My wife and I have known each other for 4 years, been married 4 months. We own a home, 6 pets and are trying for a child.
My wife suffers from depression—she occasionally sees both a psychiatrist and psychologist (although I don’t think she’s been for a while). She takes medication for the depression (Zoloft, I believe). She has also suffered prior trauma as a child (extremely difficult older brother).
Her depression and trauma cause her mood to fluctuate dramatically. However, recently her behavior has been more extreme. Typically, it manifests as her becoming exceptionally irritable, speaking to me in harsh tones (which I’m very sensitive to and she knows this), a lot of crying and outright shutting down and just wanting to sleep.
I want to be supportive, but I no longer know how to do so, as every attempt I make upsets her. She either becomes sad and cries because she feels guilty for not doing her part, or she becomes angry and defensive, and deflects by pointing out my shortcomings. I’m not perfect either, and I’ll present more detail as I continue.
Her behavior is hurting us financially. I’m the primary income earner and I pay most of the bills after she gives me money for her part, when she can. In the last 16 months, she’s changed jobs twice, because of some aspect of the job she could no longer stand, each time taking a significant pay cut. She’s currently self employed with a primary client that gives her a full time workload, but the income isn’t great, and she agreed to take on some freelance work to supplement the income loss. But on her days not working for this client, she sleeps past noon, days she works late, she sleeps in, days she works early she gets home and sits on her phone and watches tv. I ask her to look for some clients for freelance work and she says she needs my help setting up a Facebook page, yet never puts any effort into trying to figure it out herself nor approaches me for help. Lately she has skipped giving me her contribution to the mortgage, forgets about bills that overdraft her account, and is late on credit card payments that I will ultimately need to cover. To top it off, she’s started finding new frustrations with her current job. It seems she’s not very mindful when shopping, fails to consider how costs of fun activities mount and I’m draining my savings because of it.
Meanwhile, my job is extremely demanding and it’s not uncommon for me to work 6am to 6pm. I have to put in extraordinary effort, mental capacity and energy into my job because I’m pushing for a promotion and to earn more in commission to cover us financially. I’ve even taken on a side gig building websites to supplement our income. I’m sacrificing sleep and relaxation time for this, but my wife’s response is more frequently complaints that I don’t do enough around the house, or we never do anything fun, and far less frequently appreciative.
Because of my commitment to work, it’s difficult for me to contribute to chores. My wife gets mad at me for not doing my part, and when I remind her about the rigor of my job, she becomes very upset and defensive saying that just because I make more money doesn’t mean I get to skip out on chores, and that if I expect her to do “everything” then she needs to not work. When she’s angrily vocalizing her complaints, I tend to “shut down” and remain silent, mostly because I don’t want to say something I’ll regret, and prefer to bite my tongue until my emotions subside and I can articulate a fair response. But that only makes her more angry with me. When she manages to calm down, she will apologize for how she spoke to me, admit that some of her criticism of me was unfair, but there are certain things I can contribute more to, which is fair, as I acknowledge that some of my actions frustrate her, but I don’t see what else to do other than to let work slip or not sleep.
Her behavior makes it more difficult for us to be intimate. But maybe this is my problem. Her outbursts are quite off-putting. Her criticism of me makes me feel unwanted. And when she wants sex, she expects that I will just flip a switch and become aroused. But in reality, it’s difficult to do so when her behavior contradicts everything I know her to be. She used to give me positive attention, which I very much enjoy, but there’s much less of that now. And I catch further grief because of how infrequently we have sex. She blames my health. I agree I need to lose weight, and I accept that it contributes to the problem, but her off-putting behavior is at least half the reason I struggle to become aroused by her.
I acknowledge that I need to step up my contributions to house work, and that’ll naturally alleviate some of these problems. And I’m even going as far as working with my boss to improve my pay while finding a more favorable work-life balance, but even though he supports this, it’s a slow process and will take a few months to set into motion. I also acknowledge that I need to make the time to address my health, which I owe to myself more than anyone else, and this is something that I should prioritize over my job.
But at the end of the day, I cannot discuss any of this with my wife without her becoming extremely upset and therefore pouring more fuel on the fire. In rare times of a good mood, she’s receptive to my feedback, but ultimately never acts on it because the rest of the time she’s too depressed to care. I can’t ask her to step it up with her effort in freelance work, watching her spending or keeping better tabs on bills.
