Why does my wife treat me like this?

I am writing this letter today because I am very concerned about my marriage and my wife. We have been married for only a year now but things are starting to spiral out of control with most of the issues having to do with her attitude and negativity. I married her with the intention of spending the rest of my life with her but it has gotten to the point where I am scared to even have a conversation with her in fear of being blamed and criticized for what I say.

My wife has always been someone who calls themselves “particular”. My opinion which has also been called out and backed up by our marriage therapist is “high maintenance”. Basically, she has opinions and views about every aspect of life, which often times gets pushed onto me. I do my absolute best to conform and compromise so that she is happy with how things are done but also make sure that I am not doing something that I cannot stand or completely disagree with. If there is something that isn’t the way she wants it, I take the blame or receive criticism for not doing it the way she would have. Some examples (not complete) of the things that I am referring to:

1. Temperature in the house
2. Food we eat on a nightly basis
3. Cleanliness of every room in the house
4. Exercising
5. Washing dishes with incorrect sponge
6. Making the bed – not up to her standards
7. Listening to music on “her” Spotify
8. Positioning and noise of my bedtime fan

We have always budded heads about small issues but it seems now that she will no longer compromise and simply wants to argue and fight about every issue until she is victorious. If I get my way for anything, no matter the issue, I pay for it from her for the next week or several weeks with the “negative” attitude and “angry” criticizes. For example: I went to my parent’s house last weekend to help my father (who is getting over cancer) do some work and spend time with my brother. In her eyes, this is a personal attack on her because I am spending time with other people rather than her. When I ask her if she wants to come, she says “HELL NO” before I even finish my sentence. Anyways, I went to see my family and the second I get back, she is very critical and mean with everything blamed and pointed in my direction. For example: She doesn’t ask me how everything went but goes ahead to point out all the things that I did and am doing wrong. I used the last dish sponge and apparently didn’t let her know so she warned me about that. Then she went on about different things in the house needing to be cleaned and fixed and that we need to go shopping for groceries ASAP because “we have NO food”.

It is not just the things she says but also the way she constantly says them. For example: I was getting a meal ready for us on the grill outside. I came inside to get something and she pointed at a flower that fell over outside and said “You can’t pick that up?” with a very aggressive attitude. I was very busy trying to make a meal for us and didn’t even notice the flower fell over but she makes it seem like it is completely my fault for not picking it up and I feel like **** when she points it out this way with this attitude. I have gained about 5-10 lbs in the last year and she drops hints every night about how fat I am and how much I should be working out. I tell her how bad this makes me feels and she backtracks and says she doesn’t mean it like that.
She also blows up for everything that doesn’t go her way. I constantly feel like I am a burden and not good enough for her. For example: I accidentally stepped on her shoe this morning and her response was “What the hell” with a very angry tone after I said I was sorry. She makes more money that I do and I constantly get responses like “this is my house” and “I pay for your phone anyways”. I may not make as much money as her but I put all my money towards both of us and would never say something like that to the person I love. Another example: I was cooking our meal on the grill and I needed to clean the grill before I put the meat on. Once she found out that I needed to clean the grill she flipped out saying “But I’m Starving!” and stomped off. I replied by saying, “I am sorry but this will take 5 minutes”. I feel like I am doing my part because I communicated very clear beforehand that I needed to clean the grill.

She seems to have “expectations” of things and nothing I can do will live up to her expectations. We go through ups and downs constantly with the downs being much more prevalent lately. While we are going through the “downs”, she will say things like “You need to do something nice for me” or “I want to do something new”, again, in an aggressive way. But she will not give any hints as to what she wants but she will surely criticize anything that I pick to do. Plus, she says this when we are in a “fight”, So it is very difficult for me to want to buy her something when I feel she is the one that is causing the fight to begin with. Either way, I still do what she is asking and deal with the criticism afterwards. The criticism is getting out of control as well. She asks me what time I would like to eat and I say “around 5-530”. She comes back and says “NO, we should eat at 430”. Why even ask me this if you are going to just decide what time we eat anyways?

