Warning at the outset: This is mostly an unstructured rant, so no claims are made as to coherency or clarity. I am as much trying to get things off my chest as I am asking for advice. I met my...
Warning at the outset: This is mostly an unstructured rant, so no claims are made as to coherency or clarity. I am as much trying to get things off my chest as I am asking for advice.
I met my fiancée (let's call her B—) almost two years ago, and we connected immediately. Our values align closely, we have a lot of common experiences (having kids young; growing up as a middle child in a middle class family; both having come to queerness late in life being chief among them), and we were both absolutely dedicated to being silly and carefree with each other. B— calls it the "yes and," and it's something we're quite good at generally. I moved into B—'s place about 8 months after meeting, and 4 months after that we were engaged. We're due to be married in May this year. In general, it's been pretty smooth sailing, but the past four months or so have been increasingly stressful, and are making me feel like the relationship is falling apart.
The stressors in detail (TL;DR — Our jobs, our children, our house, our car, our wedding, our finances)
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Our jobs. Neither of us is particularly happy with the job that we each have. Mine is a nightmare of micromanagement and having every minute of my time tracked, with cryptic expectations, and labyrinthine processes to follow with exacting precision. B—'s is a charity job where she is required to do all sorts of tasks over and above her actual job description, including (but not limited to) dealing with her colleagues' tech support issues, despite the organisation having IT support, and B— not actually being an IT person; and constructing a whole-ass database for the team to use instead of paper records. We are both underpaid, and thoroughly overworked. The job market sucks, and it's increasingly difficult to find the energy to apply for a new position anyway.
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Our children. We have three kids from former relationships(14F, 12NB, 8F), all of whom are pretty definitively on the neurodivergent spectrum (as are we). 12 is the only one with any formal diagnoses (AuDHD), and the two girls are distinctly autistic, though with very different presentations. We adore our children, but we are also exhausted by them. The list of acceptable foods that they'll eat is such that I can't go a week without repeating a meal. We can't leave 12 alone with 8 otherwise they'll fight. 14 has absolutely no filter, and just wants to chat constantly, but refuses to do it with her (step-) siblings. All three of them are completely obsessed with video games or screentime in general, but cannot ever agree on anything to do together, so they will all just sit on their own devices. And when they've reached their screentime limit for the day, they all become listless and have apparently zero idea of how to entertain themselves without one or both parents coming up with something to do. Getting them all into bed takes at least two hours every night, no matter what we try to do. The children's respective co-parents are dreadfully difficult to work with, to cap it all off, and most of the actual parenting is falling to us.
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Our house. We live in a three-bedroom house that B— bought her former partner out of when their relationship ended. It is not large enough for the size of family that we have. There is too much stuff in the house, and never enough time to actually sort it out. Every room is a dump, beyond full to bursting with stuff. There isn't a single surface that doesn't require decluttering to be able to actually use, including the parts of the kitchen where we eat, or make food. I won't pretend that I'm completely innocent of contributing to this, but as the person in the house with the fewest possessions, I am far from the worst offender. The children all just drop whatever they're playing with wherever they stand. B— amasses new knitting/crochet projects like they're going out of fashion, but has yet to finish more than three in the time that I've known her. There is not a single place I can go in the house that I can feel peaceful in, because every room presents a massive list of chores wherever I look.
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Our car. We bought a seven-seater vehicle in July last year, and to say it has been a comedy of errors ever since is putting it mildly. The TL;DR of this particular saga is that we did not check the reputation of the place we bought from thoroughly enough, and we spent £8000 on a lemon. The car has been in and out of various garages for months, rendering us a one-car house (with all the additional stress that causes), and is looking like it will cost at least half as much as we paid in the first place to get it fixed up. The place we bought from has declared bankruptcy and stopped trading last week, so there is absolutely no chance of recouping any of our loss here. Money is tight enough already, and we are now faced with paying an enormous sum to repair the car, or to scrap it and get a new one. Neither option is palatable, since we took out a loan to buy it, and we will be stuck paying that off for the next 4 years.
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Our wedding. We opted for a smaller-scale, pseudo-elopement to Scotland, where it's legal to get married outdoors — something we both had on our wishlist. This is a small ceremony with our children, parents, and a witness each. We are also having a not-a-reception party the week after, closer to home and with a larger number of people as a celebration of the marriage. We have mostly arranged the Scotland portion now, payments notwithstanding. But the party portion is almost completely unplanned, and it's looking like we won't be able to afford it anyway, depending how the car situation pans out. Both sides of our family are coming to us with demands and requests to accommodate their own schedules and wants for the wedding, and it's feeling less and less like we have any say in the matter whatsoever.
