So, she (21F) and I (22M) have been together 4 years, and this sort of kicked off when we got our cats, because at first she got insecure about me giving the cats more attention than her, but then got even more insecure about the cats loving me more than they love her. It is really dramatically noticeable, but it's because she was abusing them when they were kittens in some ways – not like beating them but just neglect and terrible care, found out she locked one in his carrier at night, etc – so obviously they do not trust her the same way as they trust the person who was always making sure that situation was taken care of as fast as possible and taking care of them. But still, even though she knows its a factor of spending time with them and showing them love, she doesn't, and then she gets really really upset about the fact that they seem to love me more.

This stopped after a couple years but has now picked up again in the last year or so since we got engaged.

Also, very early in our relationship, she hit me twice, and was kind of dubious about consent. But she really matured at least for a few years and I came around to her. She still thinks about the times she hit me and cries about them and gets very insecure about herself as a person morally and as a partner, so I reassure her.

Anyway, she seemed to really mature and get over all this stuff and was an amazing partner for the between 3 years.

We have a son now, 3mo, and well, it's even worse with him; if I give him to her for all of 5 minutes she will start breaking down; every time he so much as makes a noise – kids do that – she will shake me if I'm in bed or scream out across the house for me to deal with him, all day every day – she will drop him off in my office and then tell me I'm "SO HELPFUL" and "Don't feed him, don't change him" etc screaming fit if I try to give her back to him – it's like a switch flipped in her head when he was born – ppd/ppr probably, I understand and try to give her space, but I cannot do the single parent life while also being the sole breadwinner with a high pressure job that i do from home while also needing to sleep while also doing 100% of the cooking and cleaning while also tending to her. But she expects that of me and gets absolutely horrible with me if I do not just do it, however, it is a load much heavier than my shoulders can bare.

Now, as a result of this refusal to take care of or spend time with or play with her own child in any way that isn't to try to get him to STFU and sleep, he is not very bonded with her, she thought he was potentially disabled because he was not making eye contact but he just doesn't make eye contact with her – he smiles, laughs, looks at everyone else, if I walk into the room he instantly locks his eyes on me and smiles and sometimes even makes happy noises to see his dad – he refuses to so much as look at her. When talking with her I chalked this up to him just being a baby and that I'm sure he'll come around once they spend some more time together and as he gets older, but it really is noticeable.

So she sees that he likes me and she gets REALLY mad about it too. Starts shouting at me all kinds of shit, you know – "I carried him around for 9 fucking months and you spent all of 15 minutes on him", which is sometimes just casually thrown out as a (pretty demeaning) joke and also often repeated in non joking contexts, various stuff about me not doing anything (when I am always forced to do nearly everything), etc – and brings up the cats liking me more, and her friends liking me more, and our mutual friends we met together basically all just being my friends that she tags along for, and really it just spills out that she really, really is hurt by the fact that people and animals like me and she doesn't feel they like her.

With the mutual friends, for example, we used to hang out at this one lounge where we became good friends with one of the employees and started hanging out with him just in general, she always points out that he doesn't really like her as much and that he's my friend and she doesn't want to be a third wheel nowadays when we try to make plans – but the only reason she's a third wheel when she comes is because she refuses to come and make that friendship stronger. And when she does come, she always has a reason not to participate in anything we're doing: doesn't want to shoot guns, paintball is too painful, doesn't want to deal with hiking, etc etc – these are all things she used to be extremely enthusiastic about that she just kinda gave up on and always has some reason not to do it. Often comes along, then chooses to sit it out at the last minute, then afterwards is sad about having been a third wheel, having expected us to totally drop everything we were planning on doing to go hang out doing nothing. Then, it comes up later, any time I mention our mutual friend, that I am making her feel bad because she ends up a third wheel when we are hanging out.

Even when we're outside. I'll be smoking my pipe, and she'll be smoking her joint, and a wasp will fly by; she will start screaming and freaking out, I just remain as I was and continue to write and enjoy my pipe. Sometimes I'll even say hi to the wasp like a weirdo, because, why not? He's just a dude doing his thing and if he's suspicious of me, well, fair: the worst I can do to him is splatter him, the worst he can do to me is an amount of pain that comes out to a mild inconvenience if I don't get really unlucky with an infection or something (and even then I'm down the street from the hospital in a country with universal healthcare, it's still basically a minor inconvenience the vast majority of the time even if that happens). And she sees this, she sees the thing fly around me and then leave, and she remembers how often she gets stung because she freaks out at it and tries to kill it, and starts saying, yk, "Fuck you", all that. Talking and acting like I'm doing some "holier than thou" act just to make her feel bad, and has later literally brought up that even bugs like me better than her as a reason she is upset. And likewise when I don't want to kill something that she finds gross just because she finds it gross, it is the same issue.

If I talk about quitting or cutting back on a vice – same thing, I have to stay as far into it as her and quitting smoking/drinking would be a "dealbreaker", and you can guess why; it would be more holier than thou bullshit to her and she doesn't want to feel like she's lesser than, meanwhile for me, I literally just want to improve my life.

Same with our diet, she always wants to get takeout, fastfood, burgers, etc – I increasingly try to eat vegetables, greens, beans, lean meats, high oleic and olive oils, because I have high blood pressure in my 20s already from my work stress and from the diet we had before – she will actively go out of her way to fill our grocery delivery with shit up to our budget before I can add anything, basically beg for fast food, and again get really pissed off at me if I ever even bring up improving our diet or my diet, because of course if I want to be healthy that's implying that she's unhealthy and she can't think about that (she is – this is in no way a dig on her weight but she is entirely sedentary and is overweight).

Any time there could be a moment of like "Hey, I think I could do something differently to be happier/get better results", any chance of self reflection, is instead replaced by shutting down, shouting, storming off, and dropping into bed.

We can't even discuss anything like abstract or philosophical anymore because she will always somehow warp it to apply to her no matter the mental gymnastics it takes and then take any and every idea that doesn't already suit her worldview as an extremely personal insult.

Even with politics. She tends to repeat whatever she sees on TikTok or Reddit even if the story is entirely false, she doesn't really keep up with the news otherwise – I consider it part of my social responsibility to stay informed, which I don't think is necessarily a good thing either with how shit the information is – and when she comes and repeats what she saw on her phone, and I disagree or have a different take or have already seen the post and fact checked it quickly, she will again take the same stance and dig in her heels on the whole issue of me "somehow always being right" and how that feels.

It wasn't always like this, it is like someone has come and swapped bodies with her around the start of her pregnancy, and we figured it would get better after, but it hasn't, it just keeps getting worse.

I don't really know what I can even do at this point to support her. I can't just like start being a dick to everyone and make my son and my pets hate me and start pretending to be scared about things and freaking out and getting stung and shit just to bring myself as far down as possible to the level she has sunken to to make her comfortable. That's just not on the table. But I don't see any actual solution either.

It's like she abruptly swapped out her emotional regulation and thinking for her 13 year old self's.

Tl;dr My wife got super depressed and is now extremely upset with me whenever I am not bringing myself down to the level of behavior and self regulation she is showing, incredibly envious of the results of not doing that, and incredibly resentful as a result – and IDK what I can even do about it.