Throwaway.

TLDR: Advice for a wife trying to submit to an unreasonable change in circumstances in a marriage, whilst love and respect are fading rapidly.

I’m hoping for both some honest advice and, perhaps, a bit of encouragement.

For context, I was saved in my early 20s and have been attending a Bible-based church for several years. I’ve been married for less than five years, and honestly, I’m struggling to see how much longer I can keep going like this.

I met my husband through people at church after several people suggested we get to know each other. I prayed a lot throughout our courtship and genuinely believed I was making a wise decision.

There were some things that9 concerned me. One of the biggest was the way he and his siblings interacted with their mother (they just seemed too relaxed, and not respectful to her while she gave them EVERYTHING). When I raised it, the explanation was largely that they had grown up very differently from me. I accepted that, we talked through it, and ultimately decided to move forward with the marriage.

The first few months were genuinely happy. Then things started to change.

My husband became increasingly demanding about how I spent my time and what he expected from me. At the time, I had a very demanding career involving a lot of studying, exams and late shifts. I was also heavily involved in serving at church.

Before we got married, I asked him several times whether my career or church commitments were a problem for him. Our pastors and family members asked him the same thing. Every time, he insisted that they weren't.

I had also been very clear that I couldn't see myself being a SAHM-do-everything-for-him type. I was the breadwinner, liked my career and I genuinely didn't believe that was what God was asking me to do.

Eventually, things became increasingly difficult. I tried to make a lot of adjustments to accommodate him, and to his credit, some of his expectations did come down.

One particularly difficult area was sex and food. At one point he wanted sex two or three times a day, which was incredibly difficult to reconcile with both of us working full-time and being exhausted for much of the week. We had sex (or some sexual act) 4-5x/week on average. I learned to cook more and better quality food, but he said he could manage whilst this happened.

The biggest issue now is that he made a major life decision that has completely changed my circumstances. As a result, I'm currently out of my career, we've moved somewhere new, and I'm extremely isolated.

I did ultimately submit to the decision. But I'm finding it incredibly difficult not to resent it. I don't trust that the motivation behind it was entirely genuine. Part of me feels that it was more about establishing that he is "the head of the home" and demonstrating that I need to follow his decisions.

I don't want to paint myself as completely innocent either. I'm not the perfect wife. I've struggled to balance everything, my tongue has been sharp, and as the pressure built up I became increasingly moody and anxious about trying to do everything "right."

I also don't think my husband is a terrible person. I think there is a lot of insecurity there, and probably a lot of growing up that still needs to happen. The issue is he doesn't see anything wrong with how he has behaved throughout our marriage. We both come from broken homes, and I'm sure that has affected both of us in ways we're not always aware of.

But I'm reaching a point where the consequences are becoming very serious.

My career and the work I've spent years building are now in jeopardy. My mental health has deteriorated. The move happened so abruptly that we've lost essentially all of our savings. I'm in a completely different environment and feel incredibly alone.

What's making this harder is that my church has largely gone quiet. The response I've received has essentially been that 'I need to submit to my husband because that's what Scripture teaches'. Even our pastor hasn't really engaged with what this situation is doing to me. I understand that biblical submission is important. I'm not trying to argue my way out of Scripture, and I know divorce isn't something Christians should take lightly.

But I'm struggling to reconcile "submit to your husband" with a situation where I feel like I'm losing my career, my stability, my community and increasingly my mental health. I also find that the circumstances we've moved into make it much harder to spend meaningful time in prayer and the Word, which has made me feel even more spiritually lost.

I know I'm not the first Christian woman to find herself in a difficult marriage, and I know there are probably things I need to repent of and work on too.

I don't know whether I'm supposed to keep enduring this, whether I'm misunderstanding biblical submission, or whether there is a point at which something has become unhealthy enough that staying isn't the right answer.

At the moment, I genuinely don't know if I can make it to December in this marriage.

