genuinely don’t know what a normal marriage is supposed to feel like anymore, and i need an outside perspective.
my husband 35M and i 33F have been together for nearly 16 years happily had many children together. we are a big family, built an entire life together, and i love him. but i feel like i’m slowly dying inside. i’ve started keeping a list of things that happen because i genuinely question my own perception of things sometimes. individually, some of these might sound small or like normal marriage frustrations. collectively i could use help understanding.
when i bring up wanting us to be happy together, he cuts it short and says things will be better when the kids are gone and he doesn’t have all this shit to worry about. he says all he does is work and come home to parent, repeat. he wants to rush through this part of life. sometimes i wonder if he feels like i ruined his young adult life.
he has grown more and more cruel over time. he expresses his unhappiness and how unhappy he is with his life. we have a beautiful home, it’s larger, a large back yard, good schools. we have several kids, he mentions though how he can’t wait to be done with parenting often. he will say how unhappy he is how he just is unhappy. if i bring up our “nice things” he’ll say “nah”. he is a great dad, and for the first several years i questioned if he was just burnt out. but he refused to get snipped. more babies. i begged he cancelled appts. and then finally after the last pregnancy, he was angry, wanted me to not have the baby, but i chose to. he came around. and then i tied my tubes bc he refused to.
lately he just says how we have no time together without the kids which is true. we are together all the time unless he is at work and we have little to no outside help. but idk if it’s wearing thin on him. i feel i carry a substanial amt of home stuff. i feel deep anxiety before he walks in the door bc i want it to feel good for him. but he says he can’t wait until the kids are gone, this phase of life is over etc.
he reminds me often that i carry nothing, while he works and makes all of the money. feels that he carries everything, that he makes all the money and everything is given to me. he thinks i’m a welfare kid who grew up unable to be a regular adult. he says he overly supports me and that i’m full of incompletions in life. i’m a stay at home mom i don’t work. we can’t afford daycare, though, 2 little kids at home and im wrapping up a degree so i can work as soon as they are able to be in school. i’m ready to start a career. he used to hate the idea. suddenly lately he seems thrilled by it.
he in the past has talked badly about me in front of our kids, making comments about how i’m going to spend all his money or how one day i’ll be smart enough to ask questions about the budget. he makes negative comments about me around them often enough that it has become embarrassing and demeaning. he has made jokes about my appearance, things i can’t change, and lately if i dress up, he sometimes comes home and belittles me. i put on cute yoga shorts and he looked at me waiting and said i looked like boxer who will beat him up. told me maybe if “my clothes fit right” he’d be turned on. I am pretty slim, dealing with some health issues and so my clothes have been a little loose.
yet says he wants me to stay fit and worries that as i age i’ll let myself go. based on his porn i wonder if he just hopes i were a slightly less skinny girl. he is however afraid of aging. it’s gotten bad, maybe mid life crisis. in the midst of an argument he said he’ll still be attracted to 25-35 yr old women when he’s 80 because “that’s the standard of beauty, everyone feels that way”. so that obviously men look at younger women in porn.
when i get hurt, or im upset, be it physical pain, or emotionally upset, he gets annoyed. he is never genuinely concerned. he doesn’t stop, he sometimes will even actually purposely start a new convo to avoid me. like asking the kids a question. if he does, he might ask if i’m okay but sometimes doesn’t actually stop to check on me. i’ll say aren’t you going to even check on me? when i’m crying and trying to explain how much something hurts, he’s like sigh, are you though? sometimes has smirked, laughed, or acted like he wants the conversation over with.
actual arguments about things he has done to hurt me he will actually say “just want this convo over with”.
