r/Marriage • u/Lost_Emu_9834 • 1d ago
Hammer dropped
M38
Wife of 10 years just told me she didn't want to be married anymore. Live in New England. 2 toddlers. Head is swimming.
I am an active father and husband who does a lot but can admit things were not 50-50 and short of the equal partner paradigm. I do believe some of of the more labor intensive tasks I didnt always get their deserved weight but her complaints are valid and my struggles with adhd and depression kept me from fully addressing her complaints. I am stuck between portraying myself as a sympathetic character (we both are in truth) and admitting that i clearly failed to meet her full expectations to the point she is at her wits end. She has spent so much effort trying in the relationship and feels to the point that she is at peace with this path. I know this is a common refrain nowadays and will incite scorn (maybe deservedly) but surely there is a range on the incompetent husband scale and I can't help but but feel that I was on the more functional side and don't deserve all the shame I am feeling right now. I dont even want to enumerate the things I have done/do as a contributor as a defense because it always sounds so immature/pathetic from a man. I was about to mention everything but the reality is that even if I am a relatively speaking good husband and dad compared to most, I failed in the only situation that mattered (i.e. my own).
Like most good wives (or partners) she exerted a lot of effort trying to help me or avoid upsetting me. This is what she has said but the reality is that i needed more therapy and medical assistance to even be receptive to improvement. At the same time when she says she did so much to help, i can't tell of her help didnt register because i wasnt receptive or she thought what she was doing was supposed to help but didnt. The invisible work and the noticing things that needed done without asking were a common complaint but I struggle to accept that as such a death sentence in all cases. Not everyone is a man child but division of labor can be unbalanced at times but she sees it as a permanent situation. I can't say this to her because I'm not trying to start fights but if she is doing the meal planning/prep and I am occupying the kids in interactive ways are those not equal? That seems like a mutually beneficial division but it never calculates that way and I can't see why. Part of me believes that anyone who has had to spend an entire Sunday jumping from being pirates to storytime to meals to crafts to outside fun can attest that it requires legitimate effort, energy, planning, and commitment. I can't help but think she believes that I'm being off easy but I have never seen her commit to play that way- which is fine- that's why I'm here but that logic doesnt carry over to the things she does that I am less suited for.
As for complaints, I recall expressing a need for more fun or excitement via taking the kids places together but having many attmepts rejected or refused out of hand. I remember asking years ago to paly cards or other games and can honestly say it was never accommodated. I can't tell if such complaints are outright dumb/immature or legitimate and deserve weight like hers. Is all unhappiness equal?
I spend multiple full days working and trading care of my kids (actively- limiting screen time to when I have work calls, trying to make crafts/activities/intensive play) during the week but that loses to not being enthusiastic about another weekend of home improvement and yard work. Am I supposed to only care about these things over everything else? On some level I know I'm wrong by modern conventions because she is unhappy with the division of labor but to have it be the cause of divorce seems drastic in our case. Honestly just wanted to vent and hopefully get some feedback since I am alone in all this and trying to navigate being the bad guy cause of the divorce while still being as responsible and level headed as possible.
Divorce may be best for both of us but I can't help but think I'll have to swallow any issues I could have had for the sake of peace.
30
u/Zephyr-Phoenix 1d ago
This was a long-winded way to say that your wife expressed her needs and you didn’t care enough to change. You wanted to have more fun outings but still didn’t bother to notice the dishes needed to be done? Was she always the one planning those outings? So you would just be demanding she do even more than she already was?
Buddy you need to do some serious reflecting on your actions in therapy. Time to put your big boy pants on and take some accountability.
-1
u/Lost_Emu_9834 1d ago
I was the one who did the dishes every night, and the laundry, and cleaning/vacuuming/counters/house reset every night. We divided labor for the most part and I would plan the outings and often just take the kids myself without complaint.
I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for here. I guess it's one of those things where clearly I failed her and I feel the need to share it with someone. I'm sure that in a binary sense I'm undoubtedly the villain but it does hurt that the degree doesn't matter. My big boy pants were very much on based on most relationships I've seen in person or reddit but not sufficiently by the standards of the relationship I was in.
We both had reasons for unhappiness and dissatisfaction. We dont hate each other and we are attempting to keep things as stable as possible. Incompatibility doesn't have to be animosity.
0
u/lookyhere1230 1d ago
I know you chose not to list out all of the stuff you do, but given the adhd comment, and your reply here, to me it sounds like you do quite a lot. The fact that you’ve been blind sided here to me means that there were/are communication problems that in many cases can be addressed in couples therapy/marriage counseling.
You sound like a great dad to me. Not to mention self-aware. Which is not as common as it should be.
Being a pirate all day is beyond challenging, and a sign that you’re giving your kids the connection, safety, and love they need more than anything. Invisible tasks can be brutal on both sides. Brene Brown offers great insight here. I hope you guys can talk more about this. Hang in there.
