I left my husband.

Leaving a man you still love feels crazy. It feels like the opposite of everything I was taught in fairy tales and in movies. I mean you hear people say "Love is not enough" but not nearly as much as you here "love conquers all, love is all you need." But the truth is all the love in the world can't fix someone who doesn't want to be fixed. Can't make someone communicate that doesn't want to communicate. Can't change someone that doesn't want to be changed.  

My husband is a sweet, kind, caring man, but he is riddled with fear and lacks any self confidence at all. Perhaps it's that he cares too much but lacks faith? I don't know. Whatever it is that has left him such a shell of a man has always made him selfish. Selfish in a way I don't even think he really grasps or understands. When is comes to his small group of close friends he is incredibly giving. I have no doubt he'd give them the shirt of his back if they needed it. Unfortunately this same giving nature doesn't transfer into his marriage.

I could list for you now all the things that I have done for my husband since they day we met. All the immature bullshit I suffered, all the things I sacrificed for him, all the ways that I took care of him and loved him, fought for him and loved him so hard but for the sake of time lets just say I was a damn good wife.

In truth my biggest mistake was probably backing my husbands dreams instead of chasing my own but when we first met I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and he seemed so certain. So I spent 10 years doing everything I could to try and make that dream a reality for him. But when we reached that pivotal sink or swim moment in his career he sank like a stone. Not because he wasn't incredibly talented and not because he wasn't smart but because he simply didn't have that drive. He didn't have that fire in his belly. And I should have seen it coming but it still his me like a ton of bricks.

When he gave up, our relationship began to unravel in front of me. I looked at all of my sacrifices and it all felt like a giant fucking waste of time. And suddenly I saw all the cracks. How every time we got something nice it was for him. How all of his tings were shiny and new and all of mine were hand-me-downs. How despite the fact that I have been the breadwinner for a majority of our relationship, he drove a brand new car and had brand new toys and brand new games and computers and I had an old beater car and not much else to my name.

In truth, I'm not a person that cares about "stuff." Material possessions are not something I hold in high regard by any means but when I looked around me and nothing was mine, it felt like a rude awakening. How could this person who claimed to love me so much have let me give them everything and never really thanked me and never stopped and said, "That's too much. You work so hard. You need some things that our your's."

Part of this is my fault. I fully enabled him to do all of these things. I bought him expense presents when he was sad. I let him have whatever we could afford because it seemed to mean so much to him and I just wanted so desperately for him to be happy. But nothing ever made him happy. Nothing. And after 12 years of trying I just couldn't take it anymore.

I still love him. When I look at him I see family. I miss his laugh. I miss hanging out, playing video games and watching movies. I miss his hugs and his snarky sense of humor. I miss my friend. But I don't miss the sex. I don't miss the way he treated me as a wife. I don't really miss the romantic aspect of our relationship at all. He is the best friend anyone could ask for but he is a shit husband and as much as I miss him I just can't go back to that. I just can't.