Together 8 years, married 6.

I met my wife at university. She was foreign, exotic and forward. I enjoyed our time together. She didn't know how to look after herself - she was 22 and knew nothing about cooking, feminine hygeine or managing her money. She basically lived in the nastiest, slummiest house I'd ever seen, and it ignited a paternal instinct in me.

Fast forward to today, we have a child together and I haven't really been happy for years. When we found out she was pregnant I was elated because I felt like I would simply have to love her again, and for a while it worked, but through the stress of having a newborn and then coronavirus I feel like I'm back to square one.

I think I've been very hot and cold with my wife now for at least 4 years. I think she knows, but she really does still love me completely.

After university I adviced my wife to go home, I said we could have an LDR for a while then one of us would move, but she decided to stay and ended up in an exploitative, illegal job where she made less than minimum wage and worked illegal hours. At the time I felt a lot of anger - anger that my wife was exploited, anger that she was doing it for me, anger that I didn't really appreciate it. So I proposed and married her to get a marriage visa that would allow her to quit that job.

Unfortunately, her career has never taken off so she has spent the last few years being hired, fired, made redundant - all on minimum wage. She has no savings, no pension. I gew up in a familiy where both parents were highly paid, and I have always resented having to be the "breadwinner", the whole quality of our life rests on how well I do at work.

I moved us to the middle of nowhere for my career. I am very happy with our life here, but I know she misses the city. I feel guilt about that.

What prevented me from separating before was this fear she couldn't or wouldn't look after herself. That she'd end up living in a dirty hovel again. It felt like I might as well just pull a trigger and put a bullet in her back. It was cold - too cold for me to be able to do it so I've just dragged things on in quiet desperation.

I love my son and I love her for giving me one, but it's not really enough. I enjoy our sex, but we have done the same thing for 8 years now and my curiosity is overwhelming. I once floated the idea of an open relationship and she said the thought of me having sex with somebody else caused her physical pain. If I divorced what reason would she have to stay in this town? My biggest fear is she'd move away. I love seeing my son every day and it would kill me to even have to time share him and only see him some days of the week.

She's an anxious person, and she will not try things if she's decided she won't be any good at them, and now that we have a kid together I feel as if she keeps inventing new weird rules to keep him "safe" and treating me as if I'm irresponsible for not knowing the rules. She doesn't spend a lot of time trying to please me - and she never has. So I have sometimes felt as if our relationship was a little one directional.

She's racist, and cannot tolerate any criticism of her home country. A lot of our dinner table discussions - especially since the pandemic - have been me saying "yeah you're right" to a lot of stuff I disagree with because the alternative is my wife getting mad with me.

I guess I'm still just confused and messed up. Does anybody have any advice? I have suggested counselling before and the response was that I could go to therapy - but she wouldn't go because she doesn't need it.