Marriage is obviously for fools. At best it just allows complacency to creep in.

I would not have goals, those also being for fools. At most I'll subscribe to a kind of 無爲.

I'm already not physically attracted to the opposite, or any, sex. At the moment that attraction has been destroyed in me by years of lies about what is reasonable, nay even possible, in the realm of physical intimacy. I'm too risk averse to cycle through partners, or even to seriously seek any out. I wanted to experience a deep, generous, and unforced intimacy, preferably with my wife. I think I gave my all toward that and it just wasn't enough. I don't want to jump from meaningless partner to meaningless partner (no denigration to those that do; I've considered it strongly but I just don't think it's for me).

I think it's best that I live by myself. In so many words I've been told that I'm too mean a person to be deserving of deep intimacy; maybe that's true. I think I'll get on swimmingly in the pines. Or I'll go insane. To paraphrase Skippy, the first thing I'm gonna do is to read all the great thousand+ page novels.

Living alone in the great white north, which I think I'll otherwise do with aplomb, when my health changes things could go south very very quickly. I'm going into that with eyes wide open; the Great Bear might win. I've actually given thought to a kind of personal online presence file that, if it doesn't change within some period, say several weeks, it would indicate to friends and family that they should come looking for me. (Can't remember the proper term; I thought this was a canary file, but that's something else.)

My kids are entering their teens. This sucks for them; I was entering my teens when my parents split the second time. But we all survive one way or another. At least they have each other, so they have a leg up on their mother (I cannot currently imagine ever even dating an only child.)

That answers the core questions, if obliquely. To flesh it out, I imagine I'll keep working as long as I'm able, and continue to support the STBX and kids. We'll pay off the house, where they'll live. I'll see the kids primarily during vacations. I am flexible and pragmatic, so as her work and/or personal life continues to bring travel opportunities I'd be happy to come back and tend to the house and kids. I would even stay married on the books for pragmatic reasons. Her...emotionalism...may well preclude those possibilities, but that's on her.

And the other part, the wild card as it were, is my AP. I'm currently as adrift there as everywhere else in my life. I think it obvious from the foregoing that I've been destroyed by my experiences. For all that, I think she's been destroyed further by hers, which are different but oh so related. We are both broken. I could (and I might) write a novel. We might be be great lovers, deeply passionate, exceedingly generous, and unforced (thus far), but...there's are buts, there always are...for both of us. Our temperaments, our locales, our modes of living, possibly our life goals, these things could not be much more different.

I love letting the greats speak for me, so I'll leave off with a couple. When I left her last these stanzas were on repeat in my car.

This is the way you left me
I'm not pretending
No hope, no love, no glory
No happy ending

This is the way that we love
Like its forever
Then live the rest of our life
But not together

But still one dreams, and dreams deep. From my man Marcel:

"It is because they imply the sacrifice of a more or less advantageous position to a purely private happiness that, as a general rule, 'impossible' marriages are the happiest of all."