Yes, there is a shift I can see, we had over fifteen years of pure and blissful marriage without a disagreement or tense moment and I never went a day without praising my wife and acknowledging her contribution and importance in my life, but I feel I started to take it all for granted at some point, it crept in virtually unnoticed until it was consuming my life and our marriage, my wife has always had to deal with depression and anxiety and it can be quite debilitating for her sometimes, I am the one that takes the reins when she is down, the depression renders her completely dependent, she needs to be helped and reminded to tackle even the most basic every day things such as showering and self care, etc and has on numerous occasions been hospitalized for weeks or even months at a time, this had started to take its toll on the family and myself and I started to have some depression of my own, and was self medicating with alcohol which made my wife nervous as she had been in an abusive marriage before we met and she was afraid it would happen again, although I've never been an abusive person and the alcohol didn't make me one either, I was what you would call "a happy drunk" and quite high functioning too I might add, but my wife blamed her depression for my drinking and as such, became even more depressed, we were both members of the church, we were rebaptised as Christians together in the lake, (I will post a photo of that if I can)I played the bass guitar in the worship team and she was involved in the catering team and various fellowship groups, I will mention that I have an adult son from a previous relationship with severe autism and I am his primary caregiver which is quite demanding at times, and when respite became unavailable to me on Sundays I had to stop going to church and eventually I even stopped talking about the church and Jesus in fact I started to live a less than Christian life and without my support, my wife gradually went less and less, soon neither of us were attending church at all, we were however, still believers of Christ, anyway this has been going on for a few years now, and I started to have a shift in thought about six months ago, I stopped drinking in early November and started to take a better look at myself and the direction I was heading, and saw that my marriage was suffering to the extent that it was heading to the rocks. Anyway, I have been more productive in the day to day running of the house, my wife is the primary breadwinner as I have to be at home to care for my son, so the house work and cooking etc is my department and I was letting it slide considerably which I have addressed recently and been more active in my marriage and Family, with a return to the kind of man I was before, I've started to read the word again (my wife has never stopped) but in the past when my wife would point out the problems we were having, I would speak with a silver tongue and convince her that it was all going to change only to continue in the way that I had been going, so this time instead of telling her that, I have just gone ahead and started to actually live it and I'm sure she is waiting for me to revert back to the old way, so she's reluctant to embrace it incase it amounts to nothing, I do feel that the enemy was working in me to make my life and my actions such that I would destroy the Godly life and marriage that we had, now he sees me returning to the righteous path and knows that I am committed so perhaps has started to turn his attention to my wife, using her insecurity and depression to try and convince her that it's all too good to be true and it's only a matter of time until it all falls apart again, she is worn out and the prospect of facing that again is quite daunting for her so as such she is naturally apprehensive about it, finding reasons to back it up and being a bit disconnected from us lest she be hurt, anyway I'm now praying for patience and faith to continue in this way and see it to fruition and praying for strength in my marriage to outlast it so we will be able to have the future that I have until recently been squandering.
So I tried to upload the photo from our baptism, but couldn't, so if I've done it correctly you should be able to see it as my profile picture
