We've been together 15 years, married for 12. Things were great for the first few years of our relationship, but started going downhill after we got married and started having sexual problems, and have been particularly bad since my mom died in 2022. Also relevant context, we're financially independent and living off my inheritance, so neither one of us is working right now. We also don't have any kids, but we do have five cats (more on that later).
The sexual problems aren't the main issue I'm asking for advice with, but for context: I have a lot of childhood trauma that my brain decided to start letting me process after we got married and moved away from our families, and I developed some chronic health issues around the same time, and my sex drive started to be lower than what it was as a result (for reference, we're talking sex 2-3 times a week instead of every day). My husband had a very hard time dealing with this and started engaging in a lot of coercive and guilt tripping behavior towards me over it, and I was enough of a people pleaser that I gave in a lot and did a lot of sexual things I didn't want to do, which only killed my sex drive more. We've talked about it a lot and seen four different marriage counselors, and at this point he no longer pressures me about it, but we also don't really have sex at all anymore, and we've shifted to a polyamorous relationship for many reasons, one of them being so that he can get his sexual needs met elsewhere. (I also came out as bisexual in my late 20s after growing up religious and deeply closeted, so the opportunity to explore dating women was super important to me as well--I mention this because I don't want to give the impression that our non-monogamy is all about him wanting more sex when it was very much a mutual decision.)
Anyway... Even with the pressure around sex removed, it still seems like I'm never able to meet my husband's expectations of what a relationship is supposed to be. I have unmedicated ADHD that's gotten significantly worse as I got older--when we met I was in my early 20s and still able to cope fairly well, but my life has fallen apart more and more as I've gotten older, particularly after my mom died in 2022. I'm an only child and my dad died in 2009, so I've had to take care of literally EVERYTHING and it's put me in a very deep burnout that I'm still crawling my way out of (I still haven't even finished moving my mom's stuff to our place, four years later).
He was very understanding in the first few months after she died, and did a lot to support me and help me out with things. After about four or five months, though, it was like his patience just started to run out, and since then it seems like I hear non-stop about all the things I'm not getting done and how I need to do better. I genuinely don't know if he's being reasonable or not--I'm so behind on everything I even have tests my doctors have been wanting me to do for over a year that I haven't been able to get around to doing yet, so it's not like I'm doing great at keeping up with things right now. But no matter how much I try to communicate to him that I'm overwhelmed and drowning, he always wants me to prioritize the things that matter the most to him, and he always has an unending list of things he's upset about that he wants me to fix and is upset at me for not doing anything about.
Some examples:
-I'm never able to keep up with the housework well enough to meet his standards. I've never been good at housework, and at one point we had agreed that I would be the breadwinner and he would be the house-husband, since it suited our temperaments better and neither of us are very tied to traditional gender roles. However, since developing my health issues I haven't really been able to work, so now he expects me to do my fair share around the house. I try to do what I can, but my energy is very limited because of my health issues, and if I genuinely tried to keep the house clean to his standards I wouldn't have any energy left for anything else.
-We got two cats together after we moved in together, and after my mom died, we wound up taking in her three cats because we couldn't find another home for them. Hence, the aforementioned five cats. He's constantly upset about the cats these days--they throw up too much, they make the house smell bad, there's cat hair everywhere, and so on--and more and more these days he treats them as being solely my responsibility. Recently he referred to them as being "your cats" (instead of our cats) and was complaining that he supposedly does everything for them outside of the house, because he drives us to the vet and the groomer when they need to go. I'm the one that figures out what needs to be done, makes and sets up the appointment, and goes in and talks to people--when I've asked him to take them to the vet or the groomer on his own he's done it, but been completely unable to answer any questions they asked. I'm also the primary one that keeps their food and water bowls full and cleans up the messes they make--the only thing I'm bad at keeping up with is the litter boxes, which I admittedly have a hard time with.
-We recently had an emergency situation with our house because an upstairs toilet overflowed and caused a bunch of water damage. I was the one who called the water damage company, I was up at 8 AM many times to answer the door when they needed to start work so that my husband could sleep in, and both of us worked together to move around a whole bunch of things that needed to be moved for them to paint, replace flooring, etc. He took care of the phone communication and I took care of the email communication, which is a typical split for us because of our respective comfort levels (I have phone anxiety and he's dyslexic). I was under the impression we'd done a very good job dealing with the situation as a team, but apparently he feels differently and thinks that he did the majority of the work and I did very little.
-We need to have a plumber come check the toilet to find out why the problem happened in the first place, and he asked me to find a plumber we could call. I told him I would and have not managed to do so in a week, which is apparently unacceptable in his book (mind you, it was a week during which I was experiencing PMDD and having a major flare-up of my health issues, both of which he is aware of). It is true that we're not using that particular toilet for now until a plumber comes out, but we also have two other bathrooms; the broken toilet is in a bathroom that only I use.
-I apparently didn't do enough to celebrate his birthday last year. I repeatedly asked him, several weeks out from his birthday, what he wanted to do for his birthday, and he told me he didn't want to bother doing anything. I repeatedly asked him if he was sure, and he said yes, he didn't want to do anything. Then, about a week before his birthday, he changed his mind and decided he actually DID want to have a birthday party. I made plans and invited a bunch of people, but because it was such short notice and his birthday is close to Memorial Day, only one or two people showed up. He blames me for this.
-I also don't do enough for Valentine's Day. It's a very difficult time of year for me, because it's right after my mom's birthday, and I'm usually dealing with seasonal depression on top of grief. Last year, my energy was extremely limited and I communicated this, but we still did what I had the capacity for, which was to dress up and go out to a nice dinner together at our favorite restaurant. He was later upset with me because I "didn't do anything for Valentine's Day," and when I pointed out that we'd gone out for dinner, he told me that didn't count because it was something that was an everyday thing and not something that should have taken a lot of effort. I tried to explain that I was so low-energy, unmotivated, and depressed that even getting out of bed was taking a lot of effort at that point, and he just kept insisting that I hadn't done enough and I needed to do more.
-Our garage was a mess and he's been wanting to clean it out for years, but I haven't been able to find the time and energy to help him and he can't do it on his own. He's complained about it a LOT. We finally wound up doing it, with the help of a friend, as part of moving things around in response to the recent flooding emergency. The garage is now cleaned out just like he wanted, but he's still upset with me about it because it didn't get done until an emergency forced it.
I'm just...so fucking tired. And I don't know if the problem is him or me. Maybe his expectations are totally reasonable and I really am just a shitty partner to live with, who knows? I've never lived with any other partners, so it's not like I have a basis for comparison. And I DID have one roommate in college that wound up specifically asking to be transferred to a different room because she thought I was a slob (mind you, my side of the room was *clean,* it just wasn't *orderly*). And I'm very well aware that I've been completely overwhelmed and unable to keep up with things for several years now. I just wish he would show some sympathy and a desire to help me unbury myself from everything instead of just criticizing me for not getting things done, or not getting them done "in a timely manner" as he puts it.
I guess I'm just looking for advice in general, as well as feedback on whether or not it seems like he or I am the real problem here. I've tried to include any relevant context I could think of, but we've been married for a long time and I'm sure I've left some things out, so I'm open to answering any questions.
Thanks for reading if you read this far, and thanks in advance for any replies. Sorry for this being so long--I'm trying to make sure I cover all the nuances of some pretty complicated situations.