My (24F) mental illness destroyed my relationship with partner (26M) but didn’t realize how bad it was until after marriage and a baby

I have struggled with mental illness throughout my entire life, as I have been abused daily from as early as I can remember up until I met my current partner at 21. I had never seen any semblance of what a healthy relationship looked like and I was by far at my worst that I have ever been when me and my husband met. We got married very quickly due to religious circumstances. I have threatened to leave him so many times during arguments where it felt like there was no other way out, I have humiliated him (and ultimately myself) in front of his friends on accident, and started out very controlling because I didn’t know him well and trust issues fueled my mental illness. So I didn’t ever want him hanging out with his friends which was a normal thing for him until he met me. I know this is all horribly wrong. He didn’t leave me because he had decided that I would be the only one for him. I used to have a hard time apologizing because that wasn’t a normal thing in my family. I was living in a different universe than everybody else.

Well after about a year and a half of me being insane, something inside me changed and I’m not crazy anymore. I don’t know what happened but I’ve been stable ever since, about 2 years. The first time in my entire life that I have ever been stable. No meds, no mood swings, giving him all the time in the world to hang out with his friends just trying to be the best wife I can be. Almost an entire year of our marriage, we never argued. It seemed loving. Everything felt healthy, so we had a baby who is four months old now. Come to find out (because he told me) recently, he’s scared of me, feels like he’s walking on eggshells all the time, I don’t meet his expectations as a wife, and because of our past trauma, he doesn’t love me fully and has no passion for me. To make it worse, we moved away from everybody because we wanted to be independent so our closest family is across the country and now I have a contract that requires me to stay here for a few years. So neither of us can catch a break. I constantly try to encourage him to communicate with me for a healthy discussion because I just want to fix things. We have been having healthy discussions but it’s not relieving any of the trauma for him no matter much communication we have or how much I apologize for what I’ve done. We both seem like we want to make it work but at the same time it is so hard to carry this emotional burden. Every argument we have brings up everything from our past that I have to apologize for again and again. I feel horrible for the things I’ve done to him but I can’t live with this feeling any longer. He keeps saying he forgives me but still holds it over my head. This makes me not want to be here. I am only living for my child at this point because my husband doesn’t seem like he loves me no matter how much effort I put in to making things better. The most important relationship in my life feels like it’s beyond repair.

How do I proceed with this?

Posted May 1, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

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