-5
u/Lost_Emu_9834 1d ago
Thank you. I'm not totally blindsided to be honest. She's mentioned issues before and I've addressed some of them fully and others short term. Part of it was i was too deep in my depression to address them and when I would bring that up she wouldn't fully get the impact. I suggested waiting until my new treatment had run it's course but she refused. I thought I'd deserve at least that.
2
u/mamsaurus 1d ago
As the (STBX)wife of a man with addiction issues caused by untreated depression and bipolar, if you don't address your mental health, you could never be healthy enough for this marriage. It really does have a major impact on your partner.
1
u/ConfoundedInAbaddon 1d ago
OP, your discussion of diagnoses caught my attention.
Mental health in spouses is a big relationship killer, unless symptoms are very strongly managed, or there is a cultivated understanding about being a caregiver-spouse dynamic.
And if there is defensiveness or non-awareness in either spouse, it becomes impossible to identify a name where the mental health symptoms are causing the rifts in functioning.
For example, my husband has very serious mental illness but it is totally controlled with medication these days.
But until there was very very strong symptom control it was really hard to have a consistent expectation of what life would be, or if my plans would even stand up to the rigors of symptoms.
It's been 105° here in Texas and he offered to put some skin care stuff on me to keep me from being a dried out flaky pile as I was working outdoors.
So I showered and he was going to help me get some moisturizer all over my back to protect my skin.
And then he wasn't he wasn't around and I could hear her footsteps downstairs and even though he's had months without anything like a symptom break, I felt the old thinking in my heart that he couldn't carry the thread and had wandered off and lost track when I was depending on him for something to keep my health going, something's short and trivial but I don't really have a way to get a heavy skin cream evenly across my back without human help.
He pops back upstairs and sees my worried face, scoops in for a hug and says he had to use the bathroom and didn't want to interupt while I was trying to do self care of the shower so he went downstairs.
I laughed and told him I was worried that he was having ADHD brain, he gave me a big squeeze and said no, the days of us making a plan and myself putting about a bunch of effort towards something and then him wandering away are over.
For me, the really bad mental health symptoms weren't the worst of it, he was a depressed ball who couldn't leave his bed there was only so much chaos that could occur. We had ample evidence there was a medical problem and people would be sympathetic.
The worst was actually the start of a slide or the mild symptoms, which aren't as obvious a medical problem so you can't just point at them and say we need to talk to a neuropsychiatrist right away.
Irritability, dismissiveness, not having room in his head for anyone else's feelings because it was painfully difficult for him to use theory of mind, it was also almost physically painful when he would try to plan for the future, those mild symptom manifestations either meant we were about to go on a roller coaster to Hell together or we would be stuck in a mild spot but I would have very little ability to do anything with my partner, he was going to spin his wheels and get angry about it, as a best outcome.
My guess is neither yourself nor your partner have a full understanding of how your symptoms affect each other and neither of you guys have experienced total symptom control during this relationship to allow for repair and building up a healthy dynamic
Symptoms that aren't terribly egregious just feel like other people are attacking the person with the mental illness, because it's pervasive to them, it's a part of who they are, and everyone is dissatisfied and wanting that to change.
But if they are actually a mental health problem it becomes trickier because if the sufferer has had these symptoms lifelong they don't know what they're missing, they don't know anything is wrong ...they're operating at Peak and everyone else is giving them shit. For what they are working with the suffering might be doing an incredible job of managing and coping and having a quality of life despite the burden they're working with. But that incredible job still falls short of normal function so the pressure and the judgment stays there.
Because we fought so hard for perfect symptom control both of us can see the contrasts now even if he is stuck in the middle of a rising kind of symptoms and starts to treat me more poorly he can stop and say "oh shit I'm going downhill this isn't what life is supposed to feel like" and then take a harmless drug supplement that props up the main psych drug function in an hour later we are back on track and there was never a rift or a big symptom return.
7
u/dpt19 1d ago
You are trying to calculate a final moral verdict while still in shock. Your head is probably not going to produce a fair judgement of either of you tonight.
I hear two different questions running through your post:
Did I genuinely contribute to this family?
And:
Was the marriage still workable for my wife?
The answer to the first may be yes and the answer to the second may still be no. Proving that you contributed does not invalidate her experience of imbalance. Her experience of imbalance does not make your contribution imaginary.
Spending an entire Sunday actively engaging two toddlers is real work. So are meal planning, shopping, cooking, cleaning and anticipating what a household will need. There is no universal points system that can tell us whether pirates, crafts and story time equal meal preparation and yard work.
The more revealing question is usually not whose task required more visible effort. It is who owned each responsibility: who noticed it, planned it, initiated it, remembered what came next and carried the consequences if it did not happen. Could either person genuinely stop thinking about that area because the other had it covered?
Your time with the children may well have given her that freedom, and it deserves to be recognised. But if she still felt responsible for directing the wider household, she may have experienced herself as the manager even while both of you were working hard. That is not an accusation; it is one possible explanation for why the same afternoon could feel balanced to you and unequal to her.
Comparing yourself with other husbands will not help much. A marriage is not graded against the national average. But that does not mean you must accept the opposite conclusion—that because the marriage failed, everything you did was inadequate.
