I'm going to keep this as real as I can because it's late and I honestly don't even expect a ton of replies, I'm just sort of venting into the universe.
Early 30's male married to my early 30's wife of 2 years. I love my wife, I enjoy living life together. We have made some great memories. We have one amazing child together who's 1.5 years old. Since marriage, we've had some arguments and some "dumb" fights. Since our child was born in late 2024, we've had an argument or a disagreement at least weekly, possible even multiple times a week. Our marriage is mostly sexless. I have a low sex-drive like 90% of the time and although she may have a higher drive, she also struggles with body image issues after gaining weight steadily since our dating years and especially after pregnancy. I struggle to initiate intimacy because I simply do not have the same physical attraction to her now as I did in years past. I don't feel good saying that, but I don't know how else to feel. She does not take care of her body at all anymore. She lives a sedentary lifestyle and also eats somewhat poorly except for our home cooked meals. Seeing her neglect her health is very tough. I can't help but wonder what life in our 40's and 50's will look like if we continue down this road. I have tried to nudge her to use her gym membership. To go on a walk with me, to use the Peloton that is literally in our home. It all falls on deaf ears.
She works full-time, I work full-time, baby goes to daycare and we make it all happen. We moved into a much larger and much more expensive home this past year. I like our new place, it makes me happy to know that we have worked hard and can provide a big home for our kids to grow into. My wife rarely seems to outwardly appreciate the home we're in. She is constantly looking at the "projects" we have to do and stating that she is overwhelmed with it. I am the one who handles most, if not all projects around the house. I spearhead literally all of the household upkeep and improvements. If I didn't take that initiative, I believe it would never happen.
I have a very physical job, I work outside and it is fulfilling to me. I have lots of room to move vertically in the company I'm a part of and have a good pay/benefit structure for the industry and our area. My wife has a good job with an above average employer in the field she's in. She makes OK money and works inside an office and rarely has to work over 40 hours a week. She has complained about her job in the last month or two because she feels she deserves recognition within her company for going above and beyond and for providing great service for the 5 years she has been there. This past year, she was not awarded anything at the company event and was quite upset by this. I would say that 9 days out of 10 that she talks to me about her workday, she will tell me about the hassles she had to deal with and about frustrating situations that came up. She very rarely will talk about any successes or any team victories or shout out someone's good work. I find this to be a bit irritating, although I do try and ask her from time to time if she had anything positive happen that day.
The last thing I want to mention is the household responsibilities. It feels like I handle probably 80% of the chores, errands and bill paying that our life requires. I do all of the cooking, I do the majority of the cleaning (and I try to do something daily to keep up with it, she will go days without cleaning anything except for a load of dishes) I recently stepped up and started to wash all of our laundry (really enjoy our new washing machine and have been on a kick). I take care of and schedule or perform the maintenance on our 3 vehicles and our camper. I handle the payment (out of our joint account) of all the bills except for her car payment. I handle repairs or schedule service calls for any household maintenance. I build our grocery list (usually in my head becasue I do the cooking). I pick up salt for the water softener. I pick up/order dog food or ask her to grab a bag if she remembers. I handle all yard work and snow clearing. I organize our files and handle our tax documents each spring. I maintain the bank accounts and 529 plan for our child. I take our dogs to and from the vet and handle most of the scheduling for that. My wife does put our child's clothes away, she will sometimes handle the dishes and load/unload the dish washer. She will pick our child up from daycare most days if she is able to. My wife will sometimes pick up after our child, but not on a regular basis. She will help out at dinner time when it's time to feed our child and clean them up after dinner. She will make sure our child has what they need for the week at daycare and that their belongings come home at the end of the day/week.
To me, life feels very lop-sided around here. I have asked her to speak to her doctor because we both agree that she has depressive thoughts and tendencies since giving birth. She has anger and resentment that she can't control. She's completely addicted to her phone. She's isolating herself and gets very defensive if I even try to give her some encouragement to make a change. I believe she needs to speak to a professional. She says she will and then never makes the effort to reach out. I was talking to a therapist for a couple of months, but paying what I was paying for a 45 minute session and poor audio quality as well as constant connectivity issues just seemed stupid. I cancelled it last month after making some changes in my personal life that took stress off of me and also freed up some time for family and whatever else. That was good for me, but I feel like her and I need a lot of help this year.
Is this normal? What the fuck am I doing wrong? I closed my small business this past November that I ran as a side hustle for 5 years. I closed it because my home life was struggling, I was spreading myself too thin. I gave up something I was passionate about because I saw it affecting my family. And things haven't hardly gotten any better! I told myself and my wife that I'll focus on my day job, I have tons of opportunity there and we make enough money without my side hustle. Now I'm home more, and I feel like I just keep taking up slack from her and piling on more and more tasks and chores. And we still argue. Maybe less now, but we're still at odds on lots of things for whatever reason. I'm trying to be a good man, I'm trying to be a good husband, I'm trying to be a good dad. I deleted social media from my phone because I'm sick of sitting on the couch and scrolling while my wife does the same thing next to me! I suggested we do a puzzle or Legos or something to limit screen time. I'm trying to spend less because we want to go on trips this year and next year and the cost of life is just plain old catching up. I'm working out at home a few days a week when I get some rare time to myself. I'm trying to knock out projects around the house that we want done but I get minimal help, or I have to express the need for help several times. That's enough for now.
2026, here we come.