I (25F) am a black American woman married to a Gambian man (30M) and have been for almost 2.5 years. I have adhd and my parents both had undiagnosed adhd. Our house was always a mess growing up. We would do a deep clean every couple weeks or every couple months sometimes. Then they got divorced while I was 21-22 and neither of them spent a lot of time at home and dad moved out. Depression befell the whole household and we did not do well with getting it back in order. And my mom no longer cooked. She got us a hello fresh subscription and my brothers and I cooked and grocery shopped for ourselves. All this to say, I did not come from a good background when it comes to cleaning and cooking. I was not taught these aspects of marriage well.
When we were dating, my husband saw the state of our house and my room and he emphasized how our house could never look like this. I agreed, and assured him that it mainly had to do with the circumstances of the divorce and no one helping with anything.
When we got married, he had to live away for work and would come home every other weekend. I was also working full time and had a 1.5-2hour commute each way by bus/train. Couple my lack of skills with my exhaustion and the house was often not in order. (Not as bad as my family room ofc….. but still) He would reset it every visit home and ask me to maintain it. I would attempt to. But struggled to. I also became pregnant 5 months into our marriage. So not only did I have these long commutes, but I also was doing it all while pregnant.
When the baby was born, I struggled with postpartum depression and again struggled to maintain. At some point, (around baby’s 2nd month) I began to create a routine for myself since I was now a stay at home mom. It has been a little over a year since then and I have gotten SO much better. My husband has an insanely high standard and the house prob meets it 1x/week, then it meets a normal person standard 2-5 times a week, and it’s messy 2-4x/week. Due to the lack of consistency with the condition of the house, my husband is not really super impressed with my progress.
Now that’s all the context— here’s the question.
All that being said, my husband essentially trained me to get to this point. In that time, he said he has been struggling more and more in his romantic feelings toward me— they are dissipating. It’s almost as though he sees me as less than because it took so much work (and I’m still not where he’d wish I’d be) to get me to this point. Is it even possible for him to fall back in love with me after all this? Is there something culturally I’m missing here too?
Men, would you struggle to see your wife with competence if you had to guide her in this area for her to get it together?
Women, are you trained more culturally to have better skills in cooking and cleaning so that you don’t embarrass yourself in this way as a wife?
Due to all that has built up, I recommended we go to therapy but he says he’d never go for himself cuz he doesn’t need it (whyyyyyyy is this a thing culturally? 😭) and he is not super open to going together either. But I fear we won’t be able to come back from this if he doesn’t. For I fear he’s looking at me with contempt or something? Which is not an easy thing to tackle on your own, let alone at all.
Thanks in advance for your perspectives shared!
