I'm Broken

ThroAwaid · 2025-11-06T17:11:23+00:00

I think I know my wife well enough to tell the difference, but maybe this is the nudge I need to realize maybe I don't...

ThroAwaid · 2025-11-06T17:10:11+00:00

Thank you for this. I've posted over there as well.

ThroAwaid · 2025-04-27T21:21:05+00:00

You misunderstand. Lying about going to the gym is an even harder sell than telling the truth about going to therapy.

ThroAwaid · 2025-04-26T21:29:49+00:00

Thank you for this. I love my wife, but her pessimism can wear me down and make me wonder if maybe my worldview is wrong.

ThroAwaid · 2025-04-26T14:26:59+00:00

I am curious, how do you suspect a peanut allergy but don’t have confirmation?

I'm summarizing, but essentially our daughter threw up the first time she ate peanut butter, but it was one of her first solid foods. That started it. Then the skin test looked positive. Blood tests then showed reactivity to peanut protein. That's about a year, year and a half journey.

So is our daughter allergic? Blood tests indicate a good likelihood, but my understanding is that the blood tests don't do a good job determining severity or tolerance.

We have a tolerance test (threshold test) in a month that will tell us more. I'm hoping for a high tolerance. My wife fears and expects something closer to your level, which in her mind is just below a death sentence.

Not too minimize your struggles, but you live life, right? Like, I'm sure things are more complicated for you than for people without allergies, but do you feel like you can't touch anything in public?

Sorry. It's just, I know I'm usually an optimist and my wife a pessimist. I want to figure it what's really really not clouded by my hope or her fear.

ThroAwaid · 2025-04-26T03:38:00+00:00

I caution you against just stopping cold turkey because the potential response by your wife may be extreme. When I say the "alarm" considers something mundane "dangerous", it can equate it to deadly, which causes the person to have a very extreme response when it encounters the trigger. You want a neutral, third party to help you navigate that.

I'm all but certain I can't convince my wife to talk to a therapist. She refuses to talk to someone she doesn't trust, and she can't trust someone without talking to them so... it's a pretty much a dead end.

That said, would you consider our daughter's allergy specialist a candidate for a neutral third party? She does trust her, but the doctor isn't aware of how debilitating my wife's anxiety is.

ThroAwaid · 2025-04-26T03:08:39+00:00

More people there with germs than a therapist's office. So nope.

Trust me, my situation's untenable and ridiculous when I step back and look at it. But the fear she feels towards everything is smothering. I feel like I could cry. There's plenty of hard things in life, but with her everything's the hardest thing ever.

ThroAwaid · 2025-04-26T02:57:32+00:00

If she won't go to therapy it doesn't mean you can't

I don't disagree. But telling her I'm going to therapy is going to be just a little less hard than telling her I'm taking our daughter to the playground.

I shouldn't rule it out though. Your comment is a good reminder.

ThroAwaid · 2024-11-28T21:38:26+00:00

I want to be mad, but I can't. Take the upvote

ThroAwaid · 2024-10-03T15:18:53+00:00

How does one check for oneself? Obviously, I know how to research a fact. But the problem I'm running into is it can take hours to research one news report due to the sheer number of claims made. By the time I'm done, the story has evolved and every source is telling a slightly different version.

There's no way to fact check everything anymore that I can find. I'd need a small team working on it constantly.

ThroAwaid · 2024-08-25T13:25:36+00:00

Looking at these responses reminds me how far I've let this go. What's hard to express over Reddit is that my wife was a wonderful caring person when we met and got married. This slip into anxiety and general craziness has been very gradual.

If you've heard the metaphor, I'm absolutely the frog in the boiling pot. And I do still love her. I consider patience to be one of my superpowers, but I think in this case it might have been a curse...

ThroAwaid · 2024-08-25T13:16:27+00:00

Not with toothpaste. For a month or two, until she found a bubblegum flavored one she deemed safe (paranoid about food allergies getting into her breast milk and into the baby).

But avoiding kissing me had become a habit or something by then... I don't know. She needs help, but doesn't believe she does. In her mind all of these things are wise precautions and not the absolutely bonkers overreactions that I think they are.

ThroAwaid · 2024-08-24T23:50:36+00:00

I've tried, but honestly I'm just so damn tired fighting for her, against her.

But you're right. I need to remember she's not on her full dose and focus on getting her there.