Any thoughts on how I can help her help herself, and therefor the both of us?
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tl;dr
My wife’s depression causes her extreme mood swings, in turn causing her to lash out at me. If I try to talk through these things with her, she becomes very sad and instead of a productive conversation, she cries. Other times, she becomes angry and deflects, citing things she wishes I did better, rather than addressing the topic at hand. Her sour behavior has become more frequent, which is a major turn off for me, and thus dampening our se life. Her behavior also hurts us financially, as she struggles to do what she needs to make more money, and causes her to mismanage funds, often not having enough to contribute to the mortgage or pay her bills on time, which i often help cover.
How can I help her work through these problems without her becoming upset or angry, and therefore worsening the problem?
3 comments
The most vital thing you can do is stop trying to have a child. That’s just cruel, and you need to not do it. You know she currently is not capable of being a good parent, because she takes out her emotional problems on others or is collapsed and non-functioning much of the time, so it would be horrific to expose a child to that. Plus, you are struggling both financially and with the chore load right now, so you cannot add a baby to it. Unless she changes substantially, which is unlikely. you can not have a child with her. If you want to have a child more than you want to be with her, then get a divorce.
Now, beyond that, you two aren’t compatible for living together. If you can’t agree on bill and chore division, then you should not live together. You two need a clear discussion about all of the chores and all of the expenses and what is a fair way to divide them up. Either you come to agreements or you don’t.
Finally, you don’t currently have much of a relationship. If you can’t talk about issues together and work through them, then the basic foundation of the relationship is missing. So, couple’s counseling or divorce are really your options on that count.
I do wonder why you two got married so recently, when it sounds like these are not new problems, but what is done is done.
Mood swings, changing jobs, not intrested in things, no longer bothered in doing her work, complains about everything but can’t pin point what she wants, forgetful, not paying bills, suddenly gets super focused on things like shopping or a new activity, doesnt look for the price tag, sleeping in, comming across as she’s being lazy and depressed, is board nothing new and fun to stimulate her brain, blunt and to the point… This sounds alot like ADHD, this sounds how I used to feel until I figured it out. Now it may not be but atleast look into it, not all ADHD is the same and 84% of parents of daughters miss the signs, when I was younger it was only known that boys had ADHD, and when you think of ADHD you usually think of a wild child, but girls don’t tend to be we keep it in we learn to mask it ‘to fit in’. Does she tend to talk then suddenly change conversation a bunch of times then goes back to what she was originally saying, start talking then forgets what she is saying because she got distracted, do some sounds maker her angry, does she get so hyper focused on some new project then like a switch is board until the next new thing comes alone, does she switch off when you talk, easily distracted, fidgets alot, can’t sit still to watch a movie has to get up or do something? I’d definitely look into it alot of women were told they were just depressed and no wonder the medication wasn’t working for them when ingact they had ADHD. There’s great Facebook groups she can look on, plenty of online quizzes free to get a rough idea (obviously then you’ll need to look into getting a referral).
Also might be worth a look into RSD, does she tend to think your tone has changed and you’re mad at her?
Lots of information online. Hope this helps
Just kinda chiming in on some of the other comments that have been made –
If she’s being seeing a phychiatrist for any length of time, i’d be very surprised if an ADHD diagnosis was missed by them. Something to keep in mind.
Other thing to echo – stop trying for a kid. Just stop, for your own sanity. You have no idea how much additional strain having a child places on not only your time, attention and finances, but also your marriage until the baby arrives. Being stuck with these issues will magnify every issue you have an make them significantly worse.
Imagine where you’re at now, but add in total sleep deprivation (zombie mode for the first 6-18 months. I averaged like 3 hours of sleep for the first 3 months after my first), very little personal time for either of you and a financial strain that’s difficult to appreciate until the costs start ramping up.
Not going into details, (feel free to PM. Similar ages too) I was close to your situation when the Mrs got pregnant. It was incredibly hard to deal with, and there’s fallout that’s still being worked through.
Just don’t do it dude. It’s an enormous adjustment even for those in the best possible headspace.