I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for from this except maybe an unbiased fresh set of eyes because I've been so beat up mentally that I don't know what's right anymore. Apologies if this turns into a massive brain dump.
I've been with my wife for 13 years and the last 3 have been trying with fewer great moments between the bad moments. I don't know where it all started to go wrong but I am of the opinion we're both at fault. Communication is probably one of the biggest shortcomings that has lead us to where we are at the moment so to keep this from turning into War and Peace, I'll just cover the past few months.
Up until May, I didn't think things were going that badly but my wife sees differently and was becoming increasingly more distant from me and less communicative. I think I went into a decline during lockdown in terms of my mental health when I was working from home as I found myself becoming less and less functional and more dependent on alcohol. To get this out there; I have abused alcohol for a few years. It was a bad habit - it wasn't out of enjoyment either. I couldn't tell you if it was boredom or a coping mechanism as I felt I had no life outside of work and looking after the children. I am however proud to say I have kicked the habit with only three beers sunk since May. It was around May I knew that I really wasn't right mentally, and thinking back, something that has been in the background for a number of years with lockdown bringing it to a head. I told my wife that I was struggling and that I thought I was suffering with anxiety and depression. She wasn't interested and turned her back on me and stopped asking me if I was ok and just started to ask if the children were ok. I entered therapy at this stage and was formally diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. The root cause was determined to be low self esteem probably stemming from being bullied at school. Two key things to fall out of this was me having issues with conflict and making decisions on behalf of others. Over the years this has probably lead to me bottling things up and just saying "sorry" and accepting any blame for any wrong doings whether I feel I was to blame or not - not that we didn't argue at all. It's also caused issues with me planning for things such as what we're doing on the weekend or the next family holiday or home improvements, which is a big gripe for my wife along with my drinking and irritability.
Cutting back to the present, my therapist was pleased with my progress and my anxiety and depression fell back in to the healthy category about 6 weeks later. She told me to keep being me and to not think that "I need to better myself", which is what I kept telling her but she kept telling me the opposite and that I should be who I am comfortable to be and that is for others to accept or reject. It took me a while to see this because I was so hell bent on trying to please my wife and putting myself second. Obviously, my efforts in perpetually trying to keep my wife happy stopped somewhere but I don't know when but was probably gradual in line with the decline of my mental health over the past few years.
Since May, I've worked so hard on myself in overcoming my depression, anxiety, drinking and improving my health but none of it has been good enough in making amends with my wife. I don't know how because she has placed all of these barriers upon me such as I'm not allowed to pay her a compliment or buy her flowers or even talk about our relationship. It's something I was trying back in June but just made things worse and she told me to stop. We've been trying to improve communication but she's such a closed book with what's going on in her life. She has arranged to go abroad later this year with her family but told me nothing about it. I found out by accident.
I've been in the spare room since May. She made the comment yesterday that I still haven't planned anything for us to do on a weekend, which erupted into an argument that resulted in her suggesting we put the house on the market and move on. Between working full time, continuing with reading self help material to rebuild my self esteem, exercising, cleaning and tidying the house and looking after the children, I get very little time to myself to plan a weekend out. It's a sour point because whenever I have tried in the past, we do what my wife wants to do instead. Control is something I feel I don't have in this relationship even down to the level of being told what to cook for dinner. I always feel I can't bring up a lot of this with her (although a lot of it came out yesterday) because it turns into "why are you with me then? Let's go our separate ways". Is it any wonder my mental health nose dived?
I know there are two sides to every story. If she were to post, I'm sure she'd tell you my lack of organisation, drinking, irritability and lack of affection are my shortcomings. I am however a lot more organised than 3 months ago, given up alcohol and less irritable in general other than for finding myself burnt out come the weekend and 15kg lighter for it. Lack of affection and gratitude, guilty as charged but I feel we're both part and parcel of that issue where I struggle for her attention or intimacy in favour of a mobile phone. It's never ok for me to mention the lack of intimacy though and her being on her phone is her unwinding but at the same time, she complained about communication but then gets irritable when I try to speak to her when she's messaging someone on her phone.
I want to fix things for the sake of our family as we have two wonderful children and not selling up everything we've worked so hard for. Maybe I'm kidding myself. I've asked her if she would consider therapy but she keeps telling me there's nothing wrong with her. We attempted one session of couples therapy. It was a waste of time without sounding cynical about it but it just turned into a stranger saying "how did that make you feel?" every few minutes.