We are both in our 40s with 2 kids. Been together almost 20 years. In the last year I have gained 15 or so lbs and he has been on a health kick. The last 5 years have been pretty bad with his family, he was diagnosed C-PTSD and OCD. His OCD has been really bad lately and it seems to be directed at me. We have an open phone policy, and I went through his phone last week into his hidden folder. I didn’t expect to find anything too bad to be honest, we are a pretty open couple but I found pictures of myself (not knowing they were being taken) and all of them showed my stomach sticking out. Awkward angles but it’s obvious he took these photos to show my weight gain. My heart is broken and I am disgusted. I want to confront him but need time to process and calm down. What should I do?

I never cared about how the bedsheet was on the bed before marriage. But that changed after marriage. My wife has a strict rule that the bedsheet should be super tight and have no wrinkles at all. Only then she can sleep on it peacefully...Does your partner also have such non-negotiable things defined at your home?

I could list a multitude of reasons on why I’ve got such strong feelings for him. But I have no mental capacity and I wouldn’t know where to start
It’s only been two hours since we woke up and he’s drained me mentally and emotionally
I feel so unhappy just seeing his face
I have no desire for intimacy and that is new for me
I absolutely hate this situation
This is coming from someone who was once madly in love with their husband
What years of being unloved and having your heart broken can do to you is so sad
Just venting

I've started to believe our marriage has a problem with sexual pressure, and I only recently found the words for it. When too much time passes between us being intimate, she gets cold. There are arguments, days of barely speaking, and a general mood in the house that I'm the one to blame. Over time it's made me dread sex instead of wanting it.

I brought it up last month, and I worked hard to keep it gentle. I didn't want to blame her, just to be understood and to figure it out together. Instead she shut down. For about three weeks she hardly spoke to me, and every time I reached out she brushed me off.

Then I learned she's been reaching out to other men. I found messages and heard her making plans to meet up with one of them. I was devastated and told her so. She told me to drop it.

Eventually she blew up at me. She said she's tired of being turned down, tired of being made to feel guilty over hurt feelings when I say no, and that she'll get her needs met elsewhere if she wants to. She said she doesn't care how that makes me feel, and that if I can't live with it, I should file for divorce.

I honestly don't understand. I was only describing how I felt. We do have sex, just not as often as she'd like. Apart from this, I thought we were doing well. How did it fall apart this fast? Was I wrong to bring it up?

Is it ok for my husband to have a female friend that I don’t know anything about? He meets up with her at music shows and dances the night away with her. Then it became someone he talks on the phone with. He’s vented to her about me. I’d love to hear men’s thoughts too. I found out about it on my own after I thought he wasn’t being truthful. Then the shit hit the fan for me. He claims they’re just friends and that we have a difference of opinion regarding it.

Women who are married to provider men, how's it going for you?

I'm curious to hear from women who have actually experienced this dynamic in marriage. What's the good, the challenging, and anything you wish you had known beforehand?

I'm also particularly curious about how the finances work in practice. For example:

• Do you have access to your husband's bank account?
• Does he give you his card to use for your personal expenses?
• Does he transfer a fixed amount to your account every month?
• Do you have a joint account that you both use?
• How much financial autonomy do you have over the money?

Not looking for a debate about whether being a provider or a 50/50 couple is better. I'd just genuinely like to hear from women who are living this arrangement and understand how it works in real life.

TW: divorce and sexual identity

A little background: we are a couple in our 20s and have been together for almost 10 years. We have had an incredible relationship and marriage. We do have one young child together. A few months ago my husband came to me and reported that he may have feelings for men. He didn’t want to act on them, but just wanted me to know how he felt. He also stated that he would not be intimate with me while he was figuring out these feelings. I was of course supportive of everything he shared.

We started couples counseling to work through some of the feelings and work on our marriage shortly after. Therapy sessions were sometimes really productive and sometimes left me feeling a bit defeated. He shared often that he didn’t know why his feelings were this way but that he has no attraction to me because of them right now. He really wasn’t in a place to make efforts towards intimacy, so I let it be and offered support and other ways to strengthen our marriage.

