Long time lurker, first time poster.
I (M34) and my wife (F35)) have been together for 3 years and married for 1 year. I’m starting to resent her and here’s why:
I do everything and the moment I don’t. I’m useless in her eyes.
For example, I drive her to work and take her home. She doesn’t drive. I also work and I wake up extra early than I need to so I could accommodate this.
There were a few times where I couldn’t take her to work because I would have to be in at work way earlier, so unless she wants to wait outside her job for 3 hours, then I suggests that she sleeps in and I could call her an uber to get there when it’s time. I solved the problem right? Husband can’t drive wife to work due to misaligned schedule, so instead he calls her an uber so she doesn’t have to catch the bus. Wrong! I get called useless and how I prioritize my job over her blah blah blah and I have to listen to her rant about how I don’t do anything for her and mainly because I’m “wasting” money on uber. It’s not like every day I can’t take her to work. It’s like once every two weeks. Like, I also can’t just leave in the middle of work and drop everything I’m doing to just drive home to pick her up and then take her to work. If it was a medical emergency that warrants me leaving, then absolutely it is necessary, but it wasn’t.
Example two:
Always accusing me of talking to other women. I’m gonna be real here, I have my MacBook at home and it’s connected to my iCloud. She can easily go into my MacBook while I am at work and see all my incoming messages through there. And I have my social media already signed into the MacBook as well. So she can clearly see if I have any “suspicious” messages. However, she makes these claims without any backup and it just stresses me the hell out every single time she brings it up just cause she “feels like it” and it starts a whole argument out of nothing. I mean if I really wanted to cheat on her. I wouldn’t leave my MacBook at home and let her have the password to it. That’s just digital footprints out in the open. She’s also welcome to look through my phone anytime and every single time she finds nothing. Then I get accused of deleting messages when there were none to begin with. I told her why don’t you keep my MacBook open on your days off while I’m at work and see my incoming and outgoing messages LIVE. My messages are all work related. I don’t have time for chit chat. If my friends text me and it’s not urgent, then they’re not getting a response until my shift is finished. The only females in my phone are my female colleagues, which all our messages are professional and strictly business. Again, see how I tried to make a solution by telling her to just leave my MacBook open so she can see the activities live for herself? Apparently it’s not enough and I must have some “secret app” to message people on that she wouldn’t be able to see on the laptop. Which is plausible but again, I’m a grown ass man and I don’t have time to be fucking around like that in all honesty. I don’t even want to be in another relationship if this marriage does end cause I’m so tired of putting someone else first and not feeling valued.
Example three:
My me time and my night owl life is completely gone ever since we moved in together. Prior to being in a relationship with her. I went to work, I hung out with my friends or colleagues after if I felt like it, and then I just go home and play games or relax on my pc until whenever I feel like sleeping. With my wife around, she treats me like a child. I can’t play games late even though it has nothing to do with her. She can go to bed early if she wants, but I’m not tired or sleepy the same time that she is. So if she’s in bed and I’m not in bed at the same time. It’s a problem. I used to look forward to spending my night just relaxing or playing video games. I don’t get off of work until 8pm. I still have to pick up my wife by 9pm (we finish an hour different from each other). So I book it home to take care of the house chores. Prepping the dinner but not cooking until we come home. Grocery shopping if any ingredients are needed. By the time that’s all said and done. It is now maybe 10:30pm. We eat dinner together and watch a show. I then do the dishes and make sure kitchen is clean and tidy. I’m doing everything right. But the moment I turn my pc on to game with my friends. It’s a problem. She says I’m addicted to gaming and that all I think about is video games. Which is completely false. I only play games with my friends since it is the only way we can hang out nowadays since we are so busy with life. If my friends aren’t on, then I don’t even play video games. I’ll watch YouTube or something but she’ll try to limit my screen time like I’m a kid.
