I have been married for seventh months. In that time I have cooked every meal. Done all the grocery shopping, and house cleaning. My spouse goes to work, comes home, takes a nap, and plays on the computer until bed time. I have said that I am doing too much and am burning the candle at both ends on three different occasions to no avail. We have made love less than once a month since our first month of marriage. This evening I was informed that she does not want children...

What was she like before you got married? How long did you date? Did you live together before getting married? Did you two not discuss children before getting married?

I have found the most effective method of solving the 'burning candle at both ends' problem is to snuff out one of the ends yourself. Decide what things you can stop doing that won't negatively effect you, and stop doing them.

Answers to my opening questions are important. Either you made the decision to marry knowing the negative things about her, or you married without knowing her well at all. Then it comes down to the decision of whether to work with what you have, or to call it a terrible decision and cut losses now. I know this place is very much Pro Marriage, but let's be real: all of us make horrible mistakes at some point.

We dated for two years before getting engaged. We were then engaged for two more years. We did not live together and were not intimate until our wedding night. We chose a church together and joined and I have been trying to teach her how to read and interpret scripture as I have been taught.

We discussed kids on our third date since it is very important to me and continued discussing them. We agreed to have 2.5 kids which means hope for one of each and if that didn't work try a third and stop there. She was planning on staying home and home schooling using the Calvert curriculum.

She lived in her own apartment and kept the public rooms very tidy and nagged me a little about my house not being as tidy as we both would have liked.

As far as burning the candle at ends goes, I am not sure what I can stop doing. She gets depressed and worse when things are not done and beats herself up more for not doing more. Now I am wondering if it is all manipulation or perhaps clinical depression?

I belive that marriage is until death. If God has decided I should be in a marriage that is draining and unfulfilling then there must be something in me He is trying to change.

She may well be depressed. You don't have to spill all her stuff here, but is there something going on with her that might be making her depressed? Does she have a history of depression?

And I have to share this: my H made a comment that our house is "filthy" (which is sooo not true, but I digress...), and he later said that he felt that I'd tricked him into thinking I was a better housekeeper than I truly am, because the house I lived in when we were dating was always spotless. I had to remind him that he was comparing the home of a single person who worked all the time to a home filled with two adults and four children. Of course it wasn't going to stay as 'spotless', lol.

You can try negotiating the housekeeping things. Since she appears to be the 'weaker' partner at this time, you can try opening it up by asking her what things she wants to take care of, what she thinks she will really take care of. Then let her take care of them.

I find it odd that she went from wanting to home school children to not wanting children at all. Find out why.

As far as negotiating chores... We made a detailed chores list that was intended to make it easy for us to limit the amount of work we would do every day. The list became rather large and visually daunting even though logically it did its job well. It worked for me not so much for her. I made a new list that was visually very simple but had the same info. We will see if she carries out the things she has agreed to do for longer than two days. The list has us both doing three daily chores, and three bi-weekly chores. I left off lots more of the things I do like yard work and honey-do's.

As far as depression... She had/has reason to be depressed that has to do with some family issues. (one example: Her father refused to come to our wedding since she would not agree to leave her step-father completely out of the ceremony. We wanted her father to walk her down the aisle with her step-father walking behind.) I have encouraged her to begin going to couseling with me about those issues and others, but she thinks only crazy people get counseling. I am willing to support her emotionally and spiritually through her depression, but if she continues to be unwilling to do anything about it than I feel like I am simply helping her stay depressed. She often says to me I am amazing and she does nothing. Today I am not going to unload the dishwasher for her (her chosen chore) which will make it impossible for me to clean the kitchen (my assigned chore). It will probably mean I will need to wash the dishes by hand, which is okay with me. It might make her upset if I did that though. We will see what happens...?

As far as children and homeschooling... I am a chemistry and piano teacher, she is an English and flute/voice teacher. Either one of us would be great staying home and schooling our kids. Early in our relationship , I made it clear that kids were important to me and that I would consider homeschooling. Perhaps she agreed in the hopes her desires for children would change? Perhaps she agreed just to keep me interested? She doesn't seem to know herself how to answer this question...

You two sound awesomely smart. Chemistry and piano and English and flute and singing? I hope you have kids! They'd be very lucky children.

Tonight, if she doesn't unload the dishwasher, it might make a good introduction into re-splitting chores so that one person doing theirs isn't dependent on the other person. It takes a while to develop a natural flow to a household, so you might discuss that with her, too. That her lack of participation is irritating to you, but you don't want to be irritated and you know that you'll both get into a good groove eventually, so brainstorm together on how to reduce your irritation in the meanwhile. My H and I fought about household duties for at least four years. We ended up resolving it by each of us doing the things we enjoy the most (me: cooking, him: cleaning up after dinner [I still don't get that, but hey, I don't question. ), and the things that mean the most to us (me: decluttering and vacuuming and making the interior welcoming, him: keeping the yard up so the outside looks welcoming). If us two knuckleheads can find a smooth spot in household stuff, I'm sure you will, too.