Does anyone else ever think, where the fuck is the man I married?

[Sadandstressedallthetime]

When we got together he was a funny, relaxed, interested sort of guy. Didn’t stress about much, very accommodating.

Fast forward 7 years (we have a toddler now) he is miserable as sin.

Whinges constantly about money. Endlessly pessimistic. Everything is too much for him. If it’s outside of work, washing up, watching DD (and by this I just mean sitting watching TV with her) and dog walking - it’s an unreasonable ask. Every tiny thing turns into a huge drama. Every time he takes our toddler out she comes home in tears. He’s hopeless at keeping his cool, just gets cross every time she does something toddler-ish. No sense of humour any more. I dread his presence to be honest and dream of being a single mum in my own home. He’s turned into a miserable old git overnight.

The only thing that stops me leaving is this is a fairly recent thing, since the lockdowns. He works from home now and it just doesn’t suit him. It seems to have changed his personality entirely. So I guess there’s always the hope it will change back.

Just looking for solidarity. I’m so unhappy this evening.

Sounds lonely OP it sounds like he is a completely different person. Have you spoken to him about it or is that a no go.

He's depressed OP. Time for happy pills. I'd be the same without 40mg of Prozac daily 🙈

Omg I could have written this. Literally a different person

I’ve spoken to him but it’s like he’s physically incapable of an ‘emotions’ type conversation. I blame boarding school. I just cannot get through to him how his mood affects the whole house and it’s actually very selfish to just go round ranting your head off and scowling all day.

Have you told him how you’re feeling?
I told my husband recently that this isn’t what I signed up for.
When we were planning our wedding, I explicitly told him what I expected from us both, and within 2 years he has changed.

He is now lazy, doesn’t do anything around the house or garden, wants to do nothing but sit in front of the TV all night.

He has 6 months to get his act together, or I’m out of here.

Sounds like depression. He's probably really suffering but men are not talkers by nature so suggest a trip to the dr. He is probably suffering more than you realise

If he can’t cope with the family life you have made together, he needs to find out why, or get out.

I was a bit like this when I had toddlers. It was exhausting and I completely lost my mojo. Come to think of it, so did my DH. Both working and trying to keep mind and body together bringing up a young family. We are just discovering each other in middle age now and it’s lovely - as well as enjoying our older family that we invested ourselves in.

Try talking to him and carving out some couple time just to do fun stuff. Remind yourselves why you got together in the first place.

I don't like jumping to the mental health card, however my DH was exactly the same. Grumpy, hideous to be around for everyone. He finally admitted his mental health was in the gutter, got some antidepressants and honestly is back to the man I married again, in fact potentially happier. I feel like in the last 12 years I've been married to 3 different men. The one I met, the depressed one and the one taking control of his mental health. I honestly prefer the latter. But it took months of talking it over and essentially arguing about it to get him to take his head out of the sand about it.

I have:
encouraged him to see a counsellor and offered to book it
told him he can have any 2 nights a week out of the house for sport/activities
tried to get him to open up so many times

I don’t know what more I can do, I think he is depressed but if he won’t accept help then what can I do?

I think you need to make it clear how miserable he’s being and the knock on effect on you. It may be that a change of job would help him overnight, but if it’s a general mood thing maybe a trip to the GP to talk about it would be better than talking to you.

If he won’t attempt to solve the problem you live with it, or you end it.
But you do need to consider the child’s environment in this.

He won’t talk to me, besides the bare minimum ie ‘have you locked the door’

If I ever ask him to just sit down and chat to me he just sighs impatiently, sits down and says ‘what do you want to talk about’

so that’s that conversation over 🤷🏼‍♀️

he sits up til midnight on the PlayStation every night, probably for about 2-3 hours

This is it. I spent my entire childhood walking on eggshells around my mum and I’ve made it clear I don’t want the same for DD

Sort of. His personality hasn’t changed much but by Christ he’s gone grey. There’s more white on his head than the top of Ben Lomond in winter and his beards got a touch of the badger.

He’s always been outdoorsy and he’d climb mountains when we were young then still be up for a night in the pub, now he comes in with his knees strapped up, rubbing ralgex into his bits and moaning about his aches and pains then parks himself and sleeps where he falls instantly. He’s only two and a half years older than me!!

So he’s a gamer as well. Time to end it.

The whole mess sounds awful, but the bit that really stands out is this: Every time he takes our toddler out she comes home in tears.
Is he shouting at her? Worse? This isn’t fair on her. Whether or not the change in his mood is recent or caused by working from home, you can’t go on like this.

Highland just curious how old he is?

OP the gaming is a worry. Would he talk to a mate? Does he have any office options?

OPs toddler comes home crying after being out with her own father but the poor lamb must be depressed. Right.

You can’t be in a marriage alone and it sounds like you are. There are obviously times in a long relationship where one partner needs some slack or extra support, but you can’t have a situation where one person creates a toxic environment for entire household including kids.
His behaviour towards your toddler is not acceptable. We all know how unreasonable a toddler can be sometimes, but she shouldn’t be coming home every time in tears.

He doesn’t shout at her, he’s just ‘short’ with her and doesn’t even try to ‘bring her round’ or distract her in the way you do with toddlers.

She came home in tears tonight because he wouldn’t let her put the car window down as they were pulling in. But rather than, say, distract her by saying ‘oh look mummy’s at home! Let’s go and see her’ or whatever, he’ll just say ‘NO’

DH got a bit like this recently. It was all stemming from being unhappy at work (although he insisted he “doesn’t get stressed”). A couple of months into a new job and he’s like a different person, in a good way.

Working from home full time was very bad for me too. I wasn’t behaving like your DH but I was definitely hard to live with I think. Going back to working in the office at least 50% of the time has made a bigger difference than antidepressants did.

Just asked him to watch Dd for a minute (and i
mean a minute!) while I did something urgent, after calling through to him I heard a crash in the next room where he’d clearly slammed something down or thrown something. Then heard swearing. He then stamped into the room and slammed the baby gate. This is the level of miserable I’m dealing with. I hate him right now.

I could have written this. A whopping dose of citralopram has fixed him.

It's time to talk wether he likes it or not Op. Tell him the truth, that he's working his way closer and closer to the divorce courts at this rate. He either admits there's something wrong and tries to address it or he can be grumpy and short tempered on his own. It's a sad thing but too many men think that their DW loves them so they'll put up with endless shit behaviour, they get such a shock when she finally says enough