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Our finances. Our budget feels very tight. The cost of just being alive (let alone having three children) is skyrocketing, and our salaries are not keeping pace. We are squeaking through each month, but that is fully paycheque to paycheque and if either one of us loses our job we will be utterly fucked. We've blown through most of our savings, and each have a credit card and a loan that we're in the process of paying off to the tune of about £10k between us. When there are no surprises, things feel stable and secure, but the moment we have an unexpected expense (such as having to get the roof repaired last year), we burn through all of our savings and are right back at square one. There's barely ever any headroom or safety net. Both of us keep saying this will be sorted when we get better jobs, but neither of us seems likely to get one any time soon.
Both B— and I are in some way neurodivergent, though neither of us has a formal diagnosis. She has all the classic symptoms of ADHD, and I am very confident that I am autistic. Our needs often feel diametrically opposed, and it's putting a massive strain on the relationship. Our house is in constant disarray, and B— apportions this chaos to "just part of having kids" and "and inevitable cycle," while leaving out the fact that she does little and less to actually contribute to the smooth running of the place. The only time she will make a meal is if I'm not actually present to do so. And her capacity for cleaning up is to do approximately half a chore every few days. Meanwhile I am tasked with doing all of the cooking and meal-planning for everyone, all of the shopping to fill the cupboards, and all of the cleaning after every mealtime to ensure that there is a clean and tidy enough kitchen for the next one. B— is so consumed by stress and shame that she becomes immediately paralysed by the prospect of any task that is not for her own specific edification. I feel like I am waging a lone war against a building that is not fit for purpose, against combatants who will with absurd immediacy undo any progress I actually make.
And I think that stress and shame is one of the core problems. We both feel it, and we both handle it in unhealthy ways. My habit is to take on the lion's share of the responsibility with a view to keeping the peace, and while sublimating my own need for rest, recuperation, and solitude. B— on the other hand will meet anything that could be construed as criticism by completely shutting down and refusing to engage with any discussion. Case in point, last night in a conversation where we were trying to figure out how best to repair our relationship, I made the point that I feel unsupported in doing the housework on top of parenting and my job, and she said "fine," and immediately stalked off. Nothing was discussed. No strategies for how to find an equitable solution. Just an immediate termination of the conversation, after I had already let her talk about my own failings vis-a-vis prioritising togetherness, and accepted that I need to take steps to change my behaviour. We haven't spoken a word since, and likely won't until there is a blow-up argument about it at some stage this weekend (a familiar pattern). These conversations can and do go fine, so long as B— is able to externalise the fault: it's work, it's Christmas, it's the car, it's the wedding, it's the kids, etc. If I say anything that challenges this and suggests that her own actions are making me feel dismissed or unloved (and I am always very clear in my use of "when you do __, I feel __" language) then the conversation just stops dead.
We are both stressed up to the eyeballs, and both recognise that we're dropping the ball in terms of keeping our relationship healthy and maintained. We described it last night as "dropping the spinning plate that is our relationship." At this stage, it simply feels like we are diametrically opposed in how we want to pick the plate back up. The time we have to simply be a couple is very limited by our being parents. Invariably it's after 21:00 that the children are abed, and we can squeak out some time for ourselves. But lately this time after the kids are in bed is compressed dramatically by having to do chores that went ignored from before bedtime, or a lengthy discussion over the current thing that is at the forefront of our minds that we are stressing about. B— in particular really feels the need to get into a topic, and what feels like it should be a brief discussion over "what's the plan with the car" turns into a 90-minute epic with B—'s anxieties tumbling out one by one.
