It's 3am and I'm going nuts

[45&counting]

My wife of 12 years has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder which expressed itself as hoarding. If you've seen that tv show "Hoarders", that's what she would do, left to herself. Our garage looks like that, because no one but her ever goes out there.

Our home is complete chaos. It's a constant battle between my tendencies to be organized and hers to be overwhelmingly cluttered. I can't put anything down and expect to find it again 3 days later. I haven't filed my taxes in 3 years because my w-2'S disappear into the piles of stuff before I can use them. We spend money we can't afford on a storage pod of more useless junk.

She's also chronically depressed. She's been on medication for it but keeps having to switch kinds; they only work for a while. I can't count on her for anything, but we pretend that I can, so I'm constantly frustrated and left hanging.

I love her, but we don't talk and never have sex. We aren't emotionally intimate. I'm lonely as hell.

We have 3 girls, ages 2, 6, and 9. The oldest has some issues that fit the laundry list describing "oppositional defiance disorder". Screaming tantrums over little things, passive-aggressively annoying daily. She's getting some therapy that seems to be helping, thank god.

The 6-year-old is a sweetie. Today she got to watch my wife and I bicker and fight over more broken promises to complete household chores; I said I was sorry and she said my wife and I shouldn't fight so much.

So as much as this all feels sh*tty to me, I know it feels sh*tty to our girls, too. Well, the 2-year-old may be oblivious so far, because our fights are in pretty mild voice tones. No name-calling or yelling. But the frustration and tension are in there.

I struggle with should I get a divorce? Or not? Which is worse for the girls?

BTW, I'm a woman married to a woman. Well, the marriage isn't valid in this state, but we have a real marriage certificate from Canada. I'm the birth mom of our kids. I work, a teacher. My wife is the stay-home mom. I'd love to stay home, and my wife would rather go out and work, but financially, trust me, there was no other option.

Divorce will suck. The 2 youngest adore their mama, though the oldest clashes with her a lot. Divorce seems to scar kids emotionally for life, sorry to say it for anyone out there who got one. So the marriage has to be pretty bad before divorce looks better.

So I tell myself I just have to get this marriage together, bring some intimacy and joy back into our lives, and that will go best for the girls, not to mention the adults. But really, I need the house to be cleaned up and functional before joy is coming anywhere near me. And I can't seem to achieve that. My wife can cause chaos much faster than I can clean it up. And I'm so angry about that, I can't get in touch with the love I have for her.

All this is just GRINDING ME DOWN. I see a free therapist through my work benefits, but frankly she's not very effective. She's nice and all, we chat, but no real emotional work gets done and so nothing changes. But she's better than nothing, at least someone can hear my truth once in a while.

So in a few hours the toddler will wake and the day will begin. I need to shop for groceries, take the 2 older girls to buy roller skates, and plan where to put cement curbing around a future rose bed in the front yard. The front yard always looks like crap, junk piled on the porch and on the side, mostly dirt or weeds. With all the clutter and chaos, there's no energy for the yard. But I promised the girls we'd have roses this year, and it's time, so by god we are going to do it. The hard part is moving anything forward into action with my wife's agreement; part of her OCD and hoarding is to never actually do anything so she never makes a mistake.

I also need to cook a big pot of soup; my wife and I will start the Weight Watchers plan Monday. I was doing it last fall with success, though I took a break for the holidays. We both are fat. I hope that getting into better shape will help with our energy levels and health. I'm glad my wife is joining me, but who knows if she'll stick to it. She's started many diets in her life without finishing them. I got fat having the babies. Now that I'm done having babies, nursing babies, and trying to get pregnant with babies, I'm glad to get my body back.

Thanks for listening. I'll try for some sleep before morning, now.

[Obayan]

Remember date night? Remember sitting and cuddling up with a good movie and bowl of popcorn? Remember what it was like to leave the whole world at the door and just be with eachother? Do that. Have a date. Not dinner out with the wife and kids, but a real date. Go back and do some of the things you used to do when things were still good. Relationships take a lot of work and even more work when there's a disorder involved that is so overwhelming and uncontrolable. I guess what I'm trying to say is get back to the basics. Remind eachother what it was that made you fall in love in the first place.