Should I leave my wife?

You have probably not said this sentence out loud to anyone. Men tend to ask it later than women do, and more quietly, and with a particular worry sitting underneath: that if you leave your wife and say why, nobody will believe you, or they will laugh, or they will quietly decide you must have done something. So you keep going, and you search things at midnight and delete the history, and you tell yourself it is not that bad.

From here this page says partner and they. The patterns do not change with the people in them, and you may be reading this about a husband.

What tends to be going on

The question itself is late. By the time a man types "should I leave", the relationship has usually been difficult for years. The threshold for asking is higher, partly because of what men are told about putting up with things, partly because the pictures of a bad marriage in films and leaflets rarely look like yours. That means your instinct is probably not running ahead of the evidence. It may be running behind it.

Ordinary unhappiness. Plenty of marriages are simply not working: two people who have drifted, who argue about the same four things, who have stopped being kind. That is painful and it is not dangerous, and it is the kind of thing couples work on or decide, together, to end. If this is your marriage, the question is whether there is anything left either of you wants to repair.

Something with a shape. Some men live with a partner who checks their phone, who decides who they see, who manages the money and asks for receipts, who threatens to tell everyone what they are really like, who says the children will be turned against them, who hits or throws things and then says nobody would believe a man anyway. Being told you will not be believed is itself one of the working parts of control. It keeps you where you are. If you recognise this, the fear of not being believed is a reason to speak to someone trained, not a reason to stay silent.

Your own side. A fair check, because you would want one if the page were about your partner: does any of this run the other way? When did you last own something specific and leave it there? Who, in your house, has gone quiet about things that used to matter to them?

What this might mean for you

Separate the fears. Fear of your partner's reaction is information, and the people who do this work treat it as a risk marker. Fear of what friends will say, fear of losing the children, fear of starting again at 45: these are real and they have practical answers that nobody has handed you yet.

On the children: courts in England and Wales, and in Scotland, start from what is best for the child, and fathers are not an afterthought in that. Being the one who leaves does not forfeit anything. Will my partner get custody? goes through it.

On being believed: write things down, with dates, in a place your partner cannot read. Tell one person before you tell everyone. Call the Men's Advice Line and say it once to someone who has heard it before. You will find the sentence comes out more easily the second time.

On safety: if there has been any violence, any threats, any control of money or movement, the free module Is this danger? asks the questions services ask, and separation is the time the risk is highest, for men as well as women. Plan, quietly, before you announce anything.

On the practical side: the law on divorce, the house and the money is the same whichever of you leaves. Is divorce expensive in the UK? is the starting point, and the court fee is on gov.uk.

One next step

Weighing it: your leaning today is free and asks you to put the whole thing in two columns and see which way you lean on an ordinary day. If what you recognised above was the pattern with a shape, When the problem is control goes through it slowly and turns the lens on you as well as them. The assessment begins with safety and does not assume anything about who you are.

Men's Advice Line 0808 801 0327, free, weekdays, for men experiencing domestic abuse. National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247, 24 hours, anyone can call for advice. Respect Phoneline 0808 8024 040 if the behaviour you are worried about is your own. In an emergency call 999 and press 55 if you cannot speak. Pressing Escape twice leaves this site at once.