This may be long but I feel so lost here and would love some advice.
I (28F) have an amazing husband (47M). I had a huge crush on him from afar for literally years before we started dating, and never imagined he’d be interested in me. Married 2 years and I’m still starstruck! I was a broke, struggling single mom and he shouldered my life and my baggage and my kids and my debt and I think about it every day with gratitude and guilt. I’m the quintessential girl who fucked up her life and shouldn’t get a good man now, but I did. He’s emotionally intelligent, kind, generous, helpful, emotionally intelligent, mature, and supportive. On top of this, which was already enough, the lifestyle he’s provided is a dream. I’m a SAHM, we have multiple houses and take several long vacations a year. I am overwhelmed when I think about how much better my life is with him.
I feel like I could never create enough value for him compared with what he has for me. I don’t contribute financially and I could never make as much as he does anyway. All I can do is STFU and have as few additional needs and demands as possible, be sweet and supportive. That was easy at first.
Now I’m 12 weeks pregnant and we have a 10 month old. I feel overextended and crabby. My sleep is bad. I handle most of the baby because he has a high-stress job. He is often meeting with colleagues at bath & bedtime, leaving me alone. He gets a full night of sleep since baby nurses and naps and plays video games during the day. Baby screams any moment I’m not holding her, 24/7. We’re always packing up the baby for last minute business trips, usually to beautiful locales so I HATE to complain but it’s so hard on the baby’s schedule. I am supposed to be helping him socialize with colleagues but they are constantly inviting us last minute to things that aren’t necessarily baby-friendly and it’s super overwhelming.
I try and try to STFU and then I’ve had a horrible night and we have to meet his colleague for lunch with zero notice and it’s ten minutes til nap time and I am so stressed and I just start bitching about it. And then he tells me “all this and still nothing’s good enough for you” “sorry it’s not good enough for you” “Colleague X gave us a $Y bonus which covers your car, the least you could do is be respectful” “you don’t contribute anything financially so why are you trying to dictate our schedule”.
I feel like shit and in my mind i want to be the wife I was early in the marriage. Adoring, positive, flexible, understanding, calm, self-possessed, eager to give. Few needs. He always says one of his favorite things about me early on was that I never complained and wasn’t entitled. And now I do complain and im tired and cranky and frazzled and unpleasant.
I don’t want him to regret having our baby or marrying me. If im a drag on him and the baby is a drag on him why would he choose us? I want him to sit in the hot tub with his colleagues to relax and sleep in a bedroom where he can’t hear the nighttime cries and have a wife who networks and charms and always shows up. He deserves these things. I believw that and yet the cost is that I feel irritable and not attracted and bitchy.
I feel so defeated. I reread Fascinating Womanhood, which I once read smugly because I was pretty much already acting that way naturally, but now I can’t understand how the women in the book are such cheerful martyrs and overextend themselves and suffer yet somehow don’t seem to feel resentful at all??
Like please help me understand how to maintain grace and composure at all times. Him doing more for me is not a solution because of the chasm of my indebtednsss to him which is so so wide.
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