{"data":{"items":[{"id":"191e70cb-bef0-44bf-9978-f89b021b6b91","excerpt":"My wife (32F) hurt me, mocked my breakdown, and now she’s finally promising change as I (33M) prepare to leave. What have I not thought of yet? — \nThrowaway for obvious reasons. I (33M) have been married to my wife K (32F) for about 7 years. We have a 2.5-year-old son together.\n\nOn paper, K does a *lot* for our family,","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/1p0ip6n/my_wife_32f_hurt_me_mocked_my_breakdown_and_now/","role":"pain","weight":1.5098073,"occurredAt":"2025-11-18T17:50:22.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"Advice","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.606178,"sentiment":-0.4390244,"confidence":0.94,"matchedPatterns":["wish","i_hate","missing_feature"],"statement":"It’s time to go.” Three years ago, she chanted “I hate you / I regret marrying you / I wish I’d picked someone else,” mocked my shock and despair, and something in me died.","title":"My wife (32F) hurt me, mocked my breakdown, and now she’s finally promising change as I (33M) prepare to leave. What have I not thought of yet?","body":"\nThrowaway for obvious reasons. I (33M) have been married to my wife K (32F) for about 7 years. We have a 2.5-year-old son together.\n\nOn paper, K does a *lot* for our family, and that’s part of why I’m so conflicted. She:\n\n- Manages the house, garden, and a rental property.\n- Keeps track of bills, maintenance, car stuff, filters, all the boring adult logistics I tend to forget (I have ADHD/autistic traits).\n- Is with our son almost 24/7 and is very nurturing and attentive with him.\n- Packs my lunch every day, leaves love notes, does countless small acts of care I never even have to ask for.\n\nI’m genuinely grateful for all of this. I’m not blind to it. But there’s another side to our relationship that has slowly destroyed me.\n\n### The pattern\n\nOver the years there has been a long-term pattern that goes way beyond “we both say hurtful things sometimes” or “normal fights”:\n\n- **Physical violence:**  \n  - She has hit me, punched my head/face, dug her nails into my arm, tried to break down a door to get to me, climbed on top of me to stop me from leaving, and used her body to corner me.  \n  - Our toddler once said, “Mama! You hit dada?” out of nowhere. He’s seen and heard more than I want to admit.\n\n- **Emotional and psychological cruelty:**  \n  - During a couples counseling exercise that was supposed to build rapport, I got flooded and shut down. I was literally under a blanket, frozen in fear. She started petting my head and said “There, there…” in this sarcastic way to mock my suffering.  \n    - I told her it was cruel. She said: **“Yes.”**  \n    - I asked why she was doing it. **“To hurt you.”**  \n    - I asked why hurt me instead of using the exercise to build us up. **“That’s just what I do!”**  \n    - I asked how she’d feel if roles were reversed. **“I wouldn’t be here.”**  \n  - She has laughed at me while I was overwhelmed and admitted she was doing it to hurt me.\n  - She’s made threats like “I just want to beat you to death with a hammer,” “I want to shoot you with a shotgun,” “I want to do terrible things to you,” “I have to find a way to punish you,” etc. Not one-off outbursts—repeated over years.\n  - She’s said things like:\n    - “I hate you, I f***ing hate you.”\n    - “I regret marrying you.”\n    - “Accept you for who you are? How could I possibly do that?”\n    - “I stuck with your little broke ass when you lost your job, so now you take care of me. Why else do you even exist?”\n    - “Punishing you is necessary because it’s the only thing that gets through to you.”\n    - “I know that I am mean, but I can’t control it. It will happen again.”\n  - She often seems to take pleasure in my pain—mocking me, chasing me from room to room when I’m overwhelmed, escalating until I’m upset and then calming down once I’m in distress.\n\n- **Gaslighting / minimizing:**  \n  - When I’ve tried to bring up specific incidents, she often:\n    - Minimizes or rewrites them.\n    - Shifts to how *she* feels, or to my flaws.\n    - Adds “yeah, but…” context that undermines any apology.\n  - She rarely holds my pain for more than a few seconds without centering herself.\n\n### My mental health\n\nThis has gone on for years. I’ve journaled hundreds of pages to keep myself anchored to reality, because when she later re-interprets or twists it, I start doubting myself. It's almost all I think about day to day unless I'm able to stay busy. This now weighs more than everything else in my life combined.\n\nBy mid-2024, I was telling our counselor that:\n\n- Nothing felt real anymore. Life felt like static, like a hazy dream.\n- I felt like a fortress welded shut. I couldn’t force myself to emotionally open to her even when I wanted to.\n- I was deteriorating psychologically and even got an MRI because I wondered if something was wrong with my brain. There wasn’t. It was the environment.\n- I was starting to associate closeness with danger.\n\nI used to have big, explosive anger when I felt betrayed (I’m not proud of that; sometimes my exits were ugly/scary, though I never did anything to physically harm her). Escape, running to the car, slamming doors, speeding off. I’ve worked hard on that and in the last 2 years, I haven't had that kind of issue since then. I can't feel betrayed if I expect it, but that leaves no room for any vunerability, incimacy, or emotional connection. \n\nBut the anger has transformed into into something else: a quiet, steady voice saying: “This is not fair. It’s time to go.”\n\nThree years ago, she chanted “I hate you / I regret marrying you / I wish I’d picked someone else,” mocked my shock and despair, and something in me died. I stopped feeling safe. Since then, the romantic love I had for her has basically been gone. I stayed for our son who would soon be born.\n\n### The 1,000-day journal\n\nToday is 1,000 days exactly fromt he date of my writing about the breakdown-mocking, which I just happened to check by coincidence today. It got me in a really reflective mode and it's what lead me to make this post. \n\nOn Feb 22, 2023, right after that cruel “rapport building” incident, I wrote about what she said and did. I went back and read it this morning, I saw how the same patterns are still happening as recently as two months ago. I asked myself in the journal today:\n\n> “Am I allowed to leave yet?”\n\nThe answer I keep coming back to is “Yes, I was allowed 1,000 days ago. I’m still allowed now.” But I feel afraid, guilty, conflicted. I'll explain more about why.\n\n### Her recent change\n\nAbout a week ago, I gave her a long letter (several pages) laying out my experience, the incidents, the pattern, and telling her I’m done and planning to separate. For the **first time in years**, she responded with something like a real, unqualified apology:\n\n> “I regret doing that, what I did was wrong, I am so sorry for how I have hurt you, I see why you feel the way you do, I will not do that again, but I understand if you leave me.”\n\nWe also had a phone call where she said things like:\n\n- “I acknowledge that I have hurt you, and taken pleasure in hurting you, and done things just to hurt you, and I should not have hit you… It was a choice. Regrettable.”\n- “It’s almost like I can’t even help it… I know that doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse.”\n- “Have I ever really, like, totally taken accountability?” (Basically she admitted she usually adds caveats/excuses.)\n- She’s started seeing a counselor again (~6 months ago) and scheduled a psych evaluation (which I asked for over a year ago, but she only did now that I’ve said I’m leaving).\n\nI actually feel like she *finally* gets some of it. I believe she is sincere. I am honestly proud of her for being more accountable than I’ve ever seen.\n\n### Why I still want to leave\n\nEven with these new apologies, I feel:\n\n- Completely out of emotional gas and about 93% out of hope.\n- My love for her as a partner is gone. I can care about her as my son’s mom and as a human being, but I don’t feel romantic/relational safety or warmth. \n- Something in me has closed off from emotion to protect me. I don’t know if that could ever reopen, and I don’t really want to risk trying anymore.\n- I’m afraid that if I stay another year to see if it sticks, I’ll just be more worn down, with even less energy to leave, and maybe end up leaving anyway under worse conditions.\n- I’ve had an emotional affair during this dead period of the marriage (no physical cheating, but still something I’m ashamed of). I'm not interested in persuing that further, but I can't keep secrets with someone if I'm going to be committed to staying. The thought of disclosing that in this environment honestly terrifies me, and keeping it secret if we reconcile feels like it would rot me from the inside. \n\nAnd then there’s our son. I hate the idea of being a divorced dad at 33 and only seeing him part of the week. I hate that he’ll miss me and I’ll miss him. But I also hate that he’s already seen headbutting and heard screaming.\n\nI grew up after age 7 without my dad being there, so I have som idea of what inconsistency feels like. She grew up with a violent, terrifying father; I can see how that trauma plays into all of this. Part of me wants to stay just so he has both parents under one roof. All the things we do together, the bedtime routines, playing outside... Another part of me thinks staying means he’ll absorb “love = fear + cruelty,” the same way she absorbed it.\n\n### The good stuff that makes me doubt myself\n\nAs I have been careful to show, She's not evil.. She:\n\n- Keeps me grounded and organized in life.\n- Takes care of the home and our son incredibly well in many ways.\n- Has been trying hard in therapy, journaling, self-help, and now appears committed to real change and is finally seeing my pain without centering it on herself.\n\nWhen I focus on that, I feel like the world’s most ungrateful asshole for leaving this rare, wonderful person who does so much for our family with zero direction or expectation for her to do so.\n\nWhen I focus on the cruelty, the fear, the numbness, the 1,000 days of pattern evidence, I feel very motivated to leave, heal, experience peace. \n\nI oscillate hourly between:\n\n- “I’m done, I have to get out, this is killing me,”  \nand  \n- “She does so much, she’s finally trying, maybe I should stay for my son. Just one more chance.”\n\nSo I've spent enough time revising this post and it's already too long. \n\n### What I’m asking\n\nI’m consulting a lawyer and starting to plan a separation. I'll be broke, but free if I move forward. I’m also in therapy. I know no one can make the decision for me, but I guess I just want an outside read from people who don’t know either of us:\n\n- Given everything I’ve described, does leaving still sound like the sane/ethical choice, even though she’s now apologizing and trying?\n- Am I missing something obvious because I’m so deep in this?\n- For those who’ve left similar relationships: did you also feel guilty for abandoning someone who *finally* seemed to “get it” right as you walked away?\n- For those who stayed and it actually got better: what was different in your situation?\n\nI’m not looking to trash her. I honestly hope she heals for her own sake and for our son. I just don’t know if *I* can heal or be the dad I want to be while staying married to her.\n\nAny perspective is appreciated.\n","offTopic":false},{"id":"effb4c5d-99e7-4d85-aac5-433948fbacf6","excerpt":"Need advice on struggling marriage — Throwaway account. Apologies in advance for the wall of text.\n\nHey there; I (29M) have been going through a pretty rough patch with my wife (25F). For context, we’ve been married approximately 2 years, but have known each other around 7 years, and have dated for just over 4+ years. ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/Marriage/comments/1qbhwy3/need_advice_on_struggling_marriage/","role":"pain","weight":1.4138305,"occurredAt":"2026-01-13T04:33:04.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"Marriage","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.6816776,"sentiment":-0.54545456,"confidence":0.84072626,"matchedPatterns":["i_hate","frustrating","missing_feature"],"statement":"I hate inconveniences that are in my control, and can be avoided by just an ounce of thought.","title":"Need advice on struggling marriage","body":"Throwaway account. Apologies in advance for the wall of text.\n\nHey there; I (29M) have been going through a pretty rough patch with my wife (25F). For context, we’ve been married approximately 2 years, but have known each other around 7 years, and have dated for just over 4+ years. No kids. Share a home together. Both have steady jobs - I’m in year 6 of being a police officer, and she’s currently in accounting for a real estate investment company, albeit she hates it and is looking for work elsewhere.\n\nBefore I dive into it, I want to say she’s a wonderful, caring person. She’s cheerful, optimistic, energetic, extroverted, caring, and sweet. She always prioritizes me, and I appreciate how much she loves me.\n\nOn the other end of the spectrum, I’m more of the reserved/quiet, realistic/pessimistic, introverted, “logical” type. If there’s a problem, most times I’ll give a solution, not sympathy. My sympathy does not run very deep if one’s problems are self-inflicted. I always aim to be a good person who’s there for others, but my patience is often times very thin off duty. If there’s an easier way to go about things, I’m all for it. My philosophy is life is chaotic and complicated enough - I try to make things, when feasible, as easy and simple as possible. I hate inconveniences that are in my control, and can be avoided by just an ounce of thought.\n\nFor more, potentially relevant, context - like I mentioned before, I’ve been a police officer for one of the country’s largest departments ever since graduating college. It has been the greatest experience of my life and has taught me countless invaluable lessons, with the most pertinent being to be grateful for what I have (e.g. family, friends, health, opportunities). With that though, has come a lot of stress. And although I personally feel like I handle it well, as I keep active at the gym, maintain my relationships with friends and family, and have always enjoyed the work I do, I know that at times it can weigh on me subconsciously.\n\nI wholeheartedly admit I’m nowhere near perfect. Again, like I mentioned, I have a shorter patience with her, most likely due to my having to deal with the worst people at work. My job revolves around being a mediator, problem solving for literal mouth breathers, essentially baby sitting full grown adults, and having to be cordial with criminals that have no respect for others. As enjoyable as it is in the moment, it can be draining. And I don’t seek sympathy, I just seek a little bit of understanding that my bad days often have, objectively, a little more depth to them than just a bad day at the office.\n\nLong story short, I do love my wife; but to say she doesn’t get on my nerves (and more often than not), would be an outright lie. She has the capacity to frustrate me like no other, and I feel like it boils down to her, from my perspective, total lack of common sense, and a subsequent disconnect in our personality types. It personally feels like I’m in a relationship with a child - someone who questions everything I do at nearly every turn. I hate having to spell things out, especially when it revolves around something so mind-numbingly simple or outright unnecessary. And when I voice said frustrations, she gets defensive. Simply put, her sensitivity is killing me. And while I want to vomit all the backstory and in-depth explanation of our circumstance, I’d rather just give examples that come to mind that highlight our inability to see eye to eye.\n\n1. **She questions me, and gets mad when I either ignore it or tell her to figure it out on her own**. If we’re walking out of the house to go drive to the gym together, as she’s walking to car A, and I (the driver) am walking to car B, she’ll stop at the passenger side of car A, watch me open the driver door of car B, and say two things: say “I didn’t know we’re taking car B”, and “why didn’t you tell me we’re taking car B?” And when I tell her that I don’t think this is something I have to spell out, as it’s clearly implied which car I’m taking, she tells me, “I’d just prefer if you could tell me, and it’s not a big deal to tell me.”\n\nAnother instance was we were already having a disagreement while driving another day, however I parked at the mall to go to a coffee shop with her. As I park, open my door, and am literally stepping out, she asks (whilst also opening the door to get out), “are you going to come with me?” I close the door, and start walking towards the coffee shop, not paying it any mind, and she follows it up with, “why did you ignore me?” When I tell her that clearly I’m going with her, as evidenced by my getting out of the car and walking, she harps on “well you can at least tell me.” And I get it to a certain extent - being ignored is not necessarily a nice feeling; however, I firmly believe I shouldn’t have to answer a question that you quite literally know the answer to. She’s the type that would get upset if I didn’t verbally verify with her that 2+2=4.\n\nFrom “why didn’t you tell me you’re going to the restroom” to “where are you going” when I’m stepping out of the bedroom to grab water before I sleep, it’s always a question. When we’re watching a show or movie, she’ll ask me questions and expect me to have an answer, when I’m just as in the dark as her. I hate having to feel like an encyclopedia or like I’m always in some type of trivial interrogation. And when I express that I don’t find peace in all these questions being directed at me, she responds with “it’s not a big deal, I don’t understand why you get so frustrated by it.”\n\n2. **She focuses on my tone, and not the content of my criticisms. She hates** ***how*** **I’ll say something, but completely ignores** ***what*** **I’m saying**. If I’m calling her out on something that really frustrates me, and it escalates to the point where I’m raising my voice in a firm or annoyed/exacerbated manner, she’ll become defensive and say “you shouldn’t talk to me like that” or “why are you getting so frustrated, it’s not that serious.” This inevitably frustrates me even more, causing us to enter this endless vicious cycle of not understanding where either one comes from. Every single argument we’ve had, she cares more about my delivery and tone of voice, and not that she’s in the wrong. It’s “how can you speak to your partner like that” without understanding that it my anger and frustration doesn’t just fall out of the sky. She always accuses me of secretly enjoying fighting, even when I affirm that I don’t wake up with the intention to have an argument. I hate them just as much as anyone else would.\n\n3. **When she apologizes for something she expects me to just do a 180° and be completely fine and no longer annoyed**, but when I apologize for an argument, she accepts it, but will pessimistically say “I appreciate that you try to make up, but we’re just going to have another argument in the future.” A week ago we had a heated conversation about my request for her to be a little more cognizant about our meals. In short, I don’t think it’s completely fair for me to always be the one to ask her what she wants for a meal, and to subsequently either pick it up, or make it at home. I’m aware we’re both tired after work, but I’m the one doing the grocery shopping, and it rubbed me wrong way that she virtually never took the initiative to provide for me in the same manner that I have always done, and will continue to do for her. Luckily we came to an agreement and I wanted to hug it out, but she had the bright idea of ending our conversation with “I bet you $10 we’re just going to get into another argument, probably tomorrow.”\n\n4. **She justifies her selfish sensitivity with “it’s just who I am as a person.”** Last Thursday I found out through my mother that my father definitively has prostate cancer. Nothing immediately serious, as they want to run more tests with results coming in approximately 4 weeks, but obviously jarring to hear from my perspective. I presume my mother didn’t want to tell my wife as to not worry her, and because she wouldn’t have any answers as to what the next steps are for the next month (leave alone, surgery, radiation therapy, etc.). Fast forward one and a half days, I tell my wife at bedtime, “Hey not to worry you, but dad has prostate cancer, and although I don’t think it’s anything too serious, we won’t know the course of action for another month due to tests being done.” Of course she’s immediately taken aback, but that quickly turns into, “How come mom didn’t tell me, and why would she just tell you?” I’m honestly a little disgusted by this and remind her, “This isn’t about you. Don’t turn this into something it’s not. Point is I’m telling you now, and I presume it’s because mom didn’t want you to worry (i.e. my reasoning mentioned above).” She fixated on how “she’s not mad that she wasn’t told immediately, but rather confused.” And when I go back and forth with her for about 30 minutes about how she shouldn’t feel confused or upset, she says “well that’s just who I am as person” as a catch-all excuse for anything she says, feels, or does.\n\nAt the end of it all, I presume she just often thinks I’m an asshole with no patience, but on my end it’s a direct result of her, for lack of a better word, situational incompetence. And it’s really unfortunate. She’s academically very smart - dean’s list, summa cum laude, master’s degree, etc. Her ditziness just snowballs trivial things into massive disagreements, and I don’t know what the solution is.\n\nObviously she recommends marriage counseling/therapy, but I wanted to get a more informal response here first. Thank you for any insight.\n\n**\\*TLDR\\* My wife is very sensitive and, in my opinion, lacks a lot of common sense. She hates how impatient I am and how frustrated I get with her. Trying to bridge our incompatibilities towards a healthier and happier future.**","offTopic":false},{"id":"9fa66bbc-2c5c-47d8-a832-9531a891fc46","excerpt":"My (48M) wife (45F) have been married 25 years. Valentine cards infuriated me so much this year. — I posted an update\n\nTLDR : My wife and I have been married for 25 years. She doesn’t have the time or energy for us right now.\n\nI am going to start by apologizing for this long post. I just don’t have anyone else to talk ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/1r43v47/my_48m_wife_45f_have_been_married_25_years/","role":"demand","weight":1.3013073,"occurredAt":"2026-02-13T22:55:51.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"relationship_advice","intent":"alternative_search","painScore":0.38436946,"sentiment":0.68115944,"confidence":0.94,"matchedPatterns":["frustrating","switching_from","missing_feature"],"statement":"Moving from our rural home to a house 5 minutes from work.","title":"My (48M) wife (45F) have been married 25 years. Valentine cards infuriated me so much this year.","body":"I posted an update\n\nTLDR : My wife and I have been married for 25 years. She doesn’t have the time or energy for us right now.\n\nI am going to start by apologizing for this long post. I just don’t have anyone else to talk to about this other than my wife. I made a rule for myself early in my marriage. Don’t talk negatively to friends about your spouse. Your friends will always be biased, pile on, and just make things worse. My wife and I have great communication. Everything I am saying here I have said to her.\n\nI always try to find a card that really fits our relationship. It often takes multiple stores and 25-50 cards before I find one that at least is somewhat appropriate. This year sucked. After three stores I wanted to start ripping the cards in half.