Early on in our marriage I made a stupid mistake on social media (which involved other men but I never cheated) and he said since then he stopped trusting me and because of that throughout our whole marriage he’s put me last. He never stands up for me when his siblings wrong me, he doesn’t trust me and calls me manipulative and evil, he keeps secrets from me but shares them with his family, he entertains gossip about me and agrees with them. All of this makes me feel like he’s not mine and everyone else is closer to him. He doesn’t like giving me what I want or doing anything I ask of him, he doesn’t speak to me about his feelings, he disagrees/ competes with nearly everything I say and doesn’t take my advice on anything, he disrespects me in front of others (ignores me, walks ahead of me, sometimes belittles me). When others aren’t around or involved, our relationship feels good but it’s just masking the reality. We are touchy feely with each other every day but we only have sex once every couple of weeks, which is low for me especially considering it’s our first year of marriage. He says his mum will always come first to him, he jumps to her defence if anyone upsets her, and I’ve noticed he takes all her advice even when it comes to our marital decisions (which never aligns with my needs/ wishes). Rather than focusing on our relationship as a newly wed couple he’s always worried more about how much time and effort I spend on his family. He’s now changed our plans of relocating/ future lifestyle so that he can be closer to his family which I don’t agree with at all but he doesn’t care. He tells me he will love our future children more than me, once again reminding me I am the least important to him.
What makes things worse is he developed chronic health issue during our marriage, which to some extent was triggered by him doing certain things for me and I felt so guilty about this for a long time but I keep reminding myself it was mainly caused by a pre-existing condition he had. This health issue is permanent but he still has mobility and is able to do most things. I’ve been helping him physically with his exercises but I’m finding it hard to care for him fully from the heart because I’m so resentful towards him of the way he cares about everyone else more than me, his wife.
Now he’s started to hate me more and says I haven’t cared for him properly throughout his illness as I haven’t been doing enough for him and because I still argue with him (and threatened to leave him) when he’s ill and depressed over his health. I know that I need to be by his side giving him the most support but I’m struggling to forgive him because he still puts me last. I also can’t help but feel like nothing I do will be enough to regain his love and trust, especially now I know I’ve made him feel worse during his illness he may hold this against me too. Sometimes he’s said he will try to change the way he treats me but he hasn’t done anything through his actions to show it. He doesn’t care how I feel about the way he’s treated me as he blames it all on me for the incident on social media which he says caused him to be this way towards me. He already had a family oriented mentality to begin with and now his depression over his health has made it worse.
It’s such a mess. I go from hating him for the way he’s treated me to blaming myself for losing his trust in the first place to also feeling really bad for him because he doesn’t have good health whereas I do. He refuses marriage counselling but doesn’t want to part ways either. I really don’t want a divorce I want to change the way he feels about me but I don’t know if it’s even possible to win him over after everything.