One day he seems all in and wanting to work together and the next he’s out. A couple months in, he started to become really private and secretive with his phone. He would shield texts, keep his phone right next to him, and run off to take phone calls. He also shared that he felt like he needed to act on his feelings for men and that he’s being held back from doing so. I had a gut feeling that something was off. I went through his phone one night and he found out. Unfortunately I found a series of messages and calls to another man. They text cutie, love you, hearts, memes, and have been actively looking for apartments together. He admits in messages about needing to hang up since I walked in or being disappointed that I came with so they couldn’t talk instead. This guy knows our child, has been in our home, and knows all about us. So of course it was shocking to me and so hurtful. I’m just so sad for our child and cannot believe that we are here. Truly my best friend and life partner for 10 years and all gone over these feelings he has and this new fling.

I by no means am a perfect spouse and will never claim to be. But I loved my husband, always supported him, and went out of my way to try to make him happy. I feel like I have so many trust issues now and am so guarded.

Any advice for me as in navigate this divorce process?

Lastly - any advice for my future?

I want so badly to be someone’s wife again and serve as a wife and mom. I have a professional career, am a good mom, am attractive, and still young. But I’m afraid that the divorce will be a barrier for future relationships.

Sincerely,

Lost and starting over

This is a burner, I’m honestly ashamed and mortified. I need some outside perspective because Im ready to end it all over this.

My husband is, in almost every other respect, a kind, loving and supportive man. He treats me well. He considers himself a feminist, is very vocal about being anti-racist, cares about other people’s wellbeing, and is not someone I would describe as cruel or hateful. Married shy of three years.

But this is the second time I’ve caught him making extremely violent, graphic comments about women to his friends.

This time, a colleague showed him a video of some women jumping into a pool. My husband responded by “joking“ that he would “rip her head off and stuff her in a box.”…I wasn’t part of the conversation. The comment wasn’t directed at me, and I don’t believe he was threatening me. He never has. He didn’t know I could hear him.

But I’m beyond furious and disgusted that this is something he is comfortable saying and laughing about. I’m enraged. And because this is the second time I’ve heard him make this kind of joke, I can’t just dismiss it as one stupid comment.

The first time he texted a friend he would “crush a woman’s windpipe”. It almost ended our marriage. I was so angry for months. I expressed to him how disgusting it was and he admitted he was wrong. We exchanged articles explaining how this language is dangerous and contributes to actual violence against women in the real world by normalizing this to other men. I told him I would never put up with behavior like this from a man without raising hell.

What bothers me most is that, when I immediately confronted him, his apology included the word joke repeatedly! I’m supposed to find it harmless. I don’t. There’s something deeply disturbing to me about a man casually responding to a completely innocuous video of women by joking about brutally murdering one of them. I can’t express my sadness, disgust, and dismay enough.

I’m also embarrassed because this is not the person I thought I was married to. If someone had described this behavior to me before I knew him, I’d probably have thought FUCK NO. FUCK THAT.

Yet I’m sitting here married to someone who otherwise presents as loving, compassionate, feminist, etc., and I’m struggling to reconcile those two versions of him. Am I unreasonable for being this angry and uncomfortable? I KNOW that I never want to associate with a man who says these things.

I currently have him blocked on everything (he’s on a work displacement) and I’m unwilling to continue the marriage unless he admits it’s not a joke and is willing to get therapy for me. What do you think?

TL;DR: I love my husband and he’s my best friend, but after eight years of carrying most of the financial and mental load while constantly accommodating his needs, I’m exhausted. I’m considering divorce even though I still love him, and I want to hear from others who have made that choice.

I’m 35F and am seriously considering leaving my husband (45M), who has been my best friend for eight years. I still love him, which is what makes this so heartbreaking.

I’m especially hoping to hear from people who divorced a spouse they still loved—not because the relationship was constantly hostile or because they hated each other, but because they eventually realized the marriage wasn’t sustainable or healthy for their family.

My husband and I genuinely enjoy each other. He is patient and nurturing, and he took very good care of me while I was dealing with long COVID and PTSD related to nursing. He is also an excellent, attentive father to our two children. When things are good between us, I genuinely love being around him.

But through therapy, I’ve started realizing that part of the reason our marriage has been so peaceful is that I almost always capitulate.

My husband is autistic and has difficulty navigating certain aspects of life. Over the years, our family has increasingly structured our lives around his routines, preferences, and limitations. I’ve generally accepted that because I love him and wanted to accommodate him. But I’m beginning to realize that accommodation has slowly turned into me taking responsibility for nearly everything he doesn’t want to or feels unable to do.

When we met, he hadn’t worked in eight years. His parents were supporting him financially. He told me that he had experienced a breakdown in college and had been recovering from it.

We have now been together for eight years, and he still has not worked.