i have a horrible panic disorder. a lot of anxiety and discomfort from life and he low blowed. i come from a bad childhood. he has told me to “go take 50 panic meds to feed my addiction”. I am prescribed <10 every few mo. most of them are used bc of his behavior. it was hurtful, knowing the things i’ve experienced as a child
while discussing my recent health flare stuff, he told me that if he were paralyzed from the waist down and unable to do anything for himself, he’d hope i would off myself long before many years went by. that it’s no life to life for anyone and anyone would want to. i told him that’s deplorable, how horrible he could think such things. and he will shrug in my face, smirk and go “meh”
he says i never initiate sex, even though i do. often and he declines sometimes. he says that if i offer, it’s always the worst or wrong time, or once he said it seemed transactional or that i’m only doing it to appease him and keep him happy, so it doesn’t count as actually wanting him. but that said if he initiates, i somehow am in a place where i never say no. we have what id consider a decent sex life. several times a mo sometimes multiple times a week. he would never ever make me, but i feel like if i don’t take the opportunity i may never touch him. maybe the random one off hug. sometimes breaks happen of course. he always seems content w sex. one time he made a comment that a recent sex though was “oh this is just fucking it’s just sex” and he didn’t feel connected. then he later says it’s the best ever he’s so connected in tune to me.
he makes constant sexual jokes and comments. constant. nothing is ever not sexual. he brushes my face and i feel love rising in my chest, like oh he’s finally touching my face gently, but he will follow it up with something really nasty. he has told me that if he wanted to leave me to find sex, he would, so not to worry. he has said things that make me feel like i’m not enough for him.
he has told me he will be waiting every day for me to be okay enough to try a threesome with a man. this is something he used to push more, the idea will come around every few years, how he wishes we could have threesomes w men or women etc. he has some additional interests that he will be excited to discuss but if i bring up on my own, he will get extremely defensive and weird about it. i don’t want to be pressured into sexual experiences i don’t want. i want to feel desired as his wife, not like i’m failing to provide something he wants. but he will be like “i’ll never bring it up again, im not into it, blah blah” and then it’ll somehow be brought up in the most sneaky way.
he has also said that if we divorced, he would have tried to give me everything and it still wouldn’t have been good enough. how i got everything but he wouldn’t let me suffer. how he hopes we could still be best friends. if i try to sit and discuss a genuine ending though, he will say he doesn’t want to, he wants to “work on himself, fix things, fix us”
i just don’t get it. i take care of our children, im a good mom, i cook, clean, manage the house, and try to make things nice for everyone. I am constantly cleaning. cleaned the entire house, bathrooms, floors, dishes, toys, and walls, then made homemade sourdough bread and dinner. i’ve come home to messes left behind, only to have him point out a single unwashed pan and ask, “what the hell, mom?” before realizing it came clean easily and saying, “oh, it came right off. i guess you didn’t do anything wrong.” he’s said he doesn’t appreciate me taking care of the kids because he doesn’t see it. it’s just an everyday thing. but if i leave and return after only hours it’s a complete disaster in the house. like dishes everywhere things everywhere. i once made dinner, and he was upset saying that i only ever make chili and things “dumped into a pot”. i love to cook. i make all kinds of food and have a food ig even. it was a weird and misplaced comment
he will list everything he’s spent money on me for over the years. says he is resentful. includes births, or a breast surgery he really wanted and the later removal because of a horrible capsular contracture. years later he is asking me to do it again while being upset about the money. this upsets me bad, feeling why are you holding things over my head financially all the while I have plenty of things I could say. but I can be crying and shaking. sometimes he smirks and laughed. he said he was numb, feels he has no emotion, and “will become more that way over time.” he didn’t cry over family deaths, our kids births but I just thought he wasn’t overly emotional. not “none”
later, he apologized and said money was why he’d been behaving so badly. we are having trouble financially and he said he felt bad about all the shitty things he’d said and wanted to stop being so fucked up. later that same evening, he asked me to unlock porn. we had set boundaries bc he kept taking it too far. short version, HE asked me to re block it (have texts begging me) that he can’t handle it. we decided to gentle re open. only hours before i left, we had a conversation about no personal porn pages. i left, 3 hours maybe, i started having a sick panic horrible feeling and i couldn’t calm down. i went home and found he had explored the same girls porn page as someone we had had an issue with before. it felt like a horrible betrayal. he agreed to the boundary like explicitly and joyfully, how it felt too much like real life and within hours of that convo and me leaving he had crossed boundaries. he told me he knew i’d see it and didn’t care. he even suggested he might have done it on purpose to spite me bc he isn’t sure how he feels about his life.
