Hi everyone, I’m relatively new here. I have read this forum for a while but only joined reddit as a member a couple of days ago.

Bit of background, I am married to my childhood sweetheart (15 years together) we are both now in our early 30s and we have a great relationship and he is a great man, he is the only man I’ve ever been with and ever want to be with. He works full time in a well paid job and I am now a stay at home parent/wife. We have two children who are school age. Before I had children I worked in Education and only recently I started a masters degree on a part time basis, this hasn’t caused a financial burden or any debt at all and I did this for self improvement/keeping myself busy reasons.

HOWEVER! I have been busier with this than I expected, stressing because of it and because I have put in so much effort I was starting to consider going back to employment to make use of it. I have been talking about this quite a lot with my husband and he is always supportive and said the choice is mine alone. He likes things as they are just now though, he likes the security of knowing I’m always here for him and the kids when they come home. Only very recently our marriage has went a little stale and I’ve noticed some issues that haven’t been there before e.g. petty arguments and an atmosphere for no apparent reason sometimes. I think I’ve disrupted our life a bit with my stressing and constant talk of change. I’m going into my final year now so it will be over as of next summer on the study front, the job thing I’ve decided can wait till the kids are grown as there is no need to disrupt things further - if it’s not broke don’t fix it. But I feel like I’ve made him feel like I’m not happy and our life isn’t enough somehow.

I have spoken with him about this but if I’m honest I don’t want to nag and demand he tells me his feelings, he has to do that in his own time. For now I guess I’m looking for ideas on how to “fix” the issues I’ve caused. I can’t seem to control my stress levels around exams and essay times and I’m affecting the whole family which is difficult as normally I’m the one calming everyone down. Any tips on balancing this last year would be appreciated and any ideas how to reverse 2 years of rocking the boat in a normally happy marriage?

I feel I’ve been “trying too hard” to make him happier again and it’s actually been annoying for him, something we’ve never had issues with before. So now I’ve got myself into a rut of being an annoying, needy, stressed wife.