Every journey starts with a single step

I've been stuck in a rut for years.  Working a long way from home, long hours, very stressful, underpaid, and, I've finally realised, neglecting my family and taking all my grief out on them. 

My wife's been stuck in a rut too.  Alone in the house, looking after the kids, depressed, realising she was nearing 40 and the kids were growing up and blaming me for everything.   

So we drifted. She hooked up with an ex, stopped talking to me, and  started a new life.  I got cross, got stressed, and had a total breakdown, exacerbated by several deaths in the family which I had to deal with.  I realised that I couldn't go on like this.  I had to change my lifestyle.  Completely, totally, and radically.  It wasn't a matter of "going back to the good times".  It's all different now. We're older, our interests have changed, the kids are growing up and will be leaving home shortly.  We needed to look to the future.

So I decided to make changes.  I  told my wife that we had to sort ourselves out, and come to an accommodation, or I was leaving.  I told my boss the same thing.  Work was helpful: we talked, we discussed some options, we found various ways where I could continue in a less stressful way.  Home was less so.  She didn't want to think about it or discuss it.  In the end, she realised she didn't know what she wanted.  Like me, she knew she couldn't go on the way things were, but she didn't know whether she wanted to move on without me, or try to reconcile our differences.

What we agreed is a 6-month separation, so she can get her head together and decide what she wants.  I moved out two weeks ago, though bizarrely, I'm now back home for a week looking after the kids while she's on holiday, which feels very strange indeed. 

Oddly, I feel remarkably positive about everything.  Sure, I get times when I feel angry, hurt, upset, confused, regretful, betrayed, and everything else, but most of the time I feel  rather good. Whichever way this goes, it'll be better than it is now.  I'd like to fix things between us, but if she doesn't want to, then I'm not going to try and mend something irreparable.  I'm getting on better with my kids now than ever before, and, for the first time in ages, I can see a future.  In fact, I can see several futures.  All of them have some degree of pain in them, but all of them have something good to offer.  The challenge will be to keep this motivation up as the next few days turn into weeks, and then months.