Breaking my closest attatchment.

First I should state that this is my first post so it might not be the greatest but here we go.

So a few months back I decided to divorce my wife. Even though I love her very much it was not a good relationship. I believe it’s what people call a codependent relationship. We were together for 5 years and it was never an easy going relationship.

I should have know from the start. From the beginning it was difficult, she was not from the United States and did not have the same skills we grow up her. Although she was 3 years older than me she never learned how to drive or even ride a bike. With her living 3 cities away it made work of us being together solely on me. My first red flag was after a few months of dating waking up to see her going through my phone as i was sleeping….

After two years she ended up needing to be married to stay in the states. Although I never really was a marriage believer I do believe in lifelong partners. So I made the choice and got married anyways thinking that I’d I put in the effort she will to. This was not the case. Years passed and things only got worse. She informed me she had a substantive amount it debt in her home country that she has been paying off not to mention her bad spending habits which pretty much made it seem like all dates would be payed for my me, all bill, all food, everything. This put a lot of stress on me as I didn’t have the best pay job while I was in college. Continuing on, Covid came, her mother lost her job and asked for financial assistance for a little bit till she got back on her feet. I agreed to help out for some time believing this would be a month or two but that was not the case. 14 months passed and we continued to support her mother. This caused many arguments.

My wife at the time came to the US to study but couldn’t afford classes. So I saved up whatever extra money I could, cut out my hobbies and extra expenses and after a few months was able to afford one class for her while borrowing a bit of money for a second class. Since I was already enrolled in the school and classes were 5x cheaper I thought I would take the classes with her. Help her adjust to the schooling methods of the US. She was over the moon that she finally got into school. But this did not last. One class was extremely difficult and week by week she slowly gave up. I ended up working on her homework as well as my own. At the end of the year I ended up doing 30% of all her projects/class work and even when I begged her to let me help her with the final she refused and failed it.

That was a turning point for me. It really showed me how much work she was really willing to do to change her life.

Things continued on this way and there were many nights of arguments and it just felt every day was unstable.

Things got a lot worse when I downloaded an app called Slowly. You write old time letters to people across the world and make pen palls. This is not direct messaging and the letters take a few hours to a few days to arrive.

Well she got very upset I was making friends. When we started dating I had to cut out all the female friends I had. Now I thought hey I need friends might as well make pen pal friends so I can still have that kind interaction with similar people but they are so far away she wouldn’t have to worry about cheating or anything like that. But this was not the case. She called it emotional cheating now.

I wish I could say this is where it ended but it escalated much worse. Are arguments became more frequent, and she became physically violent.

like an idiot I thought things could still get better and continued on forgiving the violent actions and hoping it was a one time thing… it wasn’t. The 6th time it happens I finally had enough.

I sat her down and told her I cannot be her, I cannot let her keep putting us into debt, I cannot stay with someone that wants me to build a better future for you without any help.

I have her an ultimatum (I know not good) that I get control of her wage and spending habits for a year just so she can see how things can improve. That I would be in charge now in a sense. She refused the offer and that’s that.

all this happens about 5 months ago and the divorce papers are being processed.

the thing that bothers me most is even with being treated so badly I hate how much I miss her. I miss cuddling in bed, ha being someone to watch shows with, going out to eat with, or just simple things like a walk or drive. Spending 5 years with someone attached to your hip and then suddenly being alone is a big struggle for me. I’m not sure how to cope with all this space and time I have now…

How do I keep moving on missing the things I crave and love most?