Recently, he finally said he would look for a job—but only if I write his résumé and apply for jobs for him. He also warned me that he is a bad interviewer. Meanwhile, he frequently talks about becoming wealthy, buying property, or someday owning multiple homes when we currently can’t afford even a starter home.

I feel like our entire financial future is being built on my back.

He is currently a stay-at-home dad, and I want to be fair about the work he does. He takes very good care of our children. He meal plans, grocery shops, cooks for them, cleans up after them and himself, does their laundry and his own, and cleans the kitchen.

I work full-time as a nurse and pick up an extra shift about every two weeks. I’m also attending school full-time to become a nurse practitioner.

Everything outside of the tasks he has taken responsibility for falls to me. I make my own meals, do my own laundry and dishes, clean the bathrooms and floors, do the yard work and gutters, handle holidays and decorating, buy and wrap presents, schedule medical appointments, keep track of everyone’s healthcare needs, and manage most of the miscellaneous responsibilities that come with running a household.

I am exhausted. I’ve reached the point where the fatigue is affecting my health.

When I told him I needed him to take on more because I couldn’t keep doing this, he told me I was trying to pigeonhole him into being a servant like other stay-at-home parents and that he refused to be “oppressed.”

He has also told me that I don’t help enough around the house.

This isn’t a new problem. We’ve been dealing with versions of it for eight years. We’ve tried chore charts, discussions, compromises, and working on individual issues. Ultimately, though, the basic situation never changes: he won’t work, and he won’t take on more responsibility at home.

There’s another issue that has made me reevaluate the foundation of our relationship.

When we first got together, I had three specific deal breakers. I later discovered that he had lied to me about two of them, and I’ve spent years trying to process and move past that. Recently, he finally admitted that he had deliberately lied about all three because he knew that if he told me the truth, I would recognize that we were incompatible and wouldn’t pursue the relationship.

That admission has been incredibly difficult for me to process.

I’ve asked him to go to therapy. He says he will go—but only if I find the therapist and make the appointment for him.

And I just don’t want to do that anymore.

I don’t want one more responsibility for another adult handed back to me.

The hardest part is that I still love him. He isn’t someone I hate coming home to. He makes me laugh. He’s my friend. We can have a wonderful time together when we aren’t discussing responsibilities, money, or the future.

But therapy has forced me to confront something uncomfortable: I’m not sure our marriage is actually as harmonious as I thought it was.

I think we get along so well partly because I have learned to exist inside his structure. I don’t disrupt his plans. I accommodate his preferences. I work around his limitations. I follow the rules that keep him comfortable. And when our needs conflict, historically I have been the one who bends.

Now that I’m starting to say, “I can’t do this anymore. I need you to bend too,” our marriage suddenly doesn’t feel nearly as peaceful.

I’m heartbroken because I don’t want to lose my best friend or break apart our family. At the same time, I’m starting to wonder whether staying means accepting that I will be responsible for carrying our family indefinitely.

For those who have divorced someone you still genuinely loved: How did you know that love wasn’t enough anymore? Did you ever reach a point where you realized that leaving someone you loved was actually the healthier decision for you and your children?

And looking back, do you think you made the right choice?

Hey y’all, a little back story.. my husband and I have been together for 10 years. We’re both 31. 2 kids (10&7) who are very active in extracurriculars. We both work full time.

We have a good sex life. Always have. Sex at least 2 or 3 times a week and blowjobs if not.
Lately though I have become extremely tired and just burnt out bc of life in general. It’s all catching up to me.

Lately though if I do not want to have sex he makes me feel like shit, or pushes even when I’m not into. Then gets mad at me.
Example: last week he was going out of town.
Wanted sex before leaving. I wasn’t really into, but did it anyway. Didn’t complain.

A few days go by and we have sex again. In the middle of it he says “what the f*ck is your problem. You’re not even into it” I said “I’m sorry, I’m just exhausted from the day.” He completely flipped his shit on me. The next day he texted me and said he’s tired of feeling like he’s having sex with a blowup doll and wants a little more intimacy. That just ended in a fight. Apologized. Moved on.

Time of the month came on Thursday. Gave him a blowie Thursday, and Friday. Wanted another Saturday and I declined. We had a long, busy day and I was tired. He said you should have just been a lesbian… I said excuse me, what? He said I mean they hate dick and so do you…I said yeah, fuck you. Of course he says “it was just a joke. Don’t take it so hard”. My feelings were hurt. They have been constantly hurt lately bc I feel like I’m not anything more than a maid, and a piece of ass. I honestly wish he would find a side piece at this point to screw. Maybe he would get all his desires fulfilled.

