originally written by u/Greyhound_Throwback on r/relationships

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I [24F] am at the end of my rope with my wife [27F].

https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/c3ms1o/i_24f_am_at_the_end_of_my_rope_with_my_wife_27f/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

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?

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UPDATE: I [24F] am at the end of my rope with my wife [27F].

https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/cvblpb/update_i_24f_am_at_the_end_of_my_rope_with_my/

Hello, everyone.

I wrote here two months ago about my relationship with my wife. She was a hoarder and had a litany of other issues that were above my pay grade. I asked Reddit if I should leave by July 1, and it was unanimous that I absolutely should.

I didn’t leave July 1.

I left the night of June 30.

The cleaning didn’t get done, surprising literally no one. We were driving to our apartment and I told her that I was really crestfallen about July 1.

“Why? Is that a bad date for you or something?”

I was furious, but kept it to myself. I told her how I felt, and I reminded her of my deadline. I told her that I was moving out and that I was done.

She cried and cried and cried, and begged for a week to clean the apartment to “show that she was committed to this marriage”. I said that she was free to do it, but I wasn’t going to sleep there during that, and I moved in with my friend. We agreed to reassess the condition of the apartment Sunday morning.

She told me how spiritually edifying it was to clean. I was really optimistic for a bit.

Wednesday comes and my FIL calls me, frantic. He’s like a dad to me. He tells me that my wife emailed him (which she never talks to him unless she has to), and I asked why. He told me that she begged him to tell me to ‘come back home’. He remarked that it was bizarre, but I was incensed. “No, FIL, it’s not bizarre, it’s shitty. She’s trying to leverage you though our relationship to get me back.”

Saturday comes and she sends me a message on Facebook saying “you know, it doesn’t look as good as I wanted it to physically, but I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress emotionally and isn’t that what matters?”

I told her that such progress would have been appreciated two years ago, but I had to walk- I couldn’t do it any more.

She spent money online with our card without informing me on yarn and we had a disagreement about it. I told her that I wanted the bank account closed, but she “couldn’t bear to see me in person”. I redirected my checks to a new account instead.

It had been weeks and I finally went back to get my things and it got a lot worse. There was a water leak in the carpet, the litter boxes weren’t taken care of since I took care of them the day I left, and she managed to move the microwave into her bedroom. The latter was particularly surprising because she refused to move anything heavier than 10 lbs because of a cited rotator cuff injury for years and yet got a 40 lbs microwave into her room.

I reported the conditions to my MIL, who co-signed the lease with us. She called me back to bemoan “what am I going to do about my daughter? You don’t understand how hard it is to have to think about how to take care of her!”

I snapped at MIL about her nonsense. She asked me what she should do about my ex-wife, feeding her histrionic personality. I told her that I had no idea, but she signed papers 27 years ago that made it her responsibility and not mine.

I’m happily living with my friend. Her and I are currently figuring out what we are, but we’re being supportive of each other and making each other lives easier. We both just celebrated birthdays (happy quarter-century!) and that was perfect.

I’ve been told that my ex-wife has had a much more rigid and stoic affect since I left. MIL told me that she didn’t even say she missed me. “It’d be nice if she came back.”

I heard from FIL that they’re mad that the car I have is in my name; it was given to me as a graduation present, and was an old family car.

I start my new job tomorrow. I’ve been getting ready all last week and I am so nervous but so excited.

I’m really glad I left.

TL;DR: My wife begged me for her last second chance, still didn’t do anything. Tried to get her dad to bend my arm to come back. She wrecked the apartment even more since I left, so I notified MIL. MIL is more concerned about herself than her daughter. I’m happy with my friend and I start my big girl job tomorrow, and thank God.

EDIT: I made this clarification in the comments, but it needs to be said- I was estranged from my friend when I got with my wife. I was disowned for being gay by my family and had to immediately leave college and sought refuge with my ex-wife, and my friend and I fell out of contact. We got into contact again this year when I was interviewing for jobs in the area where she lived, not knowing that she was there. I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to be roommates in the long-term, and for how long, etc. Logistics.