How old are you and how familiar are you with RPW? 26. Started reading RP stuff about a year ago, went through the sidebars for TRP and RPW, etc.

What is your relationship status? Married, for about 1.5 years

What is the problem? (Don’t badmouth your SO!) I feel really overwhelmed by my to-do list on a regular basis. I'm a student, have been working part-time, and am responsible for 90% of our personal life (managing family dynamics, motivating to exercise, household responsibilities). I also have a thyroid problem; it got better about 6 months ago but it recently started to get worse (stress-related, I think, because I started working more hours).

My husband owns his shit when it comes to making money. This might not matter, except he also wants us to save 50% or more of our income. However, he is unmotivated to put in much effort outside of work for anything else; he says it's because he's exhausted by work, but he puts in pretty normal hours (albeit at a job with much responsibility). I think it's because he has sleep apnea; he has made an appointment for a test, which is a month out. He is obese, about 100 lbs over a healthy weight. He's aware that losing weight would help the sleep apnea, but he's repeatedly said he doesn't care about his health. We also don't share the same bed because I can't sleep due to the snoring. I'm pretty sure the sleep apnea is what's causing him to be exhausted and demotivated, but I'm afraid he's caught in a loop: he needs motivation to exercise to fix the sleep apnea, but the sleep apnea makes him very demotivated. [I'm sorry, I tried really hard to lay out the facts without badmouthing my SO here. Please cut me a bit of slack if I am being too harsh.]

I want him take more of the lead to own his shit when it comes to anything outside of work (exercise, budgeting, or help with meal prep). I think this would be helpful so that I can focus on trying to improve my own health. There's a rather intense elimination diet I should be trying, but it's impossible to do with everything else I'm juggling.

How have you contributed to the problem? If I didn't have a thyroid problem, I would just own my own shit and not need as much help on this front. I'm currently on a doctor-imposed strict diet (no gluten, dairy, nuts, or corn) that makes eating out and cooking at home more challenging. Also, because I'm in school, that puts greater pressure on our finances (mostly due to the loss of my income and not because school itself is expensive). I could be better about exercising without him. I also sometimes sign us up for more social obligations than we necessarily need. It's hard to say if this is good or bad - he also gets depressed if he doesn't see friends regularly. Lately, he's been complaining about singing at church which is something I pushed him to do.

Deep down, I don't really respect my husband, but I try to show him respect as best I can. I think he might be a little demotivated to exercise because we started going to a fitness class together and it's very clear that he's holding me back. (Would give more details, but this is already so long!) Basically the only reason I haven't completely lost all hope is that I blame it on sleep apnea, and I'm hoping that once that's treated, he'll be able to improve. But I also can be overly negative. Probably 5 days a week, I just think about it to myself and say "I'm miserable. I hate being married. Why the fuck did I do this? Why does it have to be so damn hard?"

How long has this been an issue? For as long as we've been dating, really. My husband didn't do much to manage his finances, health, apartment, laundry, eating habits, or friendships while we were dating either. He's made slow progress since then. For example, now he puts his laundry in the bin rather than leaving it on the floor.

What have you done to resolve this problem? We've had multiple arguments over managing household chores.

  • At first, we agreed to a to-do list. He failed to do 70% of his chores, and he pointed to the fact that I had failed to do 20% of mine as evidence that we were both sucking equally.

  • I tried to gamify the chores / life maintenance stuff (using the Habitica app). He stopped playing.

  • I asked him to do a single chore (the dishes) every night. He only did them 50% of the time.

  • I asked him to cook instead. This worked slightly better, as starvation proved a better motivator. He pushed me to cheat on my doctor's diet because of his poor planning. We used a grocery delivery service; he wouldn't check it regularly so we'd get food I couldn't eat. I ended up taking it over again because I was frustrated with his failure to own it.

  • Our latest agreement is that he gives me 20 min a day to do my biding. [Other friends have found this mysterious and very generous on his part. But keep in mind that he otherwise contributes like 1 min / day to anything around the house.] Thus far, I've used it to ask for help with things like the dishes, going through the mail, checking our budget, practicing his music. I also waive the 20 min if it makes sense that day (traveling, going out with friends after work). He's been sick for the past week, so I haven't asked for the time. Even so, I wish that he would just do stuff around the house without my having to tell him exactly what to do. I also wish that he would commit to exercising rather than me having to beg him every day to come with me to exercise.

If married or in a committed, monogamous relationship:

How long have you been together? A little over three years total, 1.5 years married.

Is your relationship long-distance? No.

Do you have an active bedroom life? Yes. Probably 2-4 times a week when I'm not fertile (we do NFP). I initiate more often than he does, and he turns me down probably 2-3x times for every time I initiate. It used to be worse (1-2 a week, turned down more frequently) as he claimed he had a low libido due to work stress. He was right; since starting a new job a couple months ago, he's begun initiating more and rejecting less.

[Edited to fix formatting]