I'd really appreciate advice from people who have been through something similar, particularly Christians who have had to navigate marriage, submission and serious marital dysfunction. Please be kind, but I'm also open to being challenged where I'm wrong

I don’t know where to start, so I’ll just start. About 7 months married, 28F. I struggle with my reaction to things, expressing my emotions in a healthy way, letting things go.

My parents have a marriage that I do not desire for myself. I’ve seen my mom’s voice, her personality be crushed over the years. My dad has anger issues and so, to keep the peace, my mom will bottle up her feelings.

As the eldest daughter, I was exposed to this very early on. And now, I think it’s become part of how I respond to things. Because I’ve seen her silenced, I feel the need to express every negative emotion I’m feeling. Because I feel like I will become her if I don’t say something. And this usually ends with my husband feeling like I’m criticizing him, or like everything he’s doing isn’t enough. Even when i know I should keep silent, I say something. And I’ll say the thing that will trigger my husband. And my husband is an incredible man, nothing like my dad, and doesn’t deserve this.

How do I deal with this? How to practice better self control?

my husband and I have been married less than a year. he has been dealing with a porn addiction for a while. he will go to that for comfort during stressful times and heated arguments. He would also go look up his exs to lust over them during those times. He has admitted to doing it out of spite as well. He does have accountability groups and a group that he attends weekly for sobriety. This has absolutely torn me apart in so many ways. the lust the porn the wandering eyes, constant exes being brought back, cant go out in public with him. I’ve given him so much grace and mercy but it is killing me. I am now pregnant, still in my first trimester. the other week we ended up arguing and it got heated. we went into separate rooms to cool off and I notice on his covenant eyes application that he is browsing around trying to find things to lust over, I go confront him and he admits to browsing. I break down yell at him and run back into my room. my mom and sister end up coming over, he stays in his room dosent come out. As im crying in my moms arms, my husband is watching porn in the other room. I find out and go confront him, he unlocks the door and admits to watching porn. I completely lost it, I was screaming at the top of my lungs bawling my eyes out completely hysterical, yelling at him cussing him out condemning him to hell. my mom had to drag me out of that room and try to get me to calm down. she told him he needs to leave for a bit , he packs his stuff goes to a hotel and continues to watch porn there. i go and stay at my moms and have been here for about a week. he went back to our house a couple days later. He texted me his sorrys and how he’s hurt me and been ungrateful. if he wanted this marriage, this family the least he could do is apologize in person. I am so mad , so hurt I do not know what to do.

As a woman, I accept that there are some things about how a man operates that I may never fully understand, no matter how hard I try.

I’m looking for honest advice and stories from fathers who have experienced struggles in fatherhood, especially while learning how to parent a daughter.

My husband is the oldest of three boys. He experienced a lot of trauma growing up and did not have a good relationship with either his biological mother or his stepmother. His father was present and involved, but he traveled a lot for work and left many of the parenting responsibilities to his wife. There also aren’t many women on my husband’s side of the family.

My upbringing was very different. My family is full of girls. There are six girl cousins, and those of us who have siblings all have sisters. We were also raised in two parent households and generally had good relationships with our parents.

My husband and I will have been married for 9 years this September, and we have a 3 year old daughter. I’m not here to trash talk my husband or turn this into a gossip session, LOL. I genuinely love him and want helpful advice. However, I also know I have to be honest about our situation if I want honest answers.

My husband is struggling to build a healthy relationship with our daughter. She says she would rather be with Mommy about 90% of the time. He isn’t mean to her. It’s actually almost the opposite. She tends to walk all over him because he struggles to set and consistently enforce boundaries.

The ironic part is that she doesn’t behave this way with anyone else. Family members who babysit her always say she is respectful, helpful, cleans up after herself, and listens well. Even in a room full of children, she is usually one of the most well behaved. It’s generally the same when she is alone with me. Of course, she is 3 and isn’t perfect, but I typically don’t have major behavioral problems with her.