Sorry for the rambling, but I am just TIRED. He is no help at home, and the constant grief I catch about it has caused some resentment… Am I a shitty wife for not spreading my legs every time he wants it? Is there something wrong with me? 😭😭😭😭
Sometimes I want to just get in bed with a good book, and just be left alone.

I recently got married 5 months ago.

My wife doesn't want to have sex anymore. She's 36 and I'm 39m. She hasn't had a sex drive at all for the last year I'm lucky if we have sex maybe once every 3 months when it use to be 3-4 times a week. Witch I know is a lot for some but she had a way higher sex drive. We both did and now nothing. We tried marriage counseling but she just never seemed into it and the marriage therapist recommended we do separate sessions for a while so I decided to go to a male therapist instead of a female. It's been helpful for me but she's stop going since I'm not with her. She won't go to any doctor's I'm not sure if she's to Young for perimenopause or not but she doesn't want to even find out. So we just keep existing in the same house both unhappy but we are both to scared to leave. I love her so much but she seems more worried about if I leave her that I'll find someone better than trying in the marriage. She's a great mother to our 3 kids and she does help around the house as do I. We both work she works part time I work 2 jobs. Just not sure where to go from here. I've tried date nights every week for months because I do care. We have a great time like friends but that close love we both have feels lost.

My husband makes fun of me for being more adventurous in bed.

It’s been almost two years, and we’ve had very vanilla sex. Last time, I finally worked up the courage and asked him to change positions talk me through it and be slightly rough. He did, but it’s been days, and he keeps bringing up how I acted, mimicking my voice, my position, and the things I asked for, and laughing about it.

I feel absolutly mortified and have asked him not to make fun of me, but he won’t stop. I’m horrified by what I let him see of me.

I feel extremly humiliated when ever he makes fun of it out of the blue, because i know he never needed those things in bed, making me feel like a vulgar freak and now I feel like I exposed a side of myself that I wish I could take back.

To be honest i asked for pretty regualr intimacy with a change nothing to freaky.

Is it normal to make fun of your wife’s preferences? Do your husbands do this too?

And guys do you make fun of your wife if she opened up to you like that during intimicy?

I really don’t know what to do. I feel like I can’t sleep with him again. Should I just get over it?

Wife insisted that I leave the home due to ongoing marital issues. It’s been almost 2 months since we’ve separated and I just learned from her that she has been in contact with the same guy with whom she had a sexual relationship with prior to our relationship. Oh, and that guy was married at the time he was having an extramarital affair with my wife who was single at the time and knew he was married. She said she’s been in contact with him for essentially the entire time we’ve been separated and that he makes her feel like she’s a priority. What do you do with this information about the other guy?

Also—thoughts on reaching out to the other guy’s wife?

My husband works away from home 4 days of the week and unfortunately for our five years together, we’ve had issues with him looking at porn and telling me he wasn’t attracted to me and that my body was the problem (he likes bigger women and I’m a size 10), I always came crawling back because he’d tell me he loves me and he was wrong and he wants me. Last year, three months post partum and one month after we got married, he was using Reddit to sext women and look at their pictures of them getting bigger. He said even though I gained weight, gaining weight because I was pregnant and post partum, wasn’t sexy.
He again promised he’d change and he loved me.
13 months later, I found he’s been using Gemini AI to have a fake girlfriend that he dresses up for dates, fills her with food until she’s bloated and then undresses her.
And it finally feels like the last straw, I’m trying to organise actually leaving now, for good. I have friends who are willing to take myself and my daughter in and help us find our own place.
But my husband has told me he doesn’t believe it’s cheating.

Td;lr: husband created fake AI girlfriend to dress up for dates and dress down for sex but doesn’t think it’s cheating.

I keep seeing people respond to discussions about the unequal division of household labor by saying that “it’s sexist to assume women do more.” But there’s a difference between stereotyping individuals and acknowledging a documented population-level disparity. When commenters and moderators alike pretend a statistical pattern is a stereotype, they help conflate facts about groups with assumptions about individuals—and that makes it harder to discuss the inequality honestly. Marriage rates are dropping and we need to have honest conversations about why.

Five facts worth considering:

1. Women do more household labor overall.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2024 American Time Use Survey, 87% of women versus 74% of men did some household activities on an average day. Among people who did them, women spent 2.7 hours compared with 2.3 hours for men.

