My intention was to open your eyes to her perspective and hopefully I’ve achieved that.
Not saying she’s perfect either none of us are, but I could see areas where you were being (based on what you’d posted before I posted) unfair to her.
Paying her a salary when she doesn’t actually do any work for the business - is that even legal? Sounds highly dubious.
You now seem to be alluding to her having “trapped” you by becoming pregnant 6 months into your relationship. As I’ve stated on another thread BOTH sex partners need to take responsibility for their sexual health and fertility, given your teen was also conceived through a casual relationship? Think you may need to improve your attitude and actions when it comes to contraception!
And the comments about her situation when you met belie I think an attitude that you consider you “rescued” her? Possibly worse.
The holiday home - it sounds like you bought it as a “surprise” for her? Which may seem a generous gift but it’s not really if you didn’t fully consider costs and time for maintaining it, without discussing with her?
As you’re not married she is actually extremely vulnerable. That’s almost a whole other thread!
And your commute is not that bad - you really are not going to get far with me labouring that point, nor about long hours etc as I think I made clear in my first post. But to add to that I myself when dd was little older than your youngest worked full time and had a 90 min commute each way, and that was as a single parent so I also had all the running of a household, all the responsibility for paying the bills, managing family admin, parenting solo etc so please stop with that. There is NO excuse for not taking on your share of night duties.
Your bills being higher than mine is largely down to choice. Most of what you’ve listed are not necessities. Families need A home, food, heat etc they don’t necessarily NEED more than one property, holiday place, car per person etc also where you live is a choice (and yes I appreciate you saying she wanted to be near family and friends BUT I’ve lived all over uk and overseas - everywhere has within just a few miles good but more expensive parts of that town/region to live in and cheaper but less desirable areas - again it’s a choice to a degree particularly if your income allows for more choice, it’s those on smaller incomes that have less choice)
As I said she is not blameless in this. Making herself (and her children) financially dependent on you is foolish. Not only in terms of a possible split but as you yourself have said if you were to become incapacitated or die that could make life extremely difficult possibly very suddenly for her. Marriage would go some way to mitigating that risk but I totally understand that not being an attractive option at the moment.
Would she attend counselling? How are you approaching her with regard to changing things? Are you framing it as a money issue or as one of where you are unhappy with your work life balance and wishing to change that? Are you wording it as a criticism of her or have you taken that stance generally in the past?
I also wonder if home is not the best place to raise it. Would going out for a meal or something and being in a calm neutral environment be a way to create a calm way to discuss things without the distractions there often are at home?
It’s so hard when a couple becomes entrenched in their own individual disappointments and stresses and find it hard to communicate and to listen to each other, there are 5 people’s lives wrapped up in this 4 of them children and it would be much better if a solution that everyone was reasonably happy with could be agreed on.