When she misbehaves with her dad, there often isn’t much teaching or follow through afterward. With me, her teachers, and other family members, we try to talk through what happened. We ask why she did it, how she was feeling, and what may have caused those feelings. She also understands that behavior has consequences. We talk through those consequences so she understands why she may receive a timeout or lose a privilege and what behavior led to it.

At times, I feel as though I’m parenting alone. According to my counselor, my husband may not yet have all the tools needed to identify, process, and work through some of his own emotions. Because of that, it can be difficult for him to connect with our daughter on a deeper emotional level or help her understand and process her feelings.

Unfortunately, there are also times when I feel more like a mother to him than a wife. I often find myself walking him through his emotions, reactions, and decisions.
I also want to make it clear that I do step in when I feel it is necessary, especially if our daughter needs support or a situation needs to be addressed.

However, one of the things I’m currently working on in counseling is learning when to take a step back. I don’t want to undermine him as a father or automatically take over. I need to allow him the space to figure some things out on his own.

He has depended heavily on me for a long time, especially when it comes to processing emotions and making decisions. We both recognize that this dynamic isn’t healthy, and we are actively working to break that pattern.

I also want to make it clear that he is actively participating in individual counseling and putting effort into working through these issues. We have also attended marriage counseling together in previous years. Things have improved tremendously through counseling, communication, our faith in Christ, and a lot of intentional work. However, I would be lying if I said there wasn’t still a lot of work to be done.

I’m hoping to gain some compassionate and honest insight from fathers or families who have experienced something similar. I’m not looking to shame my husband. I’m trying to understand him better and find ways for us to grow as parents and as a family.

* I started to post this to the testosterone group to see if I could get some insight, but I was almost afraid that my husband might be in that group, and would know this was me.

My husband started testosterone several months ago. He’s 44, I’m almost 53. At some point I being to question if he was getting cranky from it. He said no, he’s tested his levels and he’s “slightly above average” for his testosterone. He says this is just an adjustment period and he should definitely not go lower on his dose.

Last week, on the same night after something very stressful happened with our beloved dog (health crisis) he went into a sort of full on verbal attack about all of these issues he’s had with me for months and months and even years. And now, he says he is just trying to express his feelings. If I attempt to explain my perspective he says I’m not acknowledging his feelings. He says that he had repressed his feelings for years (possibly due to lifelong low testosterone) and now perhaps the testosterone may have started allowing him to actually feel things. And therefore, he’s now realizing that he has, one the one hand, been putting up with constant rejection from me and on the other hand that he has caused this disconnect by being overly focused on growing his business/his fitness routine, and not enough on our marriage and he’s afraid he’s ruined our marriage and he’s terrified it’s too late to fix it.

He had apparently been afraid I’ve been cheating on him which is the farthest thing from true, which I have reassured him. I’m also just starting testosterone as my HRT didn’t have it and after some lab work realized I was very low on testosterone- which does explain my lack of interest in sex and lack of motivation or interest in pretty much anything/anxiety. I wasn’t exactly all over my husband but certainly not interested in anyone else. But he was also very focused on working out every day right after he would get home around 7 pm and working out for about 2 hours. Saying that he was trying to build his body back up because he had neglected it and was having pain from not having enough muscle tone, etc. I did just sort of pull back because I was tired of trying to talk or connect if he was just gonna be working out. I’d mostly be in the same room, but we wouldn’t really be communicating.

We’ve talked some things out, and he’s apologized for some of the things he’s said to me in the past week and a half. But then every day, I will say at least one thing that he will read way too much into and just seems unable to stop from complaining about what I’ve said or how I’ve said it. I’m getting to where I’m afraid to say anything to him for fear it will be misinterpreted. I want to be clear that I do not think I’m a perfect saint, but I also think this has become unreasonable. I’m very self-aware and also have a background in the mental health field.

