Hello, Coaches. Thank you for your help.

After 18 months of working on our marriage, alone and together, I am clear that this marriage is not what’s best going forward. It’s not what I want, even though I love him. There’s nothing ugly going on, no affairs, just that we’ve evolved in different directions after 20+ years. My husband disagrees. We were in the middle of this conversation when Covid hit, so we put the discussions on ice. We have kids at home whom we’re trying to shield as much as possible from this convo (understanding that they pick up on a lot anyway, probably) + my husband doesn’t sleep when we’re in these types of conversations. Not good for immunity. We shelved the whole conversation.

But it’s omnipresent for me. Hard to think about anything else. I’m doing the best I can at processing my emotions before my family wakes up, and throughout the day in the bathroom or while on a walk alone. The emotion is usually guilt. I feel like it would be so much easier if HE was the one who wanted to end the marriage. When I was on a walk this morning it was still dark out, and the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should wait to start my walk until it was lighter out because it might be dangerous. But the next thought was that if I was brutally attacked, then he probably wouldn’t be so angry at me when after lockdown I tell him I think we shouldn’t be married any more. It was quite pathetic: I was actually wishing this bad thing would happen in hopes that it would control his emotions.

What am I trying to avoid?? In the past he has told me that if we don’t stay married, he’d never recover and be a horrible father, so he’d want as little to do with us as possible. This would devastate our kids. They think he hung the moon. He’s a very very involved dad, so I don’t fully believe he’d disappear, but I could see how with his personality type that he could have an extreme response–an extremely positive one or an extremely negative one. I worry about it constantly. It’s always running in the background. I’m exhausting myself. It’s affecting my work, everything. I feel like I’m dying inside.

During our conversations this fall, way before Covid, he showed a side of himself that made me think we actually COULD preserve some aspect of ‘family’ even after divorce, if I maintain a standard of loving action and hold the vision for a future that’s actually better for each one of us. Even if it’s different than what we thought it would be when we got married. I know that if he and I both get on board with constructing a positive future, we can do this. He’s enough of an iconoclast that I know a part of him would revel at how we can take conscious uncoupling to a whole new level. And if we approach it this way, our kids will go along with it and while they’ll be sad about some parts of it, they’ll also likely roll with it much more easily than if he or I is suffering about it.

Brooke says we can put anything in the R line that we want. I want my R line to be:

Each of us is thriving as part of this differently-organized family and individually. We are each better off.

This involves other people, whom I don’t control. What do I do about that? Just believe it’s possible anyway? Or do I need to alter the model in some way?

For that to be my R line, then I need to believe things like:

We are each resilient AF.

This will strengthen and stretch us in ways that blow our minds.

We will impress ourselves with our capabilities.

We are on a cutting edge journey towards wholeness that will yield phenomenal dividends.

The best is yet to come for each of us.

When I think these thoughts, I feel courageous, excited, appreciative of my family members.

Is this legal? : )

Can I actually think this way? Is it ethical for me to think these thoughts and believe that my preferred R line is not only possible, but what is going to happen because I will not stop until it’s true?