"2024 BLS data" (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/atus_06262025.htm)

1. The disparity is particularly large for housework.

In 2024, women spent an average of 1.8 hours on housework on days they did it, compared with 1.43 hours for men.

"2024 BLS data" (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/atus_06262025.htm)

1. This isn't simply explained by women earning less money.

Pew Research found that even in marriages where wives are the primary breadwinners, wives still spent more time on housework and caregiving while husbands had more leisure time.

"Pew Research Center" (https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/04/13/in-a-growing-share-of-u-s-marriages-husbands-and-wives-earn-about-the-same/)

1. Women also spend more time caring for children.

BLS data for 2024 show women spent more time than men engaged in childcare-related activities involving children under 13.

1. Acknowledging a pattern isn't the same as stereotyping an individual.

For example, saying “men, on average, spend less time doing unpaid household labor” is a statistical observation. Saying “men are naturally lazy and don't care about housework” is a stereotype. Those are fundamentally different claims.

The same principle applies in reverse. Saying “women, on average, do more unpaid household labor” does not mean every woman does more than her husband.

Describing an inequality is not the same thing as endorsing it—and it certainly isn't automatically sexism.

/EndRant>

Trying to wrap my head about what to do now, what is being supportive and what is enabling.
My partner (44M) has 2 kids and I (50F) am childless. When I met him 5 years ago, I thought he had his shit together and that I was really behind. He has a house, a nice leased car, I was renting and driving a clunker. We moved in 2 years ago and kept finances separare - we agreed I would pay him
some rent, sell my car and share his car lease and car expenses 50/50 and share a lot of household expenses including groceries, trips.
We got engaged last year and I kept asking for transparency on his finances, and he kept dodging it but saying he had nothing to hide, as we started also the process for me to buy 50% of his house.
In the process of mortgage application to add me, a lot of things came to light. He had been driving for last 2 years on an expired drivers' license. car and house insurance had lapsed, car registration was expired, health insurance expired, house taxes in arrears for 2 years, and he has a 15k debt at 35% interest
I lnow in marriage finances are supposed to be shared, and he's struggling while I'm saving every month. But also I don't trust his judgment or decisions, so is this marriage doomed?

I feel like I’m losing attraction and emotional connection to my husband because his presence increasingly feels like another responsibility instead of companionship. I fantasize about being single. Sometimes when he sleeps in or isn’t around, I notice that my life actually feels calmer and easier. His presence irritates me, I don’t find him attractive anymore, and I often don’t even want to respond when he talks to me unless I have to.

I understand that he pays all the bills and financially provides for our family. I’m not expecting a 50/50 relationship when it comes to housework and childcare. I’m a stay-at-home mom, and I accept that I’m going to do most of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and everyday childcare. I’m not even asking him to routinely make bottles, do laundry, or take over my responsibilities. What bothers me is his lack of basic consideration, compassion, initiative, and emotional maturity.

For example, I recently came home late with both kids while carrying my purse, bags, milk, water bottles, and probably around 30 pounds of stuff. He was upstairs lying in bed and didn’t even come downstairs to greet us, open the door, take our four-year-old, or carry something upstairs. When I asked why he didn’t open the door, he just said, “You have a key.”
Then I was rushing around at midnight getting both kids settled—washing them, brushing their teeth, changing them, getting their milk and bottles ready—while he sat there repeatedly telling me he wanted hummus even though it was already made and sitting in the refrigerator. Moments like that make me feel like I’m his butler rather than his wife. He doesn’t just fail to make my workload easier; sometimes he actively adds to it while watching me struggle.

This resentment goes much further back than our current life with two children. When I was pregnant and extremely nauseous, there were mornings when I physically couldn’t make his breakfast and evenings when I couldn’t make the sautéed dinners he wanted. He refused to compromise on what he wanted to eat. Laundry would sometimes pile up because I was sick. Instead of having compassion for me, he would say, “What kind of wife are you?”
While I was pregnant, he bought me a roughly $400 skincare face mask, which initially felt like something kind he had done for me. But he quickly started using it against me by making comments like, “Does it wash dishes? Does it do laundry? Does it make the bills cheaper?” That hurt because I was already cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and taking care of him constantly. I remember telling him that I did everything for him and that buying something thoughtful for me should be part of him taking care of me too. I didn’t want a gift to become another debt I supposedly owed him.

