Didnt sign up for this.

LegacyUser

Gone unreg for this.

I am a man in my late 30`s married for 18 months. My wife (mid 30s) and I are together for 5 years and both have had a checkered past as far as relationships are concerned.

After a somewhat short romance, we started to talk about marriage and 3 years into our relationship we got married.
Everything seemed to be fine, loved each other, got on great with each others family and friends.

The wedding day was great but litterly from the first day of married life everything changed.

We had decided not to try for kids straight away as we wanted to enjoy our first year of married life together just the 2 of us. Although I enjoyed the sexlife we had before the marriage it quickly changed into a babymaking excerise that I could not get excited (excuse the pun) about.

My wife lost her job and became very lazy, spending most of her time watching tv or playing games online.
She did very little housework and I had to pick up after her on my days off and clean.
She has also started to put on weight and not look after herself.

I tried speaking to her about the situation that had come between us and even began to feel depressed about it, I eventually went to a doctor who put me on anti-depressants and sent me for counselling but my wife didnt want to go with me. She thought it was not that serious.


Now today I feel like a prisoner, trapped in a marriage that I didn`t sign up too. Although it takes a lot of work to keep a marriage, I try and treat my wife well. I cook and clean for us and take her out for dinner and nights too. She doesn`t do much for me though.
I do love her but I am starting to feel like I am not IN love with her any more.
Can anyone tell me if they have been here and managed to relight the embers that are slowly dying out?

LegacyUser

Hi OP, you did sign up for this! You signed up for this when you said you'd take your wife 'for better or worse'. You're going through some 'worse' right now!
I'm unemployed, and my boyfriend is very supportive of which I am eternally grateful. Even at that, I took to crying today because he mentioned something about 'looking for jobs'. For the last few weeks, I've found it difficult to rouse myself for actual job hunting, although I am starting to come around again. I'm earning money from a private enterprise, and have started doing some more exercise to keep myself healthy and fit (physically and mentally). What I' trying to get at is it's not easy being unemployed. I'm a fairly positive person, but unemployment and job searching really gets me down sometimes, and I have to fight to get myself out of that mindset.
Your wife really doesn't need a husband who gives her the impression that he's disappointed in her, or thinking 'why did I sign up for this?'. Rightly or wrongly, she's struggling at the moment, and what she needs is a shoulder to lean on. I mean, you married the woman which I would assume means that she was an outgoing, happy woman at the time. Surely you can see the damage unemployment can do to a person without thinking 'Oh my god, what have I let myself in for!!'
Start with a clean slate. Talk to her about your worries, but let her know that you are there for her 100%.
Best of luck

up for anything

Sounds to me like you are not the only one in the relationship to need anti-depressants.

You said that although you agreed not to try for a baby for a year that sex quickly turned into a baby-making exercise. Does this mean that you have been having sex without contraception for the last 18 months? If she wants really wants a baby that would be shattering for her along with the loss of confidence that losing her job would have entailed. Maybe she feels like she can't speak to you about it.

Honest communication is the key. Show her this post and ask her where she wants to go from here.

baby and crumble

OP, I know we can't make any kind of diagnosis here, but from what you said in your message, it sounds to me that your wife is depressed. She lost her job, and then lost the will to look after herself, you and her home. That isn't laziness.

The same thing happened to my partner. We'd just moved in together, and she lost her job. I was the one supporting us, paying rent, paying bills, all that stuff. I would come home in the evenings and she'd be in a tracksuit, having not left the house, not even left the sofa. I cooked dinner, cleaned the house, did the shopping.

I was pissed off, big time. But you know what I did? I got on with it, and realised that I had to help her. I had to encourage her to get better, to get herself back up on her own two feet. It wasn't that she suddenly changed- she had depression. Not "oh i'm so depressed!" depression, but honest to god clinical depression.

I would imagine that she knows you're annoyed. My girlfriend knew I was annoyed. But she couldn't do anything about it- I mean if she couldn't even get out of bed for herself, how was she going to cheer me up? Knowing this, it's probably going to be making her feel worse.

