My husband and I have been married over three years now, and together for almost six years. I have lost most of my attraction to him at this point and don’t know if this marriage will work, but I think it’s worth trying to make it work at least one more time.
He isn’t very involved in chores at all – I have to tell him to do his share of chores every single time. He isn’t very proactive about it. When I do ask him to take out the trash when the bin won’t close anymore, he just says “what if I do it tomorrow?” And I have to insist that it’s important it’s done tonight because it’s overflowing. His response is usually a groan or something.
Financially, he makes less than I do, which is fine. However, he treats me like a financial buffer. He can’t always pay his share of all our bills on time, so I have to do that. I would be fine with it every now and then, but it’s quite frequent. I think the reason it bothers me so much is because he’s pretty frivolous with money, in general. He gets takeout even when there’s food at home (that I always cook because he doesn’t cook or clean up after), he gets plenty of gas station snacks instead of shopping for them in the store and preparing a couple snacks for his workday, he spends a lot of money on weed. He smokes weed every single day, which I also find awful, because I think we’re too old for that now. I asked if he could limit it to evenings on the weekends, but he doesn’t agree that that’s reasonable.
Emotionally, I feel very neglected. When my father died, he didn’t do very much at all to support me. Barely reached out to speak to me (I was in the country that my father died in, which is thousands of miles away). He didn’t even stay up for his funeral which was live-streamed on a weekend. When I returned home a month after my father died, he didn’t do much to help me. I was back to working full time, managing finances, and doing all the household chores. The weekend I returned, he also had his friends over and asked if I could cook dinner. I don’t know why I said yes – maybe it’s because I feel like sacrifice is a part of love, but I don’t feel like it’s reciprocated in any way. I’ve lost a lot of my own self by being with him, I think.
I have brought up all these issues using DBT skills like DEARMAN or using the STOP skill that my therapist recommended to me because I’m just so done and depressed. I feel so unloved and unappreciated. Whenever we do have sex, which is so infrequent now because I don’t feel very attracted to him very much anymore because I feel more like his mum than his wife, he’s done in under a minute. I’m always left quite frustrated. He hasn’t made me finish in years. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve done so much to support him financially and emotionally, I pay for all our dates and international and domestic vacations, and I’ve always gone out of my way to also connect with his family.