Hi Everyone,

I joined a while ago to look for advice/comfort. I haven't started in the process of divorce yet, but I have heavily considered it. It was actually to the point I was there ready to divorce. My wife and I went through four months of a pretty tough rough patch, but I would say it has been longer and I wasn't even aware of it. For four years or longer, sex was practically non-existent to the point that I would have to beg for it. We went through a lot in the last few years like getting married and buying a house. I am currently undergoing individual therapy and so is she.

I am going to try to make this as condensed and organized as possible. I will add a TLDR at the end for those who might not have time to read it all. I am not looking for people to tell me what to do, but I am looking for perspectives.

I (29M) am married to 33F. Over the years, we went through a lot of stuff like getting married, COVID, buying and remodeling a house, etc. I thought our relationship was great until recently when we bought our current house and "had" to remodel. Lately, I have felt like I lost all control over my life.

We have been together for 8 years, married for 1.5ish years. My wife is very opinionated, strong, independent, very logical, but also very loving, caring, and an overall good wife/person. Over the years, especially when we moved in together, most things had to be done her way or it was completely wrong. Examples of this were doing laundry, cleaning, cooking, etc. Sure I could be very sensitive to criticism but she would really get loud with me when I folded laundry differently than her or if I folded the towels not all the same way. I just wanted to help around the apartment so she didn't have much to do when she got home so we could spend time together. I would be scolded for all of that to the point that I didn't want to help out anymore. I wasn't "allowed" to do certain things because of the way I did them. Yes, folding clothes and towels seems minuscule and stupid but it escalates. During the planning stages of the wedding, I wasn't sure what I should do for the wedding because I had never planned one before where my wife has to a large degree helped with many of her friends' weddings. I tried my best but I would get overwhelmed and not know what to do because she would hurl a million things at me all at once. I even brought it up a few times that maybe we should scale the wedding back to something more manageable for both of us. This was not to mention how much it would have saved us financially. She rejected me saying that "it was her day." So I felt that I didn't have much of a say in the wedding or the planning stages. Many people, like friends and family, stated that they felt like it was all about her and not celebrating us.

Buying a house was stressful because I felt like we didn't have the money to do so. Once again, she didn't want to listen to me and she listened to the realtor instead and she started to say that "this house was a good investment." I am in the boat of your primary residence is not an investment and she knows this. I have told her many times. Again, I felt like I had to go with her flow because she has gotten really short at me before when we didn't do what she wanted. For the next three months, we had the stress of renovating an entire house that caused a lot of rift between us. During this time, I noticed myself emotionally checking out because I felt I was constantly yelled at for not doing things right. My wife would complain that my parents never helped as much as her mom did with our house. I didn't really think it was my parents' responsibility to drop everything to help with the house every day.

Her and her mom are really close. Her mom gave us $15K to redo the house that we now have to pay back. I didn't want to owe my MIL money just because of house renovations. If we had to borrow money from family to redo a house, then we shouldn't have bought it in the first place. Once again, I was ignored or criticized.

After a month or two of couples therapy and individual therapy, I wanted a separation trial. It was two weeks. During those two weeks, I was the calmest I had ever been since living with her. My parents noticed a difference and so did a few of my friends. I slept throughout the night, I was productive with my days, etc.

I know I am leaving a lot out, but I wanted to make it short. All in all, she wants to me this work. We have been having sex a lot lately but I am so checked out that her smell kind of makes me repulse. I have told her I no longer love her but she is working hard to make it work saying that I can still fall back in love with her. I said that I would give it five weeks (end of April) to see how I feel and to really give it my best. However, I just feel defeated because I tell myself that she just wants me to stay because she wants kids. I did too but not anymore. I am afraid that she will resort back to her old self and now things just get much more complicated with having kids.

Thank you for reading if you made it this far.