Would I be the asshole if I divorce my wife?
Disclaimer: throwaway account because I don't want anyone I know to see this. My wife (29F) and I (26M) have been together for about 3 and a half years now, and we got married quickly and pretty young. I could blame the religion we both grew up in for the fact that we moved so fast, but at the end of the day, I just moved too fast. I proposed after 3 months, we got married 2 months later, and she got pregnant 3 months after that. I thought everything would be great, and that this was everything I ever wanted. This was in Utah, so not entirely uncommon for things to move this fast, but at the end of the day, there's no good excuse for it. When we first dated, I talked about the things that were the most important to me in a relationship, mainly communication, and she agreed that it was the most important thing to her too. As our relationship went on, sometime after we got married, it became clear she struggled greatly with communicating openly and honestly, much of this stemming from the way she was raised. But the longer this has dragged on, the more I'm having a hard time living with it. I've told her how much I need more effort in communication from her, but the only thing she ever does is tell me "I'm so sorry, I'll work on it," and she never does (or at least, does very, very slowly sometimes). Earlier this month, I sat her down and told her I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this, lately we're fighting more often than we're not, and I'm not putting all the blame on her, because I know I've let myself get to the point of being overly frustrated, and I have a hard time letting go of things without fully talking them through. Now my real issue, I was feeling pretty unhappy, and due to reasons I'm not going to get into here, we moved from the United States down to Mexico (where she's originally from), where we've lived for the majority of this year. Our life is sinpler here, and theoretically things should have gotten easier, but they haven't, and the last time we talked about things, she made it clear she really wanted to work on things, and we had a good 2 or 3 weeks where we didn't fight much, but the last week has gone back to just fighting constantly. I think we've fought 6 out of the last 7 days, and our fights are never screaming fights or anything that serious, but it's enough that I'm not happy. I don't enjoy my time with her anymore, the only thing we do together that I enjoy is watching TV or movies, and sometimes I enjoy myself more because she's there, but sometimes I enjoy myself less. Now I believe we could still work on things, if I believed that she was going to put in the work, but I think my opinion of her has dropped so far that I don't know if I will ever be able to see her the same way again. I'm at the point that I'm considering telling her I want to leave, going back to the US, and trying to restart my life there. The main reason I haven't done it yet is because she told me that if I leave her, she will never let me see my daughter again, and she won't let me send financial support to make sure my daughter is taken care of. I never wanted to stay in a marriage just for my kids, because I know that me and my wife being in an unhealthy, toxic relationship won't benefit my daughter. On the other hand, there are a lot of times that I'm worried about my daughter, because of choices her mom makes and the way she wants to raise her, that I don't want my daughter to suffer, but even while I'm still here, I usually feel like I have no power to change anything because no one cares about what I do or say when it comes to parenting. If we do decide to go forward with divorce, I wouldn't be able to stay here in Mexico as I have no legal way to be able to work for myself, and I don't speak enough Spanish to survive on my own. So I would have to find a lawyer to try and navigate international law to figure out the details of divorce, custody, etc. So I'm wondering, would I be the asshole for asking for a divorce? Sorry for the very long post, I've left out a lot of details, but I don't have much of a support system and I tried to only include the details that I thought were important.
Posted Dec 29, 2025, 3:12 AM UTC