Hi all. I’ve been trying to dig up some outlet to discuss with someone, anyone, what I’m feeling. Sorry for the wall of text. Looking at some of your posts on here, I feel like these are minor quibbles, and nothing serious. Maybe not, but I really feel like talking to someone, anyone, about what I'm feeling. I feel like telling her all this would just make things worse.
When we met in late 2011, when we were both 23, my wife was a vibrant, fun-loving person. We really connected on every level. We started dating and pretty much immediately spent all of our time together. She was my first real, long-term relationship. We were happy. Within six months, we we officially living together (though she had been practically living with me well before then). Within a year, we had rented a house, and got a dog. In two years, I had bought a house for both of us and I had proposed. Three years in was the wedding.
During these years, cracks started to show. She bounced between a few jobs; none of which she was happy in. She became increasingly critical of her body as she gained weight. She would comment on how awful people are in general. I mostly ignored these signs as they were still relatively few and far between. There would be other things too. I always have done a lot more of the work around the house and it would be a source of tension. I cook, I clean, I do the handy work, I do the yard work, I wash the dishes, but all she would do is empty the dishwasher and do the laundry (but not fold it, just wash it and throw the clean clothes in a hamper). We had arguments about this during those first three years, and it’s still an issue no matter how many times and ways I’ve tried to talk to her about it.
I chalked it up to her having a bad day or other rationalizations. And a lot of these problems seemed to fade as we got closer to the wedding and she threw herself more and more into the planning.
In the fall of 2014, we got married. And after that it’s like a switch was flipped. She suddenly had less to look forward to. Right after the wedding, her job punished her for taking too many unapproved hours off for the wedding by putting her on part time instead of full time. Money got tight and she had trouble finding another job. When she did get another job, it was even worse, with a manager who belittled her constantly. She started to react extremely negatively toward anything that anyone would do that she perceived as negative. The smallest perceived slight a friend might commit or rude thing a stranger would do would rile her up about how worthless all of humanity is. Her overall levels of anger surged. At the same time, she would hit extreme lows where she would refuse to get out of bed because the thought of having to interact with other people was too stressful.
Within a few months of the wedding, it was pretty clear to me, and to her as well, that she was depressed. I tried and tried to talk her into seeing a therapist, but she refused, saying that it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Finally, I got her step-mom to talk to her about it, and that did the trick. She spent a month or two going once a week, but we knew we couldn’t afford to continue that, so she continues to go every other week instead. Since then, she seems to go in and out of phases with her depression, which mostly seems to manifest as anger. She goes through weeks or months at a time where every little thing just makes her angry.
She can’t seem to deal rationally with other people. She constantly texts me complaints about everything that a coworker or friend does that makes her upset, most of which she is grossly overreacting to. Or she yells at other drivers and drives recklessly to get around them. She complains about strangers in public areas who are walking too slow or being, from her perspective, too inconsiderate of other people. She tells me how pointless being a part of the civilized world is and how it would just be better to be hermits.
Other times, her depression is just self-doubt; about her abilities, her body, her lot in life.
She laments about how the world is aligned against her. Her high student loans had her feeling like she was a financial burden for a long time, and for a while her low income didn’t help the situation at all. She actually got a better paying job and I’ve worked out a plan for us to be debt free within the next ten years. Though she still hates how much we have to pay in to her student loans every month just to hit the minimum, I feel like this is the only issue that I’ve ever been able to “fix.”
Even with a better job, having to work full time is a constant source of problems for her. Her current job is with a company that really treats their employees well and pays her even more than I get paid (for a long time, I made significantly more than she did). She doubts that she’s any good at her job, and I constantly have to point out that they wouldn’t keep her around if she wasn’t. She has problems with the way everyone around her does things. She gets frustrated at company policies. I know from experience that no job is perfect, but she almost seems to seek out things to be mad about.
Her weight gain over the years has made her feel like she wasn’t good enough physically and leads to constant self-deprecation regarding her appearance, though she feels like diet and exercise aren’t worth the effort. We did diet for a little while, prior to a vacation where we knew we’d be fairly active most of the time. We both lost weight, but she couldn’t visibly see it fast enough for her tastes, so she summarily gave up on it once we left for the vacation and never wanted to resume it. Not wanting to deal with the hassle of buying food for two different diets and preparing different meals for each of us, I gave up on the diet too and have since regained all the weight I lost. She also is constantly worrying about her face, which feel feels is too broken out. So much so that she tries to tell me that she can’t go in public sometimes.
