Looking for New Ideas/ Triage - Self Help Books

Thanks in advance for the help.

My wife and are are falling into a few bad patterns. I'm interested in understanding some of the different "lenses" we might use to think about our situation.

Briefly, I have kids in college. My wife is younger (not yet 40). We are working through assisted reproduction to have more kids. We have been together for somewhere in the 5 year range, married for some amount more than 1 year.

My wife is increasingly frustrated and unhappy and falling into some worrisome patterns (spending some whole days in bed). Here is a sample of the issues she raises:

- Frustration about fertility issues; we have taken several steps, and have frozen embryos; we will most likely need to pursue surrogacy
- Frustration about the timing of surrogacy; part of this is because I am paying tuition for my kids and would have trouble covering the cost of surrogacy now. I'm trying to figure out how to do that in the next year
- Feeling deprioritized - my wife feels that my spending on the kids' education, as well as on some existing real estate and other things means that she can't pursue her priorities; too much goes to my legacy expenses and not enough to her priorities or things that she wants
- Frustration about not having a clear plan or visibility to a plan for the future
- Frustration that goals are not all shared or prioritized the same way
- Can’t stand to be in the house anymore; I've lived in the house for about 15 years, and raised by boys here. She has lived here about 4 years, pursued a bunch of renovations, but now can't stand it. She wants a house that aligns with her visions. I'm not in financial position now to significantly upgrade, but we are trying to sell.
- She sees everyone who has a baby and is frustrated that she doesn't have a child yet.
- Sees everyone who has a nicer house and says "why can’t I have that house"
- In the past 6 months, she frequently skips or delays her arrival at social and family engagements
- Spending some full days in bed
- Criticism, insults, blame
- Complaints go in circles. She always says the same thing, over and over.
- Periodic but not frequent loss of intimacy (3 months)

We've tried therapy, focused on communication (emotionally focused therapy, consistent with Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson).

I and we have tried other self-help books. Most recently we (I) worked on trying to understand our situation through Five Languages of Love (I've been working on speaking the language of giving gifts).

I consider myself patient and committed to helping get us to a happier place. In fact, though, I don’t do well when the conversation turns negative and she attacks me, or when all I hear for days on end are attacks. I tend to react sharply (I sometimes respond to anger and criticism with anger and criticism).

I want new ways to think about this, and new ways to have a dialogue. I want her to be happy.

I've had a few people in my life over time who have struggled with depression, and have done a fair amount or reading on what that's like. I can't tell whether there is really a depression problem here, or whether my wife is just really frustrated in a sort of early mid-life-crisis way. Or perhaps it is the overwhelming frustration that comes with conception and fertility problems (I had a fair number of years dealing with this previously, before I had the children who are now grown).

Any thoughts on approaches to this, what types of patterns these behaviors might fit, and what resources might be helpful would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Staying in bed, regardless of whether or not it is situational, is clearly depression. Also, may I ask, when you first met her and you started dating, was she this demanding and angry? Probably not but, was there any indication that with added stress she might fall into this kind of depression?

You said, "we've" tried therapy. Has she tried therapy alone?

Was the bigger house a domestic agenda you both had when you first met? I guess what I am wondering is, is the lack of having a baby (which can be a shock if no one knew) causing all of the other ills? Once we suffer a single event of trauma it can spiral out of control and cause an attitude change that brings on a wave of issues that might have been easier to handle if the. initial trauma had never occurred.