This is a long story and I'm sorry in advance. I don't know where else to go.
My wife (34f) and I (35m) have been married for 9 years, together for 11. We argued before we got married but it always felt like we were arguing for the sake of the relationship but now I'm wondering if I was wrong about that. She was and is beautiful and passionate and smart. Early in our relationship, it was a flurry of nights at bars and restaurants, barely scraping by financially and tons of sex. Now, the bedroom is basically dead.
Before we married, she moved from one US coast near her family to be closer to my family 10+ hours from hers and that is probably when the trouble started. She hates my family and it's pretty clear the feeling is mutual. There was one big blow-up years ago that still comes up with my wife pretty regularly.
In her defense, my mother is difficult, my father cheated and has anger issues, and my siblings are largely self-absorbed. I never felt super close to any of them but hoped things would get better after we moved closer. But no one is welcome in our home because of the way she feels about them, and the way I am expected to honor her feelings.
My wife had a difficult upbringing, came from a broken home, and has been diagnosed with a severe anxious/depressive disorder for which she is on and off medication and hasn't been in therapy for in years. The thing that I think has been most frustrating for me is that the goal posts keep moving. (Ex: I tell her what she wants to hear but I didn't do it in the right way.) She cries and shouts on a near-daily basis. She used to regularly criticize me for my choices, or made me feel guilty for not spending enough time with her – she hasn't been able to make long-term friends of her own. (I say used to because now if I call out criticism, it's another thing we fight about and she's gotten less directly critical.) And every decision we have made together hasn't been made without an intense argument that was eventually brought up again and weaponized against me. Even just trying to decide what to do for the evening feels like a test – like there is a right or especially wrong answer.
Covid was especially tough – she lost her job as a fitness instructor and dancer – her dream – even if it did leave us no time together and was destroying her physical health. During the pandemic, she went to the ER after I shut down during an argument and refused to listen to her yelling at me. She told them she was going to kill herself and ended up institutionalized for a week. She was released the day of our anniversary after I harassed the staff every day to let her out with the promise that she attend regular therapy that I had arranged for her. That lasted a couple of months before she started sleeping through appointments.
We also started going to marriage counseling and reading Gottman. It helped for a little while but I feel was more of a band-aid than anything substantially helpful. Counseling lasted almost a year and we decided to try to make it on our own.
I was also in therapy for about 4 years. She begged me to go because I was struggling with depression and anger (never violent) and unresolved issues with my dad. She hated my therapist though because he taught me about anger coming from 'unrealistic expectations' and as a result, 'expectations' became a dirty word, sure to start a fight. I liked him a lot but when he retired, he told me he thought I was ready to tackle my mental health on my own. He didn't think I was as bad off mentally as my wife insisted I was.
Things got a little better, as long as she was medicated. Eventually, she decided to go back to school. While she got her degree, I continued my full time job and became the primary homemaker. I always did most of the cooking and cleaning and now it was kind of set. I supported her emotionally, helped her study (flashcards had to be involved because she was studying healthcare, well beyond my level of knowledge). She graduated with a perfect GPA – I was very proud of her. Still am.
She has been working 4 days a week for about a year and a half and has not stopped complaining about her job and her coworkers since she started. I was really hopeful that this would be different – that she could make some friends and feel fulfilled in her work, leading to generally better mental health, but that seems unlikely at this point.
I do 95% of the laundry. I do all the cooking, prepare her breakfasts and lunches and I do 95% of the dishes. I try to keep the house in livable order but I can't keep up. I have asked her multiple times to help, even if it's just emptying the dishwasher. She does do that once in a while, but then she'll decide to bake some pumpkin bread or something and leave everything in the sink or on the counter for me to wash.
Past proposed solutions have been chore calendars or just setting a timer while we try to clean as possible. Nothing has stuck. If we agree to work on separate things, I will likely come back to see her sleeping on the couch.
She still snaps at me from time to time about me not showing her I care about her or spending quality time with her and I know she's still struggling with her mental health but I have taken her to multiple concerts, shows, made fancy dinners, taken her out to dinner, 2 international vacations within the last year… We've even been taking ballroom dance classes – something we often argue about afterward because I'm not good enough of a lead.
I have done everything I feel I can to be supportive. I have supported her financially and emotionally since day one. And lately I have been feeling completely drained. I am her caretaker or her custodian, not her partner or lover. Not being interested in sex or instigating sex is another thing she gets angry at me for.
Last night, I told her I felt like we weren't going to make it and you can imagine how that went. She just kept asking me if I wanted her to leave. I told her no, I want more support from you and I want you to go back to therapy. She insisted I should go back to therapy too because I'm not handling my stress well, which felt like a knife when the lack of support is why I'm stressed. I agreed to go back to marriage counseling as long as she also went back to individual therapy of some kind. She begrudgingly agreed but today made excuses about how difficult it is to get therapy (I was the one who arranged her last 2 therapists) and cried after getting off the phone with someone who said they didn't have open slots that worked for her schedule.
I am less numb than angry now because she is acting like this came out of nowhere after I have risked hell from her every time I asked her to help. And I know everything that was said last night, I can't take back. I told her how I actually felt, that I was exhausted from carrying her weight for so long and getting punished for it when doing my best wasn't good enough for her.
I guess this was just venting. I don't expect anyone to tell me what the right decision is here or whether or not there is hope. If you've read all this garbage, thank you for your time.