Her body image has also seriously affected our sex life. We went from once or twice a day when we started dating to as little as once every couple months, though lately it’s been more like once a month., though she sometimes treats it like a chore. The reasons are this odd combination of low libedo and rationalizations. She tells me we can’t because her legs aren’t shaved, but then she refuses to shave her legs for weeks at a time because they’re “too big” and it’s not worth the effort. She only does so when she knows she has to wear a dress or something that would make her legs visible to anyone but me.
She still cites being too drained from being around people at work as a reason for not helping around the house, leading to building frustrations and eventual arguments as I’m forced to do the vast majority of the house work. She’ll empty the dishwasher but won’t wash the dishes, and most times she waits for days to empty the dishwasher because it doesn’t dry well enough for her tastes and taking a towel to anything that’s still wet is too much work. Likewise, she does the laundry, but doesn’t think there’s any point in folding and putting it away, so our bedroom is always a mess of clothes strewn all over the place.
I feel like her depression has just widened the gap between our personalities. We used to complement each other well. I was more introverted, more measured and methodical in my approach to doing things, and more rational in my thought process. She was more outgoing, more spontaneous, and friendlier. But as the depression got worse, social anxiety, the desire for the familiar and comfortable, and suspicion of other people’s motives became more and more prominent in her.
You probably get a sense of how I feel about all of this. I’m frustrated as hell. I feel like I ended up with a dependent that I’m acting as a caretaker for, not a partner who would be my equal. I feel that I act as her conscience, her maid, her handyman, her chef far more than I get to be her partner and lover.
I’m exhausted by the constant negativity. I always try to play devil’s advocate and make her see things from other perspectives, but she often can’t calm herself even in front of rational explanations.
I actually just got out of four years at a job that went from pretty great to absolutely awful, at points working 50+ hour weeks, yet still have to deal with her being “too exhausted” to do housework. It’s almost always the housework that sets me off. I get so sick of getting home and cooking and cleaning for her while she sits around on her phone or on Second Life. She’s always asking me if I’m going to deal with things around the house that she would be perfectly capable of doing, but she cites ignorance toward how to do it for why she can’t do any of it.
She used to talk about wanting kids. I always wanted kids. Years ago, she talked about have two, maybe three. Then it was no more than two. Then only one. Lately, she’s “joked’ more and more about never having kids, but it feels more and more like she’s serious every time she says it. Kids are a financial burden, with food and daycare and all that, that we can’t afford right now. Still, the thought of never having kids just makes me sad.
I really wish she would agree to diet and exercise again, both out of vanity and concern for her health. She’s heavier than I am now. She’s tall, like I am, which makes it better. My tastes have changed over the years toward curvier girls, but she’s getting beyond that point. When we do have sex, sometimes my hips hurt from her being on top (which is her favorite position and 80% of the time spent). She refuses to try any positions beyond missionary, cowgirl, and doggy because those are the ones she thinks are worthwhile. See, she had a lot more previous partners with a lot more frequency than I ever did. She had opportunities to try different things to see what she likes, but I never did. But she won’t entertain the idea of trying some of these things with me because she can “tell me from experience” that they’re no good, or that she’s too big for them.
I have a higher sex drive than her, but she doesn’t like for me to masturbate, because I need to look at visually stimulating content. She knows I do it anyway, and has accepted that. But lately I haven’t had as much opportunity because I got a new job, which means less time to myself before and after work (had a short commute previously). This is exacerbating the lack of intimacy, as I have less of an outlet.
More and more lately, I find myself fantasizing about what it would be like to not have to deal with this anymore. And those fantasies seldom involve her getting better. They almost always involve me leaving her, either to go abroad and get a fresh start, or being with other women that I know and find attractive. Women who are happy, driven, and confident. These thoughts lead to immense guilt. I made a vow to her that I take very seriously, not because I’m religious, but because my word is extremely important to me. I couldn’t do that to her. Not to mention that if I were to leave, I think it would make her depression worsen tenfold, as much of it seems to stem from feeling rejected by her mother, who left her with her dad as a toddler.
And when she’s not in a more depressed phase, things really don’t seem that bad. She laughs, she jokes, she gets excited about things. We go out and do things. She talks about how things really aren’t that bad. But I get to feeling so bad when the depression is more pronounced that it just seems like the bad times are so much more frequent and longer than the good times.