I’ve had a therapist for a few months that I didn’t need any prodding by him to seek out. I took the responsibility to start because I felt that my anxiety and depression needed to be addressed and in part I was concerned about how that could be impacting our marriage. Now we both agree we need couples counseling but when I suggested that he may need his own therapist to express all of these feelings he’s having, combined with having a very difficult upbringing, he complete shuts it down and says he does not need his own therapist.

I am barely holding up with the situation with our dog’s health situation and the stress of that alone, without his attitude on top of this. Also, he’s constantly wanting to “connect” which means that he says just even holding hands is helpful but then, despite me being completely exhausted and emotionally worn out right now, he thinks now is the time to start being intimate again but it seems like he’s constantly “in the mood”.

Summary: I’m trying to figure out if I’m dealing with somebody who, due to his testosterone levels, could be impossible to reason with at this point. Moody, whiny, bringing up what he feels has been me rejecting him in various ways for years and then saying he’s feeling like it’s his fault because he hasn’t prioritized our marriage and faith. Also, seeing if other women have gone through this with a husband using what are supposed to be standard amounts of testosterone.

We are discussing couples counseling, but due to a crisis in our family haven’t been able to really find anyone. My therapist may be able to refer us. I think I’m also just looking for some support. Dealing with our beloved dog becoming very ill (which yes, he is also very upset about), I’m at the point every time that he says something about something I’ve said that he has taken offense to, I just say, “I’m sorry you’re right.” He knows that this is more me just being exasperated. I’ve sort of given up. I don’t want to fight anymore and I’m depleted. I also cannot keep up with his sex drive. I have no interest right now. Perhaps when my testosterone levels get higher, I will be but with the stress I’m under right now I have no interest. I also feel he’s being overly pushy about sex. It’s not that he would do anything to hurt me, but just suggesting it all the time. I feel like he’s being insensitive to where I’m at. I’m in anticipatory grief and anxiety constantly right now.

I am basically opting for an in-home separation. We have a bunch of kids and I don’t really want them to experience the trauma of divorce, but I don’t want to deal with my husband either.

Yelling and screaming is normal for me in my childhood so I guess I do it naturally, not good I know. My husband says when he tells me to stop talking at him and I keep going and going that it feels like I’m r*ping him, which is a crazy comparison to me but that’s his feeling of it. He says if 1) he tries to calm me down and 2) he can’t get away physically, he feels trapped that I keep talking/yelling at him and he feels he has no other choice but to get physically violent.

He basically fake-choked me the other day when he got mad at me for continually harping at him about some stupid stuff (hands around my throat without actually squeezing while shaking me). This obviously shut me up and scares me. He’s done this four times this year and it’s being done more and more and he keeps using the excuse that it’s a defense mechanism for when I keep r*ping him with my “verbal and emotional abuse.”

I told him if he did it again I would seek out a divorce because I’m not living with fear of getting choked just because I happen to yell. They are not comparable to me, but he thinks they are.

I don’t want to dismiss the fact that I yell at him and follow him around the house when I’m upset. it’s not the greatest I get it. He is an avoidant type and a withdrawer. So I want to be fair to his side, I probably get angry because he never wants to talk about anything. he will never bring up old disagreements and never wants to bring up anything because he’s afraid it will turn into me arguing and following him around the house.

he says if I just stop being upset and following him around, then there would be no threat of him snapping and hurting me. he says I contribute to the danger and that without me following him around, he is zero threat. this confused me because he’s basically right, but at the same time, I don’t want “don’t yell at me and you won’t get choked out” to be what keeps the peace. it’s super weird to say that. He is otherwise a great father and generally good husband, but he sucks at dealing with conflict normally and definitely trash when he feels cornered, which feels like all the time lately.

I don’t want to divorce but I also don’t want to live in a marriage where I can’t express basic disagreement without him running away, and if I push it, having the threat of violence.

And no, he has never harmed the kids.