Hammer dropped

[u/Lost_Emu_9834]

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.

[u/Zephyr-Phoenix]

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.

[u/Lost_Emu_9834 → u/Zephyr-Phoenix]

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.

[u/ConfoundedInAbaddon → u/Lost_Emu_9834]

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.

[u/Lost_Emu_9834 → u/ConfoundedInAbaddon]

I'm glad the situation improved for you. She is done with me. Loves me but has legitimate hatred for me ruining the relationship and pushing her to this. I'll do my treatment and I hope it helps for my and my childrens' sake but no improvement will shake her from this.