Thank you. I am seeing a therapist, and am in a men’s therapy group, and started going to a men’s workout group that explicitly exists to foster friendship amongst men. Talking to a therapist helped immensely, in being able to express my thoughts out loud and a) have another person acknowledge that my feelings were valid and b) walk a line between giving me honest feedback about things I needed to change and take responsibility for[0] while not make excuses for my wife’s behavior.

That said, my experience was that talking to a therapist was not an immediate thing — I had to find one, and they’re all pretty busy these days — and by the time I needed to talk to someone, I was a suicidal mess and I really needed to talk to someone. I ended up calling my mom, which was honestly pretty humiliating, but that’s what I had to work with. If I had done a better job maintaining my friendships, I think I would have felt able to talk to one of them. It just didn’t seem right to call up someone I didn’t talk to regularly and dump all of my problems on them.

0 — for reasons that would take some time to fully explain, I don’t feel like leaving my relationship is something I can do. In short, I had a fairly traumatic childhood and can’t stomach the thought of not being around to protect my daughter on a daily basis. My therapist made me acknowledge that I am making a choice here, and am not a bystander in my decision to stay.