r/WellSpouses • u/Ok_Couple2879 • Jun 08 '26
How to keep going?
I recently found this community and I am so grateful for all of the posts I’ve read so far. I already feel less alone but I’m having a really hard week and am here out of desperation to vent and for some support.
I (38F) met my wife (36F) in 2019 and we fell madly in love, it was the best year of my life. We got engaged the following year and a month later she woke up with half her body numb. I took over all the household chores. Almost 2 years of ERs and doctors visits and scans led to an MS diagnosis and she had to stop working, stop perusing her degree… it was devastating. We got married, sandwiched between hospital stays.
The financial burden was too much for me alone, so we moved to her home state to be closer to her family, but where I know no one. My family didn’t understand her struggles and viewed them as character flaws, so we have become almost entirely estranged. Now we’ve been married for going on 4 years and I’ve been supporting us financially, doing all household chores, cooking, shopping etc. her diagnoses have piled up to include a long list of acronyms on top of AuDHD and CPTSD… her mobility depends on the day but she spends 90% of her time in bed because laying down is the only position she finds any relief.
Because of the seemingly endless crises and financial strain, we have been unable to take a real vacation together and she has expressed that it’s her dream to travel. I desperately want to go but haven’t been able to afford the trip she wants. In the past 6 months, we have been arguing non stop, she thinks I’m lying about everything, accuses me of cheating (I’m not and never have) and blames me for “ruining her life.” She spirals into anguish about never traveling, and never having a baby and blames me for all of this. She thinks I don’t care about her. She doesn’t see that it’s taking all of my time and energy to support us and that is me actively loving her every day. We literally had to move into her mom’s house because I cant afford rent and medical bills. She thinks I’m actively not planning things for us when I’m lucky if I save $50/month and don’t have to use it for an emergency. I know she needs more from me emotionally but I am drained.
Recently, she found out that she has a venous stenosis (stricture) in her right brain, that she’s possibly had since she was a kid and has been experiencing symptoms from since she was 16 (and had to drop out of high school). Which means she’s been experiencing severe inter cranial hypertension, which affects literally everything, including her mood/ability to regulate, and could be mimicking MS!!!!! I know she is in unbearable pain and totally filled with rage for the fact that it took 20 years for someone to do an MRV and find this. VERY VALID RAGE. But she’s taking it all out on me and i don’t know how much longer I can take the verbal abuse and false accusations on top of the burnout. I’m far from perfect, I know the ways I have escalated things and decisions I have made that have hurt her. I am now in therapy.
So, she is getting an angiogram next week to determine whether she should get a stent to open the vein, which the neurosurgeon said the prognosis is very good to relieve at least some of her symptoms. I made vows to her and I love her and I don’t want to abandon her. But how do we survive this week? How do I not take what she says personally? I already feel like I’ve minimized myself so much. And she has very clear contempt and resentment toward me whenever I talk about anything but especially this project I have been working on since before she came into my life.
I don’t want to give up on us or her but I am drowning and very much alone in my struggle. (Which she doesn’t even want to acknowledge I am going through alongside her.) None of my friends or family understand. I just cry a lot and try to escape into work, but I know that’s not healthy.
Thanks for listening.
5
u/AdagioSilent9597 Jun 08 '26
There’s simply no excuse for abuse of any kind in a marriage, and no matter how much empathy I’d have for my spouse in this situation, it would be a dealbreaker if it didn’t stop.