I’ve been married to my wife for 13yrs now. I’ve always considered her my one and only. About 2 years ago a lot of things happened at once which put me in a state of depression and general life uncertainty. I got promoted (twice) first as a department head for a new department we started, then to an upper management. As a department head I grew a team of engineers and architected a huge digital solution with a very tight deadline. All of this while I was learning the ropes on how to manage people. I should also mention I have severe ADHD and around this time I had started therapy for the first time to better understand how I can manage my issues to help with the management of my team. This also lead to me taking medication for the first time.
Now, with all this going on I ended up in a severely overwhelmed state. And one I was just completely mentally exhausted. At this point my wife was trying to investigate my issues. She ended up asking if I even loved her and I answered that I wasn’t really sure what love is. This is something I’ve always questioned, but I had never brought it up. She took this as “if you don’t know what love is, how can you love me”. Which lead to her being uncertain about whether I was invested in her or not.
This lead to somewhat of a snowball effect that’s essentially dismantled our entire relationship over the past 2 years. Intimacy was the first to go. Then any kind of meaningful communication. Now we’re basically just living together as roommates and co-parenting. I’m kind of at a loss on how to move forward at this point. Even where we’re at, I have no desire to not be with her.
I feel like I’ve really tried many times to listen to her and take accountability for any problems I caused. But I don’t feel like I get the same respect.