\n\nThe past two years of our marriage have been the most difficult we have faced. She got her dream job an hour drive each way, her mother passed, and she has been dealing with women’s health issues that, due to lack of investment in women’s health research, are treated using trial and error (primarily error in her case). The exhaustion from her health issues combined with stress, and work pressure means no energy left for us and there is no sex. I could survive without the sex but the lack of any affection is taking its toll. She knows we need therapy but just doesn’t have the time or energy right now (understandably). Unless she gave up her dream job it just wouldn’t be realistic. I won’t let that happen she is so smart and talented and this is the first time someone has truly seen how valuable she is. We do have a plan. We are simplifying our lives. Moving from our rural home to a house 5 minutes from work. Getting rid of side gigs, and hiring a house cleaner once we move. We are also going to continue to try treatments for her health issues. We already bought the house but had to rent it out until our day finished her senior year in May. By the time the renovations are done I am looking at 12 months of feeling like I am right now.\n\nHas anyone been in a similar situation that can offer advice? She knows how much I am struggling. I have said it is bad enough that I would eventually want a divorce but that we would get to the other side of this and go to therapy before I would do something that drastic.\n\nEdit : I wrote my own card.\n\n“These past two years have been such a challenge. You know I have been struggling. The hardest emotion to deal with is fear. Fear of losing such an amazing woman. You are loyal, honest, smart, talented, and when I look at you I am filled with a lust so intense I physically ache to touch you. The best way I have found to deal with fear is to look at the reality of our love. Not the reality of this moment, but rather the reality of “us”. If you love me even half and much as I love you…. If your desire for growing old together is half what mine is, our love will live on beyond the days we have left on earth. I don’t say this to diminish your love for me or your desire for our future, but to let you know that my love for you is so deep that even by itself it is almost enough.”\n\nEdit 2 : thanks for the advice before I write in pen on my new card I want to get some opinions on my revision. I focused too much on me. The thing I miss most is out emotional intimacy is what I miss most. I didn’t intend for my mention of lust to make it seem like that was my primary concern mostly wanted her to know that even 25 later she is my definition of what sexy is. The thing I disliked the most was the way my wording seemed to dismiss her love and commitment. Well here it is let me know what you think.\n\n“As you know these past two years have been a challenging as a couple. On top of that you have been fighting a frustrating battle of trial and error with your health. I can’t begin to imagine your frustration. You are the most amazing woman. Your honesty, loyalty, intelligence, and talent, combined with you being my definition of beautiful makes my heart skip a beat every time you walk in a room. What gets me through the fear of us growing apart is remembering the reality of “us”. Not the reality of this moment, but the reality of our love. I know that you love me every bit as much as I love you. When we get to the other side of this, even if everything is not solves we will be okay. The things we have overcome have always led to something stronger on the other side. You mentioned reading an article that said every relationship goes through seasons, and even though this one is difficult I don’t just want to us endure it. I want us to enjoy it. There is still joy. Enjoy our dinners out, seeing a play together, because even though this season is difficult it is still a season i get to spend with you.”","offTopic":false},{"id":"b65e080e-5677-4690-b7f9-f81339fa6eb3","excerpt":"Long-term relationship (F26) is starting to feel exhausting, and I (M28) don’t know how to approach it — Throwaway because I don’t want this linked back to me.\n\nI’ve been with my girlfriend for several years, most of it long-distance. We’re now getting to the point where we’re seriously talking about eventually living ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/1vuws00/longterm_relationship_f26_is_starting_to_feel/","role":"pain","weight":1.2225317,"occurredAt":"2026-08-21T23:57:04.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"relationship_advice","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.51,"sentiment":0.014925373,"confidence":0.8096236,"matchedPatterns":["i_hate","terrible","frustrating"],"statement":"I’m extremely patient and I hate confrontation.","title":"Long-term relationship (F26) is starting to feel exhausting, and I (M28) don’t know how to approach it","body":"Throwaway because I don’t want this linked back to me.\n\nI’ve been with my girlfriend for several years, most of it long-distance. We’re now getting to the point where we’re seriously talking about eventually living together, and spending a long period together recently has made me look at the relationship very differently.\n\nI love her. She’s genuinely a good person and there are plenty of things I love about her. This isn’t a “my girlfriend is horrible” post. But I’m getting increasingly exhausted by our dynamic and I’m not sure how much of this is normal relationship stuff vs things I actually need to address.\n\nThe biggest issue is that I feel like **I’m responsible for everything**.\n\nIf something goes wrong, I often feel like I’m supposed to have noticed it, prevented it, or fixed it. Sometimes she’ll ask me to do something and I’ll literally be in the process of doing it, but she’ll get annoyed that I haven’t already done it. Other times she’ll make a decision herself and, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll somehow be told that I should have paid more attention.\n\nThey’re tiny things individually, but they add up.  \nI’ve actually told her recently that I feel like the responsibility for everything falls on me and that I haven’t felt relaxed during our time together because I’m constantly solving things and helping with things. Her response was basically that she needs me to pay more attention.\n\nThat really got to me because **I already feel like I’m paying attention to everything.**\n\nShe’s also neurodivergent and I’m not. I understand that we communicate differently and that some things are genuinely harder for her. I don’t want to use that against her, but I also don’t want to end up taking responsibility for everything because of it.\n\nShe’s quite quiet and reserved while I’m much more talkative and social. When we’re around people, I often feel like I’m doing most of the communicating. If we’re somewhere unfamiliar, I can end up handling most of the practical stuff too.\n\nI’m worried that if we eventually live together, I’ll become her bridge to everything instead of her partner.\n\nAnother thing that’s really started bothering me is **initiative**.  \nI’m quite proactive. If she’s carrying something, I’ll notice. If something needs doing, I’ll generally just do it. If she’s struggling, I tend to notice and help without being asked. I don’t feel that same instinct from her.\n\nThere have been several situations where I’ve been carrying a bunch of things or dealing with some practical problem and she’ll just stand there. One time I accidentally dropped something of mine while trying to kiss her and she got annoyed about it instead of helping me pick it up.\n\nI know these sound like ridiculously small things, but eventually you start thinking:  \n*“If I would instinctively help you, why don’t you instinctively help me?”*\n\nCommunication is another big one.\n\nShe sometimes sighs or rolls her eyes when I interrupt her because I want to tell her something, or if I suggest changing plans.\n\nIt has got to the point where I sometimes feel like **I have to fight to be worth her attention**.\n\nI don’t expect her to drop everything whenever I speak, but I don’t want to feel like talking to my own girlfriend is an inconvenience.\n\nShe can also react quite strongly to small problems. There have been situations where something minor goes wrong, she gets angry, raises her voice or walks away, and then later apologizes. I appreciate the apologies, but the cycle itself is tiring.\n\nWe’re also very different in everyday life.  \nI’m very clean, organized and minimalist. She’s much more relaxed about mess and clutter. I’ve talked to her about things that bother me and she’s made improvements, but I often feel like things eventually drift back.\n\nWe’re also quite different with money. She’s much more of a spender and hasn’t historically saved much. I’ve sometimes paid for things and then waited quite a while to get her share back.\n\nWe’re getting closer to potentially sharing a home, so these things worry me much more now than they would have a few years ago.\n\nThen there’s the really big one:  \n**I want children and she doesn’t.**\n\nShe’s extremely uncomfortable with pregnancy and doesn’t want to go through it. We’ve discussed alternatives, but ultimately I don’t know how you compromise on something like having children.  \nThat’s something we’re going to have to seriously address before making any major life decisions.\n\nI’ve also been questioning our affection.  \nWe’ve spent long periods apart, and when we finally get to be together I sometimes don’t feel the amount of excitement, physical affection or closeness I’d expect.\n\nPeople close to me have actually noticed this too. They’ve commented that they don’t see much spontaneous affection between us.  \nI know she loves me. I’m not questioning that.  \nBut I don’t always **feel loved in the way I need to feel loved.** That’s starting to matter.\n\nOur current time together has really brought all of this out. We’ve spent huge amounts of time doing things she wanted to do, including shopping, which I absolutely hate after a certain point.\n\nOne day I was completely overwhelmed after hours of it but kept going because I wanted her to have a good time.  \nAnother day I eventually told her I was tired and wanted to go home and do something we both actually enjoy. She got upset. Later she became very upset herself about something completely different, and suddenly that became the focus.\n\nI remember thinking:  \n*“I just told you that I’m overwhelmed too. Why does my problem disappear as soon as yours becomes bigger?”*\n\nThat feeling has stuck with me.\n\nThere are also cultural/family differences that worry me:\n\nI’m very family-oriented and my family is a huge part of my life. She’s much more independent and private.  \nWhen she’s around my family, she’s often very quiet unless someone talks directly to her. Everyone is welcoming to her, but I don’t always see her making much effort to engage.\n\nI understand that social situations can be difficult for her and I don’t expect her to become an extrovert.  \nBut if we’re eventually building a life together, I need her to be able to participate in it rather than me constantly handling the social side of everything.  \nMy family has also noticed that she doesn’t always seem to take initiative or acknowledge when people do things for her. \n\nFor example, while she’s staying with us, a family member has been doing a lot of practical things for her without being asked, and apparently she hasn’t really acknowledged or thanked them.\n\nThat bothers me because gratitude and initiative are quite important to me.\n\nAnd I know I’ve contributed to all of this.  \nI’m extremely patient and I hate confrontation.  \nI’ve spent years swallowing things because I didn’t want to create arguments. I’ve probably taught her that I’ll always accommodate things.\n\nNow I’m resentful about things I previously tolerated.  \nSo I don’t want to just blame her. Maybe I’ve over-functioned for years. Maybe I’ve done too much for her and then become resentful because she expects it. Maybe some of the things I’m noticing are normal differences that I’ve become hyper-aware of because I’m already frustrated. But I’m increasingly worried about the future.\n\nI don’t want to become her caretaker - I want to be her partner. I also don’t want her to feel like she’s sacrificing her entire life for me and therefore I owe her everything forever. If we’re going to build a life together, I want it to feel like something we’re **both choosing**, not something one person sacrifices and the other has to compensate for.\n\nThe thing that scares me most is that **I don’t feel relaxed around her anymore. I** still love her. I still see all the good in her. I still want things to work.\n\nBut I’m starting to realize that love isn’t necessarily enough if the day-to-day dynamic leaves one person exhausted, so I’m trying to figure out what I need to address **before we ever move in together**.\n\nFor people who’ve been through something similar:\n\nHow did you distinguish normal differences from problems that actually needed to change?\n\nWhat boundaries did you establish before moving in together?\n\nHow do you stop being overly accommodating without suddenly turning every conversation into a list of your partner’s faults?\n\nFor people in relationships involving neurodivergence, how did you balance accommodation with making sure responsibility remained shared?\n\nAnd for people who went from long-distance to living together, what did you wish you’d discussed beforehand?\n\nI’m genuinely interested in hearing where **I’m contributing to this too**, because I don’t want this to just become a validation exercise. I want to understand what I’m doing wrong as well.","offTopic":false},{"id":"fb1c4c13-73e1-4569-a53d-3d396bccfe6e","excerpt":"My current relationship — Yesterday I gave him a ride to work and then tried to go about my day as normally as I could. I went to get my student ID for college but couldn’t figure out how to get into the actual building, even with my directions, so I ended up leaving. I went to my dad’s to rest my head and see my cats,","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/ToxicRelationships/comments/1vui27t/my_current_relationship/","role":"pain","weight":1.199863,"occurredAt":"2026-08-21T14:33:36.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"ToxicRelationships","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.48200092,"sentiment":0.34653464,"confidence":0.8096236,"matchedPatterns":["i_hate","terrible","frustrating","missing_feature"],"statement":"She said he has a lack of accountability and respect and that he’s very similar to his dad.","title":"My current relationship","body":"Yesterday I gave him a ride to work and then tried to go about my day as normally as I could. I went to get my student ID for college but couldn’t figure out how to get into the actual building, even with my directions, so I ended up leaving. I went to my dad’s to rest my head and see my cats, but sleeping was hard because I kept having dreams, so I eventually woke up and went to Phil’s house. His mom and sister were home, and I ended up talking to his mom. She asked if I was okay, and I basically told her everything—how upset I’ve been, how I feel about everything that’s happened, how Phil has been treating me, but also how I’ve been acting because I know not all of the blame can be put on one person. She actually gave me a lot of insight into him because obviously she knows him better than anyone. She said Phil carries a lot of guilt and anger from things he’s done and that she thinks that’s part of why he drinks and does drugs. She said things have gotten to the point where she doesn’t even really address certain things with him anymore because of how he reacts when people try to help him or give him advice. She said he has a lack of accountability and respect and that he’s very similar to his dad. I told her I’m my father’s daughter too, so I completely understand what she meant lol. She basically said Big Phil is the OG and knows how to be a functioning alcoholic, whereas Lil Phil doesn’t, and that he seems to be happier being numb than actually dealing with what’s going on inside of him.  \nAnd honestly, talking to her helped me understand him a little more. I told her that I think Phil gets offended by the things I say, but I’m genuinely not trying to attack him. I want to be there for him. I want to understand him and talk through things with him, but he doesn’t listen to me and instead gets mean with me or blames me for things that are ultimately his own actions and his own responsibility. After talking to his mom, I had written this really long message in my notes that I was going to text him, but I already knew he probably wouldn’t read it. So when I went to his job, I literally told him, “We’re not leaving this parking spot until you read this.” He asked if he could read it later, and I said no because I needed him to read it right then. I told him what I wrote was going to determine how we move forward from here. I know that probably sounds intense, but I felt like I had been talking and talking and wasn’t actually being heard, and I needed him to sit there and actually listen to me for once. “Here I am, cleaning and trying to occupy my mind, and I’m really starting to realize the ways I went wrong. I genuinely didn’t understand before how some of the ways I treated you or reacted to things affected you so deeply, and knowing that now makes me feel terrible. I hate knowing that I’ve hurt the man I love so much, and from the bottom of my heart, I am truly sorry. I know saying “I’m sorry” over and over doesn’t erase anything, and I don’t expect it to. I just wish I had been in a better state of mind and had the ability to respond differently instead of reacting the ways I did, both to things that happened in the past and to things that have happened more recently. I really want another chance to do this differently. I want to make things right, not just by saying that I’ll change, but by actually making conscious efforts to communicate better, respond better, and treat you with the love and respect you deserve. I love you so much, and I genuinely hope you feel the same way about wanting to work through this because I know this is not where either of us wants our relationship to be. I’m sorry for continuing to bring up things from the past, even when months or years have passed. I’m sorry for the ways I’ve talked down to you, including the things I’ve said about your drinking. I recognize that there are things I could have handled so much better, and I take responsibility for that. I would really love for us to sit down and have a genuine conversation with each other like we used to. Not to argue, blame each other, or keep score, but to actually listen to one another and find some common ground. I want us to understand each other better and figure out how we can both make changes so neither of us feels disrespected, unheard, left out, or like we have to walk on eggshells around each other. Babe, I love you so much. I really do. In any lifetime, if I had the opportunity to find you and be with you again, I would choose you every single time. I love you through the good, the bad, and the ugly.  \nYou’ve been there for me in ways I’ll never forget. You’ve helped pull me out of some of the darkest places I’ve been in, encouraged me to take my mental health seriously, and pushed me to become a better version of myself. I will always be grateful for that. I don’t want us to throw away everything we’ve built because of this difficult chapter. I want us to learn from it, grow from it, and find our way back to each other. I’m truly sorry for the ways I’ve hurt you, and I hope you can forgive me. More than anything, I hope we can both choose to do better not just for each other, but for ourselves and for the relationship we both love.” His respond to that was aww babe that’s so thoughtful and nice. Thank you. And then I told Him About a letter I was going  \nTo give him before our anniversary because it just needed to be said but I sat there reading it to him myself. And that letter is as followed “Before I give you the letter I wrote for our anniversary, there is something else I need you to read. I don’t want this to take away from our anniversary or from everything I love about you and everything we’ve built together. I’m writing this because I love you, because I care about us, and because I don’t want to keep carrying certain feelings inside of me without explaining them properly. I need you to understand something about me: when I bring up things that happened months ago or even a year ago, it isn’t because I want to punish you or because I want to constantly hold your mistakes over your head. It’s because some things hurt me deeply, and I don’t feel like hurt automatically disappears just because time has passed. I know that from your perspective, it may feel like, “Why are we still talking about this?” I understand why that would frustrate you. But from my perspective, sometimes it feels like I’m being asked to move on simply because enough time has passed, rather than because the hurt has actually been resolved.  \nI don’t want to live in the past. I don’t want to constantly bring up old arguments. I don’t want our relationship to be defined by mistakes you’ve made. But I also can’t pretend that certain things didn’t change the way I see things or the way I experience certain situations now. And when I bring something up that hurt me and you become frustrated with me for still being hurt, it makes me feel even more unheard. Sometimes I don’t need you to defend yourself or explain why I shouldn’t feel the way I feel. I need you to understand why I feel that way in the first place. There’s also something I need to be honest about when it comes to social media. Seeing you follow women who post very sexualized pictures, like those pictures, and especially leave comments like “Fireeeee 🔥” or “Her” on those kinds of posts makes me uncomfortable and hurts my feelings. I’m not saying you’re not allowed to find other women attractive. I’m not naive enough to think that being in a relationship means you suddenly stop noticing attractive people.  \nWhat bothers me is the active participation. There is a difference between seeing someone attractive and choosing to publicly engage with them in a way that can come across as flirtatious or sexually interested. When you’re in a committed relationship, I believe there are certain things that should naturally change out of respect for the person you’re with. And I need you to understand that this isn’t about me thinking I’m prettier than these women or trying to compete with them. I don’t want to compare myself to anybody. I don’t want to wonder whether I’m enough. I want to feel like the man I’m with understands that some things simply aren’t appropriate to me within a relationship. What makes it harder is when these things happen alongside the way you sometimes treat me when you’re angry. I understand that you’re going to get frustrated with me sometimes. I understand that we’re going to argue. I understand that I can frustrate you too. I’m not asking for a relationship where we never disagree. What I am asking for is respect even when we’re angry. I don’t want the person I love to become someone who intentionally says or does things because he knows they will hurt me. I don’t want anger to become an excuse for cruelty, disrespect, shutting me down, or making me feel like I’m suddenly your enemy. You are allowed to be angry with me. You are allowed to need space. You are allowed to tell me that something I’m doing is upsetting you. But I need to be able to disagree with you, bring up something that hurt me, or express my feelings without feeling like I’m going to be punished for doing so. I also want to take responsibility for my side of this. I know I’m not perfect. I know I have my own reactions, my own mistakes, and things I need to work on. I’m not asking you to change while I stay exactly the same. I want to continue becoming better for myself and for us too. But I need that same effort from you. I don’t need perfection from you. I need accountability. I don’t need you to never make mistakes. I need you to care when your mistakes hurt me. I don’t need you to agree with every feeling I have. I need you to respect that my feelings are real. And I don’t need you to erase everything that happened in the past. I need us to actually heal from it so that I don’t feel like I’m carrying it alone. I love you. That’s exactly why I’m telling you all of this instead of keeping it inside until I become resentful. I believe in us, and I believe what we have is worth fighting for. But fighting for our relationship can’t mean fighting against each other. I want us to be on the same side.  \nI want to feel safe bringing things to you. I want to trust that when something hurts me, you won’t just become frustrated that I’m hurt. I want to know that you’ll care enough to understand why.  \nAnd most importantly, I want your actions to eventually give me the peace that my words are currently asking you for.  \nI’m not reading you this because I want to start another fight. I’m giving it to you because I want you to understand my heart before we continue moving forward together. I love you deeply. I don’t want perfection from you, and I don’t expect perfection from myself. I just want us to love each other in a way that makes both of us feel respected, heard, secure, and valued. I hope you can understand this not as an attack, but as me finally putting into words what I’ve been struggling to explain. I love you, and I want us to be better not just because I want a better relationship, but because I want us to be better for each other.” I then told him that I’ve had men put their hands on me. I’ve had men pack all of my things into trash bags and put me out of their homes. I’ve had the father of my miscarried child drop me off at home with all of my things and my cats because he decided he didn’t want me anymore. I’ve had to leave a relationship with nothing but a backpack and whatever I could fit inside of it. So this stunt you pulled to boost your ego or your pride is not worth the shit that falls out of my ass. I also told him exactly what was going to happen. I said, “All of my things are still in bags in the closet. When the laundry is done, you’re going to take my things out of those bags and put them back where they belong.” I told him I knew he wasn’t finished talking shit because of the way he was still speaking to me after his little stunt, but","offTopic":false},{"id":"e7ae5d21-0178-4f62-a7cf-aa60c66f1f34","excerpt":"As of yesterday, my 20 year will likely begin its end — I typically lurk, but I guess I wanna pause from crying alone in my lab at work. I met the love of my life in Oct 2005, the summer song that year was Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” In less than a month, we were madly in love. We were the perfect couple; peopl","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/BoyDinnerDiaries/comments/1uh2ugf/as_of_yesterday_my_20_year_will_likely_begin_its/","role":"request","weight":1.1938,"occurredAt":"2026-06-27T13:30:26.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"BoyDinnerDiaries","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.27,"sentiment":0.7183099,"confidence":0.94,"matchedPatterns":["why_doesnt","frustrating","praise"],"statement":"There is blame on both sides, I can forgive and forget, why can't she?","title":"As of yesterday, my 20 year will likely begin its end","body":"I typically lurk, but I guess I wanna pause from crying alone in my lab at work. I met the love of my life in Oct 2005, the summer song that year was Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” In less than a month, we were madly in love. We were the perfect couple; people wanted to be us since forever. Our love was motherfucking indestructible, bulletproof. Long sigh. April 2006, we were married; and we weren’t kids, I at 28, she was 32. Our song: Norah Jones’ cover of Elvis’ “Love Me Tender” Still, the sweetest day of my life, the biggest complaint was we were only able to get about 3 slices of leftover cake, which was amazing AND affordable. Truly the sweetest day, it was all sugar.\n\n20 years, 3 beautiful kids, and 4 states later, here we are. It wasn’t fairy-tale, but it was still amazing. However, several years of biting my tongue and not speaking up at displeasure took its toll; and turned into resentment. I guess I was hoping time would make me forgive; instead, it accrued interest. If there’s any good to come of this, boys; if you truly love someone, fight. The details are unnecessary, we tried to work it out, but there’s just too much anger, too many tears, too much pain. And while she thinks there is a way back, I’m unwilling to follow that path; because it completely goes against how I believe spouses can resolve their issues. I simply will not continue, and it’s killing me. Many will likely not understand and may even blame me; that’s fine.\n\nI’ve only known this woman’s face when I wake up; she is still the light of my life. Beautiful, if you read this, I’m so sorry. Kids, I’m so sorry. As a man proud of my faith, I feel so abandoned. God, how does our broken marriage glorify you? Either way, I’m sorry. And resume ugly crying. If my coworkers come in to give me work, it’s gonna be an awkward interaction, sorry to you too. I know I will only get out of bed because my kids need me to, cause I sure as hell don’t want to. Brothers of Reddit, if you can spare a kind word, I’d really appreciate it; because this is truly my darkest hour.\n\n\\*ThisBoy’sDinner: House fried rice w/shrimp, chicken, and bbq pork.\n\n\\*\\*my life may be falling apart, but I still gotta keep up my humble food-pic game, right?\n\n\\[Update\\]\n\n\\*\\*\\* To those who were kind: I am truly grateful, thank you\n\n\\*\\*\\*\\* I suppose some details should be put out there since I've been frustrated by Reddit posts sometimes, so here goes. That said, I was an emotional wreck 2 hours ago, sorry\n\n1. There's no infidelity involved, in 20 years, life gets tougher, bills get larger, and we've both dealt with serious professional setbacks in the last year. Somewhere along the way, during our arguments, she was quicker to be disrespectful and would curse at me. Both of us know better. On my end, I honestly don't know where, but she's voiced that I would ignore her, and be dismissive, leading to her \"not feeling seen\" and with the beatdowns of life, I suppose this has amplified.\n2. Yesterday, we're talking it out, counseling, individual and couples? Sure, I say, but this stuff ain't cheap, but we'll make it happen. I tell her, I know this will take time, but there was a time when we gave each other chances, the benefit of infinite doubt, I can do that, and forgive right now; can't we love each other and give the same grace we did 19 years ago. \"I'm sorry, she says, there's just too much water under the bridge, I'm too hurt.\" To me, it kinda sounds like I'm angry and I'm not over it. There is blame on both sides, I can forgive and forget, why can't she? I'm sorry, please forgive me, I'll never do it again. That ain't enough now? That's a huge problem for me. If it gets worked out in therapy, sure, great; but it stings that it's necessary. It ain't a problem for me.\n\n....so we're in bed, it sounds like we've got a plan, and it looks like I'm about to get the love of my life back, whom I've felt distant from the past 6 months. And we're on a path to 2006 all over again, praise God! So, I'm craving affection, I love this woman so much, so I start lightly stroking her thigh, and then, \"Baby, I don't wanna do anything, I don't want to confuse the issue...\" CONFUSE THE ISSUE? We've just said we love each other seconds before, and our sex-life is actually one of the strongest parts of our marriage, and we don't want to use one of the rare tools that very effectively brings us together emotionally? So now I'm feeling a million times more rejected, my touch repulses you now? That was the backbreaker. Why is it playing out this way?\n\nSo, what I'm not willing to do is try to reconcile, AND be denied physical intimacy BECAUSE it'll confuse the issue? The radical forgiving, I understand if she doesn't feel the same, but that? I don't see the reasoning there; while feeling incredibly hurtful. That's just the last cut to bleed me dry.\n\n\\*\\* I was really reluctant to give the details, 'cause I don't want the slightest chance of this somehow coming back to her; I'll be the bad guy all day, err-day to avoid that. That said, I'm finding this therapeutic, and may even print this out and show it to her. So, there it is.\n\n\n\n\\*\\*\\*\\*\\* \\[2nd Update\\] \\*\\*\\*\\*\\*\n\nI showed my wife my post, and I'm glad because my thoughts were organized, so it went way better than me just free styling it. We are in a much better place, and so our marriage WON'T end in the next 48 hours! Yay, thank God! Her first therapy session is sometime in the week, I'm trying to get mine scheduled sometime this week. Some have brought up the point that yes, wanting sex immediately after resolving conflict is a bad move; and that its a celebration instead of a band-aid. Great point. It's just after 20 years, we have used it as a crutch; both of us, and we'd overlook the underlying problem and maybe repeat the same problem sometime later. We just didn't know better, but that's what she maybe(?) realized yesterday, \"Beautiful, why didn't you say that?\" \"I didn't really know how to word it\" \"Oh. ok.\"\n\n\\* Lastly, for those who think my wife cowers under my physical intimidation by the sound of some of these posts, ha! My beautiful bride is a Texas-born, brass knuckles kinda girl. On one of our first dates, my buddy and I had to talk her down when she got heated with a parking lot guy during a misunderstanding. My kids ask her to ask me for stuff 'cause \"He always says no to us, and he NEVER says no to you\" All family knows she call the shots, it definitely ain't me.\n\nI feel like moving forward, our marriage will be even better than before, and I have this experience and your insights to thank for it. Lastly, 8 hours ago, I was at the lowest point of my life, and I asked this subreddit for a kind word. Many of you have shown empathy and beautiful kindness. It doesn't cost anything to be kind. Alternatively, I guess malice is its own reward.","offTopic":false},{"id":"b15af4b5-c69b-46a8-98d5-babcfac73aca","excerpt":"My gf is depressed and doesn't have many life skills. Im struggling to feel loved in the midst of all her problems. — Hey y'all I don't know if anyone remembers the post but roughly a week ago I (24M) came on here talking about my girlfriend Sarah, 25F (fake name) who doesn't have many life skills. We've been together ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/1vqxvlc/my_gf_is_depressed_and_doesnt_have_many_life/","role":"request","weight":1.1867716,"occurredAt":"2026-08-17T16:58:12.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"relationships","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.35243067,"sentiment":0.27586207,"confidence":0.87751013,"matchedPatterns":["wish","how_can_i","i_hate","frustrating","too_expensive","missing_feature","manual_process"],"statement":"It's too expensive out here.","title":"My gf is depressed and doesn't have many life skills. Im struggling to feel loved in the midst of all her problems.","body":"Hey y'all I don't know if anyone remembers the post but roughly a week ago I (24M) came on here talking about my girlfriend Sarah, 25F (fake name) who doesn't have many life skills. We've been together for roughly 1 year. This will be long… sorry. \n\nThe original post was removed (I will copy paste the original post’s contents at the bottom), but I wanted to provide more context, and ask for more advice and generally be more concise with my post as I actually have more time and am slightly more level headed than I was when I wrote my original post. \n\nI had originally just detailed the problems I had within my relationship without mentioning the redeeming qualities about my girlfriend or why I love her. This was mainly a result of me only having 30 minutes to type out my post and because I was damn near having a panic attack and I do have issues with focusing on the bad (I'll get more into this later). I'm also autistic and because of all my emotions and my short time span I just thought “bullet points” and went with it. I was never expecting people to call me condescending for that. \n\nThe first thing I want to address is that my girlfriend hasn't just been mooching off me or relying on me to be the adult in our relationship this entire time. Upon reflection once my poor emotional/mental state had passed, it became more apparent that the issues only became a problem when she moved into my place full time. Sarah is generally a very bubbly person, and while she does tend to crap on herself a lot, she's a very bright light in the lives of many people, often to her own detriment. \n\nWhen we first started dating I was presented with this person whose family didn't treat her the best and despite treating her like a child, often took advantage of her good nature. I empathized with this and hoped that we could help each other feel less used and more loved. \n\nSarah was in college when we met. She was only taking like one or two classes, but generally seemed to have a good idea of what she wanted her future to look like. \n\nI really enjoyed her personality. She used to leave tiny plastic ducks all over my apartment in obscure spots for me to find throughout my day, which always made my day. \n\nSarah has never lived completely alone. When we met, she was living with her dad after an ex cheated on her and she moved out of the apartment she shared with her ex. I'm definitely not one to judge when it comes to living situations. In this day and age, I typically discourage people from moving out of their parents house if their relationship with their parents is good. It's too expensive out here. \n\nThroughout the course of our relationship, there were a few things I learned about her that made me nervous (like how uneducated she is about current world situations, even ones that directly affect her. Or how she doesn't really know how to cook). But it's not like all these things came out in one conversation, so it was something I was able to talk through with her. In general, she has been very sheltered. She grew up middle class in a rural area and has not been exposed to city life very much. I grew up in the hood in poverty and have only just begun to get to a financially stable place in life. \n\nI think it was easy to overlook some of the things that made me nervous because of what I knew about her previous relationship and her life at home, in which she ended up being the only one to clean, she paid rent early and did a lot of managing her household. While living with her dad, she would cook for herself if her dad wasn't cooking. It wasn't anything special, but she fed herself, cleaned, did her hobbies and took her dog on hikes. She wasn't perfect, but it seemed like I was dating a functioning human being. She used to make me banana pudding and even occasionally cooked for me. \n\nWhen I made my original post, I was borderline having a panic attack. I had asked Sarah to pick up 3 packages that I got delivered to our new apartment that we weren't living in full time yet and just put them inside. She didn't do that. She ended up getting there 6 hours after delivery and the packages were gone. I was really excited about the items, one of them was something I've been wanting for a while and partially a surprise for our new bedroom (it's tech related not sex lol). Instead of apologizing and offering to replace the stolen items, she immediately started crapping on herself and then got into how her whole day was shitty. At no point was I really able to feel my own feelings. This is when I came to the realization that things had gone downhill in our relationship.\n\n When we first were getting into the relationship, as usual we stated our intentions, expectations and desires. One of the things I mentioned was that I really wanted a partnership; Two individual people coming together because they want each other. When certain information about her came to light that made me nervous (like her general lack of experience in the city), I expressed my reservations and how I did not want to end up in a situation where I was overly needed and that I want to be wanted, not needed. \n\nWhen she started crapping on herself after realizing the packages got stolen, it hit me hard that we ended up in the exact dynamic I absolutely did not want. \n\nHere's where we get into me and my history. A lot of people in the original post said I have issues with codependency. I took those seriously and refreshed myself on codependency. And while some independent aspects of codependency might have some truth for myself or were true for me at some point in my life, I don't think I struggle with codependency at this stage in my life. Im actually almost the opposite. Over the years I've gotten very averse to people needing me. Im the person that breaks people's hearts (not proud of this, just being truthful). I'm the one that cuts people off without second guessing myself. I have an avoidant attachment style. I found out what it was almost 2 years ago exactly. When I learned about the avoidant attachment style, it was like someone turned a light on in a dark room. It finally made sense why relationships were so hard for me and why id distance myself over the dumbest things. Since finding out that I'm an avoidant, Ive worked \\*really\\* hard at healing the parts of myself that caused this attachment style and also working through it in real time with the people closest to me in life. That being said, I'm not going to fix my attachment style that developed over the course of my entire childhood in 22 months. So my original post was just dripping with my avoidant tendencies. I detailed every little thing I found wrong about our relationship and Sarah in that post. I was panicked enough that all the tools I had learned over the past 2 years to help me work through my avoidance were overridden completely. \n\nAfter a lot of reflection I came to the conclusion that Sarah is likely going through a depressive episode (I realize this statement is like “oh, how could I have ever noticed?” But it was gradual, not all at once. In May she was still crocheting. In June she was still going on hikes with her dog. It wasn't a sudden change, so yes it did take me a second to realize it). This is completely understandable given the circumstances. If you didn't see my original post, I mentioned how I had to ask her to clean and it was never consistent. She was getting overwhelmed by everything and uses gaming as an escape. It had been quite some time since she had put effort into our relationship beyond “we should do x.” The reason? She moved in with me full time because her father made some disgusting sexual remarks towards her. Since then she's remembered more comments he's made throughout her young adult years. I think also being with me has made her realize just how terribly her family has been treating her. Like how I was the only one that told her her dad’s Christmas gift to her was complete bullshit (he gifted her chocolate, which was a replacement for her chocolate that he had eaten like 2 weeks prior). And I was the one who told her it was ridiculous that her family was guilting her for not taking 3 hours out of her day to pick up her niece and nephews from school because her sister in law had cancer. The situation sucked but I told her that she could offer other types of support that didn't involve losing 3+ hours out of her day and driving in the worst of rush hour traffic. Her aunt called her to guilt trip her which I thought was crazy. \n\nI completely understand why she'd be dealing with depression. I haven't even gone over half of the things she's been through this year. \n\nI brought up to her that I thought she was dealing with a depressive episode and described how she doesn't do the things that she loves or really pursues her ambitions anymore. I mentioned some more intense/different types of therapies that others suggested in the comments of the original post, like EMDR therapy amongst others. We got a lot of items for our new apartment meant to help us stay on track. Less eating out, more consistency with chores, divided evenly, more date planning, more independence on her part (A lot of people thought it was weird that I wanted to divide our chores like roommates in the first post and completely misunderstood what I was talking about. No I didn't mean literally live like roommates, just structure chores and cooking more like roommates to give myself a much needed break).\n\nDespite doing all that, I'm still tired. I am so tired of being the dependable one. I have ended many friendships over the past 2 years for being depended on too much, without that same support in return. I'm that person that if I say I'm going to do something, I'll do it. Sarah regularly fails herself and me by saying she will do something and then not doing it. I don't think she has a very good grasp of her own abilities and bandwidth. If she says she'll do x, y and z. She'll probably only do x and part of y, or just x; which I think is hard to handle with my own neurodivergence. I hate the unpredictability of it. I used to live with roommates like that and I was stressed out because I never knew when things would get done. “Acts of service” is my main love language. \n\nI can't remember the last time I felt truly loved or seen. I recognized that Sarah was struggling with depression, albeit after an online meltdown, but Im not sure if she'd notice if i was going through the same thing; or if she'd bring it up and provide me with the same support im offering her. I'm big on the little things, and I don't think she necessarily notices those. Like she mostly gets me gifts that she likes, and shes never gotten me a gift I actually asked for. She got me kites for my birthday. Which is really sweet and sounds like fun, but I also never in a million years would have asked for kites. I had to tell her to stop buying me Oreo flavored stuff because I don't like it and it would always go uneaten. And it sucks because I see the intent behind it. It's really hard to tell someone that got you a random gift you didn't ask for that you don't like it (she got me Oreo cheesecake). \n\nI wish she'd hold me accountable for things like I do for her. Like when she gets a slight attitude from stress or frustration and I remind her that we're working together and that she can't take her frustration out on me. If I get a slight attitude from being tired or frustrated by the situation (not her), I have to check myself and mentally recalibrate (I need to make it clear here that I don't WANT to be mean to her or to catch an attitude. It just sucks that if I'm struggling with stress or frustration and might snap a bit, she's not going to go “Hey. Take a deep breath and let's figure this out together”). If I end up doomscrolling all day (a habit I'm working on breaking), she won't remind me of my goals but when I notice she's gaming a lot more than usual, I remind her that she has other hobbies that she w","offTopic":false},{"id":"f3f581f3-199c-4a8c-91fb-3e4df26738fc","excerpt":"Update - I asked my wife to cut down the kids screen time - she said over time she loves me less and less.. AITA? — My (32M) wife (30F) primarily stays at home with our kids, 6, 2, 1, and 1. She works part-time, about 10 hours a week, as a home health nurse by choice. She says this is her break from the kids and a way ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/1n2mixe/update_i_asked_my_wife_to_cut_down_the_kids/","role":"pain","weight":1.0458666,"occurredAt":"2025-08-28T19:57:57.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"AITAH","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.48,"sentiment":0.8202247,"confidence":0.70666665,"matchedPatterns":["frustrating"],"statement":"At this point the conversation went back and forth with me getting more frustrated but no resolution came out of it.","title":"Update - I asked my wife to cut down the kids screen time - she said over time she loves me less and less.. AITA?","body":"My (32M) wife (30F) primarily stays at home with our kids, 6, 2, 1, and 1. She works part-time, about 10 hours a week, as a home health nurse by choice. She says this is her break from the kids and a way for her to feel like she is contributing something to the household. I completely support this, because I understand how hard it is to constantly be home with 4 kids and maintaining the house by doing most of the chores. It also gives me an opportunity to spend the morning with my kids a couple of times a week, because usually my workday is 10-12 hours Monday to Friday and I don’t often get to see them at night before they go to bed. Additionally, I work on weekends sporadically (some months 2 weekend days, some months 5-6 weekend days and these days are typically 8 hour days) so that we can pay all of our bills. The longest stretch of time I have worked without a day off is 28 days. I have also recently started to take 1-2 online classes a semester (this semester it is 1 class) so that I can hopefully go to med school when our twins start kindergarten in about 4 years. I know this is a lot, but I feel like this is important context so our situation can be a little better understood.