Do I stay with my husband who’s a great dad but incompatible partner?

My husband is an amazing dad to our 2 year old daughter - he plays, he reads, her cares, he listens, he supports, he provides, he teaches, he puts her first with everything. He would get an A+ for parenting if grades were handed out!

But as a couple, we just don’t get along with one another and haven’t for years. We pretty much go through a number of random days every month where we aren’t nice to one another - and they’re really impactful to how I feel about him.

We’ve been together 12 years and I would say the last 5 years I have googled on and off “how to get a divorce” and, in particular, in the last 2 years the googling has becoming more frequent (monthly). I go through phases where I’m ready to leave him and then the tension dissolves and we’re good for another month.

We both work fulltime but I do most of the housework. He’d say that while I’m doing everyone’s laundry, out grabbing the groceries (a job I loathe) or cleaning the bathroom — he’s minding our daughter which - I agree - absolutely is a job. The thing is when I’m playing with our daughter, he’s watching tv or on his phone so has more downtime/self time than me. Plus I’d much prefer to be colouring in than scrubbing a loo! I’m also the one that does all of my daughter’s mealtimes. In fairness to him, we do 50/50 on cooking dinner but he ducks off when it comes to sitting with our daughter for the meal while she eats and I then do the clean up. It’s always me at breakfast and lunchtime (preparing, eating with her, cleaning up).

His common way of irritating me is through little digs that he says are jokes. Example, when I say “I’m just going to pop a wash on - back in 2 mins” he’ll respond, “oh there goes mummy, pretending to clean the house again!”. I’ll say, “what do you mean by that?” to which he’ll say “you’re so sensitive to everything! I can’t say anything in this house without you getting upset”.

He’s also quite judgmental of how I parent. He is a good dad and I take cues from how I’ve seen him handle tantrums but he makes little remarks if how I’ve done something isn’t how he’d do it. Example, my daughter hates the car but, one day, I tried to give her 10 saltanas to eat from a little container in the car. The result - no tears, calm car ride. My husband goes “how much sugar is in those? It’s too much for her to have every car ride” and the tone of the comment was judgmental and like I’d fed our kid poison! Noting that she’s in the car maybe 3x a week and I wasn’t worried about it her consuming 30 saltanas over a week. There’s just no winning with him.

We never really talk to listen - very much talk to respond and argue our point and, quite honestly, I’m at the point where I can’t even be bothered to argue. I’m tired. We often ‘escape’ to whatever can distract us on our phones, go to other rooms once baby is sleeping or we both zone out watching a series on Netflix because it’s easier than spending the night arguing or just feeling really hurt afterwards. A comment that has stuck with me from a recent argument 6 weeks ago was when I said to him: I think you’re not happy, but you don’t want to end it because it’s convenient to be with me, it would be expensive to separate and you couldn’t deal with only seeing our daughter a few days/nights a week. He never denied it. I’ve been feeling like a convenience ever since.

It’s the little remarks, the parenting digs, the lack of contribution to the household work that makes me go — I think I’d just prefer to do this alone. But then I think about my daughter and she would be heartbroken if she didn’t see her dad every moment she could or wanted to — so do I just suck it up?