My 39F partner 32M have been together for almost 10 years. We have a child and briefly separated two years ago for a year. During the separation, I did a lot of therapy to better myself for my own health and to be a better parent to my child. I was happier and lighter and we decided to reconcile. Before jumping in, I clearly expressed my boundaries and was honest and open with him about what I wanted from our reconciliation. My partner has a lot of mental health issues, takes ritilin for ADHD along with sleep apnea and promised that all of these things would be be maintained/worked so that we could both maintain our own health and work better together for our family.
When we moved in together, I started seeing that he was not working on these things at all. He was instead working crazy hours in a high pressure job, leaving me to do the parenting, work full time and continue the work on myself.
Everything started to feel unbalanced and I became exhausted and could feel all old wounds being triggered again from before we split due to the exact same issues. Eventually, I become irrational and exhausted. When I try to talk to him about my needs, I was always told to stop complaining as he was providing for us.
When we did reconcile, he laid down some “rules” in his own words. I was not to yell at him especially in front of our child.
I worked hard on this, but the rule is very easy to break because at the slightest raise of my voice he will shut down because I broke his rule. We have lived together now for almost a year and he hasnt changed a single thing.
He has called me names, yelled, he hasnt maintained his sleep apnea or medication and has become withdrawn and depressed and has directly blamed me for this.
This week everything has fallen apart. Our child is having violent meltdowns every single night for the last month. I am the one copping this because his fuse is so short and he cannot parent and shuts down which makes things worse. Earlier in the year I lost my job and I have recently been diagnosed with MS and I have been really struggling through each day. I do all the housework and parenting and supporting him through his career and now I am at my wits end and have communicated this many times.
The cycle of fight break up reconciliation has been happening for months now and today, I totally lost my shit and definitely broke his rule. He is saying that my health makes it hard on him, that I am a drama queen and that he is sick of me and that I don’t appreciate him and that I use him.
There is no denying that I react and I could be better. I am hurt that he hasn’t been committed to his mental health after many empty promises. I am hurt that I am being blamed after so much effort to do things different this time. He doesn’t help with our child and told her to remember when we were split and we did things separately because thats how we will be now. He said that in from of me as though I didn’t exist. This just devastated me.
I still want to make this work for the sake of our child despite feeling like its all my fault it broke apart. Please help me gain some perspective here. Would you just call it a day or try and try again? Is this cycle ever able to be broken? How?
Thank you.