I am really struggling.

TLDR: After the first year of marriage I feel more like a babysitter then an equal, and I feel guilty about it.

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This is more to get things off my chest.

My wife and I will have survived our first year of marriage this coming May but have been together since July 2014. We have had our share of ins and outs along the way like a lot of couples and with the decision not to have sex or live together till mariage has had an effect.

From 2016-2020 we lived out in Indianapolis while she worked her master degree at Butler. She had always been very driven to acomplish what she wanted despite what people around her had said, in fact it was one of the major things that attracted me to her when we first met. We had met through some mutial friends when she was in college working on a double bachleors in both english and communication, while working two different jobs, all at the age of nineteen. I was twenty-seven and had settled into what I thought was a nice job doing CNC machining at a local company. We hit it off and talked for a while before we started dating, there was even a point were I had stumbled across her facebook profile a few years before during the ASL Ice Bucket/polar plunge challenge and determined she was to young and left it at that.

I was her first major boyfriend, she had dated a guy for a few weeks before me but in ended about as quickly as started. She had never lived outside of her families house besides for the college dorms, she was and still is a huge book worm, and like many others had a emo phase which she still embraces a bit. When we met and through getting to know her I fell hard for her, she was driven, smart, a bit nerdy, athletic, didn’t take shit farm girl, who was feircly loyal, and had a body that drove me wild.

Fast forward back to 2019 we were already engaged and she moved back to Iowa, where we were both from originally, before me because I still had a lease to finish out on my apartment. I felt so in love and inspired to impress her that I pushed myself for the eight months I had remaining in Indianapolis, and managed to lose sixty pounds getting myself down to two hundred eighty pounds a weight I had not been at since early college nearly fifteen years before. She told me it was hard to keep her hands off me during that time, as for all of our time together I had been three hundred plus pounds and an avid weight lifter.

I moved back to Iowa in spring of 2020 just as COVID was first entering the world media as cases broke out in China. I lived in the basement of her parents place for 2 weeks while I started my new job and located a place to live. That is where things started getting rocky for us, she had transfered the job she was working out in Indianapolis to a local branch which was run very differently and causing her loads of stress. She refused to go see a doctor as she didn’t trust doctors, dentists, or most medical professionals. She finally agreed to talk to someone after her mother sat her down and told her to go as well as myself telling her that her anxeity was tearing us apart. She eventually was placed on some medication which helped a lot and was able to find a job that got her out of her taxing workplace, although she was now working from home.

Ok here is where I struggle, we have been married almost a year which means living together just as long. The spark she had to succeed as well as the drive that attracted me to her all those years ago are gone, she still is an avid reader, but now spends more time rewatching the same 5 TV shows over and over. She has gained seventy pounds and lost any motivation to be active, myself a bigger person I believe there is a bit more hygiene that goes into being bigger, she might shower one or two times a week and will stay in the same clothes all week long reguardless of if she smells. She does not brush her teeth as she has hated the taste of mint and despite getting non mint toothpaste she has admited she is just to lazy to brush. She is now twenty-seven and still struggles with acne, she has the treatments just never uses them. Cleaning the house is an as needed basis unless I do it, she might if there are guests coming over or she needs some space on the counter to make some food. I am usually the one who loads and unloads the dish washer, does laundry, and vaccums.

The long conversations we used to have about our goals, dreams, what we are reading, and other topics are no more. We talk about her work, any interesting clients she had, and the huge about of family drama that is constantly going on that is all she ever talks about. If I try to talk about our dreams she says she can’t deal with that right now and shuts me down, she has flat out yelled at me if she feels I am talking about certain topics to much simply becuase I want to talk about something different.

She will get on my case if I don’t adhere to my diet or get go to the gym, but if she even thinks I am talking about her weight or what she eats she breaks down either crying or getting angry. It took me a few months to convince her to go to the local YMCA and take a class one or two nights a week just to get her out of the house, however she does not shower afterwards and will change back into the same old clothes she was in before.

All this together has killed our sex life now that we are married, and I feel bad that after waiting till we were married to start having sex that I no longer want to be intimate with her like that. I have on more than one occasion had to stiffle gags when she removes her underwear.

I feel bad for writing this as I know I still love her and wish I could talk to someone about this most of all I want to be able to talk to her about this, but when I try I am called inconsiderate.

I feel like a babysitter.