Any relationship is built on mutual trust and respect. Right now I get the feeling that you don#t respect her. And in a way, she doesn't seem to want to acknowledge how hard you are finding it.

I know this is going to sound harsh, OP, but coming from someone who was pretty much in your exact place 4 years ago- you need to cop on a bit and realise that this isn't about you. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, and start feeling empathy towards your wife. Talk to her from a place of empathy, of understanding, tell her you think she might be depressed, and that you'd like for you both to talk to someone. Ask her, as her husband, to do that. Obviously, if she doesn't want to, or is unable to see that you have a say in this too, then she isn't respecting you as a her husband.

If it helps to hear, my partner went to a doctor, was prescribed anti-depressants that helped enormously, and has since gone back to college to retrain. It's been hard, but I know that if I had given up on her when she was in the worst place of her life, that I wouldn't be able to look myself in the eye today. It gets better, OP, but you need to focus on her for a while, as counter-intuitive as that may seem.

LegacyUser

Just my 2 cents... Over the past three or four years, myself and husband have also dealt with unemployment, poverty, crappy sex life and worst of all infertility. We're now pregnant and have never been happier. I understand that we would still have had to work things out if the pregnancy hadn't happened... I'm just saying don't underestimate the effect circumstances are having here.

curlzy

Hey OP,

I think Baby and Crumble is spot on. However, I think he may be being a little harsh too, you're new to marriage and I'm assuming haven't suffered with depression yourself? Well, if so, how are you supposed to know that's whats going on? From your point of view you married a bright and sparkling woman who wanted the first year to be just you and you've woken up to someone that's not looking after themselves and obsessed with babies. So you have my sympathy it's must have knocked you for a loop. I think communication is key here. Try and get her to the GP and do as Baby and Crumble says. If it turns out your wife really is this totally different person to the one you married (very doubtful though) then you can address that. But from what you're saying I think it's unlikely, not impossible but very unlikely.

Best of luck to you both.

LegacyUser

Hey OP,

Well, I'm going to slightly disagree with some of the other posters here.

I think if these issues were merely "Going through a rough patch" you wouldn't have found yourself on here looking for answers.

I think the others who have replied have failed to acknowledge your worries about your wife's lack of interest in your own mental health, how she fails to realise that you are suffering as a result of her actions.

I am 30 and am in a commited relationship but not exactly at the marriage page yet. Myself and my boyfriend are both in good careers and we both are fit and keep healthy, if either one of us were unfortunate enough to become unemployed I can put my hand on my heart and say that I know we would back eachother up 100% and I know if my bf was home all day he'd have the house spotless and dinner on the table and vice versa - so would I!!!

If I married him and then realised that he was playing computer games and letting himself go - I would be devastated. I understand the whole "for better or for worse" thing but you can't answer the OP's question by basically telling him to deal with it.

My suggestion would be to encourage your wife to go for walks, get some fresh air and explain that at least their is some positives to her being out of work as it gives one of you more time to look after the domestic issues. Maybe she's feeling like she has lost her purpose in life?

Without nagging perhaps encourage her to find things she wants to achieve each day - The longer she's out of the workforce the harded it will be to get back in - especially if she adopts a lazy attitude.

Whatever happends, best of luck

LegacyUser

Justanobservation wrote: »

I think the others who have replied have failed to acknowledge your worries about your wife's lack of interest in your own mental health, how she fails to realise that you are suffering as a result of her actions.

I don't think anyone is arguing against the OP's wife helping herself!!! We all know that with any problem within a relationship, there are two people involved, sometimes equally involved, sometimes one more involved than the other (in this case, the wife is involved in the problem more than her husband)

If the OP had written a post saying 'My wife is really depressed and I'm finding it very difficult', I would've just replied saying that you need to support her but she needs to help herself too. As it is, the OP wrote a post basically saying that he doesn't know why he married his wife. My view is that he should get out of the mindset that he has made a mistake in marrying his wife, because she is probably picking up on it. She's in a bad place as it is, knowing her husband thinks he made a mistake by marrying her will only exacerbate her depression/unhappiness and certainly doesn't live up to the promise of 'for better or worse'.