\n\nMy wife is the hardest worker I know. She has the most amazing work ethic of any person I have ever met. She is an absolute powerhouse of a woman and I have nothing but love, respect, and appreciation for how much she does in a day and how wonderful of a mom she is to our boys. She makes sure the house is spotless (you could literally eat yogurt safely off our floors), makes sure the laundry is done, dishes are washed, sheets and comforters are clean every week, organizes everything in the house, toys are put up at least every other day, kids are fed, napped, changed, bathed, our 6 year old has a hot breakfast every morning before school and a hot lunch is packed for him when he wants it (one of his lunchboxes has the stainless steel container that retains heat), and so much more. You get the idea. She is AMAZING.\n\nMy wife also struggles with PTSD (which is currently in the process of being diagnosed but makes a lot of sense), depression, and anxiety due to trauma she experienced as a child. Without going too far into detail, she suffered multiple kinds of mistreatment and abuse from her mother, her father, and her biological father (she was an affair baby). She is currently seeing a psych NP who has given her a medication which seems to have been helping some of her symptoms, a counselor (whose appointments she has admittedly been skipping), and we see a couples counselor together. While this has influenced a lot of our interactions, our communication style, and our relationship in what often feels like a negative way, it seems to have sent her in the complete opposite direction as a mother. She is full of love, understanding, and concern for our children. She is determined never to let them experience what she did. Her ability to parent them so well despite the trauma and abuse that she experienced is an inspiration to me. Even though we have had and continue to have our issues, I could not be more proud of how far she has come on her own two feet.\n\nNow on to the current issue. Last night we were attending a couples counseling session which went a bit off the rails. It started off well enough - she was feeling overwhelmed by the fact that I had to go in person for 3 hours on Saturdays for my biology lab. I told her that I completely understand that and wanted to make sure she got some time to rest and recover. I asked one of my friends if his wife (also her friend) and my wife could go out Saturday night so she could get a break and some adult time. He thought it was a great idea and said he could come over with their girls and we could hang out and watch the kids together. I also suggested my wife take as much of Sunday as she wanted to work out, relax, or do some self care so that she can get a much needed break. She expressed a great deal of appreciation for this and even became a little teary eyed, which then made me a little teary eyed. I expressed to her I wanted to try to create as many opportunities for her to be able to get a break - if I am choosing to use some free time to study, she should get AT LEAST an equivalent amount of time for herself to do whatever she chooses. The couples counselor then asked me what I wanted to talk about, as I had expressed that there was something I wanted to discuss at the beginning of the session. This is when I may have screwed the pooch.\n\nI told her that I was having a difficult time figuring out how to have this conversation with her, as when I brought up concerns I often felt shut down, unheard, and like it almost always ended up in a fight. I said that I didn’t want to make her day any harder than it has to be and I understand how much she does, but I would really like to impose screen time limits on the kids bc I didn’t feel like 4-5 hours of screen time a day was healthy for them. She. Lost. It. She started talking about how much she has to do every day and how everything wouldn’t get done. I told her I was ok with everything not getting done and if I had to start waking up early to help do stuff or stay up later I would. She then started saying how I don’t understand what she goes through and how it seems like I am just trying to make her life harder than it already is. The couples counselor interjected and told her that based on what I had said, it did seem like I understood those things and was seeking a conversation about this. She snapped at him and then turned back to me and started demanding I give her activities that the kids can do to replace the screen time on the spot. I pitched sensory activities but was honest and told her I’d need to do a little more research to figure out what could be a good alternative. I said maybe we could do that together so we could figure out what would work best. She said I needed to do that research on my own if I was demanding that changes be made. I tried to let her know I wasn’t demanding changes I was asking for her input and collaboration for what was best for our kids. She told me I needed to take care of them all weekend and she can leave the house so I can try to get everything done without any screen time. I told her I would struggle a lot with that and it’s not that I don’t understand what she goes through. The couples counselor interjected again and asked her what her motivation was behind this, and if she just wanted me to feel some pain to make a point. She outright told him yes that’s exactly what she wanted because clearly I don’t understand. At this point the conversation went back and forth with me getting more frustrated but no resolution came out of it. This morning, she texted me and said this:\n\n“I realize that instead of loving you more with time….i love you less. Still love you But less. And I know it’s been a coping mechanism for me. Of all the bottled up things.\n\nI don’t know what to do with that. This marriage feels like a business”\n\nI responded briefly but essentially asked if we could discuss this later as I don’t have the ability to have this discussion over text while at work, and I can’t compartmentalize my feelings well with this kind of discussion so my work quality gets affected. This has occurred in the past during periods where we had a lot of arguments. It resulted in my work quality suffering due to all the text arguments that we had and I was written up for poor performance. I set a boundary with her after this to ask her to not send me these kinds of things while at work because they really affect me and to hold onto them till we can talk in person. She has never really respected this boundary and has repeatedly violated it.\n\nTo give a little more context, I am an SLP. Throughout my undergraduate and masters program, I saw how detrimental excess screen time was to my neurotypical and neuroatypical kiddos. I have read and forwarded her multiple studies on the effects of screen time on children under 2 and 3 and the litany of problems that it can cause later in childhood, how it increases incidence of ADHD, and how kids with excess screen time at a young age often struggle when they start school. She does not dispute any of this. Our 6 year old is my step-son. I met him when he was about 3. I observed him on his iPad almost all day at that time and often on his iPad till 1 or 2 in the morning while she slept next to him. When I met him at 3 he had maybe 20 words. He was eventually diagnosed with a moderate to severe speech language delay after I expressed concern and had a friend test him. After he received services, he did catch up some, but he still struggles with speech and language and is also having a little bit of a hard time reading. Unfortunately he is no longer eligible for speech and language services because he just barely meets the cut off that disqualify him from receiving these services either privately or through the school. When I say just barely, I mean by 1 point both times he was tested last year. He has a lot of difficulty sustaining his attention onto a task and very quickly forgets instructions. We are fairly certain he has ADHD but we were told he needs to be 7 (he’s now only 3 months away) before they can test and diagnose. At the time she was a young single mom and we can’t know what we don’t know. I also don’t blame her for these issues that he has had. If I am being honest, I do think the excess screen time (what I measured at upwards of 10 hours a day) exacerbated issues he may have been predisposed to. I do not think it’s fair to say screens caused these issues entirely, but this is where the lines between nature and nurture blur.\n\nSo I have to ask - AITA for asking my wife to reduce the kids screen time? I really need help navigating this\n\n\n\nEDIT:\nThere are a few things that I wanted to clarify since I kept seeing some of the same questions and concerns in the comments! I also realized I didn’t really provide a break down of my day and an explanation of what I do for work so I wanted to provide that as well:\n\n1. There were a few comments about me not being sincere or trying to paint myself in the best light. I understand we all have some amount of bias when telling our version of events, but I genuinely came here for advice. It wouldn’t help me in the slightest to be insincere. And for those of you offering genuine suggestions, thank you so much. \n\n2. I am a SLP who works with adults. My primary population is psych patients, dementia patients with behaviors, and patients who were born with developmental disabilities. Being the only male SLP on my team, I tend to get some of the tougher and more aggressive patients. There is also a lot of paperwork that goes with my job. I tend to get hit, spit on, have things thrown at me, and infrequently I have been bit and scratched. I do this for 10-12 hours a day, 8 hours at one facility and 2-4 at another, depending on patient load. On the weekends I commute to facilities 45-60 minutes away that unfortunately tend to have tougher populations than what I usually deal with. That being said, I have been doing this for 5 years and I love helping these patients and am able to establish rapport and bonds with them and their families. I try my hardest at my job, but it can be mentally and emotionally exhausting. \n\n3. My day starts between 6 and 7 am. I get up at 7 am a couple of times a week and immediately start helping with breakfast, getting oldest ready for school, baths, showers, etc. 2-3 mornings during the week I get up at 6 with the kids and let my wife sleep a couple hours longer while I get the oldest to school, make everyone a hot breakfast, pack lunch, etc. basically all the things associated with getting the kids ready. Every day my wife doesn’t work (she leaves at 7:15am when she does) my wife is able to get an hour workout in and I am with the littles. I leave for work between 9 and 1","offTopic":false},{"id":"047711ed-c66a-4af3-96d2-440f6d74a98a","excerpt":"I asked my wife to cut down the kids screen time - she said over time she loves me less and less.. AITA? — My (32M) wife (30F) primarily stays at home with our kids, 6, 2, 1, and 1. She works part-time, about 10 hours a week, as a home health nurse by choice. She says this is her break from the kids and a way for her t","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/okstorytime/comments/1n0qnpy/i_asked_my_wife_to_cut_down_the_kids_screen_time/","role":"pain","weight":1.0458666,"occurredAt":"2025-08-26T16:33:06.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"okstorytime","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.48,"sentiment":0.8863636,"confidence":0.70666665,"matchedPatterns":["frustrating"],"statement":"At this point the conversation went back and forth with me getting more frustrated but no resolution came out of it.","title":"I asked my wife to cut down the kids screen time - she said over time she loves me less and less.. AITA?","body":"My (32M) wife (30F) primarily stays at home with our kids, 6, 2, 1, and 1. She works part-time, about 10 hours a week, as a home health nurse by choice. She says this is her break from the kids and a way for her to feel like she is contributing something to the household. I completely support this, because I understand how hard it is to constantly be home with 4 kids and maintaining the house by doing most of the chores. It also gives me an opportunity to spend the morning with my kids a couple of times a week, because usually my workday is 10-12 hours Monday to Friday and I don’t often get to see them at night before they go to bed. Additionally, I work on weekends sporadically (some months 2 weekend days, some months 5-6 weekend days and these days are typically 8 hour days) so that we can pay all of our bills. The longest stretch of time I have worked without a day off is 28 days. I have also recently started to take 1-2 online classes a semester (this semester it is 1 class) so that I can hopefully go to med school when our twins start kindergarten in about 4 years. I know this is a lot, but I feel like this is important context so our situation can be a little better understood. \n\nMy wife is the hardest worker I know. She has the most amazing work ethic of any person I have ever met. She is an absolute powerhouse of a woman and I have nothing but love, respect, and appreciation for how much she does in a day and how wonderful of a mom she is to our boys. She makes sure the house is spotless (you could literally eat yogurt safely off our floors), makes sure the laundry is done, dishes are washed, sheets and comforters are clean every week, organizes everything in the house, toys are put up at least every other day, kids are fed, napped, changed, bathed, our 6 year old has a hot breakfast every morning before school and a hot lunch is packed for him when he wants it (one of his lunchboxes has the stainless steel container that retains heat), and so much more. You get the idea. She is AMAZING. \n\nMy wife also struggles with PTSD (which is currently in the process of being diagnosed but makes a lot of sense), depression, and anxiety due to trauma she experienced as a child. Without going too far into detail, she suffered multiple kinds of mistreatment and abuse from her mother, her father, and her biological father (she was an affair baby). She is currently seeing a psych NP who has given her a medication which seems to have been helping some of her symptoms, a counselor (whose appointments she has admittedly been skipping), and we see a couples counselor together. While this has influenced a lot of our interactions, our communication style, and our relationship in what often feels like a negative way, it seems to have sent her in the complete opposite direction as a mother. She is full of love, understanding, and concern for our children. She is determined never to let them experience what she did. Her ability to parent them so well despite the trauma and abuse that she experienced is an inspiration to me. Even though we have had and continue to have our issues, I could not be more proud of how far she has come on her own two feet. \n\nNow on to the current issue. Last night we were attending a couples counseling session which went a bit off the rails. It started off well enough - she was feeling overwhelmed by the fact that I had to go in person for 3 hours on Saturdays for my biology lab. I told her that I completely understand that and wanted to make sure she got some time to rest and recover. I asked one of my friends if his wife (also her friend) and my wife could go out Saturday night so she could get a break and some adult time. He thought it was a great idea and said he could come over with their girls and we could hang out and watch the kids together. I also suggested my wife take as much of Sunday as she wanted to work out, relax, or do some self care so that she can get a much needed break. She expressed a great deal of appreciation for this and even became a little teary eyed, which then made me a little teary eyed. I expressed to her I wanted to try to create as many opportunities for her to be able to get a break - if I am choosing to use some free time to study, she should get AT LEAST an equivalent amount of time for herself to do whatever she chooses. The couples counselor then asked me what I wanted to talk about, as I had expressed that there was something I wanted to discuss at the beginning of the session. This is when I may have screwed the pooch. \n\nI told her that I was having a difficult time figuring out how to have this conversation with her, as when I brought up concerns I often felt shut down, unheard, and like it almost always ended up in a fight. I said that I didn’t want to make her day any harder than it has to be and I understand how much she does, but I would really like to impose screen time limits on the kids bc I didn’t feel like 4-5 hours of screen time a day was healthy for them. She. Lost. It. She started talking about how much she has to do every day and how everything wouldn’t get done. I told her I was ok with everything not getting done and if I had to start waking up early to help do stuff or stay up later I would. She then started saying how I don’t understand what she goes through and how it seems like I am just trying to make her life harder than it already is. The couples counselor interjected and told her that based on what I had said, it did seem like I understood those things and was seeking a conversation about this. She snapped at him and then turned back to me and started demanding I give her activities that the kids can do to replace the screen time on the spot. I pitched sensory activities but was honest and told her I’d need to do a little more research to figure out what could be a good alternative. I said maybe we could do that together so we could figure out what would work best. She said I needed to do that research on my own if I was demanding that changes be made. I tried to let her know I wasn’t demanding changes I was asking for her input and collaboration for what was best for our kids. She told me I needed to take care of them all weekend and she can leave the house so I can try to get everything done without any screen time. I told her I would struggle a lot with that and it’s not that I don’t understand what she goes through. The couples counselor interjected again and asked her what her motivation was behind this, and if she just wanted me to feel some pain to make a point. She outright told him yes that’s exactly what she wanted because clearly I don’t understand. At this point the conversation went back and forth with me getting more frustrated but no resolution came out of it. This morning, she texted me and said this: \n\n“I realize that instead of loving you more with time….i love you less. Still love you \nBut less. \nAnd I know it’s been a coping mechanism for me. Of all the bottled up things. \n\nI don’t know what to do with that. This marriage feels like a business”\n\nI responded briefly but essentially asked if we could discuss this later as I don’t have the ability to have this discussion over text while at work, and I can’t compartmentalize my feelings well with this kind of discussion so my work quality gets affected. This has occurred in the past during periods where we had a lot of arguments. It resulted in my work quality suffering due to all the text arguments that we had and I was written up for poor performance. I set a boundary with her after this to ask her to not send me these kinds of things while at work because they really affect me and to hold onto them till we can talk in person. She has never really respected this boundary and has repeatedly violated it. \n\nTo give a little more context, I am an SLP. Throughout my undergraduate and masters program, I saw how detrimental excess screen time was to my neurotypical and neuroatypical kiddos. I have read and forwarded her multiple studies on the effects of screen time on children under 2 and 3 and the litany of problems that it can cause later in childhood, how it increases incidence of ADHD, and how kids with excess screen time at a young age often struggle when they start school. She does not dispute any of this. Our 6 year old is my step-son. I met him when he was about 3. I observed him on his iPad almost all day at that time and often on his iPad till 1 or 2 in the morning while she slept next to him. When I met him at 3 he had maybe 20 words. He was eventually diagnosed with a moderate to severe speech language delay after I expressed concern and had a friend test him. After he received services, he did catch up some, but he still struggles with speech and language and is also having a little bit of a hard time reading. Unfortunately he is no longer eligible for speech and language services because he just barely meets the cut off that disqualify him from receiving these services either privately or through the school. When I say just barely, I mean by 1 point both times he was tested last year. He has a lot of difficulty sustaining his attention onto a task and very quickly forgets instructions. We are fairly certain he has ADHD but we were told he needs to be 7 (he’s now only 3 months away) before they can test and diagnose. At the time she was a young single mom and we can’t know what we don’t know. I also don’t blame her for these issues that he has had. If I am being honest, I do think the excess screen time (what I measured at upwards of 10 hours a day) exacerbated issues he may have been predisposed to. I do not think it’s fair to say screens caused these issues entirely, but this is where the lines between nature and nurture blur.  \n\nSo I have to ask - AITA for asking my wife to reduce the kids screen time? I really need help navigating this\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEDIT:\nThere are a few things that I wanted to clarify since I kept seeing some of the same questions and concerns in my comments! I also realized I didn’t really provide a break down of my day and an explanation of what I do for work so I wanted to provide that as well:\n\n1. There were a few comments about me not being sincere or trying to paint myself in the best light. I understand we all have some amount of bias when telling our version of events, but I genuinely came her for advice. It wouldn’t help me in the slightest if to be insincere. And for those of you offering genuine suggestions, thank you so much. \n\n2. I am a SLP who works with adults. My primary population is psych patients, dementia patients with behaviors, and patients who were born with developmental disabilities. Being the only male SLP on my team, I tend to get some of the tougher and more aggressive patients. There is also a lot of paperwork that goes with my job. I tend to get hit, spit on, have things thrown at me, and infrequently I have been bit and scratched. I do this for 10-12 hours a day, 8 hours at one facility and 2-4 at another, depending on patient load. On the weekends I commute to facilities 45-60 minutes away that unfortunately tend to have tougher populations than what I usually deal with. That being said, I have been doing this for 5 years and I love helping these patients and am able to establish rapport and bonds with them and their families. I try my hardest at my job, but it can be mentally and emotionally exhausting. \n\n3. My day starts between 6 and 7 am. I get up at 7 am a couple of times a week and immediately start helping with breakfast, getting oldest ready for school, baths, showers, etc. 2-3 mornings during the week I get up at 6 with the kids and let my wife sleep a couple hours longer while I get the oldest to school, make everyone a hot breakfast, pack lunch, etc. basically all the things associated with getting the kids ready. Every day my wife doesn’t work (she leaves at 7:15am when she does) my wife is able to get an hour workout in and I am with the littles. I leave for work ","offTopic":false},{"id":"8a931f7a-7a19-4e73-a590-4a24a1f0a974","excerpt":"I (31m) set a boundary with my gf (29f), I'm afraid I might have to honor it. — Hey all, I'm in a tough spot and I'm afraid this is the last straw.