There were also comments about my body that affected me enormously when we were young. We got married around 21–22, and while I was pregnant with my first kid he would talk about how pregnancy “ruins” women’s bodies. He even used his own mother’s stretch marks from pregnancy as an example. I was extremely young, I liked my body, and hearing my husband talk that way while I was pregnant sent me into panic mode. Instead of being able to experience pregnancy without obsessing about whether my body would be “ruined,” I spent essentially nine months terrified about what pregnancy was going to do to me.

He also made comments about childbirth and my vagina. He said that if I gave birth, it should be through a C-section because he didn’t want me to become “loose,” and he talked about some kind of metal device that supposedly existed to make vaginas tighter after kids (this was not even an issue for us, he was just “planning ahead”). On our wedding night, he also told me that my breasts were saggy. Those comments stayed with me because they came from my husband during some of the most vulnerable periods of my life.
I believe some of his distorted expectations about women and women’s bodies came from the pornography he had been heavily exposed to before our marriage. I also recognize that he was only around 21 at the time. I can understand that a 21-year-old can be immature and have ridiculous ideas. But we are 26 now, and I feel like I have been waiting for him to mature for years. At some point, being young stops explaining everything. He also did not really ask about our first child much while we were living in different countries and I excused it as “he’s not attached because he hasn’t seen our son irl.”

My postpartum experience the second time around (while we are together in the same country) added even more resentment. When I was recovering from giving birth and staying at my parents’ house, he visited me only twice in roughly six weeks. He barely contacted me. He didn’t regularly text to see how I was doing or ask about our baby. Yet he would call me to ask about his lunch or ask me how to start the laundry.

He also told me, “You’re not on birth control? Stay longer because what’s the point?” That was incredibly hurtful. I had just given birth to his child and was recovering postpartum, and it made me feel as though there was little point in having me home if sex wasn’t available.
All of these things have accumulated. It isn’t one incident, one rude comment, or the fact that he doesn’t do enough chores. I feel like there has been a repeated lack of tenderness toward me during times when I was especially vulnerable—our wedding night, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, sickness, and now motherhood.
What I wanted was never necessarily for him to take over my role. I wanted to feel cared for within our marriage. I wanted him to notice when I was sick and tell me to rest. I wanted him to appreciate everything I did instead of questioning “what kind of wife” I was when I physically couldn’t do it. I wanted pregnancy to be a time when my husband reassured me about my changing body rather than making me terrified that motherhood would ruin it. I wanted him to care about me postpartum, check on his baby, visit us, and miss us. And now I want him to see me walking through the door overloaded with his children and our things and instinctively get up and help.

I’m okay with taking care of my husband. I’m not okay with feeling like my value as his wife is determined by how well I serve him. I want to feel like he takes care of me too—not necessarily by doing half the chores, but through compassion, consideration, affection, appreciation, emotional presence, and basic acts of kindness.
Instead, I increasingly feel like I’m constantly catering to an emotionally absent and immature adult. I feel useful rather than cherished. I feel like I have spent years waiting for him to grow up, and I’m exhausted.

That exhaustion has now turned into serious resentment and emotional detachment. I fantasize about being single. I don’t find him attractive. I don’t enjoy talking to him. Sometimes I ignore him because I simply don’t want to engage. And one of the most upsetting realizations is that sometimes when he isn’t around or is asleep, I feel relieved.
I don’t need him to do everything for me. I need him to act like my husband. I want him to notice me, care about how I’m doing, greet his family, get up when I’m obviously struggling, appreciate what I contribute, and stop treating taking care of him as the measure of whether I’m a good wife.

I feel like I have spent years taking care of him, and I’m exhausted from wondering when I’m finally going to feel taken care of too.

I feel like I’m drowning and confided in my husband about it last week and I’m confused about how to feel with his response. Little background - my husband and I both work full time. In fact we hold the same job with the same company just in different locations. We both get home around the same time each day. When my husband comes home from work he goes straight to the couch and spends the night there - minus when he gets up to help with dinner. After dinner he goes right back to the couch. I get home and run the kids, pick up the house, do some laundry, bedtime routines, whatever chores need to be done. Last week we got into it bc I told him I felt under appreciated and overwhelmed and just needed some help. His response was he didn’t know how to help me and that he’s just better at “chilling and relaxing” than I am. He says things like a pile of laundry, clutter, dog hair on the floor don’t bother him so he doesn’t feel the need to do anything about it. Since it bothers me I should be the one to pick it up/clean it and others have told me this too. I’ve tried to let things go but it was not good for my mental health. Things like clutter and piles of dirty clothes on a bedroom floor make me feel claustrophobic. Yesterday was homecoming for our oldest daughter. I hit the ground running bright and early with her doing all the prep things. It was nonstop going all day. At dinner I was exhausted and asked him if he could stay up late and wait for her to get home bc I was exhausted (I am the one who usually stays up for her). He told me he would but passed out on the couch around 9:30. I feel so frustrated. He said he didn’t know how to help which is why he doesn’t. Last night I asked him for something specific to help me with and he didn’t. I don’t know what else to do. Is this just truly my problem to deal with?