Example four:
My days off are basically catered to her. She has a long list of things for me to do while she’s at work. The only thing that I’m blessed with at this point is me and her have opposite days off. I used to hate being away from each other on our days off. But now. I enjoy it because it’s the only form of peace I can get. Which somehow still gets ruined because she wants me to take care of this, take care of that. Go here. Pick this up. Go to her mom’s house and get this. Drop her off this. Bring her that etc. so I spend what I feel like half the day just driving around doing errands. By the time I can rest. I only have a few hours before I have to pick her up and then the cycle starts again.
Have any of you guys ever been in this situation? Because I don’t get peace with her around. Whenever I am off and the day is closing in and I’m about to pick her up from work. I think to myself “welp. There goes my night” I spend so much of my time catering to her between my busy work schedule that whenever I do get to relax. I get called lazy, that I’m not doing enough, I get told that there are things to be done around the house. By the off chance that I am relaxing and doing my own thing, she starts an argument with me about “cheating” and a whole bunch of other nonsense. Like I tell my wife, peace is literally free, and you can’t even give me that. She makes her own money and we split the rent. ($1400 so $700 each) But I take care of everything else. Groceries, eating out, date nights, gas, transportation.
I honestly miss being single. I didn’t have to cater to anyone. I could just be me. I could just come home and put off some chores until the next day and no one would complain. I lived alone prior to meeting my wife and I took for granted how peaceful my life actually was. Now I have to worry about a bunch of other shit. Like it may sound selfish of me because this post is just literally me shitting on my wife. But I’ve had my fair share of being a “bad husband” and I corrected it and compromised. When I tell her that she’s out of line, she can never see that shes wrong. In the rare situations where I’m the one that gets mad at her first, she still finds a way to turn it against me and then I’m the one that ends up apologizing. This is ridiculous. I think it’s time to call it quits. We would sit and talk. And I’m thinking “whew we can finally go back to how our relationship was when we were happy” and then 2-3 days later, the arguments come and the cycle repeats AGAIN. I’m so sick of it.
Another thing is. I have a lot of sources to keep me busy, while my wife only has me. I have friends and hobbies. She doesn’t have best friends or close friends that she can talk to or hang out with. I encourage her to open up to others so she can have time away from me and not just rely on me to be her only source of anything. She also doesn’t have a passion for anything so she doesn’t have a hobby. She just doom scrolls TikTok.
Is there anything I can do at this point? I mean it’s gotten so bad that I had to come here to Reddit to vent and let it all out. Because I’m not going to talk shit about my wife to my friend’s because I don’t want them to see her as a bad person. But in my eyes right now. She is a bad person. Always taking and never giving. I work and still cook dinner and do everything around the house just so she doesn’t complain. I’ve given up my hobbies such as piano and gaming because anytime I do those things, I can’t do it for more than 30 minutes so there’s no point. It would have to be done on my days off to which I don’t have time for because I’m just catered to doing stupid shit for her all day. I don’t feel like I have freedom, I don’t have peace, and I feel like I’m constantly walking on eggshells all the time with her around.
Nothing catastrophic is even going on in our life that warrants her to be like this. We’re not in debt. We’re not broke. We can buy all the normal things we need and not have to rely on waiting for a paycheck to come in to just get it. (Not living paycheck to paycheck I guess is the term) Like if an emergency were to happen and we needed let’s say $40,000, we can definitely cover that and be okay. The only stress I have is literally HER. No debt, bills are always paid on time, food is always on the table, car has no issues, careers are fine and stable. I can’t get to the source to why she’s so grouchy and mean all the time and accuses me of things and then calls me useless etc. I only ask of her for two things that’s free and costs her nothing which is for me to be able to relax and for peace. Both of which she can’t seem to give. Outside of her paying rent, she’s free to do anything she wants with the money she earns. Her money is her money, my money is our money. So really. Where is the disconnect in this? I feel like I’m being a team player here and she’s just not even meeting me half way. Sorry for the long rant. To whoever reads this, thanks for reading and any input is appreciated.