I've been with partner for 12 years and we have three kids together. It's hard to know where to start with this but I guess what I really need is some advice on what I can do as I feel very trapped. Also I'm new to MN so please bear with me as I don't know all the abbreviations.
I've felt that I might need to leave him for a long time but I feel a bit blinded the enormity of what that might mean for me and the kids.
He has always been controlling with me which I struggle to cope with. He will sulk, shout, talk down to me, criticise me, threaten to leave me, tell me he wants to kill himself (has on one occasion swallowed a handful of tablets mid-argument) pushed and shoved or raised his fist, although thankfully he has never hit me but has left me bruised from the pushing and shoving. Even as I type this I'm thinking of all the different things that have happened and there are too many to list. He uses guilt trips, emotional blackmail and mind games to get his own way. It's like his only objective is to have things on his terms at any cost.
I believe he is depressed as he tells me he thinks about suicide a lot. He insists he only suffers with stress and anxiety and refuses to consider that he might be depressed. I think this is because he is worried that if he seeks help with his problem that he will be told he has bi-polar which his dad has had since my partner was a child. His dad also has narcissistic personality disorder and is extremely controlling and can be very cruel. This has had a very big impact on the whole family which I feel might be why my partner won't risk being told he has the same problem as he is scared of what this might make him do.
He is an excellent provider and for this I am very grateful. Since having my third child two years ago I have been able to give up work. In front of friends and family he always talked of how he'd like me to stay at home and care for the kids however in private he makes me feel that I have no right to make decisions about our life because I make no financial contribution. His attitude is that I have no value because I don't earn any money. Even when I was working he'd criticise the amount I earned and would suggest that I would be able to have more of say when I earned the same as him. We have a joint bank account. He has threatened to take my bank card away before but has never gone through with it. He says I spend too much. I have tried to cut down the cost of our groceries by shopping at Aldi and Lidl but we live in one of the most expensive parts of the country and we have three children. We don't walk around in designer clothes, I don't own expensive stuff like jewellery, I get my hair done about twice a year, don't have nails done, hardly ever go out or buy make up. I usually get my clothes from H&M or Primark because they're cheap. The majority of what I spend is on running the home, groceries and the kids. He can be very generous so I feel bad for saying this because he works extremely hard to provide for us but I feel he uses that as a stick to beat me with. He has openly expressed his views that he works harder than I do even though I'm up most nights with the children and rarely get to bed before midnight trying to keep on top of everything, when he's off to bed at 10pm after relaxing on the sofa for hours. I just want him to understand that I am his equal and for that to influence the way he treats me. He can be very generous but I've noticed its nearly always the big things he can draw other people's attention to, like buying me a car a few Christmases ago which he gave me on Christmas day in front of family with a giant bow on it. It was lovely and I was really happy and don't get me wrong, I appreciated how brilliant it was to be given such a lovely present but I would rather be treated with a bit more respect day to day than have months of anger directed at me and then presented with an amazing giant gesture. Maybe I'm ungrateful. I just find the whole thing so up and down all the time. Its really confusing and I can only imagine how difficult it is for the children to make sense of.
He tells me that the reason he's so angry towards me a lot of the time is because 1) everyone at work stresses him out and 2) because I wind him up. I'm sick of hearing his excuses and sick of his apologies afterwards too as to me they're meaningless because he does it again. He says he knows he takes everything out on me but if I didn't put up with it he'd kill himself or hurt himself.
He can be nice and reasonable sometimes but I feel like he's two different people. He can go from one to the other in a heart beat and without warning so we're all on egg shells all time. He can be affectionate but its very much on his terms. I've lost count of the times I used to be in tears or feeling down and he'd behave like it was an inconvenience to him. There was no emotion.
It will hurt as believe it or not I do love him, but I want to leave him. I'm worried that I wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage on my own or that he'd be difficult about our housing. We live in an area where we're in the catchment for an excellent secondary school but all the alternatives are terrible. My eldest child has Special Needs and I want to make sure he's able to go to a decent school so I feel I need to stay in this area and fear that this would not be a possibility as a single parent.
Any advice that you have about what help is out there for people like me and my children about how to cope financially and emotionally after a separation from a controlling relationship would be really appreciated. I also worry about how my kids will cope on their own with him when I'm not around to help them make sense of it all.
I'm so sorry to waffle, I realise this is long and I could carry on and on and on! Thank you for reading this far!
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I think I need to leave my husband
16 replies
Ratbag82 · 08/04/2016 23:27
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