I’ve had a really hard time with self esteem in my relationship lately, and it’s hard to feel better about it no matter how much I do to get an attaboy. I feel like every time I do something nice for my wife, no matter how many hours and how much work, went into it I get a short thank you, maybe a few seconds of time, occasionally I’ll get a couple thank you’s and a hug and a kiss. Which is nice, but then if I do the tiniest thing wrong like forget to switch the laundry or leave the cabinet door open (that’s a big one) I get chewed out for hours or even days. It’s to the point I’m scared to talk half the time (and I’m a big talker) for fear of my wife biting my head off for hours on end when I simply didn’t say something in a way that appealed to her. And half the time even when I do those nice things and get those thank you’s a couple days or even hours later it’s a 30 minute lecture about how I could’ve done it better, or I should’ve done this, or something else she wanted me to do that I didn’t get done because I put the time into doing something else that extra bit special just for her. Like my wife gives me a lot of to do lists, usually stuff that’s very time consuming and usually I get about half of the list done in a day, and every time she doesn’t care about the hours I put into getting that half done (usually outside stuff that I work on until well after dark), she just gets mad about the half I didn’t get done THAT DAY. I try to tell her before I get started that some of the stuff she needs done is an all day long task so I’m gonna do it another day while I focus on getting the stuff that I can get done in succession over with, this way I get the most amount of tasks done that day but even still by time I come back in to sit down the only important parts are the ones not done. I can’t even do nice romantic gestures anymore because halfway through the evening she brings up something I did weeks or even months ago that upset her and it ruins the entire time, or she’ll just randomly get upset about something tiny just to put me down and start an argument, like once I lit a bunch of candles around the house and set up a cute movie date for when she came home, I had all of her favorite snacks, the movie we’d been excited to see all queued up and a beautiful bouquet I’d hand selected and designed specifically for her taste, she loved all of it until she got into the living room and saw I’d lit a candle we made together without her, she wanted to light it together (which she never told me) and she got angry and stormed off, mind you I lit it maybe 5 minutes before she got home and the wax had barely melted about the size of a quarter around the wicks, I tried to smooth it over and get her to come have a nice time but she just got more and more rude the more I tried to bring back the evening, eventually I just cleaned everything up and put it all away and started making dinner for us instead, I made her salmon (her favorite meal that I make) and poured her a glass of her favorite wine just for her to mumble a thank you and eat it in silence. Then the next day I have to act like it never happened or else it all starts over again. It hurts. It hurts every time she does this, I feel so shut down. When I try to explain that I feel unappreciated because of this and that the small little things she wants adjusted would only take a few moments of her time or even just to ask me to do it but instead they get thrown in my face, every nice or sweet thing I do she has a problem with and honestly it’s worse when she lets me think I did something good for a couple days only to undercut me and tell me it was all wrong and horrible. She says she waits because she feels bad nitpicking me after doing all that work but it hurts more to feel like I never know if I actually did something right or if the other shoe is gonna drop soon. I don’t know what to do, I love her and for the most part we’re great together, she’s my best friend, we have all the same interests and hobbies, we both would do anything in the world for eachother, but she just can’t comprehend that her near bottomless negativity but short fleeting moments of happiness make me feel on edge and like I’m not enough for her, she just gets defensive and starts another argument. I just don’t want to feel like I’m worthless anymore.