Ok, it's good that you have a plan and a goal for your life.
I have read your wife now has cancer? How has that unfolded?
Coming back to the divorce:
This is still something that can lead to totally different outcomes in life and how you go into it is the most important part. If your wife still likes you, maybe starts desiring you again when divorce comes up etc. etc. then this is a better situation.
Imagine buying a car. You go to a car dealer and your mindset is "I will buy a car. It is concluded". The dealer will read your mindset, because that is his job and if he is really bad at that particular thing, he will not be a car dealer for long. He knows then, that you will buy a car and for him this means, he will either sell you the shittiest car he has, that is hard to sell or just not go down with the price, because you are going to buy it anyway. If you go into this encounter and are open to buying a car, but if the deal is not good, then you are out, there are many more possibilities for you and it will safeguard you from really bad deals.
I just bought an awesome woodworking machine for ~1500€ 3 days ago from an individual, transported it to my place and now he asked me if he can give my number to someone else who wants to buy the machine and has contacted him and asked him to get my number. I agreed, even though I don't want to sell the machine, I just bought it and I want to use it. But maybe the other guy really needs the machine and exactly this model (that is rare) is what he needs. Then he might make an offer that is fair enough. I will have no machine, sux, but if the deal is great the deal is great. So I just opened the discussion by saying, well we will not come to an agreement if he is not 100% sure he needs exactly this machine. We wanted to know why and I told him that the machine will cost 3500€, which he said is 2k more than the initial price and I explained to him, that it costs me a day to transport it away, it costs me a day to install it, I have been looking around for half a year to find this machine. All of that stuff costs my time and he is not paying a fair price for the machine, but he is paying a fair price for the loss I have, when I sell it. He totally understood this. But did not want to buy. Fine. I then said, that I'm willing to sell the machine to him if I find out it is not what I was looking for, but I can only tell that in 2-3 months. He said, sure why not. I saved his number and for that situation I have 1 possible buyer. Nice.
Why am I telling this story? I could have told you 10 other stories with the same message, this is just one that happened today to me. Your mindset is incredibly inflexible. Bad things come out of that.
You will find more opportunities and better outcomes in life when you communicate clearly and openly to your partners what you are looking for and what your situation is. From what I read I see a very inflexible mind and that locks you into rigid and unbearable situation, I wish that you can live a better life.
In my sex life it has also happened that my partner did not want to have sex. I have explained that this is a desire and a need and I'll be looking somewhere else then. It is ok if she does not want to have it, but I want to have it and if we are not finding a way to have it, then she should allow me to look somewhere else. Sure if she'd agreed and just said, yeah look somewhere else and I did that, the relationship would have broken. But that's not going to happen, because communicating clearly how the situation is and what are the consequences completely changes her mindset. Just stalling is no longer an option, because then I will be looking somewhere else. The next time when I say "you have to open up and tell me what makes sex great for you" it is a different situation. It's this "Oh shit, now I have to act" moment for her, it is "Ah wait, If I don't act now, then these consequences might come that are a bit distant on the horizon". In another situation, where I am just waiting every day for sex and are ok with having a sexless marriage for 10 years and she can have sex whenever she wants and I'm just hoping it happens a single time, then she will not consider this moment as "Oh shit, yeah I have to tell him" but rather like "Well, if not today, then I can still do this tomorrow".
Many will not even know what to tell you and how to answer that, but it will start a process of thinking about it. And guess what? The answers I got totally surprised me and were not what I was expecting. The biggest surprise I ever heard:
"We should have like a fixed time in the week, where we have sex."
For me this was totally strange, because this sounds so much like a turn off, absolutely not spantenous, no tension, just do it anyway at that time. I was expecting stuff like "more cuddling, less hard stuff" etc, but that was like the opposite of what I was expecting. The explanation: Well, the sex is not bad, but starting it is just so exhausting, but once it has started, it's often good and if not, then it's not as bad as I think it will be before we start.
Was that the solution? Yes. She even said we can fix 2 times a week. It is usually not really happening 2 times, but that does not matter, it's creating pressure and that seems to work. Don't ask me, I don't understand it and if you read any advisor on the topic it will mark this as a big no no. I might not believe it if it didn't come with multiple orgasms. But what I have learned from this: Try to make your partner come out with solutions. Don't just wait for miracles. You will always find some "experts" telling you this is toxic masculinity, but well, non-functional relationships are toxic and these experts mostly mirror their own toxicity on others.
Be open, be flexible, scout the possibilities with talking and negotiating.
