I (23F) am a full-time university student, a mom to a toddler, and I do most of the parenting alone because my husband (30M) works out of town. I also handle most of the cooking, cleaning, doctors appointments, vehicle maintenance, and pet care. I’m tired all the time. I am burnt out.mentally, physically, emotionally. I barely sleep. I barely eat. I don’t have a lot of friends and am too tired to even go out socializing. And lately, it’s been showing in my everyday life, missing appointments, loosing 50+lbs, migraines and brain fog, and my hands.

I began picking at the skin around my nails, they would bleed it would hurt at lot. But I don’t know why I couldn’t stop, and every time it would just go deeper and deeper. There would be ingrowns, my nails would fall off, it would get infected and swollen. But I couldn’t just stop. The anxiety began post partum. And after discovering my husband pornography addiction and the extent it went to it destroyed me, and it changed our relationship and worst of all it changed the past. After finding out my nails only got worse, and my poor hands gave me so much anxiety going out of people saw my hands. I can see the looks in their face a mix of disgust, pity, and discomfort. It makes me so self aware and I’ve tried everything to stop it.

The other night, he looked at hands and compared my compulsion with his compulsion of watching porn.

I told him that wasn’t the same. I don’t think it’s the same, and I find it so hard to find empathy for what I think is “his need to look at other women sexually”. He said I was overreacting. That he was just trying to make a point. That I was shaming him for trying to relate.

But to me, it felt like emotional gaslighting. Like he needed to justify his addiction by dragging my trauma and mental illness into the same category. So. Would I be the asshole for getting upset? I don’t understand the comparison, and i’m just confused by this situation.