About 3 days ago I read /u/jacktenofhearts’ reply to the Minor Nuke Event thread and it really hit home.

I am 37. I have been together with my wife for 13 years and our 10th anniversary is in October. Things have been in a slow decline that angered me for a long time and I reached my limit a few months ago. A family member pointed me in this direction in April. I’ve read a large amount of the sidebar material. I still need to read WISNIFG. I’ve been counting calories since January, jogging 3-4 days a week since March and started lifting in May. I’m now currently lifting almost every day. Have not been lifting for max bulk but am focusing on endurance and cutting weight. It’s working. I’m down about 15 pounds since the end of May. I used to drink every day, started cutting back a few months ago and am now limiting myself to 2 beers (or whatever) max, and only Fri/Sat.

Wife is 35 at the end of the month. She’s out of shape. No major health issues, nothing completely extreme, she just isn’t very active. Small frame, she’s soft. She drinks every day, not often to extremes, but a few drinks every day. Lately it’s been significantly more than me.

She is the anxious person that /u/jacktenofhearts describes.

We have 5 kids together (4 boys, ages 12, 10, 9, 4 and a girl, 2) and she is a SAHM. The two youngest kids have some health issues. My littlest boy is partially deaf and my daughter has a genetic abnormality resulting in some minor physical disabilities that limit her ability to walk, and her manual dexterity. She also has a trach tube, which requires special ‘cares’ every day that only a medical professional or, right now, only the Wife and I are qualified to do. The trach is a weak spot in her immune system and she often gets respiratory infections that can occasionally result in a hospital stay. This is what started the wife sleeping on the couch.

I earn pretty well, I’m in sales so it fluctuates a little bit but on the average for the last 4 years I have pulled in low six-figures. I travel between 50-75% of the time and am working to get that number down to 50% max. We have an affordable house in a quiet area. We have one car payment on my truck, hers has been paid off for about 2 years.

She has a side business that used to earn some good spending money but hasn’t been doing well for the last 12 months. Part of that, I suspect is because we moved away from her customer base in IL 1.5 years ago. Truth is, she’s borrowed about 3k on credit cards (and kept it from me - she’s been handling finances due to my travel) since the beginning of the year. She has spent more money on her business than she earned, both in 2014 and so far this year.

I think so far this year we’ve had sex maybe 4 times. Unfortunately this has been going on for a long time but she’s been sleeping on the couch for most of this year.

Things have been really bad since June. We have been arguing more and the 12yo knows it. We fight about money, (her use of CC’s) lack of sex, and things she can do to make her business successful. I object to her answer of ‘borrow and spend and maybe they’ll come’ and counter with ‘sell more’. I also bought a gun as part of my self improvement plan. We’d talked about it and she wasn’t against it until I brought it home. Then TSHTF. I have not been enthusiastic about having pets because we have so many kids, but she decided she wanted a dog about 6 weeks ago and then went and bought one without any discussion whatsoever. Now I have a dog that is OK, but I don’t really want.

That was the last straw for me. I accepted this as the outcome of not being a good enough leader and redoubled all my efforts on improving my SMV and it is working. I want her to come around but the better I do at work, the more money I earn, the better I look, she sees only selfishness and disparity. I think she’s afraid but in her anxiety/dread she’s become paralyzed. She’s fighting me at every opportunity and refusing to follow my lead.

Three days ago I decided I had enough with the bitchy comments and accusations of selfishness. I stopped talking to her. Why reward bad behavior? I didn’t kiss her before leaving for work and didn’t initiate any conversation during the day. She didn’t greet me when I came home. I ignored it, went on about my business and worked on a furniture project out in the workshop. I came in and helped put the kids to bed, then went back outside. Went to bed without saying anything to her.

The same thing happened two days ago, except she initiated a text conversation by saying she can’t live in misery, she’s jealous of my change in SMV, and that I don’t support her own attempt to improve her lot in life. She said I need to be less hard on my oldest son. I told her I think we both are wanting more out of life and she agreed. I suggested making a list of goals that identified what it is that we want, specifically, as the only way I know to get what you want is to identify it and then come up with a plan to get it. She said she didn’t know if she could do that.

Yesterday I had plans after work to go to my brother’s house to borrow his table saw (so I could move into the final phase of my furniture project) that she was aware of. I went. While there, she texted me a few times, mostly pleasant things, showed me a picture of the dinner she made. I was looking forward to coming home, thinking that she was maybe coming to realize what I was doing. Then I got home, kids went to bed, and we started to talk. She told me she had been drinking hard. It basically turned into a verbal rehash of the text conversation we had the previous day. I asked her about the goal list, she said she didn’t do it and wasn’t going to. She accused me of not trusting her (which is sort of true - she’s done some things that are bad for our family with credit cards) and I replied that she doesn’t trust me, and that if she did, she might not feel like I was holding her back or not supporting her. At that point I shut up and went to bed. I invited her to come to bed with me, a peace offering. She refused.

This morning I woke up with an odd feeling in my gut. She was asleep on the couch. I did my weight routine and got dressed and then I did something I have only done maybe 2 other times in the last 5 years. I checked her text record and I found that she had texted her sister and told her about our argument, and texted a hardcore beta friend (dude got cucked and when his LTR left him for third guy, he agreed to take care of the kid that wasn’t his), sent him a selfie of her face, no body shots. Asked him if he still wanted her and he said he did.

I debated leaving it up on the computer screen so she would know I knew, and then decided against it. I’m writing now because I need to know what people smarter than me think is going on, and what they would do. I love my wife and want to be with her but I have no delusions about making it work if we both aren’t on the same page. Anyone have any wisdom to share?