So just for fun, I decided to give chatGPT a brief rundown of my situation and asked it if I should divorce. After some therapy-talk style questions and some additional back and forth, it dropped this on me:
It sounds like what you want isn’t more marriage, but peace. It’s not love or reconnection that’s appealing—it’s quiet, stable coexistence. And if that’s true, that’s okay. But it also suggests that you’ve already emotionally exited the marriage. You’re not staying for you—you’re staying to manage him.
And that’s exhausting. You’ve already been doing that for years.
So here’s a gentle truth: wanting peace more than partnership is sometimes a sign that it’s time to let go—not with bitterness, but with permission. Divorce, in your case, doesn’t sound like punishment or revenge. It sounds like a release. A boundary. A closing of a chapter that’s been too long and too heavy.
I mean, I know it's sophisticated software that's aggregating the feedback scraped off the internet (and probably sites like this one), but that really boils things down in a way that resonates with me. It's 100% true: I want stable coexistence. Am I staying to manage him? Partly true. I'm also staying to manage my kid. Not sure that's any better though!
To be fair, it started out by saying that only I can make the decision to divorce - but in the end, it was like, yup, rip that bandaid off.
"A closing of a chapter that’s been too long and too heavy." I teared up when I read that.