My Wife is Slowly Dying

I love my wife. She is flawed, just as I am, but I love her dearly. I just can’t get any effort from her on anything but her job.

My wife leaves for work two hours away every morning at 6AM. She gets home sometime between 9 and midnight.

I work full-time third shift and I take care of our son full-time during the day. I take him out to play with neighborhood kids every afternoon, and if no one is out, we go to the playground until it’s dark. Tomorrow is his first day at school, and my first day of grad school. I cook every meal, and I change every diaper. I juggle a lot, and I try to do it with a smile on my face, but it’s hard sometimes.

The only time my son and I get with my wife is on the weekend. She’s always tired and always angry with both of us. She gets upset that the house is a “pig sty” when it has a few toys on the floor or a couple unwashed dishes in the sink. I’ll admit I’m messy, but it’s far from ridiculous, and honestly, cleanliness is just the last of my priorities.

Our sex life has been non-existent for years now. Every couple weeks she’ll begrudgingly give me a half-assed handjob, and we’ve had sex maybe 10-15 times in the last five years, all of which were passionless, with her asking me to finish as quickly as possible. I mean, I know I’m not as pretty as I was when we were young, but we used to have mind-blowingly good sex: everything and everywhere, all the time.

We’ve both gained weight, which is fine. We’re getting older, and we aren’t gonna be the sticks that we were when we were twenty. I’ve been eating healthier and exercising, and I’ve got some to go, but I’ve also lost 35lbs, which I feel proud of. I’ve tried to get her to join me in some healthier lifestyle, but she just refuses. She spends about thirty dollars a day on Taco Bell and McDonald’s, and she still smokes about a pack a day.

I cook every meal, and she literally refuses to eat what I make, no matter what it is. I’m not an amazing cook, but guests like what I make, and I’ve gotten many compliments, so I’m pretty sure it’s at least decent. And my toddler eats it, so that’s a pretty good litmus test. She just eats fast food or TV dinners away from us. One night I made a chicken and peanut massaman curry over rice, she refused to eat it, and then heated up a TV dinner version of massaman curry over rice. That felt targeted.

I’ve struggled with depression since I was eleven, and from what I’d like to think is an experienced view, she seems to be showing all the signs of a long, deep depression. I’ve asked her to see a therapist and think about medication (because medication saved my life), but she refuses. I’ve asked her to go to couples therapy and sex therapy with me, and she refused both.

I feel like I’m trying everything, and I feel like I’m giving more than my fair share to the marriage, but she just won’t budge on anything. I know a lot of people need to reach their own epiphany, but it’s been like this for five years, and nothing has changed. I don’t know what it’s going to take. Every time I confront her, she just threatens to divorce me and take my son away, because she knows it will shut me up. I don’t want a divorce. I love her. But I also don’t want to be married to someone who is always angry at me and my son, who recoils when I try to kiss her, doesn’t want to have sex, and is ultimately going to die at 50 from lung cancer.

She gives every ounce of her energy to her job, and it’s not even worth it. If it was some 200k job, maybe, but it’s $27/hr. With what she spends on gas, car maintenance, shopping, and fast food in Chicago, it comes out to far, far, far less. She won’t make a budget with me, despite my best efforts, so I don’t know the exact numbers, but we make good money with both our incomes, and we net zero at the end of every month with about $3,500 in actual living expenses. We’re saving nothing. She’s pissing herself away at that job for nothing.

I’m at the end of my rope and I don’t know what to do. Like I said, I don’t want a divorce, but I don’t know any other options at this point besides waiting and hoping for her to wake up from whatever funk she’s in. I’m hoping for some advice, but I also just needed to scream into the void. I’m drowning, and I don’t know what to do. I’m so fucking lonely all the time. I want a hug, a passionate kiss, and for someone to want me.

TL;DR: My wife gives all of her energy to her job, has none left to give me or our son, and resents us for it.