I 27F might be starting to resent my husband 25M and it might not be his fault
I, 27F, have been with my husband, 25M, since 2020, married in 2024. We have been through a lot of ups and downs in our relationship already. We've experienced richer and poorer, sickness and health, all that jazz already. It really started all the way back in August of 2021 when we both got COVID, delta variant. We were living together at the time in an apartment with another couple who are still our best friends, but since it was a shared space we spent 95% of the 10 day quarantine in my 121 sq ft bedroom which had an attached bathroom, only coming out to make a quick meal a few times a day. We did really well over that time together, didn't get on each other's nerves at all, played fun video games when we had the energy and took turns caring for each other. It really made us both believe that our relationship could withstand a lot and I still think that is true.
Fast forward and some time in the spring of 2022 he started developing some bizarre symptoms. He had severe vertigo, tachycardic episodes, often felt faint and weak, developed insomnia, and began to gain weight. We started missing work a lot more frequently due to these various health issues and since he didn't have insurance it took us time to get him to a doctor to get properly checked out. Long story short, this continued on and off for several months, sometimes he'd get better and would be able to work for a week or two straight without missing a shift but then it would come back and he'd be down for at least a week before being able to work again. Eventually, he lost that job, they did tell him he was welcome to come back if he wanted to once he was feeling better but at the time his manager thought it might be easier for him to get Medicaid or disability benefits if he wasn't working. All this time I was barely scraping by with my income and was desperate for a different job as I hated where I worked and I'd already used most of my savings to keep up with bills. I would come home and break down almost daily, I often cried on my way to work. Eventually he seemed to almost miraculously get better and started trying to work again although he still often didn't feel well, he was doing much better than before.
In January of 2023, I got a better job and things looked great. Until April when I was abruptly fired with no warning, never even a single complaint about my performance, just that they had already hired my replacement and didn't want me back. Our lease was ending May 30th so we decided to go out on a limb and apply to work at a National Park. It was great, we both had great positions that paid well and didn't have to pay for our housing or food. A bunch of stuff happened that landed us moving to a different state with his family and we ended up getting engaged that November.
2024 was spent working for the business his family started and planning a wedding, he still occasionally had bad days but it wasn't nearly as frequent as it had been and we were both very happy with the direction our life together was going. We got married and basically nothing changed since we'd already been living together for so long.
2025 held more ups and downs, we ended up quitting the family business (you know what they say about working for family) and got other jobs, struggled a bit but got by and we were again mostly happy. We did have a lot of discussions about intimacy, or the lack of intimacy in our relationship due to my low libido compared to early in our relationship. It was something that we'd both been aware of for some time but could really seem to figure out a good solution for. In October my grandfather got sick and we returned to our home state to be with my family and help my grandparents.
This brings us to now. My husband seems to be going through something again, insomnia, poor health, not sleeping well, weight issues, etc. have led him to not be entirely helpful. At first he was quite active in helping with my grandparents (who are paying our bills as well as letting us live with them while we help out with driving to appointments, grocery shopping, housekeeping etc.) but lately he's been struggling again and I find myself getting more and more frustrated. First he says he doesn't feel good and ends up sleeping well into the afternoon and then can't go to sleep at a normal time and repeat until eventually he's falling asleep at 1pm and sleeping until late at night. It kind of cycles and then he'll reach a good spot and he's feeling better for a few days or weeks before it restarts. It's clear that his mental health isn't great but neither is mine. The resentment kicks in because I feel like I'm constantly defending him to my family and trying to help them see that it's not laziness, it's not that he's not active enough, he's just depressed? The thing is I don't really know and I think that's the frustrating part. I don't have anyone I can properly talk to about it without it making him somehow look bad and if I talk to him about it, I'm afraid it will further damage his mental health. On top of all of that, it feels more and more lately like I'm pulling teeth to get him to do normal things that were supposed to be doing every day. I've started almost feeling like a single mom and I don't even have kids. I feel the responsibility to keep him fed and healthy on top of keeping the house clean, taking care of SIX cats and managing my grandparents who are quite difficult to deal with at times all by myself.
I guess the question here is more how do I approach this with him without making him think I'm going to leave him? How do I make him see the way it's hurting me without hurting him in the process? What would you do in my situation to preserve the marriage and create a happier healthier relationship?
TLDR: My husband may have a chronic illness or mental illness causing him pain, sleep issues, and bouts of illness that make him unproductive and I have to take care of him and everything else so and I think I'm starting to resent him over it but don't know how to talk to him about it.