\n\nI've been with my partner for a little over 9 years now. We've both grown a lot, changed a lot. We've butted heads plenty, but have always managed to come through.\n\nSometh","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/1pl5gm3/i_31m_set_a_boundary_with_my_gf_29f_im_afraid_i/","role":"pain","weight":1.0246667,"occurredAt":"2025-12-12T22:43:18.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"relationships","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.45,"sentiment":0.5555556,"confidence":0.70666665,"matchedPatterns":["doesnt_work"],"statement":"She's told me she won't work full time again until she can do it for herself (wants to start a business).","title":"I (31m) set a boundary with my gf (29f), I'm afraid I might have to honor it.","body":"Hey all, I'm in a tough spot and I'm afraid this is the last straw.\n\nI've been with my partner for a little over 9 years now. We've both grown a lot, changed a lot. We've butted heads plenty, but have always managed to come through.\n\nSomething that has been a constant strain on us, and has gotten much worse these past couple years, is her mental health. She is diagnosed with ADHD, and is certain she has some other things going on. Recently, she claims she's autistic, but has not been diagnosed. I have no issues with any of this, I have my own things going on as well, but it's relevant.\n\nShe has a lot of trouble with tasks. Chores, jobs, work. Our home is almost always filthy, food left around, laundry carpeting the floor, dishes, etc. I try to keep up, and she will go through brief manic times where she'll be able to clean a bit, but over all it's become the norm. She's always managed to cover her part of the bills, but can't really keep a job. She's told me she won't work full time again until she can do it for herself (wants to start a business). Currently, she works 3 days a week and dedicates the rest to side projects. She has a LOT of side projects. I want to be supportive (and have been!) but they all end up abandoned and become another thing cluttering our space. So more honestly, she works 3 days a week and then is on her phone, or sleeping, or disassociating for the rest. I myself work a LOT. Not because we're struggling, but because we have a lot we want to save for for the future. So it's very hard to come home and see this, and have to pick up so much slack. At this point I'm very afraid for the future. She has no savings, and even her physical health is taking a back seat. I've tried to bring this up and it led to a full on explosion.\n\nRecently, she's been very combative. Like, anything I say to her has a 50/50 shot of being taken as an attack. I'm a very soft spoken person, and I try to be very careful when I'm communicating frustrations, hurt, anger, or even just critique. But if I specifically bring up something she's done that's upset me, she takes it as a personal attack and immediately gets VERY defensive or angry. I really can't talk to her about anything anymore, I find myself on eggshells and always afraid I'm going to \"screw up\" talking with the person that's supposed to be my partner. I no longer feel like I have a safe emotional space in my home, with her.\n\nI've been experiencing a lot of health problems, recently. High blood pressure, palpitations or heart flutters, headaches, and I \\*always\\* feel like I'm in fight or flight. If my phone rings, I jump out of my skin. If I hear the front door open when I'm home alone, I get an adrenaline rush and a pit in my stomach. I'm just SO anxious and on edge all the time. I've been tracking my BP and these palpitations (on instruction from my doc, I used a journal and even wore a little monitor they glued onto me for a while), and find that they spike and occur more when I'm on my way HOME from work, or when I know she's coming home. Knowing this makes me so damn sad.\n\nIt's been rough in the past, but she's been my person, my safe space, a person I could trust and feel safe with, and she's just not anymore.\n\nThings came to a head a while ago. I had been talking with my therapist about all of this (and more not listed ofc), and she helped me come up with a way to \"enforce a boundary\". This is something I've ALWAYS been comically bad at, but I'm trying to undoormatify myself. The gist of it was, **\"I am giving myself a boundary that I can not be with a partner who will not prioritize their mental health when it is affecting them and our relationship so negatively\", and that I needed her to seek a diagnosis and treatment.**\n\nWe had a conversation, and I tried so, so carefully to deliver this in a way that could remain constructive. I spoke about why I'm struggling with us, and shared with her the line above. As soon as I did, she stood up and left the room. Obviously \"taking a breather\" from a hard conversation is totally ok, but she just stood up and silently left, slammed the door behind her. I waited, and could hear her storm into the living room and start slamming things around (turns out it was just pillows and herself into the cushions, but still), cursing me out and screaming. The main thrust of it was \"f\\*\\*cking a\\*\\*shole how dare you\"\n\nShe then came back into the room and very coldly, calmly, almost flippantly said \"I've thought about it and I won't be doing that\".\n\nThat specific sentence hasn't left my mind since. I'm not sure it ever will. I finally shared a deep, important need that I felt was kneecapping us and our relationship and was hurting me deeply, and that was her reaction.\n\nThe conversation then kinda dwindled. I didn't know what else to say. She talked about her plan for self treatment going forward, which includes in it's entirety renting an air bnb and dropping acid by herself ((!?!?!?) I've heard of people finding this kind of experience therapeutic but???)).\n\nAnd here we are like two months later. Not much has changed. I have tentatively brought up therapy, diagnosis, treatment, etc., a couple times sense but am always met with either a shut down, evasiveness, or anger.\n\nSo I guess, like, that's it? She's shown me she either doesn't take me seriously, doesn't respect my needs and boundaries, or simply can't. I find myself whipping back and forth between thinking how nice it might be to be single and live alone, and maybe even eventually finding a partner that can communicate with me and respects me as a person, and thinking about how devasting it's going to be to break up with her, untangle our lives, and mourn us.\n\nI'm currently hanging on to a letter I wrote her, speaking about how much I love her, how much I've valued our experience, and how much I believe in her and that she can accomplish and do better, but also that I was serious about needing her to seek help, and that I can't keep doing this. It's essentially a somewhat open-ended break up letter. Part of me wants to give it to her and see if she can finally get shocked into seeing it's serious. Part of me wants to give it to her and tell her she's got a month to move out.\n\nIt feels silly to ask, but is this even worth saving? There's a part of me that still feels like I'm disrespecting her agency over her own mental health. But I'm trying to tell myself that it's what \\*I\\* need, and if she can't do that that's on her.\n\nTL;DR, long term partner's mental health causing major strain, and she won't get help. I'm at my wits end and have made a bit of a last-ditch effort.\n\nThanks for reading. I hope you have a nice weekend.\n\n  \n**Edit, Update. Hope it's cool to just add this to the body of the OP. I don't super know how this works (I only ever lurk, hah).**\n\nI very much appreciate all of your comments, advice and support. I know some of ya'll were saying to ditch the letter, but I do feel like it's important to me to say my full piece before this goes wherever it's going and this was the only way I saw that happening. It's also something she and I have agreed on as a better form of communication for her, so I don't feel like it's out of the ordinary.\n\nGave her the letter last night, before I left for work. She knew something was coming. We had a quiet hug, both cried a little, and I left. She seemed like she was taking it seriously, like she cared about what it might mean. Kinda gave me hope for a minute.\n\nThe letter is, basically, \"I'm writing this because I love you, but I'm not happy, I feel unsafe, I feel like you don't care. I love being the person that has your back, but you don't have mine. There is no room for me or my emotional needs in this, it feels like it doesn't matter to you unless it directly affects you in the moment. I told you I needed you to seek help and you refused. I have to take the boundary I set seriously for myself, I cannot keep being a part of us when you have refused to take steps to work on your mental health when we both know it's destroying you (and us).\" \n\nThis is very much the cliffnotes, but you get it.\n\nI got home, she had some plans that night so was out. I crashed early for the night, woke up to her coming home. She was super quiet, not really saying anything. I asked her how her night went and she snapped at me that I had \"sabotaged her plans\". Apparently she went to a different friend for support instead of the girls night she had planned? I told her that wasn't fair, that I needed to give her the message and she could've waited to read it. She said \"Well even if you didn't mean to you sabotaged my night\". I was kinda flabbergasted. She said she didn't want to speak to me right now (which I wasn't in the space to either tbh). I told her \"when you're ready\", and rolled over to try to sleep.\n\nI understand being angry. But the fact that the \\*only\\* thing she had to say about it was that I ruined her plans with her friends for the night is deeply painful.\n\nI've been stumbling through my day this morning. Waiting on her shift to end, we'll see what happens.","offTopic":false},{"id":"3d6a0da7-81f8-4ec9-a0ed-d9bd5042a937","excerpt":"My (M38) wife (F34) has been very quiet since a conversation we had of why I love her. Confused about her silence. — **I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/Background-Baby-1206**\n\n**Originally posted to r/relationship_advice & r/AITAH**\n\n**My (M38) wife (F34) has been very quiet since a conversation we had of why I love her. Confuse","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1s6l2jd/my_m38_wife_f34_has_been_very_quiet_since_a/","role":"request","weight":0.99808335,"occurredAt":"2026-03-29T04:00:07.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"BestofRedditorUpdates","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.18,"sentiment":0.94520545,"confidence":0.84583336,"matchedPatterns":["missing_feature","praise"],"statement":"Edit: since I got a lot of answers making me realize I should have written more about what I do to reassure her every day and information that might have been missing.","title":"My (M38) wife (F34) has been very quiet since a conversation we had of why I love her. Confused about her silence.","body":"**I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/Background-Baby-1206**\n\n**Originally posted to r/relationship_advice & r/AITAH**\n\n**My (M38) wife (F34) has been very quiet since a conversation we had of why I love her. Confused about her silence.**\n\n**Trigger Warnings:** >!mentions of abuse and trauma, cancer!<\n\n----\n\n[Original Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/s/PDaRfgB36v): **March 15, 2026**\n\nSo I'm a little bit confused about this. A couple of days ago, my wife came to me asking the question that has been asked many times during our marriage. \"Do you still love me? And why do you love me?\"\n\nShe comes and asks this from time to time. I don't mind. She seeks reassurance, nothing bad about it.\n\nI have always said the same thing. Yes I still love you, followed by why I think she is amazing. But every time she asks this it makes me think of exactly why I love her.\n\nSo this time I became more descriptive in my explanation.\n\nSo I said this: I love you because you give me space when I need to have it. You choose to understand and reflect rather than judge and defensive during arguments. She taught me not only to love myself, but to actively persue my hobbies. We are allowed to be our own people. She is upfront when she wants us time. I'm bipolar type 2 and am on the spectrum so I can have a hard time reading people. She was there to support me during my autism evaluation, and learned about it so she could understand me better. This all made her smile and all seemed good.\n\nThen at the last I added this. Something I never told her before. That I can cry in front of her and she doesn't think any less of me for it.\n\nThis comment I could see made her smile flicker for a moment before coming back to normal. She thanked me for reassuring her and we said I love to each other, hugged and kissed.\n\nSince that conversation she has become very quiet. Not really distant but I can tell something is bothering her. When asking if she is upset she says no I'm not. But I get the feeling she is.\n\nDid I say anything to warrant this reaction? I have no clue how I messed up.\n\nEdit: since I got a lot of answers making me realize I should have written more about what I do to reassure her every day and information that might have been missing.\n\nI tell her every day that I love her and how beautiful I think she is. I kiss her good morning the first thing I do when walking up. Then again when I leave for work or drop her off for hers. I am there to listen when she complained about her friends or the latest drama in her friend group. She comes to me when she feels down and I listen to what she has to say without judgement. I make her coffee every morning since she says it tastes different when she makes it. We have an automated coffee machine.\n\nShe is from the Philippines. I am from Sweden. She grew up very poor and has very abusive parents. They regularly beat her. She still has scars and burn marks on her from this. Though she says she came off easy since she didn't get kicked in the head by her dad. She started working when she was 12 to help her parents with their medicine. Dropping out of school doing so. This makes her feel dumb since she didn't finish her education. I always tell her that this is not true. She learned 5 languages by just listening and taking too people. She is amazing. I tell her this regularly. She hated her skin color when we met. She is dark skinned and was regularly bullied for this as a child.\n\nI do all the dishes since she doesn't like doing them. Except for when she feels guilty about me doing them all the time. I reassure her I don't mind. I buy her flowers, her favorites are tulips even though it makes her itchy and makes her sneeze. I give her massages when she is worn-out or her feet aches.\n\nI cook her favorite foods, plan date nights and go out of my way to pick up whatever food she craves. I clean the apartment since she hates clutter.\n\nI was there when she got diagnosed with uterine cancer. Held her when they told her that she needed to remove her uterus. This hit her hard since she loves kids. She was convinced I would leave her for someone else who could give me kids. I always reassured her that I will never leave her. That she is the love of my life. I go with her to every post checkup. She has been cancer free now for 4 years.\n\nI got her a therapist when she first came to Sweden since I knew she needed help with her trauma.\n\nShe is amazing. I love her more than I love myself. I always tell her this.\n\nAnd I made a comment about her being my teacher. This is the best way to describe it. She taught me how to stand for myself. Raised my self-esteem and made me into the man I am today. She has always been there to support me and make me want to better myself. Maybe a teacher is a bad word to use. But I can't come up with a better one.\n\nWhenever she came to me with this question before I have always answered with what I love about her. Told her how amazing I think she is and what I love about her.\n\nNow I can see that I made it all about myself rather than her. Maybe dumped to much on her at once.\n\nWe have a whiteboard we write our schedules on and write messages to each other on. I will fill it with all the things I love about her. Buy her some flowers and cook her one of her favorite meals. Then sit down and apologize for making it all about myself rather than reassure her about how amazing she is.\n\nTLDR: wife asked me if I still love her seeking reassurance. I made it about myself rather than reassure her what I love about her.\n\n**Editor's note: OOP has also made the same original post onto another subreddit, I am adding the relevant comments from that sub for more context**\n\n**Relevant Comments** \n\n**Commenter 1:** Just a guess that may be far off... you talk about what you love about her from what she can do/is doing that benefits YOU. Not all directly but that'd be my take on it. I don't really see anything about what is wonderful about her, what amazes you, that she's funny, has talents or skills that make you think she's fantastic for them.\n\n> **OOP:** This is since I have always said why she is wonderful before when asked this. This time I chose to say it differently since I have said all those things before.\n> \n>> **Commenter 2:** Maybe slip her a handwritten note adding those to the list for additional reassurance\n>> \n>>> **OOP:** This is a great idea. Thank you. We have a large whiteboard we use to write each other messages and our schedules. I will fill it with the things I think is amazing about her.\n\n**Commenter 3:** I think what you said was wonderful, but.... Maybe she needs to hear this too??? We women can be insecure at times and simply want to hear that you men still see us as attractive as you did way back when... just pulling at straws. 🤷🏻‍♀️.\n\n> **OOP:** I do. Every day. I kiss her the first thing I do in the morning. I make her coffee since she says that when she makes it herself it tastes different 😅. I tell her I love her and how beautiful she is every day. I drive to pick her up and drop her of at the train station every time she goes to work.\n> \n> I always kiss her goodnight before we go to bed and tell her that I love her.\n> \n> I give her massages and rub her feet when. She feels worn out.\n\n**Commenter 4:** Is there anything you like about her ? Not just what she does for you?\n\n> **OOP:** I have always when asked before this told her what I like about her. Why I think she is amazing. She is funny, smart, caring, very loving and attentive. Every time she asked this before I have always said what I like about her. Just said it differently this time since I wanted to give a deeper answer.\n> \n>> **Commenter 5:** Except when you wrote your post you only talked about what she does for you. \n>> \n>>> **OOP (downvoted):** Yeah this seems to be what I did wrong. I genuinely don't understand why this is bad though. Since what she does for me is a large part of why I love her. I should probably also have told her more about how she is the amazing person I think she is.\n\n**Commenter 6:** Do you know what her passions and interests are? Her favorite book, her favorite movie, her favorite music, etc.?\n\nWhat are HER emotional needs? When she feels in need of kindness and understanding, does she come to you? Are you as much a source of support, engagement, etc. to her as she is to you, or is it all about YOUR needs/interests/comfort?\n\n> **OOP:** She loves Korean drama and old Filipino movies. She doesn't like to read but she likes her latest book about a Japanese coffee house. Have not read it myself so can't say what it's about. She loves tulips even though it makes her itchy and makes her sneeze.\n> \n> She loves going on walks around castles and going into secondhand shops. She comes to me when she feels down and she feels like she is worthless. I hug her and tell her why that is not true at all and tell her why she is amazing.\n> \n> She sings karaoke, and loves to gossip about the latest drama in her friend group and whatever celebrity she currently has her sights on.\n> \n> We watch movies together, she loves horror. So much so that we have gone through all the good ones.\n> \n> She is an amazing cook, and I try to match that as best I can. I bake her pandesal every month and makes her favorite Filipino foods. I cook on the days she is working and clean regularly, so she doesn't have a messy apartment to go home to. She hates clutter.\n> \n> I do all the dishes since she doesn't like doing them unless she feels guilty of me always doing them. I tell her I don't mind.\n> \n> I give her regular massages when she feels worn-out or if her feet are aching.\n\n**Commenter 8:** How did you meet? Wealthy Swedish patron finding his poor/abused/disenfranchised future in South Asia and then lifting her back home is a bit of a picture\n\n> **OOP:** We met online. I at the time was really depressed and suicidal. Went online to talk to someone who didn't share my world view. Someone who didn't have anything to do with Sweden. Why this? No idea. Just didn't feel like talking to someone who had anything close to my way of the world.\n> \n> When we started talking I literally trauma dumped on her so hard it makes me cringe thinking about it right now. I knew I was bipolar at the time but not that I was autistic.\n> \n> Literally just said. I'm not here to date or find love. Just want someone to talk about. Then explained I was depressed and that had bipolar type 2.\n> \n> She said hi. I explained who I was and why I was there. She ghosted me for 2 days. Making me think she didn't want to talk to me.\n> \n> She then came back and explained that she had read up on what bipolar disorder was and said that's ok. We started to talk and kept talking. She made me feel better and made me realize I have it pretty damn well. Neglectful parents, yes. But that's about it.\n> \n> 2 years later I flew down to the Philippines during what I now recognize was a hypo-manic episode and met her. She was working as a nanny for her cousin at the time. We met in Bohol. I asked her to marry me and she said yes.\n\n**Any chances that OOP's wife is autistic?**\n\n> **OOP:** My wife is not autistic. She has some ADD characteristics but nothing to bad.\n> \n> She gets quiet when she is upset. So as you say she might just be going over what I said and going through all her thoughts.\n> \n> I just don't like to see her upset or sad.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n[Update](https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/Dcj3y64FD5): **March 18, 2026 (three days later)**\n\nHi everyone. Thank you all for your comments. I got a lot of good advice, and things for me to reflect on.\n\nThis will be long. Sorry for this.\n\nI took your advice, somewhat to write her a letter. I wrote it on our whiteboard instead. It's a large whiteboard that hangs in our bedroom. On it, I wrote the reasons I love her for who she is as a person and things I love about her, and not about the things she does for me.\n\nI wrote as follows: Hi mahal. I love you more than i will ever be able to express in words","offTopic":false},{"id":"5bca5d02-aa0b-4aa5-8680-0abee6980d7b","excerpt":"My (M38) wife (F34) has been very quiet since a conversation we had of why I love her. Confused about her silence. — So I'm a little bit confused about this. A couple of days ago, my wife came to me asking the question that has been asked many times during our marriage.\n\"Do you still love me? And why do you love me?\"\n\n","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/1rv1dvs/my_m38_wife_f34_has_been_very_quiet_since_a/","role":"request","weight":0.9916667,"occurredAt":"2026-03-16T05:56:58.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"relationship_advice","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.36,"sentiment":1,"confidence":0.7291667,"matchedPatterns":["missing_feature"],"statement":"Edit: since I got a lot of answers making me realize I should have written more about what I do to reassure her every day and information that might have been missing.","title":"My (M38) wife (F34) has been very quiet since a conversation we had of why I love her. Confused about her silence.","body":"So I'm a little bit confused about this. A couple of days ago, my wife came to me asking the question that has been asked many times during our marriage.