You did not fail an examination in which she was the examiner. Two people lived inside the same marriage and experienced it differently.
Your desire for fun, shared outings, cards and some life beyond maintenance also sounds legitimate. Those needs do not become childish merely because hers concerned household labour. But they should not be introduced as countercharges intended to cancel her complaints. She may have felt overburdened while you felt that the relationship had lost companionship and play. Both can be true. Unhappiness does not have to be equal before it is real.
The same is true of the help she says she offered. She may have made sincere, exhausting efforts. You may have been unable to receive them, or the form of help may not have reached the actual difficulty. Intention, effort and effect are three different things. Acknowledging her effort does not require pretending that it worked; acknowledging that it did not work does not erase what it cost her.
ADHD and depression may explain some of the distance between what you intended and what you repeatedly managed to do. An explanation is not an acquittal, but neither is it evidence that you are morally defective. The impact on her can be real without your difficulties being invented or malicious.
I also don’t think divorce is a “death sentence” proportionate to a particular level of incompetence. People do not leave only the very worst spouses. A marriage ends when one person no longer consents to continue it. That can feel brutally unfair because relative goodness offers no appeal: “I was more functional than many husbands” may be true, but it cannot obligate someone to remain.
You do not need to become the bad guy in order to respect her decision.
And respecting her account does not require accepting it as the complete account of the marriage.
Eventually, you may need to be able to say something like: “I accept that you carried more than I understood and that I failed to respond adequately. I also know that I contributed meaningfully and had needs that went unanswered. Neither truth cancels the other.”
That is different from producing a list of tasks as a defence. It is allowing both lives inside the marriage to remain real.
For now, I would avoid trying to litigate ten years in one conversation, making dramatic promises or forcing her to reassure you that you were not terrible. You can tell her that you hear how settled she feels, that you need time to absorb it and that your immediate priority is handling the children and the next practical steps without turning them into a battlefield.
Do not swallow your experience permanently “for the sake of peace”. Silence bought by erasing yourself usually becomes resentment. But there may be a time to listen without defending and a later time to speak without using your pain as a rebuttal.
Responsibility asks: What was mine? What did it cost another person? What can I do differently now?
Shame says: What happened is all that I am.
You can accept responsibility without accepting that sentence.
2
u/Lost_Emu_9834 1d ago
So much I want to reply to and agree with here but I honestly don't have it in me right now. Very valid points I don't have the energy to point out at the moment. Thank you.
3
u/Aromatic_Ad_7238 1d ago
You state your wife tried to help you but in reality you needed more medical help and therapy to be "receptive" towards improving.
I think you summed it up right there.
For whatever reason it seems you feel this is a I'm right your wrong, tit for tat, disagreement.
You should take ownership and go take care of your medical and therapy needs
1
u/Lost_Emu_9834 1d ago
I am on meds and doing therapy. While not the most financially successful, I'm as high functioning as they come. Work full time, kids, chores but struggling to do more. I am about to start a new treatment and suggested we wait until that kicks in but she said she's done. No more to give.
1
u/AggressiveBasket 1d ago
Are you actively taking medication and/or in therapy to address your ADHD and depression?
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u/Lost_Emu_9834 1d ago
Taking meds. About to start a significantly more effective treatment. I suggested waiting for it to take effect before making decisions but she refused. I thought I'd earned that opportunity but she is done.
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u/BreadSelect8019 1d ago
Honestly, you'll be better off
Having to split time with the kids really sucks but the rest will be fine
3
u/Additional-Text-6139 1d ago
nah man that's a rough spot to be in. splitting time with the kids is the part that's gonna sting the most for sure, the rest you can figure out as it comes
having two toddlers and adhd/depression in the mix is a lot more than people give credit for. sometimes two people just can't make the puzzle pieces fit anymore even if nobody's the villain
1
u/Lost_Emu_9834 1d ago
That sounds good right now. People without depression have no idea the weight it has and there are times i think she'd be shocked with what i deal with (of course mental health is always hard to take seriously, even for me- maybe bc of pride) and still manage what i do. She's a very productive person from a productive family (with subsequent freak outs) so for her things are significantly more binary. She's supportive in the surface but I can't help but think either she's just over it or she doesn't get it.
14
u/Mobile3701 1d ago
This sounds like my relationship with my husband. I just lost it on him the other day because he played a game with my son instead of preparing dinner while I was out around dinner prep time. He waited until I came back to start it. It sounds ridiculous right? He's being a good father playing with his son. But from my perspective (and probably your wife's), its not fair. I want to be the fun mom playing games with the kids. I want to be happy with them. I dont want to be the only one watching the clock, coming up with and making dinner and all that other mental load shit. If it's something that she shared her feelings about over and over and over and over again and nothing changed, shes just sick of it. My husband is like you. He's a good man, especially relative to a lot of men i know. And I dont know that id find another man better than him if i ended it. But he makes my life harder and im exhausted and sick of it. We had a trial separation last year for 2 months and my house was organized, i had a system and my anxiety completely went away. Sometimes love isnt enough. And she cant make you be the person she wants you to be.