I asked my husband for a divorce last night, but he wants to keep trying and I'm just tired
32NB and spouse is 31M. We've had one hell of a year; to summarize 2025, my grandmother died, our car broke down and we had to get a new one, my job at the time (I'm the sole breadwinner) became toxic, my dad was diagnosed with cancer, our house's kitchen flooded and we were displaced from our home for 200 days, the dog we got at the beginning of our marriage died horrifically, I started a new job during my dad's cancer treatment, and the entire year we were dealing with my spouse's sister and their horrific child custody situation.
We've supported his sister in some way for about a decade. The man she shares a kid with (we will just call him Hell Spawn) is a pedophile and truly heinous. Hell Spawn has threatened to kill my spouse, break into our house, accused us and our friends of truly disgusting, vile things, and has overall been a monster lurking in our lives for 10 years. Our entire marriage has been plagued by helping SIL through this. Our niece (whom we are certain he trafficked) has been the main focus for the most part. It left me and our daughter (4) in a very tough position. My mother-in-law moved here in 2020 to help with the situation, but then left after a few months because she couldn't handle it. She left my spouse and I alone, with zero help already, to help my SIL through all of this. She is still not helping in any way. Spouse's father died 13 years ago.
As you can imagine, we were not doing well. My spouse emotionally abandoned my daughter and I during all of that. I spent so many nights crying alone in an AirBNB (because we couldn't live in our house) afraid that my father was going to die. Sometimes I would ask him to comfort me, but I was frequently met with "give me like 30 minutes to finish this game" and so I stopped. To me, it should have been a no-brainer that he drop everything to support me. I have bent over backwards, put myself into truly dangerous positions to help his sister, but he couldn't take the time to be there for me while my dad went through treatment. I know that he was trying to survive, just like I was, but it was MY FATHER going through cancer treatment, so sorrynotsorry I needed him a whole hell of a lot more than he even tried giving.
Spouse also wasn't on his anti-depressants and ADHD meds, and it seemed like he just didn't care to fix that. I'd beg him to get the prescriptions figured out, but he just wouldn't. Finally in December he figured out his anti-depressants and in January his ADHD meds. I will say that there is improvement and he is a lot more emotionally present than he was. But he isn't helping around the house very much and he (who is stay at home) still puts our kid in front of the screen more than I would like and hops on his computer to play games. Our daughter has started screaming at him about how much she hates his video games.
I want to leave because he keeps choosing his mom and sister. Now that he's back on his meds, he's trying to be present again and put me and our daughter first, but his sister just keeps making her problems our problems. (She had custody of her kid, then lost it, and my spouse agreed to take our niece in without talking to me first. Niece is no longer with us because the level of violence.) I just can't live my life giving endlessly to people who haven't earned it and who only ever take, never give. And my husband perpetuates this cycle in a way that has made me resent him. I think a part of me hates him because of how close he's made us get into this situation.
He wants me to keep trying because he's getting things back on track, and to be fair he really is. There are improvements, but his sister is still treating us like a storage unit and refusing to come get her stuff. (She keeps ordering things for herself and getting her mail sent to our place even though we have told her to stop.) I don't feel like he's 100% on my side when it comes to his mom and sister, and I feel like I will always have to give up not only my peace and safety, but that of my daughter's, too. When we talked last night he said that he didn't realize just how much damage had been done to our marriage by the situation with his sister, and hs truly looked remorseful and regretful. I believe him that he will try to earn my trust back, I just don't know if I can let him.
Tl;Dr 2025 was hell and my husband didn't support me during my dad's cancer treatment because of his selfish, self-centered mom and sister's bad choices. If we divorce, it's mostly because of his mom and sister.