And I am struggling to meet those anxieties with patience and love, because the way these conversations are phrased is such that the only way that B— can not feel anxious is for her to have her own way. Which makes me feel less like a romantic partner and soon-to-be wife, and more a subordinate being asked to get on board with whatever the management team have decided. I want her to feel safe and like she can express what she's going through, but it is completely endless. One anxiety begets another, and before we know it it's 23:00 and we either have to get ready for bed ourselves, or else push through beyond midnight to gain any semblance of downtime. I love her so much, but at the moment it feels like so much of the relationship (as well as my own actions) is being driven forward by her anxieties and stresses about any given thing. I feel like I am buckling under the weight of all B—'s worries and stresses, and the accommodations that need to be made. She feels paralysed by all of the stressors we have in our lives, and so these stressors compound because she gets "stuck" and cannot do anything about them. Dishes pile up. The laundry basket overflows. Surfaces become cluttered. The children need feeding. At every turn there is another responsibility that it feels like B— is heaping onto me because she is so exhausted by constantly living in her anxiety and stress that she is rendered unable to do much beyond doomscroll on her phone. Meanwhile I am operating with the assumption that the only way out of the stress is to actually deal with the thing that's stressing me out: tidy up, clean the kitchen, do the laundry, plan the week's meals, have the conversation. But at each turn I am the one left to do the job. And I had better do it cheerfully and with a smile on my face, because B— experiences another shame spiral if she perceives someone to be cleaning around her in a bad mood.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I don't know what to do. I don't know if this relationship is sustainable in the long-term without some serious outside help. I don't know if we can afford that help. I don't know if I can continue to operate in this cycle of stress-paralysis without losing some sense of who I am. I don't know if B— still loves me. I just want to go back to when this felt easy. Our bedroom is all but dead. We don't "yes and" any more. The honeymoon period ended a long time ago, and I'm afraid that what we're left with is just an unhealthily attached relationship where neither of us feels able to lean on the other or to communicate our needs in a safe way. I'm terrified that I'm going to lose her and my step-children. We feel completely stuck in this rut, and I don't know the way out. I feel like I can't come to B— with problems, because she won't engage with them if there is any onus on her to work on herself. I miss the woman I asked to marry me.
Update: 03/02/26 (DD/MM/YY)
Thanks for all the replies everyone, it's been very helpful to read so much support! If I haven't replied to you directly, know that it's not out of anything other than mild overwhelm and feeling like I couldn't do justice to each of your comments.
B— and I hashed some stuff out on Friday, and it got heated. We argued for most of the evening and into Saturday morning, but we've taken some steps to try and reduce our stress load and take some time to work on ourselves:
- This coming weekend, B—'s parents are going to be looking after 8 & 12, while 14 is going to be with her other parent. We are deliberately not filling this free time (the first kid-free weekend since I moved in!) with things to do, and are going to just focus on connecting and being together. We've also made low-key plans for Valentine's Day to get a takeaway after the kids are in bed. These are both small things, but we're both finding that it's helpful to have time as a couple in our immediate future to be looking forward to, and we're going to try and make a point to schedule more things like this into our lives.
- We are going to actively pursue relationship counseling. Our argument on Friday evening showed that both of us need to do some work on communication with the other. I am not blameless, and I have a tendency to bottle things up and let them get to the point of anger before expressing them, which is not conducive to a healthy relationship. So the plan is to create some flex in the budget for counseling. I have a job interview tomorrow which will be bringing in a good bit more money than I make now, so hopefully the money stresses will be reduced.
- We got news back about the car and the damage is not as bad as we'd feared. It's still an expensive fix, but far more affordable than trying to find a replacement vehicle that we trust. It'll be out for a while yet while it's getting fixed, but that just gives us a bit longer to squirrel away money for the repair. Knowing that it's going to be back in good, safe, working order is incredibly relieving, and both of us have commented that it feels like a burden lifting. Getting back to being a two-car household will be another point to find some relief.
- B— and I are talking about cancelling, postponing, or reducing the scope of our wedding party. To clarify, we're aiming to marry on a shoestring anyway, but it's becoming apparent that the party portion is not really as affordable as we'd like. This is still in active consideration, but it's probable that we'll pivot to something closer to a garden party at one of our parents' homes than anything more intensive than that, and possibly a meal out with friends somewhere. The knowledge that we might not have to plan (and account for) this party is very refreshing, but we're trying to balance our sense of exhaustion against our possible future regrets.
So all in all, things are shifting in a more positive direction. I don't think I'm naïve enough to consider our problems solved; life has a way of finding new ones. But it does feel like we're mostly out of a very dark patch. There's work to do, both on ourselves, and in our lives. But I'm an insufferable optimist, as B— would say, and I think now that some of the fog of stress has cleared we're in a much stronger position to deal with what comes our way.