Hi everyone,

I've been married six years (together for 9), and have one toddler. I struggle with depression an anxiety. Recently I've started some new meds which are working pretty well. We have had a LOT of rough times in our marriage, not necessarily because of our relationship but because of external factors, tragic family member deaths for example.

I've been depressed for a while and I've gone through a lot of changes in the last year (move and a new job). My husband stays home with our toddler but that's about to change.

Now that I'm feeling better, I am just starting to realize that marriage isn't anything like I thought it would be. I felt like I was getting married to have a companion/life partner. And I feel like I had one, before the move/baby. But now I don't feel like I do. I love my husband and he loves me. I always thought he wouldn't be what I needed as a stay at home dad, because when I was pregnant he was unemployed (laid off and trying to find a job the entire time). He would do very very little around the house and it drove me nuts. Didn't matter so much when he was working but how in gods name can someone justify pushing the vast majority of household duties on the working person when they aren't working? Then we had the baby and ended up having to move cuz I lost my job. He quit his job he had found right before I had the baby beside it wasn't enough to support us.

So he's been a stay at home dad for a year and is about to start working. We have had a million fights about how he does not do hardly anything in the cooking/cleaning/household management department. And I don't expect much. Maybe an hour a day of combined cooking and cleaning would suffice for me. But somehow he has managed to convince himself that it's ok that I have to do all the household management tasks when he stays home all day. He thinks I'm unreasonable... I know it's not easy staying home with a toddler but my God.

Since I started feeling better I've been able to do more household tasks without being exhausted, and he has started doing tiny bit more. I feel like I don't want to let something as trivial as housework ruin or marriage but the resentment is still there.

But it's not even about the housework lately. I am so mad because it seems like he just never wants to do anything with me. It takes convincing to make him leave the house and it never seems like he wants to go. I feel like I can't ask him to do anything without pissing him off. I thought being married would mean having a companion but I do 90% of things alone. He is hardly ever even in the same room as me, unless you count him being in the dining room playing video games while I watch tv in the living room. I can see him but it's not the same room. I just don't get it. Since we had a kid it seems like he just
Complains all the time about being tired, and as soon as I'm home it is "me" time, and he needs to relax and take a break from childcare. Which I get but we do so little together and as a family, I just don't understand why it has to be like this. I see other families at the park together, grocery shopping together. I do those things alone or with my toddler, never with my husband. And if he does go to the park once in a blue moon he will just sit on the bench on his phone.

Does anyone have advice? I just don't understand. I'm fine with him having some "me" time, of course. But what about family time? Why even be married if I do everything alone?