My Marriage Stinks.

My marriage stinks.

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I need help.

My wife and I have been married for five years. Looking back on it, we probably rushed into marriage--we were both 23 at the time--but we were madly in love, and it seemed like the right choice. Our problems really began shortly afterwards. To be honest, I haven't really been happy for the last three or years, although I never really attributed this to my relationship.

Until now. Last night, she suggested that she is not satisfied with our relationship. She insists that she still loves me -- and she's dedicated to making it work -- but now I'm so angry that I'm not sure if I want to stick with it. She listed a set of "grievances," which are basically the perennial issues of our relationship. Here is her list: 

(1) My debt

I have a humanities / liberal arts degree. I have never had a desire to make loads of cash; I've always just wanted to be satisfied with my career choices. As such, I went back to graduate school with the goal of someday becoming a college professor. I'm now fairly close to achieving that dream (almost three years from finishing my PhD), but the road of a humanities graduate student is always emotionally turbulent -- it's very hard work, and you rarely make enough money while you are going through school; my assistantship pays for my degree, but my stipend doesn't pay for much more than living expenses. In addition, once I finish with my degree, I will need to find a job in the extremely tight humanities job market, although my field is a little more successful than some. My wife has a much more stable career and makes a little more money. Throughout our marriage, she has always been worried about our financial situation, and -- this is rather strange, but true -- our finances are still separate (separate bank accounts, separate bills, separate everything). She also is rather critical of the 11K of student loans that I amassed as a undergraduate, which makes me fairly angry; she had a free ride at her university, while I had to work my way through college (for the first two years, I worked 35 hours/week at a difficult job in order to pay for tuition and books, and I was able to pay for all my schooling until my last year). Before I met my wife, I felt like I had done a good job handling my finances as an undergraduate (I went entire months eating nothing but cans of baked beans in order to finance my education). Since then, I've been a little less responsible, and I've managed to acquire 3K in credit card debt. Nevertheless, I live much more frugally than my wife, who spends oodles of cash on everything from video games to role playing books.

(2) My slobbiness

I'm a slob. I've always been a slob, and it's been a habit that I've found hard to crack. So this is a big deal, and I need to fix it. At the same time, when we have conversations about this problem, I always feel like she is exempting herself from responsibility. I might be a slob, but she's not perfect on this issue -- in fact, I would say that she equally contributes to the problem.

(3) My bad eating habits

I'm a stress eater. Over the last three years, I've gained a considerable amount of weight. I've always had weight problems, and I actually lost a great deal of weight at the beginning of her marriage. Now -- this is not what bothers her -- she still seems to find me physically attractive despite my weight gain. Rather, she's upset because she claims we "reinforce each other's bad eating habits." See -- she's ALSO gained about 20-30 pounds over the last couple years. I feel like I'm being blamed for this, even if she constantly says, "We're reinforcing each other's bad eating habits." What kind of crap is that? Doesn't that seem to indicate that I'm the cause of her bad habits?

So, she lays all this on me, and I thought our relationship was just fine (like I said, I've been happy the last few months). At first, I was really depressed. Now, I'm just PISSED OFF. I look back at the last five years and all the sacrifices that I made (and all of HER faults, which I just forgive and overlook). I'm a really laid back guy. I forgive easily, and I don't dwell on things. So, for example, a couple years ago, she applied for a job in a state fifty cabrillion years from our current home. At the time, if she had gotten the job, I wouldn't have been able to leave my current situation; I had just got accepted into a doctoral program in our home state. But she went ahead and applied anyway. If she had gotten the job, it probably would have ended our relationship! But I just waited and waited, and when she didn't get the position, I even COMFORTED HER! What a bunch of crap! I could continue listing similar issues. It feels like I've been naive and stupid these last five years; I haven't been noticing the signs that our marriage was in trouble.

How can I stop being so ANGRY? Help me out! I constantly alternate between being mad and depressed! Looking back on it, I feel like I have been depressed because I have been trying to live up to her expectations; I've always had the suspicion that she thinks I'm a massive loser, even though she's never expressed it. She says I changed after we got married (I had some trouble getting a job, and she says that it completely changed my outlook on life). Maybe that's true, but how can I be expected to just like I was as a cocky 21 year old? Don't we realize that life is more difficult than we expected at some point?

Source:- http://www.loveshack.org/forums/romantic/marriage-life-partnerships/157374-my-marriage-stinks