This is a compiled set of documentation I've prepared for my therapist. It covers three separate periods of documentation, each created independently, each using a different tool. When I put them together, the same patterns showed up across all three without my having designed it that way.
I'm giving you this because I cannot access what I know during sessions. Brain fog, CPTSD activation, and the sheer weight of what I'm holding make me a bad narrator in real time. On paper, with space to think, I'm precise. In the chair, I lose the thread. This document is the thread.
I am being fair throughout. I note what my wife handles. I name my own anger, my trauma lens, the ways my independence training makes me hard to help. I correct my own inflammatory framing in real time across these documents. This is not a case being built against someone. It is an honest structural account from a person who is deteriorating and needs help testing what he's seeing.
1. Quality of Life Daily Logs (May 21 - June 13, 2025) Three weeks of real-time logging, hour by hour. Documented via ChatGPT as events happened. Ends with an ER visit for diverticulitis. The timestamps alone tell the story: entries at 6am, noon, 3pm, 6pm, 10pm, midnight, 3am. No breaks, no handoff.
2. Couples Therapy Documentation (approx. February - March 2026) Session prep, live incident logging between sessions, and drafts of communications to the couples therapist. Documented via Gemini. Includes my attempts to quantify the household labor split fairly, my corrections when the AI inflated data or used manipulative framing, and post-session processing.
3. Structural Analysis (March 14, 2026) A single long session compiling everything into a structural picture. Documented via Claude. This is where the patterns across the first two sources got named and connected. Includes what I'm willing to own, what I need tested, and what I'm afraid is happening to my kids.
These showed up independently in each documentation period. I did not design them to converge.
I carry the full domestic and financial load. I am the sole income earner (full-time software engineer/UX architect). I am also the primary domestic operator: all cooking, all driving, all grocery runs, all errands requiring physical presence, morning and evening childcare, meltdown management for two neurodivergent kids (Daniel, 12, and Sadie, 9, both ASD/ADHD, both with ARFID). My wife Randi cannot drive, does not cook, works overnight hours and sleeps until 11am or later. She handles bills, scheduling, insurance, doctor calls, and is coordinating our move to Costa Rica. Her businesses are not yet profitable. I fund them.
My physical health is deteriorating. Celiac, Crohn's, diverticulitis (multiple ER visits), CPTSD, chronic pain. The QoL logs document days where I cooked three separate meals for three people and then did not eat. This is not occasional. It is the pattern. I am the sickest person in the house and the least accommodated.
My wife's parenting is reactive. Mine is active. She sets rules from the garage and returns to her office. I am in the room absorbing the dysregulation those rules produce. The kids are angry at me because I'm the one present when the boundary lands. She experiences none of the cost of her own parenting decisions. When I step away during her parenting time, the kids are unsupervised and situations escalate. I cannot actually rest.
The couples therapy room replicates the home dynamic. She presents composed. I present foggy. The therapist validates her composure and focuses on modulating my presentation. There is no examination of why I present the way I do. The fog is not a personality trait. It is the output of a person being run past capacity. This is the only couples therapist available to us.
Naming the problem is treated as the problem. When I articulate the imbalance, I am told I'm "narrating" or "complaining." The request for accommodation is heard as attack. The system depends on me completely but refuses to hear what that costs. The position I'm in is: be the infrastructure, and do it silently.
The exit trap. If I leave, Randi has said she would move to New York. I become a single parent with full load and no second adult. The kids lose their mother. I get blamed. Every move I can make either keeps me in this or makes it materially worse.
The kids are absorbing the dynamic. They are learning two models: give until you're destroyed and get nothing back, or have your needs met without accountability. Both are the cycle I set out to break. It is reasserting itself through the structure of the household despite my awareness of it.
Test what I'm seeing. I identify this dynamic as structural gaslighting and possible narcissistic abuse. I am not asking you to take my word for it. I am asking you to read the evidence and help me determine whether that framing is accurate or whether my trauma lens is distorting the picture. Both are possible. I need to know which.
Understand why I present differently in session. This document is how I think when I have space. If I show up foggy and fragmented, that is not who I am. It is what the environment produces. The gap between this document and my in-session presentation is itself evidence of something.
Help me with the couples therapy problem. The current couples therapist appears to side with Randi based on presentation, not structure. I need strategies for that room, or I need you to tell me it's not a viable space for me.
Help me protect my kids. This is the thing that matters most. I can survive this. I am not sure they can come out of it without damage. What they are absorbing from this household dynamic is my primary concern.
Help me plan for Costa Rica. We are moving in July 2026. The kids are enrolled. It cannot be walked back without doing damage. I need to know how to survive this dynamic in a foreign country with zero support network.
Help me with cannabis. I have been using prescribed cannabis to sleep and regulate. I am struggling with my use and want to stop. I think I need to replace it pharmaceutically. This requires discussion.
I try to be fair in these documents. I name what Randi handles. I name my own anger, my trauma-built independence, the ways I trained people to believe I don't need anything. I correct inflammatory framing when I catch it. I own what's mine.
But being fair is not the same as being wrong about what I'm seeing. I need help figuring out which parts are accurate perception and which parts are trauma activation. I cannot do that alone, and I cannot do it in the couples therapy room. That is why I'm bringing this to you.