I've been married 22 years and have a 15 year old daughter. My wife left me and moved in with her boss in year 3 of our marriage, and I begged her to come back. She came back, but we agreed that a condition would be that we'd get counseling. Once she moved back in, she didn't want counseling anymore. Out of 22 years of marriage, she worked for almost a year. When our child was born, I wholeheartedly supported my wife staying at home to see our daughter through the stay-at-home years, and figured my wife could work part-time then.

To be honest, I think i've been bothered by the affair and the clear unwillingness to work for a long time, but suppressed it. For the last five to seven years, she basically sleeps until four or five in the evening. I found out that for years she's been buying codeine and other 'feel good' drugs over the internet--maybe that contributes to her sleeping.

At the same time, my daughter is picking up lots of mom's habits. During the summer she sleeps until four in the pm. Neither one of them has any friends, no social life, no hobbies, no interests. Never have. My daughter gets pretty good grades, all a-b grades, but no friends. My daughter has a fairly good attitude (when she's awake) but tends to be a little gloomy.


Recently my wife inherited some money, and while I don't really want her inherited money, an issue came up a year ago where she could have helped us out financially if she'd paid a bill with her inherited money, and she pointed out that she wasn't using "her money" to pay bills. Recently if I make a credit card purchase, she wants me to 'reimburse' her from my allowance that she gives me for lunch money.


Oh, and our relationship hasn't been intimate for at least 10 years. I've been bumping along, trying to make the best of it. Now, i'm not saying that i'm blameless. I figured out kind of late that a relationship takes effort, and in the early days I was focused on work, and fixing up our house, etc, and i'm sure that I neglected my poor wife. I wish i'd done a better job.


But now i'm feeling fed up. She still sleeps all day, she doesn't support me or participate in anything I want to do. We're friends--we don't fight, I would miss her if we separated, but there's no partnership or deep love left.

Now here's a thing that i'm definitely not proud of, but maybe it helped jar me from my daze. My dad died recently, and a friend from work (female) was very supportive and helped me through lots of the difficult and painful parts of his death. My wife was a little sympathetic, but she really didn't want to spend much time with me, and I don't really blame her, but I suddenly realized that life is quite a bit easier when someone is on your side.

So, now i'm thinking that I might be smarter to get a divorce than to sit around and grit my teeth until I die. I'm 50, she's 50. She has a lot of money from her inheritance, so she can take care of herself financially much better than I can, so i'd be the one taking the big financial risk, but I think the risk might be worth it. I feel like a heel over the whole thing, but there is so much negative stuff built up in my head over 15 of our 22 years that I don't know what could be done to fix it. Especially if she isn't enthusiastic. I know she'd be disappointed if I suggested divorce, but i'm not sure why--i think we have a fondness for each other that comes from sharing 22 years and a family, and that's not inconsequential, but...


I'd love to hear your thoughts on my situation. How far should I go to try to rebuild our marriage? I've asked her to go with me to a counselor several times. She actually went on her own a few years ago, saw two counselors (didn't want me to go) and ended up deciding that both counselors were kooks. I think we've both made many mistakes, but i'm concerned for my daughter primarily, and I don't want to shortchange my marriage, but isn't 15 years of painful marriage awfully hard to repair?