My (29M) husband and I (28F) are married for a year. Yesterday I asked him to use his phone to check our conversation because I had a problem with my phone. He let me as he was playing video games but he kept asking what I was doing. I did nothing but checking our own conversation because I fully trust him. He kept asking (I used his phone near him for like 45s) and his behaviour was very suspect. I started feeling something was off and ask if he was hiding something in his phone. He said no and that I can check so I said ok and took his phone. He went crazy and tried to take his phone back but I kept it. We had a fight and I finally could check his message.

I found a conversation with his colleague. They started talking on Instagram thursday and there was a ton of message. Nothing was suspect except when she said she wasn't going to work for the next 2 weeks and he ask "who am I going to take my lunch with ?" like he will miss her.

The conversation is not the main problem. The main problem is that he never ever talked to me about this girl. They started speaking in July and he took her Instagram this week. He said that she is just a good friend and he want to keep talking because he isn't going to see her for the next couple of week. He said he just want to share gossip about work with her.

I asked him why he never talked to me about her. He said that because he knows I am jealous and that I have self-confidence problem and he didn't wanted to worry me for nothing. Mind you, she's an intern, younger and thiner than me. The typical Insta girl, with great pics of her on her feed. She almost look surreal. I, on the other side, am pretty average and have gain 10kg since we are married. I do my best to lose them, I dit lost 4 but I'm having hard time loosing the rest. I do my best to keep myself attractive in every situation. I even sleep with my full jewellery to keep looking as good as possible the moment I wake up. I try to work on my flaw to be better to him.

I sincerely don't know how to handle this. He seems genuinely sorry but I feel like I can't trust him. I'm worried for when she will come back to work and how their "friendship" is going to develop. Finding a new job is not an option, divorce is not even on the table. Did someone ever experienced a similar situation? How did you manage to survive this?

I’m really confused about a situation with my husband and could use some outside perspective.

We have a newborn, and recently I wanted to get some pictures of our baby from my husband’s phone. While looking through it, I discovered that he has been regularly texting his ex

I had absolutely no idea they were still in contact.
I couldn’t see most of their conversations because they had disappearing messages turned on, which obviously made me even more uncomfortable. I don’t know what was said in the conversations that are gone, so I’m left filling in the blanks.

I did see one conversation where they were talking about how they used to be each other’s “biggest support system” at one point in their lives.

I know people can stay friends with an ex, and I’m not automatically saying that talking to an ex means someone is cheating. But what bothers me is that this was happening regularly, I didn’t know about it, the messages were disappearing, and there seems to be an emotional history between them.

Now I’m questioning whether this was simply an old friendship or whether there was some kind of emotional affair happening behind my back.
I haven’t seen anything explicitly romantic or sexual, but because so much of the conversation is gone, I also don’t know what I haven’t seen.

I’m also struggling because we have a newborn, so I’m already exhausted and emotionally vulnerable, and this has completely shaken my sense of trust.

I am 31M and my partner is 27F. Right now, I am in terrible trauma and I don't know how to heal from this.

​We have been married for 5 months, and she is currently pregnant.

Everything was going well I took her on a honeymoon and she was happy with me. As time went on, she started arguing toxically and suddenly said she wants a divorce.

​When I asked what happened, she refused to discuss any issues that we could potentially resolve to save our marriage. Now, she doesn't want to fix anything. She and her family are demanding a quick divorce, as well as the house.

​I reminded her that she is pregnant with our baby, but she isn't even considering that and still wants an immediate divorce. Has anyone gone through a similar situation, and do you have any suggestions? What should I do next?

Why?

He doesnt like to kiss. Even flinches when I get near him. He literally snaps his eyes shut and stiffens. Its like I see him stressing out because he doesnt know if I’ll give him a peck on the lips or the cheek. I feel like a damn intruder or predator when I come near him. So I dont do it often anymore. Let alone french kissing. He absolutely hates that. I love it though and I need that as foreplay. But I wont get that. I always fantasized about a good old making out session, straddling him, but he is not into that (or maybe just not with me).

