I (27f) and my wife (27f) have been together for 6 years and married for 6 months. We only got married for health insurance purposes and considered having a house together to be commitment enough before. We both have dealt with strange family dynamics and both had single mothers growing up so we didn’t have good examples of healthy relationships. We met at the end of college, we were getting started in our careers and then covid hit as we were getting more settled in to the relationship, so this is the calmest life has been since our relationship started. This is both of our first long term relationship too. I recently went back to therapy and have been processing a lot of things from my past, but my marriage comes up a lot.
About a year ago my wife was under a lot of stress from work and resentment had built up about her feeling like she has to manage the tasks in the house and me being financially irresponsible. I will admit that I am forgetful and we think I probably have ADHD, but haven’t gotten an official diagnosis because the cost to get evaluated is just too much. I also ended up with irresponsible credit card debt that has since been paid off. She started taking that stress out on me, calling me lazy, stupid, childish. She even wouldn’t believe me when I said I had or hadn’t done something. For example, I told her I hadn’t hidden their keys and they had put them there and they didn’t believe me. Or saying I hadn’t swept the floor because the dogs had just come in and tracked in leaves and dirt right before. I had just started therapy at that time and talked it through with my therapist. I gave my wife an ultimatum of we had to go to couples therapy and she needed to get her own therapist or I was done with the relationship.
We started couples therapy pretty soon there after, but she was reluctant to go to individual therapy, saying she had done enough therapy in the past. I let it slide for a few months and she finally found someone she liked. I was really hopeful that things were going to change. I’ve been trying to find ways to deal with ADHD and am now thinking of trying to get medication because I feel overwhelmed with everything and I thought my wife would be able to work on handling stress and some trauma responses they still faced. Unfortunately she didn’t feel like individual therapy was doing anything after only a handful of sessions. That definitely frustrated me, but I can’t force her. We are still going to couples therapy, but I feel like she isn’t actually taking anything away from it either.
The therapist talked to us about ways to make sure arguments didn’t last too long and get past the point of being productive. We are supposed to check in after 5 minutes and try giving criticisms with signs of affection like a simple touch of the arm. She has completely ignored these things. We mostly fight about housework. She does a lot of the things inside the house and I do a lot outside. I feed our animals (dogs, cat, rabbits, chickens), I take the dogs out for a walk at least morning, evening and night, I mow the lawn, and I do DIY/home improvement work (I built a shed from scratch, I changed all the toilets in the house, I built the chicken coop, I put together any furniture we get, I move around our garden beds and fill them with dirt, I dig holes for fruit trees, etc.), I do our taxes, I take care of technology in the house, as well as, doing the dishes, cleaning out the fridge, wiping the counters and cooking. I am also the one who has to run errands. While I understand there is other things she does in the house, we don’t have kids and I feel like I put in a lot of work. So much so that I don’t feel like I am able to have time to myself because the rest of my time I have to spend with her otherwise she feels like I hate her. I tried setting up a once a week date night so she felt prioritized, and we both work from home and I make us lunch so even if I took 3 evenings to myself a week I would still see her, we would still talk and interact. Sometimes I’ll get caught up in whatever she is watching on tv and sit with her for a while. She even told me that just watching tv together doesn’t feel like quality time so I try and propose other things to do together, but she usually just wants to watch tv.
About 2 weeks out of the month can be pretty tough between us. We think she has PMDD and it causes her to be pretty irritable, but she won’t do anything about it. She’s terrified about being infertile and the most common treatment is to go on birth control. Sometimes they will try antidepressants, but she is scared of that too. She even once told me if I wasn’t going to stay with her in the long run to just end it then because she didn’t want me wasting her chance of getting pregnant. So now I feel like I’m stuck only being mostly happy in my relationship 50% of the time. Then she doesn’t understand why I don’t want to be intimate the other 50% when we are getting along.
From other’s experience how likely is someone to change in the relationship? Can couples therapy actually work for us? Or am I just wasting my time? I don’t want to make a mistake and lose this relationship if things can get better. We do share values and get along. We can have long conversations and enjoy each other’s company when things are good. It just feels like things are getting harder as time goes on.
TL;DR My wife gets irritable for 2 weeks out the month leaving me unhappy in my relationship about 50% of the time. She won’t do anything about it and things got to the point of her being disrespectful towards me. I am trying to make it work with couples therapy, but unsure if I should stick around.