but hasn't done anything official yet. (First I want to say sorry for what's about to be a jumbled mess of thoughts, and thank you to anyone who reads or responds) We've been married 7 years, dated for two more. Since marriage, it's always been less than great, but there've been good times, too. About a year ago was a particularly high point. We seemed to be working together better, just bought a house, and she decided, after years of saying she didn't want kids, that she wanted to try. Now we have a sweet baby girl that I didn't think I was ever going to get and now love more than anything.

My wife has always had issues with anxiety and depression. It's always led to what many might call "laziness." I try to give her a lot of slack, especially if I know she's currently suffering, but I also try to motivate her to do SOME things like eat properly and clean up after herself. She calls it "bitching." Anyway, around when she got pregnant, two things happened: 1) she stopped doing almost everything around the house. Not a big deal, I'm now the husband of a pregnant woman, I can pick up the slack. And 2) she started an online business as a "Financial Hypno Dominatrix." The TLDR of what that means is she sucks money out of online simps the way any cam girl might, but for them, the kink is less about sex and more about throwing money at women. Thus, there's no nudity, just some PG-13+ suggestive pictures or video, and some dirty suggestive language. She started doing this without my knowledge, then once she was making a notable amount of money, told me about it. Of course I'm like, "WTF??" then as she explains it I'm like, "Well... if you make some money to offset any fancy purchases you buy, and it's something you're apparently good at compared to others, and it's giving you some confidence to combat all that depression you've felt for years not having a career, AND you're being careful and not doing a bunch of X rated shit, I can deal with it."

Thing is, I never had any choice but to deal with it. As I've enabled her to do less and less around the house, even once recovered post-birth, she has used that free time only on that business. That's all she does. She keeps our daughter alive while I'm gone for 4 days at a time for my job, she barely eats and what she does eat is usually takeout or delivery. I cook meals when I'm home. The job has also dramatically twisted what she thinks a proper relationship looks like. She's used to being able to do and say whatever she wants to the simps, makes them do whatever she wants, they thank her, pay her, and she can block them when she doesn't like what they say or do. So she's brought that dynamic to her expectations for our relationship.

She's always been the kind of person who doesn't say I'm sorry, who doesn't take any responsibility for things, who is always the victim and everyone is out to get her. But the past 6 months, as she's brought more of her dominatrix/dictator attitude to our marriage, she's also further developed the paranoia of a dictator. She treats me like her arch-nemesis, like my entire exitance is to make her miserable when, in reality, I'm just trying to scrape by, keeping the house clean for our infant daughter, doing chores, and working away from home 4 days a week. And don't get me wrong, when she's screaming at me, saying horrible things, I've said some back, I'm far from perfect, but I always apologize and keep trying. But if I've said one terrible thing once, then that's all I ever say, in her head, and she tells herself and me that I constantly say those things. The fun thing about arguing with someone who is paranoid and thinks you're gaslighting them: if you deny it, it just plays into their belief.

So I'm not being very organized with this word-barf, as I figured I wouldn't, but going back to how "she says she's done": her job has made her think that "she deserves better" i.e. someone who will do what she says when she says it, and won't expect anything from her. She's also grown her business to the point that she claims she's making more money than I am. Our finances are pretty separate (thank God) so I don't have any real idea, and I'm not sure she does either, but I DO know that she's one of the top 20 creators on the main site she uses. She uses this fact to remind me almost daily that she fully intends to leave once she's ready, and that she is done trying at all in the relationship. We've not been to counseling, she refuses to go. And any attempt I make to talk to her is seen by her as a waste of her time and emotional capacity that she could be using to make more money and "escape."

I don't really know what the point of this was. To vent to strangers, mostly. I guess I can ask for advise now that I've set the stage. I'd prefer we find a way to work this out, even if it seems idiotic and hopeless considering she won't participate. But I want to do anything I can to protect myself when she decides to pull the trigger (hopefully a figurative one). A google search mostly says protect finances. I have a bank account that all my paychecks go into that's just mine. I transfer money to the joint account for bills. She has her own bank account somewhere, too, that her simp money goes to. The only shared assets we have are her car and the house. Also trying to find a hidden camera to document her horribleness since apparently that can be used in family court in my state. And I'd really like some anecdotal vindication after her telling me for YEARS that I'm somehow the abusive one.