Hi everyone,
Looking for some advice really. I've been married for nearly 4 years and together for over 6. We have a little girl who will be 3 this year.
My husband is an excellent dad, he adores our daughter and is definitely the 'fun one' in the house. However I'm really struggling with the fact that he is not emotionally supportive/ available at all.
I do pretty much all the housework and if he does do something it's because I've nagged him to do it or I've argued with him about it first. We both have quite similar and demanding jobs and I work part time hours so I can look after our daughter.
He's very difficult to talk to about anything important or upsetting. Honestly it's like talking to a wall. He constantly turns any argument or disagreement around to me and makes me feel like it's my fault, even if he's obviously done something wrong. He never opens up about his emotions or feelings and sometimes I wonder whether I know him any better now than I did 6 years ago when we met. He just switches off when I talk about being upset, even if it's not related to him at all i.e an unwell relative etc.
I'm a very 'heart oh my sleeve' kind of person and always end up providing emotional support for him but feel like I never get anything back.
I spoke to him last night and explained how I feel and asked for more emotional support and he said that that's just not who he is as a person and didn't think he could do that for me.
He constantly wants to be the most intelligent person in the room and will correct me and make me feel stupid a lot of the time. We have very similar jobs and he hates if I know something he doesn't know. I really wanted to apply for a new job which would require me going back to uni, something that my parents and sister told me they thought I'd be great at but he got extremely jealous. Said that he wanted to go back to uni and it wasn't fair if he had to financially support me when I was at uni when he wanted to go back and do another degree himself (something he had never mentioned before I said about it).
I don't know what to do. He's not a horrible person and a great dad but I feel like we're just housemates. He provides no emotional support at all for me so I feel unheard and lonely. I don't want to split up for the sake of my daughter but not sure what else to do if he's not willing to change. There's lots of other things but I could write a 10,000 word essay and don't want to bore you all.
Anyone in a similar situation? X