\n\"Do you still love me? And why do you love me?\"\n\nShe comes and asks this from time to time. I don't mind. She seeks reassurance, nothing bad about it.\n\nI have always said the same thing. Yes I still love you, followed by why I think she is amazing. But every time she asks this it makes me think of exactly why I love her.\n\nSo this time I became more descriptive in my explanation.\n\nSo I said this: I love you because you give me space when I need to have it. You choose to understand and reflect rather than judge and defensive during arguments. She taught me not only to love myself, but to actively persue my hobbies. We are allowed to be our own people. She is upfront when she wants us time. I'm bipolar type 2 and am on the spectrum so I can have a hard time reading people. She was there to support me during my autism evaluation, and learned about it so she could understand me better. This all made her smile and all seemed good. \n\nThen at the last I added this. Something I never told her before. That I can cry Infront of her and she doesn't think any less of me for it.\n\nThis comment I could see made her smile flicker for a moment before coming back to normal. She thanked me for reassuring her and we said I love to each other, hugged and kissed.\n\nSince that conversation she has become very quiet. Not really distant but I can tell something is bothering her. When asking if she is upset she says no I'm not. But I get the feeling she is.\n\nDid I say anything to warrent this reaction? I have no clue how I messed up. \n\nEdit: since I got a lot of answers making me realize I should have written more about what I do to reassure her every day and information that might have been missing.\n\nI tell her everyday that I love her and how beautiful I think she is. I kiss her good morning the first thing I do when walking up. Then again when I leave for work or drop her off for hers. I am there to listen when she complained about her friends or the latest drama in her friend group. She comes to me when she feels down and I listen to what she has to say without judgement. I make her coffee every morning since she says it tastes different when she makes it. We have an automated coffee machine.\n\nShe is from the Philippines. I am from Sweden. She grew up very poor and has very abusive parents. They regularly beat her. She still has scars and burn marks on her from this. Though she says she came off easy since she didn't get kicked in the head by her dad. She started working when she was 12 to help her parents with their medicine. Dropping out of school doing so. This makes her feel dumb since she didn't finish her education. I always tell her that this is not true. She learned 5 languages by just listening and taking too people. She is amazing. I tell her this regularly. She hated her skin color when we met. She is dark skinned and was regularly bullied for this as a child.\n\nI do all the dishes since she doesn't like doing them. Except for when she feels guilty about me doing them all the time. I reassure her I don't mind. \nI buy her flowers, her favorites are tulips even though it makes her itchy and makes her sneeze. \nI give her massages when she is worn-out or her feet aches. \n\nI cook her favorite foods, plan date nights and go out of my way to pick up whatever food she craves. I clean the apartment since she hates clutter. \n\nI was there when she got diagnosed with utarian cancer. Held her when they told her that she needed to remove her uterus. This hit her hard since she loves kids. She was convinced I would leave her for someone else who could give me kids. I always reassured her that I will never leave her. That she is the love of my life. I go with her to every post check up. She has been cancer free now for 4 years.\n\nI got her a therapist when she first came to Sweden since I knew she needed help with her trauma.\n\nShe is amazing. I love her more than I love myself. I always tell her this.\n\nAnd I made a comment about her being my teacher. This is the best way to describe it. She taught me how to stand for myself. Raised my self esteem and made me into the man I am today. She has always been there to support me and make me want to better myself. Maybe a teacher is a bad word to use. But I can't come up with a better one.\n\nWhenever she came to me with this question before I have always answered with what I love about her. Told her how amazing I think she is and what I love about her.\n\nNow I can see that I made it all about myself rather than her. Maybe dumped to much on her at once. \n\nWe have a whiteboard we write our schedules on and write messages to each other on. I will fill it with all the things I love about her. Buy her some flowers and cook her one of her favorite meals. Then sit down and apologize for making it all about myself rather than reassure her about how amazing she is.\n\nTLDR: wife asked me if I still love her seeking reassurance. I made it about myself rather than reassure her what I love about her.","offTopic":false},{"id":"1d0599d5-65d7-472d-823d-e9706e6091b8","excerpt":"My girlfriend [23F] seems genuinely disgusted by my interests and I [25M] am starting to feel ashamed of myself. How do I address this? — **I am NOT the Original Poster. That is** [Adventurous-Cap8649](https://www.reddit.com/user/Adventurous-Cap8649/). He posted in r/relationships \n\n# Do NOT comment on Original Posts. ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1rbcycm/my_girlfriend_23f_seems_genuinely_disgusted_by_my/","role":"request","weight":0.9799762,"occurredAt":"2026-02-22T05:02:14.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"BestofRedditorUpdates","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.19025445,"sentiment":0.64705884,"confidence":0.8233333,"matchedPatterns":["how_can_i","missing_feature"],"statement":"It's really common for more feminine interests to be painted as frivolous and show a lack of character, which is misogynistic bullshit.","title":"My girlfriend [23F] seems genuinely disgusted by my interests and I [25M] am starting to feel ashamed of myself. How do I address this?","body":"**I am NOT the Original Poster. That is** [Adventurous-Cap8649](https://www.reddit.com/user/Adventurous-Cap8649/). He posted in r/relationships \n\n# Do NOT comment on Original Posts. Latest update is 7 days old.\n\n**Trigger Warning:** >!bullying; misogyny!<\n\n**Mood Spoiler:** >!tentative progress!<\n\n**Original** [Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/1qz9305/my_girlfriend_23f_seems_genuinely_disgusted_by_my/)**: February 8, 2026**\n\nMy girlfriend (23F) and I (25M) have been dating for about a year now. I love her a lot and I genuinely care about her deeply. I see her as my partner and my best friend, and I have always imagined a future with her. We share similar goals, values, and aspirations, and most of the time our relationship feels supportive and loving. That is why this situation has been weighing on me more and more, because it feels at odds with how close I thought we were.\n\nI am kind of a nerd. Not extreme, but my interests are things like superheroes, anime/manga, games, and DnD. These are things I have liked for a long time and they are a big part of how I relax and enjoy myself.\n\nShe is pretty much the opposite. She is more into celebrity culture, going out, fashion, luxury or trendy things. I do not have a problem with that at all and and I’ve always tried to be supportive.\n\nThe problem is that whenever I bring up my interests, she reacts very negatively. She will scoff, say “ew,” or look genuinely annoyed. At first I thought she was just teasing, so I tried playing along with it as a joke, but she actually gets upset when I do. She has told me that she finds these interests unattractive and associates them with guys who have bad mindsets like misogynists or incels.\n\nThat really hurt. I do not identify with any of that, and I do not think my hobbies say anything about my values or how I treat women. I am not asking her to like the same things I like. I just want basic respect and to not feel judged or gross for enjoying them.\n\nThere have also been moments that make me wonder if this is partly about image. For example, I am using a very old iPhone and want to upgrade to a flagship Android phone. She keeps pushing me to get an iPhone instead, even if it's not the latest model. She says this is because she prefers using iMessage, but in my country iPhones are also a status symbol. She has mentioned before that appearances matter a lot to her because of how she grew up, which makes me unsure what the real issue is.\n\nLately, I notice that I hesitate to talk about things I enjoy around her or I downplay parts of myself to avoid that reaction. I do not want to feel ashamed of who I am in my own relationship.\n\nHow do I bring this up in a way that sets boundaries without turning it into a fight? Is this something that can realistically be worked through, or does this point to a deeper incompatibility?\n\n**TLDR**: I love my girlfriend and our relationship is mostly good, but she reacts with disgust toward my interests and associates them with negative stereotypes. Combined with her focus on appearances, it is making me feel judged and ashamed of parts of myself. I am not sure how to set boundaries or whether this points to a deeper incompatibility.\n\n***Some of OOP's Comments:*** \n\n**yellowstar93:** I'm confused how you even started dating this girl if yall are so different? Like what do you talk about? Sounds boring and demoralizing.\n\n>**OOP:** We bonded over food and movies. We’re both big cinephiles, and I love cooking while she enjoys going out to try new food. We also share similar life goals, which is why this is hard for me. The issue isn’t lack of overlap, it’s feeling judged for certain interests.\n\n*OOP adds:* \n\n>That’s what makes this hard. I’ve told her she doesn’t need to like or understand my interests, just not react negatively to them. On my birthday she even watched a video from my favorite YouTuber and an episode of my favorite show and was genuinely engaged, so I thought things were improving. But recently the same reactions came back, which is why I’m questioning whether this is something she can be consistent about.\n\n**Athenas\\_Return:** I think what she is trying to do is keep the parts about you she loves and change the parts of you she doesn’t. You are a great boyfriend but not 100% there, so you are her project to fix. That’s why she says ewwww, to train you away from discussing it and hopefully in her mind get you to drop those activities altogether and pick up new hobbies that are more appealing to her. That sucks honestly, and not fair to you. You shouldn’t have to change who you are so she gets who she wants.\n\n>**OOP:** I get what you’re saying, and I think the pattern is more about image than hobbies. She hasn’t pushed me toward different or “manlier” interests, but she does push me to dress and present myself in a way that looks more “wealthy,” and discourages things that don’t fit her taste. I appreciate being exposed to fashion and new perspectives, but it still sometimes feels like parts of me are only acceptable if they fit a certain image.\n\n*Girlfriend is shallow:* \n\n>I don’t see her as shallow at all. She cares a lot about physical wellness, reads and collects books, is a big cinephile, and has great relationships with her family. This isn’t about thinking I’m “better” because of my interests, it’s about feeling respected within the relationship despite our differences.\n\n***Top Comment*****s*****:*** \n\n**MasticatingSheep:** She honestly just doesn't sound very nice. There are plenty of nice women out there who like the same things you do or at least can appreciate that you do like them.\n\nBut once someone starts saying \"ew\" at 1/3 of your personality, the relationship becomes untenable. Imagine spending the rest of your life hearing that. I certainly couldn't deal with it.\n\n**Update** [Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/1r5ph5q/update_my_girlfriend_23f_seems_genuinely/)**: February 15, 2026 (1 week later)**\n\nPosting an update because a lot of people commented and DMed.\n\nWe talked. Like actually talked, not just surface level fixing things for the night.\n\nI told her straight up how it feels when she shits on my interests. That it is not just a small joke to me. Every time she scoffs or says “ew” it chips away at me and makes me hesitant to share parts of myself. I told her I am scared that if it kept happening it could build resentment over time and that is not something I want in our relationship.\n\nShe listened and owned up to it. She explained that a lot of people she has encountered who were really into those same hobbies have made misogynistic remarks or behaved in ways that made her uncomfortable. Because of those experiences she built this association in her head, and part of her reaction came from being afraid I might share those traits or eventually show them. I told her I understood where that fear came from, but that applying it to me felt unfair. I explained that it felt like I was being judged based on a stereotype rather than who I actually am. I told her she knows me well enough by now to know I am not like those people.\n\nThe conversation got emotional and deeper than just hobbies. We talked about insecurities, fears, and how we affect each other. It got heavy, we both ended up crying, and we agreed to be more mindful with how we speak to each other, including her not dismissing the things I enjoy.\n\nFast forward to recently. I was telling her about my day and kind of testing the waters without making a big deal out of it. I mentioned I watched an anime while working (I work remotely). Normally that might get a reaction, but this time she just asked about it. She asked if it was something I watched as a kid and whether I enjoyed it. No scoffing, no “ew”, just curiosity. That sounds small, but I noticed it immediately and appreciated it a lot. I am not declaring victory or anything. I just see it as a positive step and I hope it reflects a real shift rather than something temporary.\n\nAlso addressing something I saw a lot. People saying I am putting up with her because she is hot, or calling her shallow. Yes, I think she is conventionally attractive. But no, that is not why I am with her, and no, she is not shallow. She enjoys fashion and material things. That is just part of how she expresses herself and how she wants to be seen. It has never hurt her finances and she has always been mindful about spending. She talks things through with me before buying stuff, cheap or expensive.\n\nHonestly I do not think this is that different from how many of us express ourselves through our hobbies. People buy expensive collectibles or gear. Yes it is for personal enjoyment, but we also enjoy when others appreciate it or think it is cool. Wanting to be seen or validated is human, not something exclusive to one type of interest.\n\nI am not pretending everything is magically solved now. I just wanted to share that we had an honest conversation, emotions were on the table, accountability happened on both sides, and I have seen a small behavioral shift since. I am paying attention to consistency going forward.\n\nAppreciate everyone who took the time to respond.\n\n**TLDR:** We had an honest talk about how her reactions to my interests were hurting me, she explained where her assumptions came from, and we both agreed to be more mindful going forward. I’ve already seen a small positive shift and I’m hopeful it sticks.\n\n***Top Comments:*** \n\n**404\\_otpnotfound:** I’m so glad to get an update and hear that it’s positive! I hope she continues to be curious and open to you.\n\nI know I posted on the original, and I’d just like to say I don’t think she IS shallow. I was trying to point out a negative stereotype about her interests. Every space has bad people. It’s up to us to work out whether or not that person fits into that box.\n\nI’m so happy to hear she was receptive and that you’re both being vulnerable with each other. This is a small victory and it’s good and okay to be happy about it and hopeful. I hope things continue to get better. It’s good that you guys had the convo. I’m proud of you guys. It’s hard to be vulnerable and accepting when there’s a disagreement or concern. Good luck and I’m sending good vibes y’all’s way that it keeps going up from here.\n\n**francoise-fringe:** \n\n>Also addressing something I saw a lot. People saying I am putting up with her because she is hot, or calling her shallow. Yes, I think she is conventionally attractive. But no, that is not why I am with her, and no, she is not shallow. She enjoys fashion and material things. That is just part of how she expresses herself and how she wants to be seen. It has never hurt her finances and she has always been mindful about spending. She talks things through with me before buying stuff, cheap or expensive.\n\nAs a fellow girly girl AND a semi-nerd who probably has overlapping interests with both of you, this bit right here is a good example of where your gf's insecurities probably came from (+a good example of why *you* are not like the people she's afraid of). It's really common for more feminine interests to be painted as frivolous and show a lack of character, which is misogynistic bullshit.\n\nIt sounds like you really deserve your girlfriend's trust and approached this issue really compassionately without ignoring your own needs. I'm glad she's making changes to be as open-minded, supportive and loving a partner as you seem to be in these posts.","offTopic":false},{"id":"410ed031-493c-4fb9-ad3f-d63daa1579df","excerpt":"Am I overreacting about my teenager going vegan and how she’s handling it? — I swear to God lol \n\n(Coming back up to warn that this is long and has become a rant...sorry but also if you don't want to read it all I get it...just please be kind as I'm already pretty emotional about it 🙏)\n\nOkay so I'm on my cell while my ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/AmIOverreacting/comments/1qqg7q1/am_i_overreacting_about_my_teenager_going_vegan/","role":"request","weight":0.95918334,"occurredAt":"2026-01-29T18:11:07.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"AmIOverreacting","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.165,"sentiment":0.8125,"confidence":0.8233333,"matchedPatterns":["why_doesnt","praise"],"statement":"*🗣 Why can't you go vegan, you're evil* You know this is on me.","title":"Am I overreacting about my teenager going vegan and how she’s handling it?","body":"I swear to God lol \n\n(Coming back up to warn that this is long and has become a rant...sorry but also if you don't want to read it all I get it...just please be kind as I'm already pretty emotional about it 🙏)\n\nOkay so I'm on my cell while my kid is at school and it's...kids dude 😅\n\nI’m a mom to a 13 (going on 30 lol)-year-old daughter \"Decker\", and I’m trying to figure out whether I’m actually being totally unreasonable here or if this is just what parenting a teenager looks like because to be honest with you, reddit, I can be very stubborn when I want to be (and that's to be kind to myself, my wife has accused me of being pigheaded before)\n\nMy wife \"Honey\" and I moved our small little family earlier this year for work and a fresh start after some drama and dynamics shifting. Its been great fo us and our kid is thriving in multiple ways. Our daughter is adopted, very compassionate, very opinionated, very much probably going to take over the world or save lmao and deeply curious about the world. She’s involved in sports, theatre, art, keeps her grades up, and stays pretty busy by choice. Like I said, going on 30. I swear sometimes she's more on top of things than I am. She handles her own schedule, created a family calendar, has a duffle ready for every weekday to keep track of uniforms and homework - she really has her own system down and we have learned to *never* interfere with the system 😅 buuuuut she's always prepared and on time and is a good students so we take this as good news.\n\nListen she's our only kid and we are NO EXPERTS - we've been flying by the seat of our pants since day 1 and no amount of research or prep has truly put us ahead of the current on this wild ride of parenting lol\n\nRecently, she decided to go fully vegan. No problem here with either me or my wife. And this didn’t come out of nowhere...she’s been learning more about animal welfare and food systems and her reasoning is rooted in empathy and weve always taught her to use facts over emotions and she presented FACTS. I mean i was facinated by what i learned from her. I respect that a lot and genuinely want to support her values. In fact I'm really proud of her for taking up a cause she's passionate about and being factual and consistent with her points regarding it...\n\n...for the most part?\n\nI mean all that said, I’m not vegan. I eat animal products, I’m healthy, and I don’t want to overhaul my entire diet. Same for my wife. We’ve been trying to support our daughter without pretending we’re something we’re not. At best we could be pescatarian but that's about it.\n\nAt first everything was fine. My wife and I would cook 2 separate meals, one for us and one vegan dish for her. She ate her vegan meals, we ate ours, and we shared the table. Over time, though, she started making comments...about meat smelling bad, about animals suffering, about what we were eating. Some of the comparisons felt extreme and she always did this WHILE we were trying to eat. I tried to let most of it slide until I really couldn't take it anymore and flat out requested she refrain from criticizing anyone's food while they are eating, citing that it's kind of mean and rude to do and it makes people uncomfortable. She argued that discomfort is what \"carnavores\" need to change and I said that her comments don't want me to go vegan at all, it just makes me uncomfortable - this isn't *helping* her cause and can push people away. Many people would probably just avoid eating with her if when they eat, all they'll hear is not a conversation but a lecture. This caused a real blowup and she yelled some hurtful things and went to her room. It was the firstb outburst of that kind from her towards me and I was stunned. \n\nIt really made me question myself. Am I crazy? Am I not doing this right? I spent the whole night wondering what I should've Said or done. Honey went in to talk to her and my daughter later did apologize to me and did her chire of the dishes that next morning but she wouldn't look me in the eye and was shirt with me for a couple days. \n\nSo, instead of arguing, I shifted toward teaching her independence and social skills alonfside her advocacy. I’ve been helping her learn how to cook her own vegan meals, plan grocery trips, read labels, and make sure she’s getting what she needs nutritionally. She and i took an online course together about healthy conversations and conflict. We’ve also made it a point to explore vegan food together. Every couple of weeks, we go to a vegan restaurant and “grade” it. It’s actually been a bonding thing, and we’ve found a few places we really like! Vegan cuisine has really coke a long way and there are a lot of vegan dishes I found I actually really love and would crave or order myself without her prompting.\n\nRecently, she asked if she could start cooking only vegan meals for the entire household. I gently said no. My wife and I talked it through and offered a compromise: one fully plant based day a week where she cooks for all of us.\n\nTo say she didn’t take that well...😬 She said that if we only eat vegan one day a week, then it’s not a real vegan household. I told her calmly that she’s right...it’s not. It’s a household with a vegan in it, and that’s okay. I explained that when she has her own place someday, she can decide what food comes in and out. In a shared home, one person doesn’t get to dictate everyone else’s choices.