Divorce Support Forums: guys: how far do you go telling her the reason?

No need to be cruel, but be truthful (the part of the truth that won't hurt her).

Honey, I love you, but being together with you since the accident has not helped you. I've watched you slip into an emotional state that makes your physical situation worse, and I seem to be helping by allowing you to do this. You dont' bathe for two weeks at a time, can barely walk when the docs say it should not be a problem, have issues with healing because you refuse to stop smoking. You smoke like a chimney and are putting everyone around you at risk, including me, including the house, you've fallen asleep in bed with a lit cigarette, nearly killing us all.

You're slowly killing yourself and I can't allow you to take me with you. But worse, I realize that by PICKING UP your cigarettes for you, but keeping the cable TV on and allowing you to sit here in the house and do nothing to help yourself, by providing 100% of the income to support the house, I am allowing you to make a mess of your life, and I can't bear to continue to watch it.

We have talked before about what it would take, and it's clear to me that it would take a whole lot more than you can do while you're living here with me supporting you here.

But more, I can't do it any more. I'm breaking under the pressure of doing it all. And the little bit you've been helping doesn't nearly make up for the extra work you create. The time you were gone, I hate to say, I realized how bad things had gotten here with you here. I dont' want to be mean, but it was wonderful to simply not have to worry about your cleanliness, your smoking, your health, for a few precious weeks. Your refusal to deal with your own needs has kind of killed the feelings I had for you at one point, and I need for this to be over with before it gets even worse.

This is NOT an issue of me dumping you becasue of yoru disability. Far from that. I've taken full care of you for 8 years since the beginning of the disability! How DARE you suggest that it's your disability. No, what I'm leaving you for is because you have not done the things that the experts say you COULD do that would HELP you get over your disability, and over time, rather than get better, you've gotten worse. Slowly, you're killing yourself, and every tiny step worse that you get, it's another step worse for me in trying to pick up after you.

I can't do it any more, and I can't stand that your being with me has allowed it to get this far. I've talked to your doctors and it's very clear to me that you could get better, but it's not happening. So for now we need to separate. It's not impossible to beleive that at some point, once we've been apart for long enough for you to address some of these issues, that we could get back together, but we can't do that as long as I'd have to be your caretaker. I've doscovered in the past year that I am not a good caretaker. I can take care of business in a normal household, but I'm a failure as a caretaker of a disabled person. Under my care, you have been allowed to let yourself get worse, and I cannot let this continue.

So if you want a specific, easy to explain reason for the divorce, it's because the situation we were in after the accident made things get worse and worse until we could no longer manage together, until you were not motivated to follow doctor's orders, and so we had to separate in order for us both to heal and figure out how to be self-sufficient rather than allow ourselves to drive ourselves into early graves. If that helps you understand, then that's it.

I'd suggest that if this goads you into a self-improvement project, then maybe quitting the smoking, bathing daily, keeping your clothing clean and taking a walk from time to time, instead of watching TV all day, might be great goals for the next year. But I've had it, I can't be the one to try to make you do these things any more. When I visit you a year from now, I'll know if you've been doing these things. It will be obvious from your appearance, from your manner. It will be clear. If that happens, I can't imagine how happy I'll be to know that things are gettting better, that you have gotten some goals and maybe the future for you is bigger than this stupid little smoke-filled room. I'd be very happy to know that.

I hope you can make it to that place in life. You can't do it from the sofa in my house. That is why.