She also has a very contradicting style to her life. She has gotten onto a very strict diet where she will only eat certain things. Since I cook nearly every night, this is important for me to know so I make her something that she feels is good enough. She gets mad at me because she says she always makes the meal plan but when I try to decide on a meal for us she says she won’t eat it or tells me how disgusting it is. She believes that life is short and she wants to take care of her body with the foods that she puts in. This make sense to me and I am on-board as long as it is communicated to me what I need to cook. However, she also wants to now buy a motorcycle. I explain to her that I do not want her on a motorcycle because of my safety concerns. She has bad eyesight so I do not want her driving 70 mph on a highway where anything could happen as well as she only has limited experience on a motorcycle. Her response to this is “you only live once” and gets angry at me that I have a different opinion. This “you only live once” attitude is completely contradicting to her “life is short and you need to take care of your body” approach with her food. This makes me extremely confused. She seems to spin her opinion to whatever she feels like at the time.

I have tried to approach her about this many times and we have been going to marriage counseling as well. I have expressed my concerns in therapy and it seems like she knows what she needs to do at that time. Things seem to get better for a week or so but she ALWAYS slips back to her normal behavior of the negative, blaming, condescending attitude towards me. Whenever I say something to her about something mean she just said or something she continually says, her answer is always “everything gets you mad” or she makes me seem like I am just imagining her negative attitude. She simply will not take responsibility for how she acts. Everything we do gets her mad and has to be re-adjusted to do it “her way”. But yet she blames this on me saying that I am the selfish one and that I am always mad. This is so hard to deal with because SHE is the EPITOME of always being mad and wanting things her way.

It is so difficult to even explain all the things we fight about on a daily basis. Many things are so small it makes me want to cry just thinking she wants to argue about it with me. For example, my thing is when I sleep I need a fan blowing on my face. This has been a thing my entire life and I need it to sleep so I don’t wake up drenched in sweat and uncomfortable. However, this has turned into her thing now for whatever reason. She constantly complains that the fan is blowing on her during the night when I have it turned in a direction so the air has no chance to go towards her. She constantly complains about how loud the fan is so I used a different one. The different one that I got is too big and will not fit next to my bed so she now wants that fan blowing on her. (why does she complain about my fan blowing on her but yet wants another fan blowing on her?) Every morning I have to wake up to her first words being about how she hates my fan… I try very hard to compromise but it always ends up being her decision anyways so it makes me not want to even have an opinion anymore.

She also goes into my phone and reads my text messages every chance she can get. I have caught her several times red handed and still she says “No, I wasn’t looking at your phone”. Yet if I say I was outside when I was inside or any other small fib, I get lynched because I “lied to her” and she “can no longer trust me”. This is yet another example of the double standard and hypocrisy that I go through on a daily basis from her. I really try and take the things that she says to heart as well as the things the therapist recommends and try and improve on our marriage. I communicate with her when I am gone and what times I will be home. I try and communicate and compromise about every temperature or issue that she has an opinion on. I also communicate to her that if she needs something like the car or her music, I will be happy to give her first dibs and wait until she is done to use it myself. In return, I get nothing from her in the form of communication. She goes places and never texts me or responds to my texts in a timely manner. Later she explains that she was busy and couldn’t respond at that time. She will go anywhere she feels like without communicating to me what is going on and often times I am left by myself. However, if I forgot to communicate for something, I would never hear the end of it and it would be a travesty and she would call me a liar.

Instead of trying to compromise, she constantly just has to criticize or complain about something until it drives me crazy where I just give in to how she wants it. If I want the air conditioning on during a very hot and humid day, I turn it on but every 5 minutes I hear about how uncomfortable she is and how much she hates air conditioning. I would rather sweat than have to listen to her complain about it every 5 minutes. This is the same for everything else that goes my way. I constantly listen to how much she hates it until I finally just let her have it her way.

I love my wife more than anything but this has been going on for a while and she simply does not want to listen to my point of view because I am being “selfish” in her eyes. All I am doing is trying to show her how her attitude and aggression affects my life and makes me feel worthless and sad. I am not sure if she is simply just stuck in her ways or if she is seeking advice from others who are just telling her to not give into anything I do. I do not want to get a divorce but it seems this is the way things are going since I cannot keep living with someone who constantly makes me feel terrible and guilty about how I do everything and myself in general. I work my ass off at work and at home but I am constantly walking on egg shells with her because any answer I give could be the “wrong” answer. Plus, no matter how much I do, I am always lazy in her eyes or I am never doing enough to warrant her recognition.

We have been together for 4 years and we have been married for 1 year. Since we have been together, this has been my only argument and what I want her to change or try to work on. It seems like every time I bring it up now she no longer cares or thinks it is just me complaining. I do not know what I can do anymore and I am ready to give up….