Oh, I wish I didn't relate so closely to your situation......but reverse the roles.

Red flags went off the month before the wedding & I even told my mother I didn't want to get married to him.....but she convinced me that I was wrong & that he would grow up & mature when he had to & I thought that anyone with a college education couldn't be anything like my own father......I was wrong.

Yep, year 2 1/2 did come our daughter.....dang summer vacation....I didn't have any time for him while I was working on my degree. Before we got married I had even told him that I didn't want kids & wasn't going to allow anything to get in the way of my getting a degree (in hopes that he wouldn't want to get married to me). First thing after the pregancy was confirmed he tells me that I can take time off of working on my degree & can go back to school later.....I almost killed him immediately but instead....kicked him out of our apartment & he went immediately to MY PARENTS house for sympathy. Guess it did help because they agreed to care for our baby (daughter) while I finished my degree & held down my career (computer engineering).

Fast forward through the years & through all the financial mess he drug us into because he believed in using credit for everything & was never held his spending accountable.....I cleaned it up so that we could finally get out of the first house we owned.....with a 2 engineering career family.....we couldn't even qualify for a house.......we finally did after I got all the credit paid off.

Fast forward even more......aerospace crashed in California & I lost my career & it was impossible to get into the business world because of a salary that was too high & they didn't want to train anyone at that level of salary....never bothered to ask if I would take less which I would have gladly done just to have another career. Anxiety hit, then he started coming home & just throwing stuff down thinking because I was now home, I would pick up after him.....depression hit even worse. Everyone blamed it on my loss of career.....& even the suitice attempts were blamed on that & at the time, I really didn't realize what was going on in my life. Through all of this, my poor daughter was trying to get through her senior year of high school. I moved into my own room in the house & basically had nothing to do with him from that point on......because at that point, the financial mess began again because he I was in & out of the psych hospitals & couldn't handle anything.....& he spent & spent & allowed spending rather than stopping all spending like I would have done if the roles had been reversed.....it took 13 years of just living under the same roof until after my mother died that I was able to sell her house, take my inheritance & leave the state (something my daughter had done years before).

Honestly, it's amazing the freedom that getting away from that life cam make......I have found that person who had been smothered by dysfunction all my life. I knew if I didn't get out, someone was going to end up NOT LIVING & since only my horse vet had a hit person who he was going to volunteer to take out the home care person who abused my mother & threatened me when my mom was dying of cancer.

It wasn't until I got away from that life & found my own that I was able to see what lack of support I was surrounded by all my life & how dysfunctional everyone including my parents actually were in my life.

I understand your wanting to stay for your kids.....but I also know from personal experience what a toll it took on me staying in a bad marriage for 33 years.....big mistake in my situation & almost cost me my own life....a life that I am totally enjoying & loving now even though I probably will NEVER get married again, & have no desire to even have a man in my life at this point.

I left 8 years ago & it wasn't until just last year after finishing with the IRS mess he created for me to care for was I able to realize & study I find out that the first therapist I went to after moving here (2100 miles away) suggested the possibility of my husband having Asperger's......& with research......that is what described my marriage 200%.....also described everything I had learned about him before we got married. All the other things that seemed to fit the problems I was having like passive aggressive & even the adult ADD explained the behavior I was experiencing from the Asperger's though I know there was a lot of "just jerk" thrown in to the mix.....but 33 years of fighting with someone after a previous 21 years of fighting with parents....I began to think I was the horrible person until I'm finding that I have no problems interfacing with people who are nothing like my parents or my husband (soon to be ex after I get finances more settled so I can afford the divorce). What amazes me most is that most people aren't anything like them......wow, was that eye opening now that I'm surrounded by wonderful caring people. It's not that they weren't nice, but living around them 24/7 is a whole different picture.

I understand looking at the big picture & seeing no good way out.....I lived that way for way too long.....but only you know what works & what doesn't. It's not easy living in that condition....but finding an open door that works in a whole other thing also & not always that easy.

It was interesting because it wasn't until I was driving across country in my truck with him hauling my horse trailer full of our american eskimo dogs that I remembered the conversation I had about not wanting to get married to him before the wedding.....that was 33 years later......after I got out, all the little memories started coming back of the things that had bothered me so badly & then when I read the book on Asperger's......I was hit with hundreds of memories that were triggered. The thing for us was that Asperger's wasn't even Dx'ed in the US until 1994 & that was when my major depression hit...so it's not surprising no one in the mental health world put the pieces together at that time....20 years later & it makes perfect sense. Sounds like your wife has some serious issues that really need to be dx'ed....at least for her benefit in the long run....sometimes it's too late to make any difference in a long term bad marriage.