\n\nShe responded by saying that I’ve dictated her whole life and went on a very long rant to me about how I smother her and she is just trying to save the animals and that we taught her to be compassionate but are betraying our own values and now she has lost respect for me for liking vegan food but still eating meat. My head was spinning. It was a lot to take in. \n\nI made it clear that even if we're angry at one another, we still need to be respectful when we speak to each other. If she speaks to me that way again, there will be consequences. As for her respect of me, i said I found that unfair and hurtful, as we've been very srrspectful of her going vegan and respecting her boundaries when all we ask is the respect for ours in return. I did tell her her passion is good but she need to learn how to coexist and  manage both her expectations and her communication with people different from her if she wants people to be open to her side of things. I'm her mom, I love her, but she's being unreasonable. She went silent and just stared. She just shut down. She went to her room, slammed the door, and hasn't really been herself since. She'll talk to answer questions but it's curt and any invitation to spend time is turned down. It feels like she's icing me out. We let this breathe for a weekend but that night when she came out for me to give her a ride to her rehearsal, I told her the cold war needed to end and we needed to talk this out. I told her I love her and always will, but this treatment is just not ok. She said \"I love you too, I just don't really like you.\"\n\nThat one stung. From my perspective, I’ve been trying to parent her while still giving her space to grow, explore, and figure out who she is. I love this kid fiercely. I respect her compassion and her convictions. I’m just tired and struggling to find the line between supporting her values and maintaining balance in our home and BEING A PARENT without being a doormat *or* a tyrant.\n\nSo… am I overreacting? Or is this just part of raising a thoughtful, passionate teenager?\n\nTeenagers, man. 😅 I know I'm joking around a bit in my post but it's just painful. She seem to like my wife way more and though my wife will correct behavior too and defend me, Decker seems completely unmoved. She has been grounded when crossing boundaries, but it just seems to fester resentment at this point. Am I crazy?\n\n\nEdit: okay this got unmanageably busy lol here's some FAQs or FACs\n\n\n*🙄 she's a teen duh*\n\nLol guys she's our only kid. Duh. It's a learning curve and I can admit I don't know what I'm doing. I've read every book and article and scrap of info I can find about parenting but nothing fully prepares you for your cute little adulty child becoming a freaking TEEN. 😅 Tokyo wasn't entirely prepared for Godzilla right?\n\n\n\n*teens hate their parents* / *she hates you*\nWell I love her. And always will. I will forever be so proud to be her mom. That's not changing.\n\n*you wouldn't eat meat if you had to dispatch the animal yourself*\n\nActually, I do 🤷‍♀️ we had a farm. I still fish and get live crab, crawfish etc. My kid knows how to break down parts of meat for meals as I've taught her. In my culture and similarly in my wife's culture, you're taught to appreciate and use every part of the animal.\n\n*everything has animal products, is she aware of this*\n\nI would imagine so but its worth a discussion. I only know 3 vegans so this is pretty new territory for me. I will look into this!\n\n*she might be influenced by tiktok or twitter*\nOof. Maybe. Though she's aware of the strengths and pitfalls of such things. We had a talk when she was younger. The internet is GREAT but also you have to wade through utter crap to find the gold. We try to keep her off the internet a bit so she's not a head in a phone but...anyone can tell you how challenging THAT can be lol\n\n*this is normal* / *here's some advise*\n\nMUCH appreciated and thansk to all who were kind and reassuring. Kids are challenging and we went to do right by her but it can be so scary. You don't want to mess your kid up for life even accidentally. My parents were not great, I want so much to avoid those pitfalls \n\n*this is too long*\n\nI warned you 🤣🤷‍♀️ why are you here!? Did you not see the warning not 5 sentences in because if 5 sentences is long emails must be tough..\n\n\n*🗣 Why can't you go vegan, you're evil*\n\nYou know this is on me. I did post on reddit...😅 not here to debate that. And honestly, thanks for proving my concern.youre exactly the type of bully I don't want my kid to become. I actually want her to be happy with life and not have voids the size of TX that can only be filled by online circlej*rks.\n\n\nHey and while I'm on jerks, anyone suggesting I harm my child for compliance can F off. Get therapy. Christ.\n\nMy block button be SMOKING! 😅\n\n\nUpdate: It's morning and my kid was up in the garden with Honey. I suggested a vegan restaurant we really like later today (it's Friday) to eat and talk as a family. You guys she said YES. She actually seemed to really like the idea. I did cloak it a bit under the guide of a reward for her straight As last semester. We will see how that goes. Send good vibes! \n\n","offTopic":false},{"id":"bc841b36-c3ab-4a9b-a60b-6415ee3ab365","excerpt":"advide needed — Hey there! this is my first post ever here, im currently looking on any advice that you might have for me. This august itll be our first year anniversary, just for you to keep in mind that im new at this.  \nSorry if theres a lot of misspelling, english is not my first language. and sorry for the LONG po","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/Marriage/comments/1t5tha4/advide_needed/","role":"pain","weight":0.9344434,"occurredAt":"2026-05-06T23:25:04.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"Marriage","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.48,"sentiment":0,"confidence":0.6313807,"matchedPatterns":["frustrating"],"statement":"I got my period last night so i can understand my reactions a little bit better today but yesterday i asked him if he likes me (i know, stupid question) but i noticed that hes been having less patience for everything lately, inluding me, h…","title":"advide needed","body":"Hey there! this is my first post ever here, im currently looking on any advice that you might have for me. This august itll be our first year anniversary, just for you to keep in mind that im new at this.  \nSorry if theres a lot of misspelling, english is not my first language. and sorry for the LONG post. \n\nMy husband is the loveliest man ever, lately we've been struggling with a few stuff, number 1 being the sex ritual, either hes too tired for it or when we do it its mostly for his pleasure, we discussed this a few times now, its been great, but i still want him to want me, if that makes any sense? he has a very tight schedule working nights, we go to the gym in the am, share breakfast and then hes out of the shower and ready for bed which i dont mind bc hes the only one working rn (im in the process of getting my work permit) so i want him to rest as much as needs/wants/likes, the problem is when hes off hes mostly never trying to be playful with me and lately ive found myself being the only one iniciating anything sexual between us, so its been hard, he says sometimes its just different for guys (mind you hes the only man ive been in such a long relationship with) and i want to understand, but like i said, its been hard lately.   \nJust yesterday we had a discussion over whatsapp bc before he left everything was alright, per say, in the morning he came back from work very grumpy and i noticed that he was taking it on me, couldnt even greet me like we always do, i was confused and asked him if he as ok and said that he was just doing stuff and got grumpy, so i gave him space to deal with it  and i went back on getting ready for the gym, after that we had yet another small discussion and i honestly hate it when hes grumpy and he picks on me so i got grumpy and he got upset ????? does he expect me to be fine after dealing with his attitude? i obviusly told him that but at the gym we talked and were fine.  \nI got my period last night so i can understand my reactions a little bit better today but yesterday i asked him if he likes me (i know, stupid question) but i noticed that hes been having less patience for everything lately, inluding me, he gets easily frustrated and when i ask him about it he just says that is too much that hes dealing with at work and his family situations and ive been trying to get him to talk more so he can vent and stuff, havent practiced that too much tho. ok so he answered saying that he loves me and just bc hes grumpy i shouldnt take it personal and my first thought shouldnt be \"hes upset at me\" which i understand but we are both emotional, specially me, so when hes grumpy for a long time and doesnt even try to not be soooo grumpy i get upset but i dont make a fuss (or fuzz? idk english very well, sorry) and this is our second week of us going to the gym M to F and the second week thats hes been \"helping\" me in the kitchen, this is where i get upset and i could get resentful when were done eating he just throws everything in the sink and let it soak but never actually washes the dishes if i dont ask him, i mean is common sense i would think, but he doesnt and when i ask him i can tell hes upset about it and last night our fight via whatsapp was related to the events in the morning, he said that he looks for a little bit of sympathy bc he works hard and yesterday he was upset in the morning bc he had to fold some laundry and didnt have clean workout shorts, i didnt do laundry on monday bc i did grocery shopping and was busy with other stuff, plus dinner for both of us, etc. that comment relly reached a point where my feminist side was UPSET bc i understood that he wanted me to not complain and just have everything ready for him or something, he mentioned that he had to take the trash out and some boxes (of his grandpas delivery stuff that i didnt even see) that were there for 3 days and he said that i obviously wasnt going to do anything about it and i was flipping out. I never ask anything of him during the week bc i prioritize his sleep schedule and when hes off we both do the chores around the house like we always have, but this past 2 months hes been really crabby, grumpy, bad mood, if i ask him of anything and its making me sad bc i expect him to do the basic stuff without me asking him to, he should just do it bc were a team and whenever i do it i never complain or anything. We really dont fight, or argue a lot, but its been too repetitive lately, i think he just wants me to be a housewife and thats it, but he says that thats not his point ever. \n\n  \nIm just really exhausted emotionally and talking about it with him at this moment its been hard and im trying to avoid it bc like i said, im exhausted.\n\nAlso, I know hes not cheating, this is not the case, i trust him and we love each other very deeply, its just when we argue we dont seem to be able to communicate very well, also since english is not my first language sometimes the tone and or phrases puts me off or viceversa.\n\n  \nThank you so much in advance.","offTopic":false},{"id":"554d8fa6-636f-44dc-b464-0fe6c2be6f47","excerpt":"My girlfriend (24F) rarely makes time for me (28M) outside work, and I’m starting to feel like I’m only being prioritized when it’s convenient — My girlfriend and I have been officially together for a few weeks, but we’ve known each other professionally for longer and have been getting to know each other romantically f","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/1vvgo6t/my_girlfriend_24f_rarely_makes_time_for_me_28m/","role":"pain","weight":0.8582704,"occurredAt":"2026-08-22T16:20:25.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"relationship_advice","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.48930234,"sentiment":-0.023255814,"confidence":0.57629025,"matchedPatterns":["frustrating"],"statement":"I don’t personally care that much about texting, but it becomes frustrating when she asks for more communication while also making it difficult to actually communicate.","title":"My girlfriend (24F) rarely makes time for me (28M) outside work, and I’m starting to feel like I’m only being prioritized when it’s convenient","body":"My girlfriend and I have been officially together for a few weeks, but we’ve known each other professionally for longer and have been getting to know each other romantically for around 6 months.  \nWe work at the same company but in different departments. Our relationship started becoming more personal when I deliberately asked her out for lunch around 6 months ago. From there, we started having more lunches, dinners and dates together, and eventually I asked her to be my girlfriend.\n\n**Some context about how we became official:**\n\nWhen I asked her to be my girlfriend, she told me that she liked me but felt that I was rushing things and needed time to decide whether she was ready to make the relationship official. She had a few concerns about me that contributed to this.\n\nOne was that she wasn’t convinced I was serious about her. She felt that I could be overly sweet/talkative with her and worried that some of it might be love bombing rather than genuine intentions.\n\nAnother major concern was that I talked to a female colleague too much. From my perspective, most of our conversations were work-related and during office hours, but my girlfriend genuinely believed this colleague was interested in me and felt that I was entertaining that attention.\n\nShe also told me that she wanted us to text more. This was somewhat ironic from my perspective because she’s generally a slow and fairly dry texter herself. I wasn’t particularly bothered by her texting habits before, but it became relevant because she specifically identified communication as something she wanted more of from me.\n\nBecause of these concerns, she asked for time to think about whether she wanted to make things official. She ultimately took around two weeks.  \nDuring those two weeks, I became increasingly anxious. I felt like I was already putting a lot into the relationship while still not knowing whether she actually wanted me. Eventually, I pushed her quite hard for a yes/no answer rather than allowing her to delay it further. I essentially told her that if she couldn’t give me an answer, I would take that as a no and move on. She eventually said yes. I recognize that I put significant pressure on her to make that decision, and in hindsight I don’t think that was the healthiest way to handle it. At the same time, I think the underlying differences in what we each expect from a relationship are still relevant.\n\n**The actual problem:**\n\nA major issue for me is how difficult it is to spend meaningful time together outside of work.\n\nHer usual priorities seem to be:  \n\\- Immediate family  \n\\- Her roommate/best friend  \n\\- Her roommate’s family, who treat her like their own  \n\\- Me\n\nI’m not expecting to be her #1 priority all the time, and I understand that she has existing relationships and commitments. The problem is that I rarely feel like she makes an effort to create time for me.  \nOn average, we probably have around two lunches and one dinner together per week, and I’m completely fine with that. I’m not expecting to see her every weekday or even most weekdays. The issue isn’t the frequency of those meals; it’s that those meals are essentially the only regular opportunities we have to spend time together.\n\nThere were several occasions when we started seeing each other where I asked her to have dinner with me and she declined because she was tired, while I knew she would sometimes still have dinner with her roommate/best friend. I eventually brought this up with her directly, and she responded well. This particular issue was resolved once I communicated how I felt. However, I also don’t particularly want our relationship to revolve around weekday lunches and dinners, even though those are the easiest opportunities because we work at the same company.\n\nLunch at work is chaotic and crowded, we’re still in work mode, and we’re usually on a clock. Dinner immediately after work has similar problems. We’re both tired from the day, places are often noisy and crowded, and there’s always the possibility of bumping into colleagues. Since we’re coworkers, we also can’t necessarily be openly affectionate without it becoming awkward. More importantly, I don’t feel like those settings give us the kind of quality time I’m looking for. We’re not really able to just sit around and talk about random things for hours, have deeper conversations, or simply enjoy being together without watching the clock. Maybe that’s partly a personal preference, but I don’t consider a rushed weekday meal at or immediately after work to be a substitute for actually spending a substantial amount of time together. So when I say I want more time together, I’m not necessarily asking for more meals. I’m asking for time where we’re actually able to switch off from work and spend time together as a couple.\n\n**We actually discussed this before my recent trip:**\n\nA few days before my recent solo trip, we had another conversation about this and agreed on three things:\n\n\\- On weekdays, we’d try to do more than just a quick dinner together when possible.  \n\\- If she was in the country on a weekend, she’d try to make time for me.  \n\\- If she was back in her hometown for a weekend, I would occasionally make the effort to travel there specifically to spend time with her.\n\nI felt pretty good about this conversation because I didn’t feel like I was asking her to abandon her existing relationships. We were trying to find a compromise that worked for both of us. \n\nI then went on a week-long solo trip. She knew when I was returning, and I deliberately didn’t push for a meetup because I wanted to give her some space to actually initiate and show me that she wanted to spend time with me. She was in the country that weekend. Instead, she told me that we wouldn’t meet over the weekend and would meet on a weekday instead.\n\nThis really hurt me because it was literally the first weekend after we had explicitly agreed that if she was in the country, she would try to make time for me. And the weekday alternative is exactly the type of situation I’m struggling with. It’s convenient because we already work at the same company, so seeing each other requires very little additional effort. I realize that from her perspective, this might not seem like a big deal. She may genuinely care about me and simply have a different idea of how couples should allocate their time. There may also be things going on that I’m not aware of. But from my perspective, I had deliberately stopped pushing and gave her an opportunity to demonstrate the initiative we had just discussed.\n\nInstead, nothing changed.\n\n**The texting issue:**\n\nThere’s also a texting issue. She has told me that she wants us to text more. I’m willing to do that, but she’s generally a slow and fairly dry texter, so I find it difficult to maintain much of a conversation. I don’t personally care that much about texting, but it becomes frustrating when she asks for more communication while also making it difficult to actually communicate. I don’t need to text her constantly. I just find myself wondering what exactly I’m supposed to work with when the replies are often hours apart and fairly short.\n\n**The confusing part:**\n\nThe confusing part is that when we’re actually together, things are great. I enjoy being with her tremendously. She’s affectionate, we have fun, and I genuinely love her and want the relationship to work. And I can feel that she’s enjoying too.\n\nBut when we’re apart and I’m repeatedly unable to get meaningful time with her, I spiral. I start feeling unwanted, unimportant, and like I’m essentially single despite being in a relationship. And this is where I think my situation might be different from someone who is simply overly dependent on their partner.\n\nI’m actually very satisfied being single. I have my own hobbies, friends, family, career and interests, and I genuinely enjoy having time to myself. I don’t need a relationship to fill some void in my life, and I’m not looking for someone to occupy all of my free time. In fact, I still have plenty of time for all of those things while I’m in this relationship. That’s part of what makes this so frustrating. My life has barely changed since becoming her boyfriend. I still have my hobbies. I still see my friends. I still spend time with my family. I still have plenty of time alone. I still do my own things and even go on solo trips.\n\nObviously I don’t expect a relationship to completely take over my life, and I don’t think that would be healthy. But a romantic relationship should still become a meaningful part of your life. Right now, outside of the times when we’re physically together, my day-to-day life barely feels different from when I was single. That’s why I say I feel single despite technically being in a relationship. It’s not because I need constant attention or someone to occupy all my time. It’s because I don’t feel like the relationship is taking up a meaningful amount of space in either of our lives.\n\n**What I’m struggling with:**\n\nI don’t want a girlfriend who has to constantly rearrange her life for me. I don’t need to see her every weekend. I don’t expect her to cancel important plans for me. What I want is some evidence of initiative and enthusiasm, for her to occasionally make time for me because she actually wants to, rather than because it’s convenient. And I don’t want to have to repeatedly identify every single thing I need and then ask for it before anything changes. I want to see some effort coming from her naturally.\n\nAt the same time, I recognize that she has already responded positively when I’ve communicated certain issues, and she may genuinely feel that she is putting effort into the relationship. She may simply have a completely different baseline for how much time couples should spend together. So I’m genuinely questioning whether we’re incompatible in how we view relationships, or whether I’m being too demanding.\n\nAm I expecting too much? Is it reasonable to expect my girlfriend to occasionally prioritize spending a weekend with me, especially when we’ve explicitly discussed this and agreed that she’d try to make time when she’s in the country? And for anyone who’s been in a relationship where both partners have very different ideas of how much time they should spend together: how did you determine whether it was something you could compromise on or a fundamental incompatibility?\n\nFrankly, I’ve already mentally broken up with her because of this. I don’t know whether I’m overreacting or not. And as fucked as it is for me to say, I know I can find someone better, someone that actually wants me. But I really want it to be her. ","offTopic":false},{"id":"be14b3e4-744e-49eb-a128-d0867eddc50c","excerpt":"Update: My (29F) husband (33M) says I changed after having kids, but I think he liked me better when I was just his Barbie doll. — I posted just 3 days ago, but I want to give an update because I took the comments to heart and decided to stop wallowing by myself and online and just come out and tell my husband how I've","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/1ue0yt0/update_my_29f_husband_33m_says_i_changed_after/","role":"request","weight":0.83386666,"occurredAt":"2026-06-24T02:26:17.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"relationship_advice","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.18,"sentiment":1,"confidence":0.70666665,"matchedPatterns":["i_need"],"statement":"I woke up from the nap and when I went out to the living room I told him immediately that I need a nap like that every weekend.","title":"Update: My (29F) husband (33M) says I changed after having kids, but I think he liked me better when I was just his Barbie doll.","body":"I posted just 3 days ago, but I want to give an update because I took the comments to heart and decided to stop wallowing by myself and online and just come out and tell my husband how I've been feeling. I'm still getting comments on that post today, so I wanted to share what's changing.