What do you do if you have to choose between your health and your marriage? Between the lack of emotional support/connection and how much i have to manage family life/home life/mental processing, I don't have enough energy to keep myself healthy. I don't feel safe in my marriage emotionally, and in the sense of having a true partner that I can trust to keep life from falling apart. I don't know how much of that is unrealistic expectations vs this is just a shitty marriage and I'm right to feel like I have to leave. (Possibly relevant: he has ADHD and is autistic — and so am I, so all the excuses people want to let him use should also apply to me.)
The basic gist is that he is very emotionally immature and I am tired of being the designated grown up.
The positives: he is always correcting our kid if they disrespect me. He is willing to do anything I ask, even though it may not be to my standards or on my timeline he will do it. He will happily do the icky, gross or overwhelming jobs so I don't have to. He supports me when my chronic health conditions make it hard to function. We have similar values with politics and religion. Because he is so laid back, I get to make most of the decisions which has its benefits. I get along with my in laws. They are healthy, kind and loving people.
Our work circumstances: We both work outside the home. I'm the breadwinner and have been the sole source of income through 3 rounds of his unemployment over a decade, with two of those periods lasting about a year and him having zero income during that time. He's also got a background so he's brilliant and skilled but often doesn't even get a chance to prove himself.
In home life, I do the mental labor, strategic planning, noticing what needs attention inside the home, and managing of finances. He doesn't care what I do with the money as long as he doesn't have to think about it. After about five years of him picking a fight whenever I try to include him in financial planning conversations I basically gave up because that's fucking annoying.
I have to prompt, remind and oversee household cleaning chores for him and our kid. I make a list. Husband doesn't routinely check the damn list. My kid is pretty good about checking and doing things when asked but I'm always worried that dads disrespectful approach will rub off on him.
My husband will "help," but does not truly share responsibilities. The "help" is intermittent and he has to be trained/reminded/prompted to start the task.
My husband acts like he should be able to come home from work and either do nothing or do what I "assign" to him (maybe in a reasonable timeframe, maybe whenever he damn well feels like it).
EVERYTHING feels like a power struggle. Including recognition of my emotional needs. He's made it impossible to talk to him because he is so defensive. If he thinks he is treating me well then it doesn't actually matter if I agree or not – he sees no need to adjust anything.
It doesn't occur to him that the way he saw his parents acting isn't applicable to us because he doesn't provide the majority of our finances so he cannot expect to be king of the castle like that.
He says he does way more than most husbands and I'm lucky. But he is creating work while adding very little and I guess he just doesn't realize how much of a liability and dead weight he makes himself out to be.
I'm tired and angry. I've asked. I've gotten my own therapy. I've made him attend his own therapy to work on defensiveness. I found him an executive functioning coach to help him take responsibility for himself better. I've found and attended couples counseling with him multiple times. I've cried. Yelled. Scheduled emotionless family meetings.
Honestly the chore wars and default parent stuff sucks, but I could tolerate it if the emotional stuff worked properly. I could tolerate his immaturity about finances and planning ahead if he could make space for my emotions but he just can't. He wants things surface all the time. He wants to avoid a conflict or find the quickest way to shut me up which interferes with the way conflict is meant to be used to improve connection as help people grow as a couple. If he doesn't think I "should be" upset because the thing wouldn't upset HIM he thinks he has no responsibility to repair or make amends for impacts or understand why it is viable and equally valid to see it differently. If that were just his autism then he should be more willing and interested to educate himself on how to be a better partner but he doesn't seek out info. He says he reads what I send him but he doesn't seem to act on it. He claims to but often he insists on creating some huge gap between the request and the action, like he can't just do it bc I ask and need this from him to feel emotionally safe. It's a power struggle to him so he has to wait long enough he isn't just rolling over to me. He sees my request for emotional consideration as a request for domination of him or something.
So anyway at this point after learning I might have cancer and watching him respond abysmally to that situation, I feel like I cannot stay. It's harmful to my kid to stay in a situation creating so much stress for me. I'm just wondering if others have wrestled with this decision and what you decided to do. I can't make him change and I can't make myself not feel scared, insecure and stressed with someone that is a perpetual teenager. He's in his mid 40s. So is it fair for me to say I did all I could? Dude bonds with our son, having fun and playing games but isn't teaching or guiding with anything practical. So if he won't guide and teach, won't contribute enough financially that I can stop working full time to compensate for the lack of adulting from him, won't contribute an adequate amount of adulting and won't admit to himself more of the problem is him than he thinks so he can actually work on it then basically I have no choice but to leave, right?