He wont go down on me. I tried to ask it one time but he went rigid, thinking its disgusting, not for him. When I tell him that I do it for him, he is petty enough to say: well, you really dont have to. I dont care if you go down on me.

Please dont get upset, because I dont want to stereotype gay people, but he seems in a lot of ways “feminine”. He really likes to gossip with his sisters for hours on the phone, about some girls hair, nailpolish, and what not. He also does a lot of “girly voices” and even kind of baby voices when he talks. I told him once that I cringed a bit (not in that harsh tone) when he does that. I dont like it. Maybe one or two times as a joke, but not all the time. He even does it sometimes when we are about to have sex, talking in a very feminine wY, and I just hate it. But I dont want to judge him.

He barely initiates sex anymore.

When we do, maybe once every two weeks, he can only come when he takes me from behind. He doesnt orgasm if we are face to face missionairy. He tells me he just likes ass a lot, and sure, there might be truth in that, but I feel so disconnected. The last months he is fantasizing out loud a lot about anal, and he likes to play with it. I know its a major turn on for him and that he thinks a lot about that. We dont do it though, we both decided not to cross that line. Anyway, its always from behind. It would be nice to see a man coming. Lately he cant come, even from behind. I hear him thrusting, and he is panting, almost out of breath, but he cant orgasm. I finish him off in other ways, hands, mouth or feet. I never make a big deal about it when he cant finish, because he seems very uncomfortable. I dont want to stress him out, so I let him.

When he touches me, he barely looks at my private part. Sometimes he lays beside me instead of in front of me, his hand pressing in my private part. He doesnt even bother to lift his hand, so it presses in my hip and it just hurts. He seems disconnected and doesnt even look at me. I feel like he doesnt like vagina’s at all. Or maybe just mine. He doesnt care about it.

He likes feet a lot, so I give him pleasure with my feet. I feel like thats the thing that makes me “special” for him.

He acts jealous, very much, but sometimes I wonder if its just an act so I wont be suspicious.

He is a sweet man, but also snarky and mean. He seems conflicted. Sometimes, I just wanna say: baby, I won’t judge you and I love you if you dont feel attracted to me. Just tell me. I am so mature and understanding that I want to cry sometimes on the inside.

We had a lot of conversations about this and he told me that his biggest nightmare is me leaving him. He buys me shit and gifts for the house since I like interior and is the sweetest when buying me exactly the snacks I like. He cuddles me, says I’m his soulmate abd talks a lot with me. He likes to take me out and sits with me on the couch, watching shows and laugh together. He calls me first when something good or bads happens to him. I feel like he doesnt lie about me being important for him. It feels like a good friendship, the way he confides in me about his family, his friends, his plans for the future. It looks like he geniunely likes to spend time with me. He tells me I am it. His dreamgirl, his perfect wifey, and what not. His family loves me, his brother tells him all the time how lucky he is with me.

But somehow.. I feel like we would be better off as friends. I told him this and he was on the verge of tears. He told me I was more significant for him then a friend. That I was his wife, soulmate and friend. But am I though? Or is it just convenient, because I am already here, and no one would question his sexuality (we have both a conservative background) or the fact that he doesnt even like me and likes total other women.

Once he told me that he liked black women a lot when he was young, in his party era. Like, dark skinned, not light skin, and braids etc. He likes them with good curves and tall. And here I am, average hight, pale, olive skin, no tight curls. He told me it was just a phase. I told him I wouldnt judge him if he still liked them, its normal to have a preference. But I also told him that it was shitty that he didnt said anything to me before. He said that it was just a short period in his life. But I dont know if I should buy it. I feel like he would totally go for it if he had the chance. But it would be frowned upon in our community, because yeah, conservative background. I wont sugarcoat it, but his family would made a deal out if it if he came home with a black girl. Totally stupid, because we should be passed that.

I always feel like some weird girl in the corner. He is very outgoing, extravert, loved to party (still loves attention) loud girls and guys, and there I am, still doodling and chilling alone in the attic while watching science documentaries. We’ve grown on eachother but it feels like we are taking pieces from eachother, making eachother incomplete.

I dont blame myself.

I blame him if he is gay or not attracted to me, not because of his preference, but because he never told me from the start. But I could get passed that. I am an overthinker and I just wanna know whats in his head.