Advice: How to leave my husband

This is definitely an awkward one. I have been married for a few years now (not going to specify in the hope no one on here can connect the dots to who I am) to my husband who I dated for many years prior. Our dating relationship was great, we enjoyed each other’s company, spent every spare moment together pretty much from the day we met and of course dating became the natural progression for the situation.

After dating for a year or so we decided to move in together... I should also mention that prior to this we did a somewhat long distance relationship, only seeing each other on weekends etc. So one of us had to take the leap to move to a completely different place and that person was me. I left my friends, my job, my family - all things I consciously chose to do because of course, I was in love.

Moving in together was easy at first, we’d been around each other and every spare moment we had that living in the same house was a dream! There were no more goodbyes, no more moody night before’s and no missing each other. If I’m honest it was almost perfect. As time went on we created the home we had so desperately wanted with one another.

After many conversations and giggling moments of a marriage, there we were walking down the aisle saying I do’s and as usual the honeymoon cloud 9 phase kicked in. I’d never been happier to be married.

However only a few months into our marriage my husband began to become someone I didn’t even recognise. Temper tantrums, breaking things and saying things so wildly inappropriate I couldn’t come to terms with it. I told him that I wanted to leave... a decision that I sat with for many sleepless nights. Reluctantly I chose to go into marriage counselling because of how sympathetic he was and because I like him, did not want a failed marriage!

Marriage counselling worked for some time, it allowed us to bond, become closer, grow as individuals and allowed him a safe place to better himself in the areas that were affecting our marriage and for a while, things were good.

Certain things didn’t change, I constantly felt that I was “misbehaving” or being a bad wife, for things about my own character that he had loved coming into this relationship. It seemed as though over time this had become a part of me that he loathed rather than what he had loved at the start. But still, I tried, doing my best to think before having “too much” or not going out with a friend he didn’t like...

Cutting this story short, it’s now become evident that we don’t believe in the same things, we don’t have the same values, our ideologies of a relationship and especially a MARRIAGE are completely different and here I am... stuck in Covid-19 with a man I feel like I barely know. No exit strategy. I left my well paying job for something that paid less because I was in love! I left my family because I was in love! (No judgements there) I now do not have the income to move back to the city because of a pandemic that no one has control over. I’m completely lost and somehow stranded in a relationship I can’t escape. I have sacrificed every part of my being to be with my husband and he feels absolutely nothing in return. He doesn’t compromise! He dictates and somehow I am always at a loss...

Maybe I didn’t need advice, maybe I just needed a space to rant. But hey it’s a lot easier to talk to a bunch of people you don’t know, than the ones you do!