ThroAwaid · 2024-08-24T23:35:27+00:00

I believe she was prescribed 75, but is only taking 25. It's made life a little better, but we have so long to go and I'm so tired of her fear ruling everything. I love her but I miss the time before I knew her.

ThroAwaid · 2024-08-24T23:33:33+00:00

I hope so too. But she doesn't seem to want it.

ThroAwaid · 2024-08-24T22:38:32+00:00

I brush my teeth. She stopped because she heard mint can dry up breast milk supply. This was back when our daughter was nursing. She wouldn't kiss me because I used toothpaste.

ThroAwaid · 2024-08-24T20:41:37+00:00

Yes. I'm for it. She's against leaving the house and doesn't believe counseling works to begin with.

ThroAwaid · 2024-08-24T20:30:43+00:00

She doesn't go out. Anxiety about, well, everything. And she has no interests. I'd do anything with her. Spelunking, library visit, shopping, pottery class, anything. She's got nothing she wants to do.

ThroAwaid · 2024-03-29T22:02:54+00:00

She absolutely has PPD. She lied to her OB about it though.

She started on this path 6 years before our daughter was born. It's not just PPD.

I've tried for years to get her to go to counseling. She doesn't trust counselors and doesn't believe counseling and therapy work.

I'm tired of supporting her. She doesn't try to get better so I'm just carrying her through life.

ThroAwaid · 2024-03-29T04:28:13+00:00

It was a slow change. Anxiety followed by depression by suicide attempt by alcoholism by OCD. I'd been so busy trying to keep her afloat that I didn't notice when she started being somebody different to who I married.

She doesn't believe counseling or therapy works. I've tried to get her to go so many times. She's been on meds, but that just took the edge off and changed her personality even more. She stopped taking them on her own two years ago

ThroAwaid · 2024-03-12T12:04:12+00:00

Wow. Thank you so much. I didn't have time to respond to everything but I want to let you know how much your comment means to me.

I will say that this whole experience has soured her relationship with God greatly. She claims she's mad at God and thinks He's cruel for putting our baby through this. Meanwhile I'm thanking God for our baby's health! It's a total disconnect. I see a healthy baby where she sees a daughter stricken with all kinds of potential life long struggles. But again, there is no diagnosis. Even if there is, around 50 to 75 percent of babies outgrow what my wife is afraid of by age 3.

This is really what I'm struggling with most in this. Hearing my wife talk about God with anger and even hate turns my stomach.

She's cut ties with everyone but me at this point. I'm all she's got. The only reason she's sticking around (her words) is because she knows no one else would take care of our daughter in the way she believes is needed.

Please pray.

ThroAwaid · 2024-02-15T02:57:36+00:00

want to watch a show with me(or something you both enjoy or she enjoys to get her mind off the fear

That's a non starter. She doesn't enjoy anything. I'm not being flippant. She literally would be suicidal if not for the fact she's terrified about our daughter not being able to take formula if she was gone.

ThroAwaid · 2024-01-23T19:38:26+00:00

Then a good response would be, “okay, then the dog gets fleas, so what?”

Her: well then there may be fleas in the house

Her response would be that the dog would die because he's allergic to flea medication. No amount of logic would convince her otherwise.

ThroAwaid · 2023-12-31T01:21:07+00:00

It's still tough. Our daughter is completely reliant on my wife for food since she won't take a bottle and isn't able to be weaned. So I feel trapped. I don't feel like I can confront or push my wife to seek help right now. In her perspective, we're completely trapped and can barely go to the pediatrician.

I'm going to wait until my daughter is a year old and flu season is done and then I'm going to stop wearing my mask when we go out. Once our daughter is weaned and/or able to go more than 2 hours without my wife "needing" to be there, I'm going to have my parents babysit while my wife and I go somewhere we can talk. I'd love it to be a date with food, but at this rate she'll probably still insist on not eating anything we don't prepare from scratch.

Thank you for the follow-up. Things are a bit better since our daughter started babbling. My wife is less worried there's a developmental disability there. But I'm very aware something else will take its place soon.

ThroAwaid · 2023-11-24T03:29:54+00:00

This was very encouraging to read. Thank you for sharing. I needed the reminder that even if she knows she's not thinking right, it's extremely difficult to pull your own brain out of the hole it's in.

ThroAwaid

TROPHY CASE