[TemtnF8]

Ok, so here's the story... My wife and I met October of 98, married June of 99. To be completely honest, I have no idea why we got married in the first place, and I wish to god it had never happened. I literally remember my first thought after saying "I do" was, "What the FUCK did you just DO dipshit?"

Since then we've had ups and downs just like all couples do. I've tried to leave her once in the past, around August of '01. She convinced me to stay saying all the usual, "I'll change, everything will be better" bullshit that people say when they're not ready to let go. I went through a 5 month period of depression due to unemployment right after 9/11 happened, and she admits now that she nearly left me because of that. We moved back to Arkansas in '02, which I could only stand for about 3 months before I told her I was coming back to Seattle with or without her. We were together but I was living here and she was living there for about a month while we worked out the finances and stuff to get our lives back together up here. During that time we BOTH cheated, and I'm ashamed to admit she's the only one who had the balls to come clean. She still doesn't know that I did, and I doubt she ever will. I almost left her when she told me, but then I realized that I had done it too and decided to just call it even.

So here we are, 4 years later... To everyone on the outside looking in, and her to a lesser extent, everything is peachy keen. We're the typical happy 'successful' couple with a descent house, 2 nice cars, and I've got a nice motorcycle to boot. How did we manage to accumulate all this? hell if I know... I haven't been happy for a very long time, although I can't explain exactly why. At this point I'm just ready for it to be over, and therein lies the problem.. I've NEVER ended a relationship before... I've always been the one being dumped, and I don't know how to play the other part. I still care about her and her feelings, and it kills me to see her cry, but I just don't want to be in a relationship with her any more. A lot of my problem has to do with what others will think, too... Her family loves me, and my family loves her... Every day I think to myself, "How can you consider causing so much pain to so many people that you care about?" and end up just sucking it up, accepting that it's better for me to be unhappy than to hurt the feelings of others.

Am I completely irrational in thinking that at some point I deserve to be happy too? Should I just continue to suck it up and live my life in misery? I've gone so far as to consider suicide, which I KNOW is completely irrational, but sometimes seems like it would be easier than actually asking for a divorce...

I know this is a dangerous place to ask for advice (especially on something like this), but occasionally there are some mature people in this forum. Hopefully someone with more experience and a clearer point of view will give me some guidance...