Troubleshooter: My Wife Is Very Selfish and I Want To Get a Divorce

The Yomiuri Shimbun

11:02 JST, April 20, 2025

Dear Troubleshooter:

I’m a male office worker in my mid-50s. I have been married to my wife, an office worker, for 30 years, but we haven’t spoken for more than three years.

I have decided that we will get divorced when our two children, who are junior high and high school students, reach adulthood.

When I tried to have a calm conversation with my wife following my domestic violence incident, we quarreled over our different ideas and decided to maintain some distance from each other.

My top priority is my family’s health and happiness, and I’m working more than the average person. As for housework, I do 60% while my wife does 40%.

My wife is very selfish and does not cook meals when she is absorbed in her hobbies. She goes out for drinks with friends without telling the family and never comes back. She puts priority on what she wants to do and is clueless about her surroundings, such as by vacuuming while the children are studying.

From my point of view, my wife clearly has a developmental disorder. She is not the type of person who makes her family happy, and I regret that I married the wrong person.

However, I’m worried that getting a divorce might have a bad effect on my children and that it will be a betrayal to our relatives. I wonder what will happen to me in my old age. Is divorce a bad thing?

— S, Saitama Prefecture

Dear Mr. S:

You have decided to divorce your wife, and you ask me if it’s something bad. But I’m not qualified to answer that question.

I believe that people should make their own decisions about their own actions, not just about divorce, and that it is not for others to judge whether it’s good or bad.

On top of that, as a psychiatrist, I’m concerned that the term “developmental disorder” was used in your description. You described your wife’s various bad behaviors that seem to support this. You seem to be using the term to blame your wife. Such an attitude will only make the distance between you and your partner get wider and wider.

The reason we psychiatrists give names to symptoms is to create a human relationship with those who are suffering. We have a proactive desire to help them and use the diagnostic name as a clue.

I dare to write this because I hope you will think proactively about how you yourself would like to live your life and how you want to keep your relationship with your wife to do so, putting aside for a moment the situation of your family and relatives and your worries about old age.

— Yutaka Ono, psychiatrist