\n\nOn Father's Day we did some special stuff for Father's Day. He even semi-broke his diet for the special occasion, but only semi. In the afternoon, both babies were napping at the same time, which doesn't happen often despite my best efforts. He really wanted to have sex. We used to have sex all the time and still did pretty frequently after our son was born (my son is the oldest at 18 months and my daughter is 4 months). It only happens maybe 1-2 times a week now because I'm just tired and never in the mood. He has not been rejecting me sexually, and when it does happen it's actually one thing he's not selfish about. If anything, I'm trying to turn it into a quickie and he wants to do everything to me. If I have free time, I want to sleep. So, I resisted for a while but he promised me he'd give me an amazing orgasm which would help relax me. I figured ok, it was Father's Day, but he better make good on his promise. We actually had fantastic sex and I was so relaxed and sleepy afterwards. One of the kids woke up and he told me to sleep and he'd handle it. I ended up sleeping for 3 hours straight in the middle of the day and it was divine.\n\nI woke up from that nap and realized I should be getting these naps every weekend. I should be getting more breaks and time to myself. I don't know why it's been so hard for me to voice that. I know that part of me wanted him to realize it himself without being told. I wanted him to offer or step up or whatever you want to call it. I didn't want to have to tell him. I was probably being too stubborn about that.\n\nI woke up from the nap and when I went out to the living room I told him immediately that I need a nap like that every weekend. He said ok. I said no, I'm serious and he needs to promise me he'll let me sleep for a few hours uninterrupted every weekend day when he's home. He said ok, like it was nothing.Then I just kept going. I told him I need more help, not outside help as I'm not comfortable with people coming into the house and cleaning or taking care of my kids when I'm there. I want him to do it. I want him to either wake up in the morning and do some chores before he goes to the gym, even if that means he has to wake up at 4 am now....because I'm up at that time! I don't even want to go to the gym, but if he wants me to look like I used to, I'd like to be able to be up at 4 am riding the Peloton while he does chores or take care of anyone who is awake and needs fed or changed during that time. He just said \"I can do that\" like it was nothing. I asked him if it's nothing, why am I having to ask for it. He said he just didn't think of it, he's not a mindreader. I don't expect him to be a mindreader but how hard is it to comprehend that your wife, who is with your 2 babies all day long, might need a little more help?\n\nYesterday when he got home from work I was dressed and ready to go. He walked in the door and I told him I was going to get my hair done and I'd be home whenever, didn't know how long it'd take. Give him a run down on who had last ate and been changed and napped and when and bye. He did have to text me once or twice to ask where some things were, but everything was fine. I decided that I don't need to keep trying to be the same me with the same look I've had for years. I got about 7 inches cut off my hair. I haven't had my hair done professionally in over 6 months, and I used to be there all the time, like every 2 months. I just wanted something that actually looked styled and cute, plus it's still below my shoulders so it's not super short, but easier to maintain now.\n\nI walked in the door and he was like \"you look like a mom.\" Grrr. It didn't feel good, but at the same time I just told him I am a mom and if he doesn't like it that's tough. He's the one who made me a mom. He said he was just joking and he liked it, it looked really good. I don't know if I believe him, but I like it and that should be all that matters.\n\nTonight I told him 1) I need him to do some chores and I'm making him a chore chart like he's a little boy. He said that was okay, and he admitted he is like a little boy and needs told what to do. I told him that whatever sort of whacky diet eating like 500 calories a day he wants to do is whatever, but he needs to start helping prepare food for me because I'm not eating well and I'm not losing weight and I want to lose weight. I told him I don't really want to step on the scale in front of him though. He said I was the one who kept going on about being fat and wanting to lose weight. He's not wrong.\n\nI’ve already told him that tomorrow we’re having a serious conversation about all of this, what we both need from each other right now, when he gets home from work. I had originally told him I wanted to do that tonight but he had to work until 7 tonight so I knew I’d be too tired and likely right in the middle of my son’s bedtime routine when he got home.\n\nSo tomorrow is when I’m going to really put it all on the table. I’m not ready to say anything like I’m considering divorce or will divorce him if xyz doesn’t happen. that’d be a lie. I’m not even thinking of divorce. The only reason I’m even mentioning divorce here is because there were several comments about it on my previous post. But if you were me, what would you say and what would you ask of your partner?","offTopic":false},{"id":"7659b9f6-454d-426e-86e7-3eb762e6d2c2","excerpt":"35M trying to cope up with wife’s 34F infidelity — Okay.. so i joined Reddit some time back because i have been thinking of posting a part of my story since a long time but didn’t really have enough courage to post it.  \nIt might be a little long so please bear with me.  \nA quick backstory - So, i (M35) have been marri","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/RelationshipIndia/comments/1vu6nv8/35m_trying_to_cope_up_with_wifes_34f_infidelity/","role":"request","weight":0.8104429,"occurredAt":"2026-08-21T04:56:23.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"RelationshipIndia","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.36,"sentiment":1,"confidence":0.5959139,"matchedPatterns":["missing_feature"],"statement":"Not that she had a lack of anything.","title":"35M trying to cope up with wife’s 34F infidelity","body":"Okay.. so i joined Reddit some time back because i have been thinking of posting a part of my story since a long time but didn’t really have enough courage to post it.  \nIt might be a little long so please bear with me.  \nA quick backstory - So, i (M35) have been married for the past 5 years and it’s a love marriage (that happened after a lot of issues as her (F34) family wasn’t convinced initially). We have known each other since a couple of decades as we have been friends for years and even dated each other when we were in school although she broked up with me after school ended citing issues from her family). But then we kind of met again quite a few years later and we started dating again for a year or two before finally getting married.\n\nThe event - So basically for the past 1.5 years she has been cheating on me with another guy from her office. I have know n it since a year post getting to see certain evidences when she started reacting weirdly. She would go to office early and come back early and would go off to sleep by the time i would be back. Slowly and steadily she started getting irritated of me and kept bad mouthing for every thing. Not that she had a lack of anything. We have been quite well settled, i earn well enough and she hasn’t been ever short of any necessities. We would go on trips, lavish resorts, would order a new dress almost every alternate day, weekend dinners movies.. i mean it has never been dull or unfulfilling at any point of time. So her going out of the relationship with someone else, never made any sense.  \nI started picking up small evidences initially to confront her and ask her questions. Slowly and steadily i started getting a lot of them.. all of it broke me from within.. but then i kept trusting her thinking it might just lead to nothing.. but with every growing evidence, i kept feeling numb within and then finally one day i was shaken to the core.  \nI got to know that this guy would come to my home, spend hours with her at our home, while i was at office.  \nShe would call me and check as to when i’ll be back.. and i kept thinking that she’s just caring for me.. but then when i just joined the dots, it was all about timing.  \nNot even for once, did i think of spying on her or going back to my home for checking to see if someone came behind me.  \nBut that one day changed everything for me.. so i was in my office and i was talking to my friends when suddenly some topic started and i told my friend that “arey i checked that thing out yesterday only.. it will be in my browser history”.. so i just opened my browser history.. although unknowingly i had my wife’s email account logged in to my web browser as this phone was used by my wife for some time and she might have logged in to the browser with her credentials.  \nI wasn’t aware that it was my wife’s email account logged in as i didnt notice it and directly opened the history to find my searched item.. strangely i was a bit shocked.. the search list wasn’t mine and it had “within how many hours of unprotected sex should we take a contraceptive tablet” and “contraceptive tablets delivery” being searched a few times.  \nI was in my office then.. was just talking to my friends a couple of minutes ago as i told earlier and within a couple of seconds.. my life shattered.. i almost started shivering.. my friends saw the change in expressions and asked me.. i just went out to call her asking what it was.. she too got stunned at first and was taken aback.. she told me it was for a friend and she was helping her.. definitely a lie.. but she was fuming with anger on how i got to know.. i told her about the history thing and she started shouting at me.. when i returned back home.. she fought with me.. it was ugly.. really ugly.. and she told that she wants a divorce and can’t stay with a man like me.. she kept shouting like anything while i kept pacifying her.  \nI resolved the argument a couple of days later agreeing to what she said but then i kept getting more evidences going ahead.. movie tickets, handwritten love letter, and more of such contraceptive pill deliveries (her email was logged into another device at home and with each growing evidence just decided to check a few recent emails), couple rings and what not!!  \nIt’s been 1.5 years since then.. i never filed a divorce because maybe i was a fool that i kept giving her chances and kept trying from my end to fix things (which wasn’t my fault but still i did).  \nOf lately, her relationship with this guy (btw he’s married with a kid) turned sour when she got to know that her wife is 6months pregnant. So basically this guy was just playing with her.  \nWhen she got to know about it.. she was devastated to the core.. that she ruined her life because of that guy.. and what not.. but then she cried inconsolably for him which showed how deeply she fell for him.. while that guy was just trying to put everything on her that she got into his marriage and all of that.  \nThat’s when my wife revealed the most shocking and choking truth i was not ready to hear - my wife was pregnant and she went through an early abortion process (she once told me that she’ll be at her friend’s house for a week as her friend is unwell and her husband isn’t at home so she’s just going there to help her.. although it was that time when she was hospitalized and went through that process).  \nA quick note - all this while my wife never let me touch her or come near her.. even when i tried to maybe hug her or kiss her.. she used to refrain from it saying she doesn’t like it so there has been absolutely no physical intimacy for all these past 1.5 years or so.  \nI didn’t know how to react but felt bad for her that she went through all of it.. again didn’t think about my condition.. but consoled her.. till she became normal.. took a couple of days but she was getting normal.  \nI was silently crying but gave her that strength she needed during that time.. not trying to show off here but genuinely did it without thinking of anything else.  \nShe kept calling that guy for a few days asking questions on why he did all of it and can’t he just come to see her for once.. but he didn’t come.. all she had with her now was ME.  \nWithin a few days, she told me that she might sound selfish but that she isn’t left with anyone but me and if i would spend the rest of the life with her. Obviously i was always just an EASY OPTION.  \nAll this while, i never told about all of this to anyone, including her family, because i didn’t want them to think of her in bad way or whatever.. but yes.. just didn’t feel like sharing any of it to anyone.  \nThis is probably the first time i am sharing all of it to someone and although it’s anonymous.. i kind of feel light.. and with every typed word.. i swear i felt lighter.. as if someone is actually listening to me.  \nI am quite a mentally strong individual and hence i want to just focus on good things ahead and achieve a lot more professionally, as the past two years have been heavy and hence i wasn’t at the best in terms of focusing on my work.\n\nI don’t know how to take this further but recently i moved to a PG, staying along but yeah it’s kind of helping me. Although, she has been calling me now and saying that she wants to be back and try things out with me. Tbh i still fall weak at times but then i gave enough chances in the past couple of years and hence can’t really trust things anymore.\n\nThere’s a lot.. a hell lot more to this story that i couldn’t type in.. but just here to seek some guidance on how to move forward.. i know about divorce things and all but here for just some genuine advice and some good wishes. Need a lot of luck and wishes going forward as i am falling short of it ig🤭\n\nAnyways.. that’s still quite a long post and anyone who has read all of it till here.. i just want to THANK YOU for hearing me out. Lots of love❤️","offTopic":false},{"id":"6804190d-ba21-40f2-a352-22ada2a94e73","excerpt":"Wife (38F) says she doesn't want to separate but has no desire for me (39M) and doesn't know if she wants to rebuild our marriage. How do I navigate this? — My wife and I are both around 40 and have been together for about 20 years. We have three young children. (f9, m8 and f6 - m8 has ADHD which I also suffer from).\n\n","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/1vvx24n/wife_38f_says_she_doesnt_want_to_separate_but_has/","role":"request","weight":0.6564321,"occurredAt":"2026-08-23T04:13:12.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"relationships","intent":"howto_question","painScore":0.09,"sentiment":0.7288136,"confidence":0.60223126,"matchedPatterns":["how_can_i"],"statement":"How do I navigate this?.","title":"Wife (38F) says she doesn't want to separate but has no desire for me (39M) and doesn't know if she wants to rebuild our marriage. How do I navigate this?","body":"My wife and I are both around 40 and have been together for about 20 years. We have three young children. (f9, m8 and f6 - m8 has ADHD which I also suffer from).\n\nOur marriage has been in a difficult place since April last year. There wasn't one dramatic event in April. It was more that problems that had been building for a long time came to a head. Around Easter she told me she was unhappy and needed space.\n\nLooking back, I can see that I contributed significantly to where we ended up. I could be critical and negative and I relied on her too much for reassurance about our relationship. When I felt rejected or insecure I would sometimes push for reassurance or try to resolve things immediately, which made her feel more pressured and made things worse. There were also times when I was angry and difficult to be around. I don't think I properly understood how much those patterns had affected her until things reached this point.\n\nSince then I've worked pretty hard on changing those behaviours, both because I want the marriage to survive and because I don't like those things about myself. I'm certainly not claiming I've become a perfect husband. But my wife herself now says I've been a great husband for quite a while and that she has noticed the change. The difficult part is that changing those things hasn't brought her romantic feelings back, at least so far.\n\nMy wife initially talked about separating but since then has moved between wanting to leave and being uncertain. She has also told me that, even when she was talking about separation, she never actually wanted to separate.\n\nFor quite a while her position has basically been that she doesn't know what she wants. When I've asked why she stays, she has sometimes said, \"I'm still here.\"\n\nWe've been in couples counselling. I've taken a lot of responsibility for things I did that contributed to the deterioration of our relationship and have spent the last year trying to change those patterns. A few months ago my wife asked to pause our sessions with the counsellor. She has also seen her own therapist a few times. She told me recently that she doesn't like going to therapy because it makes her think about all of this and she finds that really distressing.\n\nWe have just returned from a week-long family skiing holiday. It was actually a good holiday. We slept beside each other all week, managed five days skiing with the kids and generally got along well.\n\nTowards the end of the holiday we had a very difficult conversation about intimacy.\n\nMy wife told me she currently has no desire for me. She said she actually doesn't feel desire for anyone — me, friends or anybody else — and mostly wants to be cared for by her parents, sisters and our children. She said she doesn't want to separate or divorce but she also doesn't want to try to \"rekindle\" our relationship.\n\nWhen I asked whether there was any part of her that wanted us romantically, she said she felt nothing. Just nothing.\n\nShe cried during the conversation and told me she feels like a failure. She said what has happened is partly her fault.\n\nShe told me that a long time ago she had basically decided that she was going to make our relationship work, that she would have a good marriage and that she would stay married. She thought she could make that happen. Now she feels like she has failed.\n\nShe talked about having a big ego and thinking she could make things work. She said she had been stupid to try things that weren't going to work and that now \"it has all shattered\".\n\nShe also said she feels conflicted between being a loyal wife and being happy. She specifically said it isn't as simple as her not wanting to be with me. She says she genuinely doesn't know what she wants.\n\nI told her I had given this everything I have and that I am willing to keep doing that if there is hope. She said she didn't know how to respond to that authentically. She couldn't tell me there was hope but she also didn't tell me there wasn't.\n\nAt another point she told me that I could find someone nice and be happy. I told her I agreed that I probably could but that isn't what I want. I want her. Partly that's because she is the mother of my children and I value our family enormously but it is also because I genuinely think she is an incredible person and I still love and admire her.\n\nI also admitted that the children are a huge consideration for me. If we separated I would probably see them less and I don't want that. I have a demanding career and I honestly don't know how well I could juggle everything as a separated parent. If we didn't have children, moving on might make more obvious sense. But taking our whole life together into account, I desperately want our marriage to work.\n\nShe told me that I have been a great husband for a long while now. She said I am a great provider and that she is impressed by me professionally. That was lovely to hear but also painful because none of it seems to translate into her wanting me romantically.\n\nThere is also a confusing physical side to all of this. Earlier in the holiday she offered to have sex because she thought sex was something I \"required\" in a relationship, based on something I had said 6–8 months ago. I told her I had changed my view. I don't want her having sex with me because she thinks she owes it to me. What I want is for her to be okay and free to work out what she wants. What I hope for is that she eventually wants me and wants to be with me.\n\nAfter the really difficult conversation above, she was later in the shower and asked if I wanted to join her. She grinned and asked if I wanted to have sex. I told her that wasn't fair because obviously I wanted to but I didn't want sex if she didn't. She said no, it was okay and we could have sex. We did and it felt good. I kissed her goodnight afterwards and she scratched my back as I left. It was a small thing but it felt really nice. I don't put much significance on it but it adds to my confusion.\n\nBefore we were intimate, I also told her that what I would actually value more than sex would be occasionally sleeping beside her — maybe once a week or even once a month. We normally sleep separately. I said I would trade that for her offer of sex. She said not that night because we were exhausted and had just spent the whole holiday sharing a bed but she understood what I was asking for.\n\nI just don't know what to make of all of this.\n\nShe doesn't want a divorce and says that even when she previously talked about separation she didn't actually want it. She says it isn't simply that she doesn't want me. She is sad about what has happened and cries about it. She had always imagined that she would make our marriage work and now feels like she has failed. She says I've been a great husband for months. There is still some affection and occasionally sex.\n\nBut she also says she feels no desire for me, doesn't want to try to rekindle things and doesn't know what she wants.\n\nWe've had counselling available to help us work through this but she wanted to pause it. She finds thinking and talking about the whole situation distressing, including with her own therapist. I understand why she might want a break from constantly analysing our marriage. At the same time, I worry that we are now just living with the uncertainty rather than doing anything about it.\n\nMeanwhile, I have effectively been waiting since April last year for her to work out whether she wants this marriage.\n\nI love her and desperately want our family and marriage to survive. I don't want to pressure her into producing feelings she doesn't have. But I also don't know whether I can spend years waiting for someone to decide whether she wants me.\n\nHow should I approach my marriage from here in a way that gives my wife genuine time and space to work out what she wants without leaving me indefinitely waiting for a romantic relationship she may never want?\n\nHow should I approach restarting couples counselling when my wife finds thinking about the marriage distressing and has asked to pause it, but the alternative seems to be continuing in the same uncertainty?\n\nTL;DR: My wife and I have been together about 20 years and have three young kids. Problems that had been building for a long time came to a head around April last year. I recognise that my own criticism, negativity, anger and reassurance-seeking contributed significantly and I've spent the time since trying to change those patterns. My wife says I've now been a great husband for quite a while but her romantic feelings haven't returned. She says she never actually wanted to separate, even when she talked about it, and had always decided she would make our relationship work, have a good marriage and stay married. She now feels like she has failed. She doesn't want to separate or divorce but currently feels no desire for me or anyone else and doesn't want to try to rekindle things. She says she doesn't know what she wants, feels conflicted between being a loyal wife and being happy and is deeply sad about what has happened. We paused couples counselling at her request and she dislikes individual therapy because thinking about all of this is distressing. I love her and want the marriage to work but I'm struggling with how to give her space without remaining in this uncertainty indefinitely.","offTopic":false}],"breakdown":[{"sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","count":19}],"total":19}}