Aw jeez.... been there, done that. I left my first wife after 5 years because of what I perceived to be psychological and emotional abuse. She never hit me, never threw anything at me, never overtly threatened me, everything she did was perfectly deniable because I was the only person who saw it. Two years into the marriage she made a unilateral policy announcement: there will be no children, ever. That was not acceptable, I grew up as one of six siblings in a happy family and I couldn't imagine never being anybody's dad. I concede that she's perfectly entitled to make such a decision for herself, but what she's not entitled to do is say one thing before marriage and another thing afterward that so significantly changes the terms of the contract. Three years later, I finally abandoned her and started over, having failed to convince her that was a choice I could not accept, and in the meantime enduring a great deal of very destructive scorn and mockery and belittlement over what I now perceive that she saw as my refusal to devote myself totally to her the way she wanted. I have never in my life since encountered anybody as totally selfish as she turned out to be, and I've kicked myself around the block a thousand times for failing to perceive that in time to avoid marrying her in the first place. I had no idea I could be so badly tricked.
And 30 years later, I still have not really been able to forgive her. Or me. Thinking about it still makes me angry and frustrated. So I'll stop now. I probably should have gone for psychological counseling, but I never did. Like the OP says, real men don't do that, they tough it out, deny it, claim they're okay when they're clearly not... Sometimes I'm not very smart, and if my present wife of 27 years were a lesser woman than she is, I'd be in serious trouble.
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