My Marriage Is Falling Apart And I Don’t Know What To Do Anymore.

Location: Kentucky.

I’m a 23M and my wife is 24F. I don’t even know how to process everything that’s happened over the last couple of months. It feels like my entire life has been ripped apart piece by piece, and I’m just trying to keep my head above water.

Back in early December, I found out my wife had been contacting her ex (30M). There’s a Domestic Violence Protective Order involving him — she’s the protected party, he’s the respondent. She admitted she called him, more than once, told him she loved him, told him she missed him, and even said she had been considering leaving me for him. She hid it, lied about it, and only told me when I confronted her.

I tried to work through it. I tried to understand. I tried to keep our home stable for our daughter.

But it didn’t stop.

She contacted him again after that — twice — and hid it again. Then on December 24th, she packed her things, left the house, drove an hour away, and called him to tell him she left me. She came back that same night like nothing happened.

Then came January 20th — the night everything blew up.

Earlier that day, she had a doctor’s appointment at 2:30 PM. She took my phone because hers didn’t have service, and I stayed home with the kids and her phone. While she was gone, I found explicit videos of her and her ex on her phone. She claimed she “didn’t know they were there,” but that didn’t matter. Seeing them shattered me. I felt sick. I felt betrayed. I felt like my whole world collapsed in seconds.

She got home around 4 PM, and I was just… drifting. Trying to take care of the kids, trying to keep the house clean like she asked, trying not to fall apart.

Later that night, she texted me reminding me to finish the dishes. I did. The only thing I didn’t do was wash the baby bottles. She came into the living room, asked if I was going to wash them, and I told her I didn’t want to. She went into the kitchen, started washing them, and started cussing me out — calling me useless, putting me down. I didn’t respond.

She went to the bedroom and started sending me hostile texts. When I didn’t respond, she escalated by calling her mom on speakerphone and bad‑mouthing me loudly. At that point, already emotionally wrecked from what I found earlier, I snapped. I went into the bedroom and told her she didn’t need to involve her mother in our marriage. She yelled that she could do whatever she wanted.

I tried to take the phone from her to stop the situation from getting worse. We ended up wrestling over it. At one point she was on top of me, and in a reactive moment, I bit her arm. She screamed for her mom to call the police.

While all this was happening, our three‑year‑old bit our two‑year‑old because my wife told her to “bite her back.” I saw the mark from across the room and tried to intervene. When I tried to stop my stepdaughter from running out of the room, she fell. My wife immediately claimed I shoved her.

The police showed up. She told them I attacked her, bit her, and shoved her daughter. I was arrested and spent 24 hours in jail. Before I was released, I was served with an Emergency Protective Order that made me sound like a monster. I wasn’t allowed back into my own home — the home I pay for. She kept my wallet and all my belongings.

Then she started texting my family, telling them I don’t care about my daughter, telling me to “go get that divorce,” accusing me of cheating, and painting me as the villain.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, on January 23rd at 5:05 AM, she tried to use my EBT card in Roanoke, Virginia — the exact city where her ex (30M) is currently staying. She had our daughter and her other two kids with her. She has no reason to be in Roanoke except for him.

Later that day, she threatened to put me in jail, threatened to file more charges, and threatened to get a no‑contact order against me for my daughter.

I feel like I’m living in a nightmare I can’t wake up from. I’m trying to stay calm, trying to stay rational, trying to be a good father, but everything is falling apart around me. I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know how to fix any of this.

I just feel lost. Completely lost.