Tl;dr Graduate School, Stay at home parenting, etc.
A few things:
my oldest friend got his doctorate last week. we've known each other since we were 10 and we had a bit of a falling out at one point, but we patched it up and always stayed in touch. But more often it seems like he has less time for or interest in our relationship. He is the type of person to get obsessed with some particular point of view or thing and it grows to consume him - we had a bit of a fight awhile back because he tried to emotionally manipulate me via my 2 year old into doing more to support Bernie Sanders's candidacy. Yeah. So I snapped at him and told him we really need to be on closer terms for you to say those sort of things. And now he just doesn't seem interested in talking too much.
On top of that, I am also a grad student and I won't get my doctorate for a few more years, and I am having a lot of trouble getting anything published or accepted to conferences. I've had 5 rejections this year so far and have been feeling really discouraged. My department head encouraged me to apply to a summer school in the UK (where I have always wanted to visit) that a few other students in the department had been to - I got rejected. And my friend who just graduated is doing a postdoc for a year before he takes a job. His postdoc is happening in London. His job is back up in NYC (we both come from the northeast). I feel like he's "won" some imaginary race we were in and I am paranoid that I will never get any work done, never get the lines on my CV I need, never get the job I am looking for, and that everything I'm doing is a waste of time and money.
My wife is working full time while I'm not taking classes in the summer so I am effectively a stay at home dad. I am going to a different summer school for a week and I feel like either I'm obsessing on that or my brain is turning to mush since I am taking care of our two year old most of the time. I have no time or energy to do very much, our daughter has what you'd call a very strong personality I guess?
My family never visits us, lots of baggage there. My mom is visiting next month for the first time in a year, second time in two years of us being here. I have a weird relationship with my dad, and it's not that I want him to come, but knowing that he's already decided not to makes me feel more bitter towards him.
My wife and I are having sex less often, thanks to work, new birth control, our toddler's energy level and demands, our inability to spend time together on our own (we don't really have many friends where we live and babysitters are expensive so we get them infrequently).
My wife is going to therapy now, which I am happy about (she has things that she needs to work through and it's the best thing for her), but at the same time I really am hesitant to talk about if anything is bothering me, which is good and bad, because I always have monopolized our problems and I also work through it by talking about it (she's usually the opposite).
I just want to feel validated in my work and have a sense that what I am doing professionally and at home is meaningful. I think when you're younger those affirmations come more readily or are more obvious. The older you get you have fewer people around you who can really tell you what you're doing is alright, at least in a way that you can appreciate and respect.