Feeling terrible guilt knowing I'm responsible for taking my husband away from our son. Don't know if its worth proceeding.

Thanks for any advice, this is so hard and I could use any advice at all.

I (F/32) have been married to my husband (M/39) for 9 years. We live in the states, and have a 6 year old son. My husband is from a western European country, and we are very involved in that culture (visit once a year, I and my son are bilingual). My son and I do not have dual citizenship, and my husband has a greencard which allows him to stay and work and live in this country regardless of divorce.

Husband is Bipolar. He is medicated, and manages his disorder well. He DOES have periods of depression frequently. Despite his being stable, I feel like he will never be able to live a normal life. He is on his third masters degree, has never worked, and can't find happiness or direction in his life. He was working towards his PhD, but has decided he wants to stop, and get a job instead. I question whether he'll be able to find, or hold a job. He recently started talking about wanting to move us back to his home country.

Throughout the entire duration of our relationship, I would regularly catch him (1-5 times per year) on dating apps, hookup websites, etc. He has always maintained that he has no intention of cheating, that this is how he gets his excitement, and then he deletes it. That I have no reason to be upset over it, and should get over it.

2 years ago I caught him having visited a prostitute. He maintains it was the only time he ever acted out of the marriage. I threatened to leave, we started a marriage counselor, and both actively were working on fixing things.

3 days ago I caught the sites and apps again. I can see how long they were open and what he did, and again, he did not actually communicate with anyone (from what I can see). I confronted him, and he opened up a huge conversation on his unhappiness, wanting to move back to his country (with us), wanting to quit the PhD and get a job, and wanting to leave the suburbs we live in.

We live in the suburbs 50 minutes outside a major city that we lived in the first year we were together. The house is my mother's, who otherwise lives alone, and it is a big house, which we've been doing fine in. He hates the suburbs, says that I am too suburban, and he is becoming too suburban, and this is his biggest fear. He is unsatisfied in his life, and feels I've immensely changed since we moved here 6 years ago. We moved here so he could pursue his PhD in a local major university.

I do everything. I work (I took a step down to work from home because our 6 year old was recently diagnosed with anxiety and possibly bipolar, and he needs consistency and can't handle before/after care. Husband has stated that though he is home, he cannot handle more than short bursts of time with our son). I bring in the money, pay the bills, raise our son entirely on my own. I make the appointments, manage our son's condition, cook, shop, clean, pack the car for vacations, make the phone calls, etc. I do everything. This had been ok for me for the longest time. Finding those dating apps, plus him expressing how miserable he was, and my final acceptance that I don't think he'll be able to ever live a typical life and contribute in any meaningful way (he thinks he can), has led me to the horrible realization that this marriage isn't working.

Here's my problem - he's got no support, family, friends, money here. He knows that were I to divorce him, I would get custody of our child. While he doesn't spend much direct time with him, there's no thought that he loves him more than life itself. If we were to divorce, he'd lose that daily contact with him. He'd likely go back to europe, to his support system, and that would mean their relationship majorly changes/diminishes. I don't want to be responsible for that.

I quietly spoke to a lawyer, and our marriage counselor (who he refuses to back to). At therapist's suggesting, I had a conversation with my husband, and framed it as the first of a series of conversations we need to start having. I told him that when I searched my feelings, my heart was closed to him, I'm not feeling any love in return, that he needs to know I'm not willing to move with him, whether in this country or back to his (western Europe).

It went exactly as horribly as I feared. He told me he believes the 'non-cheating' is a compulsion, he wants to stop, and he is going to see a psychologist for it. Then he made the connection that his relationship with his son would change, and he melted down. He started weeping, was clearly very lost. Kept pushing me to tell him whether I had made a final decision yet. I kept reiterating that this was the first in a series of conversations we need to have, and that I just wanted to start by making sure he knows my feelings.

He begged, told me that he'd rather be miserable forever, do anything, than lose his son. I told him that he will always be his father, and that he doesn't have to lose anything. He said he knows that's not true - that even if he were to stay in the state, our son would no longer jump in bed with him in the morning, that he'd no longer be shaping his ideas and person, because visitation would be limited. He begged me to see if there was any way I could stay just for our son's sake.

He left for 20 minutes, and when he came back I told him to please think of this as just the first step - that we both need to think, have more discussions, and move forward slowly, and that nothing is happening immediately. He said this is all easier for me to say, sitting in my family's home, knowing my son will be staying here, and not much would immediately change for me. And he's right. He said he has no support system here in terms of family, not much money, nowhere to go, and no matter where he went, or what eventually happened, he'd lose what he has with his son.

When I remove the dating apps from the equation (and I know maybe I shouldn't be, but if I believe that it was a compulsion and that magically it would never happen again), then my reasons for leaving him start to feel trivial. Is it worth ending a marriage because I feel like I do everything, and that I feel he'll never fully be able to contribute? I feel like I'm taking a cop-out, an easy solution. That our life is going to be tough as it obviously transitions, and I'm running because I know as a single mother in a lot of ways it will be easier. He said he doesn't feel loved or cared for by me, and I believe him - I'm not feeling much for him. He says he feels used, and that when we moved here I was 'finished with him' (because we were back in the home I grew up in, we saw my family more often, who I am close with). I reminded him that when we moved back we had a newborn, and things changed more likely because my focus shifted from caring for him, to caring for our baby. He agreed - that I don't take care of him, and our job should be to care for each other. I disagree and see it as caretaking, which I know is unhealthy. He comes from a country where divorce is much less common (though having a mistress is quite accepted), and begged me to consider any option for the sake of our child.

It is all on me, I don't want to feel this way. I am so sad and guilty and sick over it. I hate seeing this man that I loved crying and feeling the horrible heartache over losing his child. I did consider staying together, knowing he'll always be secretly on those dating sites, and could be cheating, knowing I'll likely be doing everything forever, but it would be better because my son would have his father in his life. I feel like I am the one destroying my husband's life by dropping this on him knowing he has nothing and no one and cannot stay in the state.

I feel so horrible. I have this horrible pit in my stomach, can't sleep, don't know what to do. He's just crying quietly, and I can see he's panicking trying to process it all. Every time he sees our son he just falls apart.

If you made it this far, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.