After weathering 20 years together, it is safe to assume you'd feel safe in a relationship with someone. But one husband harshly learned that his wife might not have been as happy as he thought she had been after he overheard a conversation she was having with a friend.
Now the husband and father of two adult children wants a divorce, but people are thinking he's seriously taking it too far.
"I genuinely thought we were in love," he began explaining in his Reddit post.
"…until I overheard her on the phone recently remarking to a friend that she feels she settled for me and thinks about her ex every day. Her exact words 'I feel like I settled for him… I love him but he doesn't excite me the way Tom did. Sometimes I wish Tom had been serious with me.'"
According to the husband, he had no idea Tom was such an impactful ex.
"Tom is her ex who she dated on and off before she met me," he acknowledged. "I always thought she was done with him because she told me that he 'meant nothing to her' because he refused to seriously commit but hearing this all these years later broke my heart."
In that moment, the husband knew in his heart that it was over.
"I knew I wanted a divorce," he stated matter-of-factly. "But what I struggled to accept was that I was brainwashed for 20 years and living my life based on a lie. I'm feeling a lot of unreality. I told her I overheard her and that it's over. She broke down in hysterics saying it wasn't what it looked like."
He noted that both of their children are grown adults, but the family thinks he's being "crazy."
"I just know I want out but her and our entire family has taken her side calling me a fool and idiot," he wrote. "What do I do?"
Reddit users were a little divided over how the husband should handle it.
"In some of the marriage books I've read, they talk about how when one partner is having a tough time in the marriage they tend to be overly critical of the past," wrote one user. "Your wife may be having a tough time with your marriage right now and is remembering the beginning of your relationship differently than what actually happened. If she told you at the time that she was over her ex, she may very well have been telling the truth then. Now, she may be having some difficulty with your relationship and is looking back at the past differently."
The commenter went on to urge the husband to ask her to clarify and dig a little deeper before he made any final decisions.
Others wants to be sure the husband knew that he had every right to be upset, but should consider other factors.
"If you feel this clearly that you want a divorce, that's probably the right decision," acknowledged another reader. "But you absolutely shouldn't take what your wife said as an indication that you've been tricked or brainwashed for 20 years. It's extremely common for people to turn to a fantasy memory of an ex when they're struggling with a problem in their current relationship. Your wife is dealing with something now, and it's possible she fell out of love with you. But that doesn't mean she wasn't in love with you for the last 20 years. She almost certainly was for at least some and probably most of it."
A few commenters think he has every right to have one foot out the door.
"The funniest thing is I'd do the exact same as him due to my own personal beliefs so I can't really fault him," wrote one more sympathetic user. "One of my biggest fears is ending up with someone just 'settling' for me because I don't believe in that. I would 100% rather be alone, hearing someone say something like that would be a betrayal and make it so pointless to me that I'd walk away.My fear comes from exactly these reasons, who knows what kind of fulfilling years he now missed out on because someone was lazy?"
Whatever this husband decided, hopefully he seeks some professional help to ease the hurt he is feeling in this moment.
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