I honestly don’t even know how to begin this. This is lengthy, so I apologize.

It’s honestly felt like it’s been the entirety of my relationship with my husband. We’ve been together for 7 years, 1 year married (the 28th of October) and at first it was like any relationship, happy, carefree, and enjoyable. Very little fighting and we basked in each other’s company.

After the first several years, it became emotionally unbearable for me. He would lie and hang out with his friends, he would justify hanging out with me for a few hours as a counter to be with his friends until the early hours of the morning. It got to the point where I was emotionally drained and tired of fighting EVERY DAY, so I worked almost 7 days straight just to avoid going home and avoid being with him because I knew that after he saw me and hung out with me, he’d leave again. I wanted nothing more than to feel like I mattered to him.

It got to the point where ultimately, I had to give him an ultimatum because I was moving out of state to help out my family. He agreed to join me and continue to try to work on us. After about several years, it got better and it actually felt like I had my man back. The man that wouldn’t want to leave my side, wanted to do things with me, and wasn’t afraid to turn down his friends to be with me. He started to even work on himself, went to school, got a great job at a Fortune 500 company and life was too good to be true. We started talking about marriage, babies, and things he didn’t want to have relapsed from our rocky beginning.

I adored that man and I honestly thought we were in the clear. Shortly after, we got married and it felt like things just felt right. We got our first home together, we adopted our first fur child together and I was in absolute bliss. After the pandemic hit, he continued to work to provide, but he started to go back to his old ways soon after. He would come home late, way past his normal post work hours, he would leave every Friday night to be with his friends and would “promise” to be back early. I sadly couldn’t join him and his late nights because I worked Saturday mornings and needed to be up early. He would feel bad and say he would be back soon, just a few drinks and an hour or two, to call if I needed him for anything.

Sounded to good to be true, sadly it was. I would wake to him coming home at 3am/4am, would call prior to see where he was at only to go straight to voicemail. It’s gotten to the point where his paychecks would get depleted before he was able to help pay our bills and I would have to cover most of them. I’m currently sitting in lemon car, still financing it, trying to figure out how I’m going to pay my bills, my food, and my car repairs each and every paycheck. I’m struggling and it’s gotten to the point where my husband has noticed but ceases to change his ways.

I’ve tried to reach out to him and talk, but each time he shuts down and says I’m being dramatic, that he’ll help out when he can. I sadly had an ER visit and I’m now facing a new bill on top of my current ones, each time I feel like I’m drowning and reaching out to my husband feels useless. I finally snapped and called him out, I blew up and told him I feel like I’m drowning. His lack of help as my husband and as the man he promised me at our wedding feels like it was a lie. I’m now in the middle of a nasty fight where I’ve thrown my rings at him, accused him of being selfish, and stated that I don’t want to be married to a child.

I’m trying so hard to be patient, but I’ve already spent everything under my name on our bills and he has yet to help, he’s mad because I’ve threatened to leave him because he won’t help, and our past talks about having a baby have diminished. I’m scared, I’m hurt, and I don’t know what to do. Talking to him doesn’t seem to work, I’m feeling like I’m no longer a priority to him, and it’s expected of me to work 40+ hours each weeks to pay bills on top of doing household work. I’m tired, I work two jobs and I’m asking, begging for his help and he just shut off and has left me to spend the week with his mother.

Our 1 year wedding anniversary is in a few weeks, but at this point I don’t know if I’ll even have a marriage. I’m feeling overwhelmed, drained, under appreciated, and unloved. I don’t want to file for a divorce, but this heartache is killing me. I don’t know what to do.