I’m mid twenties, newly married with a young baby (5 months old) but my marriage has almost completely broken down since my pregnancy. I will start by admitting that I never wanted children with my DH as he is not someone who likes to have any responsibility placed on him or to have to do anything for others, me included.
Our current set up is quite unconventional from what I read on here. He massively out earns me, with a take home for around £7.5k per month, whilst I take home £2k. There is no family money/joint savings and I am expected to go 50:50 on everything - bills, stuff for baby, holidays, activities or meals etc. I appreciate that I am not his responsibility as I’m a grown adult but it is hard keeping up as he can obviously afford to do much more than me and tends to have more expensive tastes.
I have always carried the mental load in the home, and always sacrificed my free time to keep the house clean and tidy because he is always busy with hobbies. He doesn’t take well to being asked for help as he sees this as needy and taking away from his time. I’ve always taken the approach that it’s better for him to be happy than for him to be annoyed with me or us arguing if I ask too much of him. This has carried on since I had our DC but I am buckling under the pressure and I’m so overwhelmed. I am paying for a cleaner but that stretches my budget even further and I have no idea what I’m going to do when baby goes into nursery as I can’t claim tax free childcare because of his income and it’s going to cripple me financially to go halves on that plus keep paying half the bills.
I know that people will say that I should make time for myself but it’s really hard as he isn't always home when he says he will be as he stays after work to do hobbies, and he is only home on time when there is some sporting event he wants to watch on TV. He doesn’t really spend more than about half an hour with DC as he always seems to busy and then hands the baby back to me to look after. All of this is on top of two evenings a week and one day on the weekend that he has hobbies booked in. This week I had a very rare appointment booked in, booked it 7 weeks ago and put it in the joint calendar. He told me last week that I can’t go as he’s now busy and his thing is more important that mine. I can’t rearrange it for anytime soon, so I’m having to wait another 4 weeks to go because we don’t have any childcare and I don’t feel comfortable leaving the baby with a stranger. I’m not holding my breath he won’t be ‘busy’ again. We spend next to no time together because there’s always something he’s doing or going out to do, and he if not, he’s glued to his phone. Not sure he’d notice if I grew a new head and painted my whole body green as he never speaks to me unless he has to.
To top it off, he appears to have developed a porn addiction during my pregnancy and can’t stand the sight of me. I fully appreciate my body changed when I was pregnant and he wasn’t attracted to me, I know it’s not something you can force but it’s clear that the postpartum me is isn’t something he’s interested in either, other than when he’s in the mood for a very unromantic blow job.
Sorry this is so long and thank you if you’ve made it this far. How on earth do I fix all these issues? I’m quite broken by it all and think I might be depressed.