Well, it's possible she is only biding her time like that. After all, none of the posters who are speculating have any of her input.

But, he is not just babysitting, he is spending time with his children and his income and benefits are contributing to his children's needs. It's so important that he not be encouraged to feel that he is only just babysitting and embrace making his children feel they are loved and even though he is having relationship issues, he needs to make sure that he does everything he can to help his children feel safe and loved and never discuss them in any way they can hear in a way that contributes to their feeling they are not important and loved.

That being said, it sounds like his wife was an at home mom and her relationship with her husband was just living in the same house as basically room mates. Her statement of "I gave you 10 years"? Well, she got bored and catching him interacting with another woman was the straw that broke the camel's back. She was not happy with her life and decided to get a degree in nursing and become more self sufficient and social. She is finally "finding" herself because her history was that of going from home right into a marriage, then that failed and she met him and got married again and had two children and her life became "giving" to them and she ended up getting very bored and also experienced low self esteem.

"You are ready to move forward with the marriage and I am not"?, "I don't want to go back to who I was"? "I don't want you calling the shots for me"?
This has been going on for more than just the last 6 or 7 months, she has been unhappy and bored for a while. She did not want her identity to just be a wife and a mother and her marriage was boring and all she had was a room mate. And that is what she considers living "his" way and that is not something she wants to go back to. And "if" he says anything to her about "if we get back together you can't do this or that", it's going to only make her push him away simply because of where she is mentally right now and IMHO, what she is "loathing" is how lonely and bored she was and it was probably going on in her for a while.

Honestly? I saw a lot of this going on in my piers at that age. I felt it myself, I was bored and lonely and often felt like a single parent as my husband had issues and was hardly home. Thinking back? My husband was selfish and if I had known more about how selfish he really was, I would have definitely divorced him. I loved being a mother, but I was very lonely in my marriage.

It would be interesting to see what posters would say to her if she started a thread in this forum. Just saying...