"AITA for wanting to leave my husband after my miscarriage?"
I (34f) have been married to my husband (43m) for 3 years, together 5. His 3 kids (ages 18-21) live with us too. We’ve been struggling with infertility pretty much since we got married. Last year was a really rough year for us because I got laid off from my tech job and a couple weeks later he had a stroke.
During his stroke I took on EVERYTHING because he literally couldn’t and that was fine. We took a pretty major hit financially and depleted our savings and wracked up quite a bit of debt.
Fast forward to June this year. We’d started going to a fertility clinic, I was working full time, my husband was doing much better and had made about a 90% recovery, but I was still doing literally everything for the house (cleaning, finances, letting the kids use my car for school and work, cooking, etc).
Anytime I asked for help it was either dismissed or turned into an argument where he’d shut me out/give me the silent treatment then have the audacity to expect intimacy later that night with no apology or accountability.
I finally got pregnant late May but lost it 6 weeks later. That experience broke me. I didn’t get out of bed for a week, I was in pain, I wasn’t feeding myself, and I was miserable. During the roughly 4 weeks I was out of work and just depressed, he didn’t do a single thing around the house, let the dishes and laundry pile up, and basically carried on as if life was fine.
One night in particular he asked if I was “okay” and I told him no and that I was in pain and hadn’t eaten and he just got on his phone. Didn’t even offer to get me food. To make it worse when I finally got up and said I’m making myself something he asked me to make something for him too knowing I was still bleeding and in pain.
It took me a few more months before I kind of woke up from the depression of losing my baby and began seeing just how emotionally neglectful he’d really been this whole year. Not to mention his financial lies. He was withholding that he was $15k behind on taxes and lying about having money for our vacation only to have nothing and make me max out my credit cards to cover it.
So now we’re filing bankruptcy on top of all this. I decided to have a very serious conversation with the ultimatum of marriage counseling and he completely dismissed everything I had to say, said I was overreacting, that the financial stuff wasn’t a big deal, and he refused marriage counseling. That’s the soft version. But after that convo was the first time I seriously considered just packing up and leaving.
After nearly 2 weeks of silent treatment, lots of hurtful comments, and defensiveness he finally caved and apologized and agreed to do counseling even though he said he won’t like it. I thought his apology was genuine and as soon as I kissed him and said I felt better he immediately wanted to get physical.
So now I feel like he’s only motivated by intimacy but not because he actually cares about how much he’s hurt and neglected me, so even though he’s agreed to counseling I feel like I don’t even want to work on this relationship anymore.
But I also feel guilty because he’s a good person, goes to work every day, doesn’t cheat, etc. but he’s the definition of emotionally unavailable/neglectful (I’ve recently realized he’s a dismissive avoidant for those who know about attachment theory). So, AITA for wanting to “give up” without trying to work on the relationship more?
What do you think? AITA? This is what commenters had to say:
the_trash_panda92 said:
He’s a good person because he doesn’t cheat? The bar is in hell :(
t-mckeldin said:
NTAH. Leave and be done with him.
Thin-Policy8127 said:
Leave as soon as possible hon. This is red flag after red flag. If he'd acted this way before you got married, you wouldn't have married him. "He goes to work every day and doesn't cheat" is the bare minimum in a relationship, and you're doing the most. This is a gift in disguise, you could have actually had a kid with this guy, chaining you to him forever. I think your body was protecting you. Listen to it.
OP responded:
See you’re 100% right there’s no way I would’ve married him if he’d acted like this while dating. And also I tell myself if this was a friend I’d be screaming for her to leave.
One piece that keeps holding me back is that I feel like he changed after his stroke so maybe he just needs therapy and to work on himself. Or maybe he’s always been this way and he just dropped the facade when he was no longer healthy enough to keep it up.
He used to always say “one day you’re going to get tired of me and leave” and I’d just laugh it off, but maybe he was lowkey warning me this whole time. And yes, I’ve had thoughts lately that maybe my body was protecting me but then I spiral into self guilt around that. I’ve started therapy to try and work on that piece more
ConnectWave1614 said:
I’m curious what the other three adults in the house are doing while all this is happening? They can’t do laundry, dishes or clean? If you’re expected to take care of all of it with no help from everyone living there you’ve got a lot of disrespect floating around there.
OP responded:
They’re mostly self sufficient and do their own laundry. They don’t clean their dirty dishes or help clean common areas but they do clean their rooms, bathrooms, and handle the trash…atp they contribute more than my husband so how can I expect them to contribute more to the house when their own dad doesn’t do anything? 😔
Zestyclose-Height-36 said:
Nta. talk to a lawyer about how to separate finances, and talk to the clinic about donor sperm if you still want a kid without having to deal with him for the rest of your life. this is your life, and if you dont want to spend it like this, you need to change things, because he won’t change
OP responded:
Is it sad that I’ve thought more than once that maybe I’m not getting pregnant because my body is rejecting him? Like I know I have issues (PCOS, Endo, etc) but maybe…idk. I’ve also thought about being a single mom by choice. I’ve told him many times my worst fear would be being a married single mother and now I’m thinking that would’ve been my reality if i hadn’t miscarried