really difficult for me after the breakup is that it feels like the entire relationship has now been turned into something where everything was my fault.
like the story now is basically:
i was the problem, she tolerated me for years and finally had enough.
and i don’t really think that’s fair either.
there were things that hurt me too. there were breakup threats during fights. there were financial pressures. there were times i felt dismissed. there were things i put up with because i was terrified of losing her.
i’m not saying this to avoid responsibility.
i know i hurt her in some ways.
but she hurt me in some ways too.
i don’t think a relationship of almost 4 years falls apart completely because of one person.
another thing that is really difficult for me is our different ideas of commitment.
whenever my career or business was struggling, whenever money was stressful, even during the last 6 months when i was having really bad anxiety attacks, she was still non-negotiable for me.
i never thought “my life is difficult right now so maybe i should get rid of the relationship.”
if anything, she was the person i wanted beside me while everything else was going wrong.
but when her own life started becoming really difficult, it felt like the relationship was one of the first things she dropped.
i know that sounds harsh and maybe she sees it completely differently. maybe from her perspective the relationship itself had become one of the things making her life worse.
but emotionally it feels like:
when my life was falling apart, i still chose us. when her life started falling apart, us was something she could let go of.
that really hurts me and makes me question whether we understood commitment the same way.
after we broke up on august 30th, things became even more confusing.
there were moments where she was still warm with me. at one point she told me she hadn’t completely moved on. she said maybe if we were meant to be together we would meet again someday as better versions of ourselves.
she even told me i could text her whenever i felt low.
obviously i took that as some kind of hope.
then over the next few weeks she became much colder.
eventually i directly asked if there was any hope for us at all and she told me no.
she even said there wasn’t even 1% space left for me in her heart.
that sentence honestly destroyed me.
i tried going no contact after the breakup but i’ve broken it three times.
each time it’s basically the same thing.
i miss her, start overthinking, convince myself that one conversation will make me feel better or give me some clarity, contact her and then somehow feel 10x worse afterwards.
i’m starting to realise that no contact can’t be some strategy where i secretly hope she notices my absence and comes back.
i actually need to do it because i’m hurting myself by constantly going back.
i’ve now stopped sending snapchat streaks too and i’m trying to stop checking her stories/posts because even that sends me into a spiral.
another thing i’m really struggling with is how unaffected she looks.
i know social media is fake and i obviously don’t know what she feels privately.
but she looks like she’s just living her life normally.
meanwhile i’ve cried in front of my parents, had anxiety, checked my archived chats constantly to see if she messaged, reread old conversations and analysed every tiny thing she says or posts.
sometimes i miss her like crazy.
sometimes i’m angry at her.
sometimes i think about all the fights, the financial pressure, the breakup threats and the way it feels like everything has been blamed on me and i get really bitter.
then i remember how much she did for me over the years and all the times she actually stood by me and i feel guilty for even being angry with her.
my mind keeps bouncing between:
“maybe i ruined everything”
and
“why am i carrying all the blame for something that clearly had problems on both sides?”
i also keep thinking stupid things like what will everyone think about me now, what if she was the only person i’ll ever love like this, what if i never find anyone else, what if she moves on completely and i’m still stuck here.
my family has been really supportive. my sister basically keeps telling me that i need to stop reacting to every little thing my ex does and start accepting that it’s over.
and honestly i know she’s probably right.
i’m also slowly realising that i don’t need to convince myself that my ex was a horrible person in order to move on.
she wasn’t.
she loved me. she stayed through some really difficult parts of my life. we had something real.
but at the same time i don’t think i should ignore the things that hurt me either just because i still love her.
maybe the relationship was genuinely good and loving for years and still became unhealthy towards the end.
maybe both things can be true.
i think that’s the hardest thing for me to accept.
something can be real, meaningful and full of love and still end.
it’s only been a little over a month since the breakup so maybe i’m expecting myself to be okay way too quickly.
for anyone who has been through a long relationship ending, how did you stop waiting for them to come back?
how did you stop checking if they missed you?
how did you deal with breaking no contact and restarting again?
did you also start noticing things after the breakup that you had been ignoring during the relationship?
and has anyone else struggled with this feeling of:
“when i was at my worst, you were still non-negotiable to me. when you were at your worst, i became something you could let go of.”
how do you make peace with that?
i’m not really looking for ways to make her miss me anymore.
i just want to reach a point where my life doesn’t revolve around whether she does.

Throw away account for obvious reasons.

My (53) wife (40) and I have been informally separated under the same roof in separate bedrooms for almost a year. We have no plans to reconcile. Due to the somewhat unusual circumstances we have no plans to divorce either.

My wife and I stated the IVF process 5 years ago. She had several failed transfers which has been traumatic on both of us. She could have proceeded with another transfer one year ago. However, she cancelled that transfer and delayed it indefinitely due to our marital issues. She felt unsure if she wanted to proceed knowing that we won’t ever have a traditional marriage. I think part of her still loves me, but she is not in love with me she says. I have made it known that I do want her to proceed with the transfer, support her, and be a good co/parent.

About a month ago, seemingly out of nowhere, she told me she made an appointment at the clinic. If all goes well, her transfer will be in December. I am beyond happy that she decided to move forward.

Today she tells me she wanted to go on a vacation before her transfer, so she booked us a trip to Turks and Caicos next month. She sent me the hotel reservation and I saw that it was one bed.

I am fully supportive of my wife taking time off to relax before the transfer. I think it’s a great idea. The idea that she bought a ticket for me (without discussing first) rather than going with one of her friends surprised me. I’m not a beach person. Not saying that to be negative, I just feel that she’d have a better time with girlfriends. Most surprising of all is the one bed.

I love my wife very much. However, we have both agreed that the romantic part is over. Is this boundary blurring? Not sure how else to say this, but does this seem like she might be hoping to rekindle the romance? I don’t necessarily mind sharing a bed, but am afraid she may have expectations that she’s not being open about. I don’t want either of us to get the wrong idea.

Adding for context: I have been seeing someone else for a while now. My wife knows about it and wasn’t happy about it at first but eventually understood that neither one of us can be expected to be lonely for the indefinite future, and that I won’t ever abandon her. My partner found it odd that I am going on a vacation with my wife, given everyone’s mutual understanding that the romantic relationship between us is over. I haven’t told her we’re sharing a bed, so I have that stress to deal with too.

TLDR: Informally separated from my wife for a year when she booked a vacation for us with a single bed; wondering if this is too messy with no plans to reconcile