u/heretoreadfornow

Was feeling a little down today, and wanted to hear some stories from this subreddit. TIA.

I work from home, my partner doesn’t work traditional hours or days. I try to reset and clean up any area the kiddos play in at my breaks and lunch time and before bed as well as the kitchen so there aren’t dishes in the sink following the next morning. HE WILL COOK AND PILE UP DISHES, HE WILL LET THE KIDS DESTROY OUR SHARED LIVING AREAS. I am highly susceptible to being over stimulated and I HATE BUGS (crumbs, insects, spiders). My toddler will absolutely have a meltdown if he’s doing an activity and there’s a missing piece. And I don’t want to hear the crash out so I try to keep things together and teach him to put things away. I feel like I can’t never disconnect from being on duty and I’m exhausted. Rawr.

I (34F) have been married to (34M) for 4 years. When we got together DH was making part time income and helping his elderly relatives get to and from appointments.

After we got married, I immediately got pregnant with our son (3) which took me by surprise since my family struggles with infertility issues.

Sadly, his relative (guardian while husband grew up) passed after long term health difficulties a month before I was due so I agreed that DH should take time to grieve and that he could quit his job to figure out he would like to do long term goals work-wise while caring for DS.

I was used to being the sole financial provider as I have a son from a previous relationship (elementary age). So stretching dollars wasn’t anything new to me and I wanted to be supportive. I worked up till labor and took my maternity leave.

At first during the grieving, DH began consuming alcohol enough where he would pass out mid day to where my eldest would ask questions. I spoke with DH about my concerns and he did scale back on consumption.

I spent my maternity leave caring for our newborn and DH would take care of transport to and from school for eldest. We were utilizing credit cards to bridge the cut in income during maternity leave as I was on short term disability.

After my leave was up I went back to work (remote) and was still able to nurse as DH and baby were at home. DH took on household duties at first and things were okay. Then came the additional responsibilities at work due to layoffs. I started my work day at 8 AM logging off at 6 to eat and do bed time routines with the kids back online at 9 PM working till midnight. While juggling my infant after I went to bed every few hours as we were still nursing.

This went on for a year and a half. By the end of that time I was burned out and struggling mentally and physically. During this time I had multiple break downs about finances and asked DH to look for part time work again to lessen the burden a bit as by this point we were maxing out credit cards. DH completely throwing a tantrum the first time I brought it up, he started “looking” again which I don’t really feel like he put much effort into. (This conclusion comes from after 6 months of looking with no callbacks I asked to see his resume of which he had no responsibilities listed for his roles). So I made him a new resume.

I was able to find a new role that was less stressful and start getting the debt down (at 8k now). I’ve managed to set aside emergency funds in case of a medical event or what have you.

Our youngest started school and DH has started working part time for the last four months.

While things are starting to look up, over the last few years I’ve been drained and touched out, with no s** drive. Which he’s complained about… a lot. The other day he asked me if I was happy and I can’t confidently say that I am.

I know marriage comes in seasons, my parents have always shown me that during different phases of their marriage they’ve had to hold the other up. He’s already talking about quitting his job without having something else lined up.

I just don’t know where to go from here. Honestly, I’m getting tired of thinking how every dollar is spent. I resent that I always have to figure things out. Or make birthdays and Christmas happen. I’ve tried to be supportive and not pressure or nag DH to find a long term career path.

I feel like I’m going crazy, I’m worried I’m being selfish and a bad wife.

Edit: He tells family and friends that he works full time, so I can’t talk to them about it. Also I use household duties mediumly, he definitely handled most of the cooking and dishes/grocery trips, bathrooms once a month and vacuuming once a week. He wasn’t actively enriching our little one while I was working after he started walking it was iPad time all day while DH played video games. Now he just handles grocery trips but I have to give him a list.