We've had our "breakthrough" and my wife is at home (never left) and has been working on our marriage now too.
We are intimate, we talk, we laugh, we go out together, etc. However she is very depressed much of the time. She talks of feeling unfulfilled in all aspects of her life, not just the marriage.
Her job is quite stressful, they fired her boss and handed her all the responsibilities on top of her own. Additionally they won't give her the position on a permanent basis which means no new title and no salary increase. They made it clear they want to bring in someone else for the job, but their top candidate doesn't want to take the position until August. So now she is working 6 or 7 days a work totalling 60+ hours and gets nothing back in return.
Our S (age 5) is showing signs of needing speech therapy, and on top of that has been getting himself in trouble at his pre-school.
Our D (age 2) is just that, buried in the Terrible Twos - refusing to listen or blatently doing the opposite of what she is told.
To top it off, our marriage needs lots of work. Today she referred to OR as "The absolute low point of our marriage". That was painful as I didn't know how to take it. I thought that "Low Point" was the day she dropped the bomb, and all these baby steps we have been taking were heading us back over the mountain. In fact I have very much enjoyed our efforts together. I dunno if what she was referring to was this entire period as a whole, or whether she was just feeling especially down, or if there is more to it, and we are at a low point.
As far as her job goes, I'd like for her to put her foot down at work (either get her some help, give her the position permanently, or to back off and give her her life back.) but there aren't a lot of jobs in the area if that backfires. (She's a Chemical Engineer) I haven't told her this - I read the John Gray Mars/Venus book and I know I am not supposed to offer solutions, I am only supposed to be her sounding board. But MAN, she is ALWAYS stressed and bitching (and apologizing) about having to take work home. How do I deal with that?
Our life is like this: She gets up and feels she needs to get to work ASAP because with her doing two jobs she is so far behind. So she is the first gone in the morning. She's almost always at work late so either I get the kids from pre-school (quite out of the way) so we get home at about the same time, or if she does they all don't get home till much later. We eat dinner then spend time with the kids, which is no picnic. Both children cannot take anything we say at face value. They either ignore us or argue. So, after a long day at work, then dealing with the kids we are both generally wiped and are ready to just crash. Often we try to stay up to spend time together, but in some instances that feels "forced" since we'd rather be sleeping.
Since for the past few weekends she needed to go in to deal with stuff at work, even then isn't the best time to work on "us".
How do I deal with all this? Should I put OR aside and let her deal with the other issues first? Should we work to fix OR so that she feels she truly has a partner to help her through this?
She's taking Prozac now for the stress. She says she can't even relax her muscles. I feel so helpless sometimes because I don't know where to start.
She talks about wanting to take a few days away from everything just to go think. I was all for that, and she had planned a weekend to do that, only to be told on the Friday before she left that they needed her to come work. It was devastating to her and to me.
There is another window for her to take a few days coming up, but she is both worried about the job calling her in again, and the fact that money is tight.
Where do I begin?? This is SO complex. All I want to do is take all this stress away from her. She is such a happy person, and she can't let it out, and as a result it's depressing her terribly. I want to be there for her to help with the other problems, but as I am still part of one of the problems myself where do I start? (If at all...)
