This is a hard post to write, forgive me.
I have been the primary support for my wife since I was disowned for being gay four years ago. She got me a bus ticket; for that, I’m infinitely grateful.
I feel like I have watched her decay in front of me. Either that, or she’s always been like this and I just became more cognizant of it. I thought she had depression; she eventually went to the hospital in 2017 for suicidal tendencies. We got married in 2018 thinking things would be better. But it hasn’t gotten better.
She will stay on her laptop all day and only get up to use the restroom or have lunch with a friend. She shares the trite self-help posts and drums up support and attention online. All of my friends here know her, and knew her first.
On the outside, we look happy together. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy spending time with her outside the house. I fell in love with her for a reason, we mesh well intellectually and have a great time together.
The logistics of living with her fill me with dread and resentment. She does not help with house cleanliness or chores at all, and either willfully refuses or cannot comprehend putting things into trash cans. She will leave things like takeout trash on surfaces for months. The bedroom looks like a level 3 hoard; there’s no visible floor and the tallest parts of the refuse are at least at my hip joint. The rest of the apartment is less bad but still not good.
She tells me that she can’t get or keep a job because of her emotional state but tells me that the psychiatrist believes her depression is situational, primarily based on her weight, and refuses to prescribe anything for it.
She is obese. I am also, even more than she is according to BMI. Her mobility is compromised and she doesn’t seem that concerned about it. This scares the shit out of me.
My wife’s life plan currently entails at least 13 additional years of not contributing financially. This would be one thing if she was trying to be a doctor, but she’s not. She wants to have kids and raise them as a stay at home parent for six years after getting a four year degree, and get her masters after that.
Now, I am not saying a stay-at-home mom doesn’t contribute to the health of the family. My wife is not currently contributing now and we don’t have children.
Frankly, the proposition of raising children with this woman given current factors gives me angina. I already feel like her caretaker. Why would I want to add a child to this?
The current situation is that I have finally broken out of menial jobs, but I need to move. A part of that is cleaning out the apartment to get ready to leave. We agreed to have it done by June 1. That deadline came and went. I told her that it needed to be done by July 1 at the absolute latest.
I reminded her about the deadline every time we brought up the move. She told me to stop nagging her on the 10th, so I did. It is now the 22nd, and she has only taken three bags out of the 40 that it most likely needs, and the only reason she did that was because I was pissed on our anniversary with how I’ve felt like a pack mule for years.
It is 9 days away from the deadline, and I can’t take this anymore. I can’t keep setting expectations and having them ignored or railroaded. I can’t stand watching her care so little about my needs.
I know that I should wait until July 1 to be fair to her, but I’m so hurt. I can’t keep baring my soul, working all the time, and maintaining a house for two people while I’m going through my own shit. I have a severe mental health condition that I keep in check with medication typically and my wife told me she needed the money for something that, in hindsight, was ridiculous. That was the beginning of February. It’s going to be July in 9 days.
The thing that hurts the most is that she says the right things. She knows what to say. She doesn’t do any of them more than once.
A friend from college has volunteered to take me in while shit hits the fan. I’m scared of what my wife would do if I tried to leave. She talks a lot about her low self-esteem and how I’m the only thing keeping her going. She has been hospitalized before for suicidal thoughts and tendencies. I feel so much guilt, Reddit.
I know intellectually that I can’t be the one who wants to live enough for the both of us. I can’t be the only one working towards progress. I will literally combust if I have to continue doing this.
Divorce is ugly as a legal process, but I don’t think I can keep going on like this. My wife is behaving like an addict. Maybe she is addicted to the internet and to her societal perception. That’s for a smarter person than I (with a license) to figure that out.
What do I do, Reddit? Wait until the first? Just pack a bag and get out? My friend says this is abusive, but I feel wrong using that term knowing that there are battered women on the streets. My wife doesn’t seem to think I’m serious about the July 1 deadline.
Thank you for reading. God/fate bless you.
TL;DR: I have been supporting my wife for years and she doesn’t respect my needs. I set a deadline to clean up a hoard-like situation and there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that it will be done by that date. I want to leave, but I’m worried about my wife. What do I do?
Submitted June 22, 2019 at 12:27AM by Greyhound_Throwback http://bit.ly/31Nro9z
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