Needing Advice & Cottage Cheese Flatbread Sandwich
Feeling like I need some advice.
I (39F) have been feeling increasingly frustrated and heartbroken in my relationship, and I don’t know if I’m being reactive or if I’m finally seeing things clearly.
My partner has a very contrarian personality. It feels like almost every conversation turns into a debate. Every decision becomes an argument. Every idea is met with resistance before it can even be considered. Over time, it’s become exhausting.
For context, I’m well educated, have a career I genuinely care about, and while I’m certainly not wealthy (who is in this economy?), I feel like I’ve built a pretty stable life. There are things I wish were different financially, but overall I feel like I’m doing okay.
A few months ago, I brought up something that felt incredibly vulnerable to me: the possibility of having a child. I’m 39, and I’m very aware that I’m entering the later part of my reproductive years. His immediate response was that we’re too old.
That absolutely crushed me.
About a week later, he apologized after talking to one of his longtime friends who is the exact same age as he is, with a wife the exact same age as me. That friend basically told him, “We’re expecting our third child.”
Today, on the Fourth of July, I opened Instagram and saw that same couple smiling together, her eight months pregnant with their third baby, surrounded by their two boys.
I was genuinely happy for them. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t break something in me.
All I could think was: Why does it feel like everyone else gets to dream about building a life together, while every dream I bring into my marriage becomes a debate?
We’ve done couples counseling. I do my own therapy. I’ve tried communicating my needs in different ways. But I feel emotionally worn down.
Lately I’ve been wondering if what I really need is some space; not because I want to punish him, but because I don’t want to keep living in a place where I feel angry and resentful all the time.
Has anyone been in a relationship where your partner’s default response to life is to push back against everything? Did it ever change? Or did you eventually realize that it wasn’t about any one disagreement; It was about the emotional climate of the relationship itself?
I don’t know if I’m grieving the possibility of children, grieving the relationship I thought I’d have, or both. I just know I’m tired.