i don’t know what to do with that. he asks me to help control his access, but he has also shown me that he can agree to boundaries and then disregard them anyway. so obviously larger boundaries are not to be trusted. and i don’t want to be his monitor. i don’t want to police his behavior. i want to be able to trust my husband, but obviously it’s too far gone there. there was a past incident where 10 years ago we agreed that our first 3some would be no piv, somehow days later that was broken too. our one and only experience. but i feel, if the opportunity is there its taken. if that makes sense.
so we sit and try to discuss and resolve problems. sometimes, it can be sitting and nice calm convo and he will agree and apologize and say he wants to be better. other times he becomes very dismissive, avoidant, argumentative, mean, cruel, he will start naming horrible things about me. low blows.
if i tell him i want to be here but can’t continue living this way, he responds, “yeah, you say that, but then why do you stay?” knowing I have no career, absolutely no friends no family (literally). when i’ve tried to explain how painful that is, it feels like he’s challenging me to leave rather than trying to understand why i’m hurting. he sometimes says he’s sorry, but other times says he’s already apologized or that it’s “water under the bridge.” he says he’s “always apologizing because i always have a problem, and he doesn’t want to have to think about my problems all the time.”
during a fight about money and a vehicle, he told me to stop being a fucking victim. he kept telling me he wanted space, but when i tried to give him space, he got angry about that too. when i asked where i was supposed to go, he told me idk, outside, the garage or to go the fuck to bed. we had to take a family trip bc of a passing. he introduced me to his family as “the baby maker”. when i said that was not nice, he became extremely cruel during the trip, threatened to get me my own hotel room away from him and the kids, and during the car ride home i was crying in the car and he threatened to “take me to the airport to fly home alone”. eventually, he apologized, but even afterward he kept asking what my issue was while i was simply trying to exist around him. he felt like he was justified in all of his behavior bc it was overwhelming for him.
so now the cruel comments. they’ve gotten worse.
told me to make an of to make money, then pointed out that there are millions of other women to compete against, so i probably wouldn’t make much.
said he sometimes doesn’t like me.
he has admitted that for the past few months he’s sometimes thought about being with other people sexually, although he says he would never cheat or be a cheater.
he told me i’m not womanly. i was so upset, super hurt, i said yes i am. i’m soft, tender, im a good mom, im empathetic, i like to take pretty photos. and he replied no that just makes you motherly.
he has said he wants to start over. he has said he wishes reincarnation were real so he could shoot himself and start entirely over.
when i asked whether he would find me again in another life, he got really upset that i asked the question. said his initial response was essentially that starting over didn’t mean starting over with me.
he sometimes says he wants to fix himself and our marriage. sometimes he’s gentle and patient with me. sometimes he holds my hands, hugs me, and says he doesn’t want to be done. i know there is a person i love in there and there have been really good times in our relationship. but i don’t know how to reconcile the person who holds my hands and says he wants to fix things with the person who says and does these things to me. he will say none of these things have happened. he will say he’s never said xyz thing to me before. or that i blow things out of proportion. the mind fuckery had me beginning to record our convos just so I could hear how horrible he spoke to me when i felt calm and alone. i offered therapy, and he says it’s more time and waste of money. we are busy, so busy bc of our schedules with kids and health. he knows the reality isn’t as simple as starting over but i think it’s starting to look really good to him.
how do you know when you’re fighting for a marriage versus just fighting to keep it alive? is it too far gone? do I keep trying? how do I even tell myself to stop trying? where do i even begin to get out?