Little long and I apologize. I’m (38M) wife (40F). Been together for 17 years and almost married for 10. And it’s been a very very hard last year and more. We have two kids (M6) and (F4) and they can be hard some days but I’ve been tough to figure it out any way you can. Old school grit upbringing. My wife is spiraling and struggling and has since the kids were born.
Let’s add some color. I’ve always wanted kids. When we first met my grandparents helped me see the vision of my world and the supported me and help mold the version I am today. Patient understanding and resilient. I wanted to leave a legacy so Ive always wanted kids to continue that. At first she didn’t and I didn’t care bc we were in our early 20s and who cares at that point right? But it matters later down the road.
She’s always been on medication for anxiety and depression even early on. I’m of the belief if you need it then take it but have a plan and at least be working towards feeling better or talking to someone to work through that path. She stayed in that path and didn’t ever seem to pass a certain point. We all have our issues but if we aren’t trying to work through them are we helping ourselves or just stay hurting? It’s been a contentious point. She is struggling, I’m there to try and help and be patient but she’s resistant to change or working through problems and can get addicted to sympathy and the loop it brings. She wants everyone to feel sorry for her but trying to offer suggestions and ways to feel better might as well be trying to drink ocean water hoping it can hydrate you.
Regardless through it all we stayed steadfast and we cared enough to work through it. Through breakups and getting back together multiple times. We cared enough to keep working at it. We loved each other. She got better and were working and she really wanted us and for it to work. So I continued to love her and it was good. She was good. She was showing actions and it was nice.
That was until after we got married and we tried to have kids. She stopped going to therapy for years. We had a hard time and we couldn’t get pregnant. We went to doctors and paid lots of money to try and get pregnant with help and we eventually did but we lost the first one and it devastated her. Mind you at that time she started slowly going backwards. Losing her jobs, staying at home for days on end and getting stuck. But we fought through it and I supported her and we got pregnant again but our first was HARD. He cried a lot and she struggled to produce milk and we had a tough few years of a dead bedroom. A mother who was struggling with post partum and a husband who wanted to help. And I picked up the slack. Let her sleep while working full time and I took over all she couldn’t handle.
We had a dead bedroom and we slept in separate rooms to get sleep and we drifted extremely apart. The next thing didn’t exactly help. With her struggling the day to day with an infant and the struggles of being a mom and the marriage well running dry we were intimate maybe one or two times those next few years and yup, she got pregnant again with our second. And just as our first got older the same thing happened. Dead bedroom, marriage on a lifeline, and me picking up the slack bc I was raised to find a way and work though the hard times. She was enabled while she was raised and her parents did there best to support her but fixed her problems and that’s how she learned to work though tough times. Sympathy is her language. Someone needs to be there to support and help her through it and I’m left feeling empty holding the empty bag in return.
Fast forward to this January. Our kids are older and in school. She still at home but we are so OVERWHELMED by all our cracks in the foundation of our marriage that we both wanted a separation for our own reasons but she requested it. I’ve been pushing for her to help more. I felt entitled to reciprocation for holding everything together since the kids were born and the years of holding the family together by compensating for her lack of effort in things. Her addiction to sleep and Xanax. All the nights I helped her sleep and picked up the slack. Screaming babies and taking them downstairs to help them cry it out and her going upstairs to survive the day/night. Sleeping on the weekends while I worked a full time job. Coming home to a dirty house and cleaning it up to help her. Classic co-dependency. I did everything. Took them out to see the world. Took care of the crying and we started to resent each other because I wanted the metaphorical interest on the marriage loan to be repaid and she wanted me to keep adding more and more funds to my account and I just couldn’t sustain it. The more I did the less she did and I was spent so we separated.
We didn’t do it the conventional way. Being on one income I couldn’t afford to pay on my home I was already paying and other places to stay so we decided to nest. It was my idea. She wanted me to leave since her parents believed even nowadays that the husband always leaves. But I believed it was 50/50 and leaving and coming back home randomly just didn’t make sense and with the kids a little older and her still a stay at home mom her responsibilities of what that looks like faded. I handled most of everything for a long time. She wasn’t cleaning, cooking or taking them out. She was staying inside and not spending quality time with them or me. She was stuck in her world and and we talked to exaustion how to help that but I was nails on a chalkboard.
So the separation started and I wasn’t great. She was staying out late and lying to me about who she was with. Going out till 4-5 in the morning with no regard how that affected me or the kids the next day. And she escaped to an alternate reality of drinking and hanging around not so reputable people. She resented me at home for not leaving and letting her stay with the kids and I wasn’t leaving them bc I was worried about them, the house and still her.
We decided to try different houses in June and we figured it out since the kids were off from school. We said during that time we would work on us and we wouldn’t try to find affection in other places and that was emphatically and blatantly discussed multiple times.
It got worse. She would stay with her aunt and they would go out to bars and she would live that life up. Get attention at bars she didn’t think she was getting at home. Forgetting about me and spending her week thinking this was the life while I handled the kids on my week. Taking them out and them thriving on my week and well behaved because there were fed, gave attention and experiencing the world outside of the house she couldn’t get then out in bc of her anxiety and depression. She absolutely struggled on her weeks with the kids but I had to stay away to honor what we were trying to do.
She cheated and went to a guys house she met at the bar the night before and lied to me about it. That guy ghosted her. The next week she met another guy but at 1am I was fed up reading what I found on her watch and what she wanted to do with him so I had my mom watch the kids and I confronted her and him and she was shocked I knew. And that guy bolted bc he knew the deal. She had to find out that guys at bars arent interested in a 40 year old mom with two kids at a crappy bar for just attention.
She realized a few weeks later she didn’t want to stay at her aunts anymore and wanted to come home. And she apologized and told me everything and even proved it wasn’t physical outside of a small kiss and attention she was seeking in all the wrong places. Didn’t make me feel better but she said bc of what she did she wanted to come home and prove this wasn’t really her and she wanted to fix things.
A week in she got sick and had to go to the er for complications with her stomach and she’s been in and out of the er for gastrointestinal tests and everything under the son. Even through that it’s been a month I put on hold what happened to support her against my best judgement. She been laying on the couch death scrolling for weeks while I’ve taken care of 95% of everything. She has cried and apologized for everything that happened over the summer and not feeling well and still wanting to fix things when she feels better but it just a vicious loop that’s been going on for so many years.
It never my turn. To feel loved, to feel appreciated. To be fought for. It’s always her struggling and me being stuck in limbo waiting and giving her time to with through her struggles. From the depression, the anxiety, to not being able to having kids, to a dead bedroom, to not being able to leave the house for any reason after having kids because of her own reasons that never ended. To a separation in the same home, till the one in separate homes, to her cheating and lying to me and her family. To now her legitimate health issues. It always falls on me to wait and for so many years being the rock and not creating better boundaries and I’m suffering from it. I’m not a dumb person. I know the environment I’ve created and I best mucked up over it bc I don’t let anyone else treat me that way and shes just my blind spot.
I love a woman who is suffering and doesn’t know how to get off of the vicious loop and I’ve tried for years everything under the sun to help but it’s goes unnoticed or becomes expected. I’m spent. She’s spent. We just mirror each other in wants and needs and after last nights talk I’m just done. We have both been to lawyers we have talked to marriage counselors, our own counselors and we are just tired, broke and unhappy. Her or her reasons and mine for mine. How many more times can I say I’ll wait for change or things to get better before I lose all self respect I got?