"AITAH for holding my wife to our legal marriage and her legal assets in divorce?"

Lurkin_Not_Workin writes:

I (31M) married my then-girlfriend (27F) after dating for a year, 4 years and 4 months ago. It was important to her to get married because, as an immigrant, she couldn’t get a green card without being married. I want to be clear, though—we were madly in love.

Three years ago, I began grad school. Her parents bought us a $500k condo. She went through school herself while I supported her; for example, I paid $12k for her health insurance during this time. I always took her on nice dates and gave her expensive gifts.

I swear, I tried my best to spoil her. During this time, her parents, planning to move to America, have transferred over a million dollars and bought a million-dollar house for themselves (all in her name).

Last year, I proposed to her. To reiterate, we were already legally married, but we wanted to make it socially official. She obviously said yes, but we decided not to get started on a wedding ceremony because it was unnecessary and complicated to plan.

We continued to live as “fiancés.” Either way, we announced to the world that we’d spend our lives together. I even got an expensive life insurance policy where she’s the sole beneficiary. Apart from burning out off and on because of grad school, life was perfect as far as I saw it.

She began working full-time in January. Three months ago, she dropped a bomb on me, saying she loves me like family but isn’t in love with me anymore. Her main complaint was that I was working too much. Hearing this, I went into overdrive. I’ve done everything I can think of to save this relationship.

I began working much less, did all the chores (not like I didn’t do most of them already), started planning a lot of dates, and gave her daily massages. I spent $3k on couples counseling, I read books, and I accommodated everything she wanted, but nothing satisfied her.

While she accepts that me working too much was in part her fault for never communicating that her needs were unmet, she says we’re just past that now. She tells me now that there’s nothing wrong with me, just that I have a feminine energy, and that what I have just isn’t what she wants to chase.

On the other hand, she has put no effort into saving our relationship. She’s been incredibly self-focused, even making the background of her phone a sexy picture of herself. She says she wants no responsibilities, that she wants to be “brainless.”

She’s been binge drinking basically every weekend, once blacking out and another time driving drunk. She would ask me not to come clubbing with her and wouldn’t tell me when she’d be home.

When I told her how I felt—worried about her and disrespected by her behavior, with tears in my eyes—she picked up her phone and started scrolling. I swear, I never even yelled at her, but perhaps crying at the idea of losing her is the feminine energy to which she referred. God, even now I still love her so much.

She said the only thing she wanted from me is space. So, for the last month, I’ve been living in her parents’ house (they do not live here yet). She’s asked me to pay for the condo taxes next year and the HOA for the end of this year ($2.5k total), and I did.

She’s rude to me in person, but I haven’t seen her in two weeks, and she’s been ghosting me via text on occasion. She’s blocked me from her stories on Instagram and deleted photos of us from her page. Recently, it seems like she’s either cheating or shopping for someone new.

Obviously, this is over. This week, I’ll talk to her (I have to f%&#ing schedule this) where I expect her to break up with me. But here’s the rub—would it be a d%#k move to go to a divorce attorney and get what I’m technically legally entitled to in a divorce?

Here are the top comments:

ProfPlumDidIt says:

NTA but talk to an attorney BEFORE you talk to her. You need as much factual information as possible because she will not make things easy.

N0b0dy-Imp0rtant says:

Fight for what’s yours, she is doing this to you after all. It sounds like she used you until she no longer felt like she needed you and now wants to be single and do whatever she wants.

LKJB90 says:

NTA, if this is the whole story it sounds like she’s taking advantage of you big time. It may be a dick move because it’s also regarding some of her parents money/belongings but sounds like she’s been screwing you over all along and was thinking you’d just roll over and let her do whatever she wants.

Bucky-Katt-Guitar says:

NTA. Get an attorney and get what you have coming to you. I'm sorry that it ended like this.

What do you think?