Long story. Been together 20 yrs, kids 11 & 8 and unhappy for 10 years. Problems started with sex life after eldest, & the general strain of adapting to being a family and worsened after second. Another major issue was that I wanted to marry and he didn’t. He swore he loved me and that marriage didn’t mean anything to him but to me that started to hurt more and more. After two children I started to feel resentful and that he didn’t love me enough, and that he wouldn’t make a compromise for me when it mattered so much to me.
Anyway, that’s an aside.... day to day after kids partner started to put me down, call me frigid & fat, belittling me which had a really hurtful and negative effect and made sex life far worse because confidence destroyed. We eventually hit a point where things were awful and gave relationship counseling a try, twice, but never stuck at it. He felt I blamed him for everything and that counseling sessions were one sided. The marriage issue always came up and he hated it. As a result of the longest round of counseling we stuck at he did seem to accept the verbal abuse and the name calling stopped for a while. Plus I was no longer fat so he had nowhere to go with that one! Frigid continued though, and always came up in the regular massive blow ups about the awful sex life though.
I’d say that on average for 10 years we’ve had massive, and I mean massive blow up, on average every 6 months. We have spells of being ok (where I give in for an easy life and give him sex twice a week), and then shit spells where I feel so low or angry with him that I can’t bear to be anywhere near him, and it’s usually the lack of sex that’s the trigger for him. The massive blow ups involve shouting, swearing and over the years have become more and more physical with pushing, shoving, hitting each other (never on the face) and this week he spat in my face. Understand i’m not blameless.... I have a temper and fly off the handle (which has always been a factor in our relationship and he teases and provokes me on purpose often). I have hit him several times over the years, I famously drew a knife on him once 18 years ago in a stupid and childish attempt to get him to leave me alone and stop an argument (I would never have done anything with it I was just seeing red and it happened to be close by which I know sounds ridiculous) and he’s never let me forget it. The name calling is now back but now it’s about what a useless good for nothing parent I am, how I shout all the time, what a waste of space I am, and how he wants me to leave and how he is going to take the kids from me. This has been going on again for the past 5-6 years if I had to guess.
5 years ago my Mum was diagnosed with a horrendous terminal illness and it was 16 months until we lost her. Things were still awful but during this time & for 6-9 months after she died he backed off, stopped hassling me for sex and was generally a bit more supportive. The marriage thing came up a lot during this period as I realized Mum would never see me married. We still had blow ups and during one such blow up towards the end he said some truly awful things about me and the way I was handling things. Truth was that I was the rock for my Dad and Mum, and brother and they were my priority not him. Between them and my kids they were understandably number one and he was jealous. The first year post Mum was horrendous. Caring for my Dad who was in bits became another responsibility and to this day is very overwhelming sometimes. Dad is fit and well but super lonely so i’ve had to try and include him in our family life as much as possible. My partner gets on well with my Dad but again has been resentful. He isn’t close to his parents and has never lost anyone do he has totally failed to understand our grief and my need to look after my Dad. Again I think he’s jealous that he’s not my number one priority.
So for 5 plus years I’ve not been great. I’m a really strong person with lots of friends, a job/career, and two amazing children who I love more than anything. But if i’m honest i’ve been struggling.... struggling with the loss of my beautiful Mum, the shock of the hotrendous ill was which came out of nowhere, the responsibility of Dad, the feelings of sadness and dissapointment with the state of things at home, and it’s all had an impact. I do lose my temper more... the kids are growing and becoming more demanding and they too were impacted by the loss of my Mum and of course the unhappy home. I do find myself losing my rag with them quickly and can’t cope with the stress of the school run some days. Plus my 11 year old and I are starting to clash. Like me he’s’developing moods and flies of the handle, and sometimes we clash and scrap and scream and yell. I love him dearly but it’s not easy sometimes. I often feel totally overwhelmed by life... I do everything around the house, run all of our finances, all of the life admin / shopping / planning / washing / running the house. This plus 2 kids, my Dad, a 97 Grandma, a full on job (in a career I’ve returned to in the past 18 months to get some financial security back) and a desperately unhappy relationship is just all too much. Everyone around me seems happily married and has the one thing I always wanted...a happy marriage and a loving partner. I feel low, trapped and unhappy but i’m still strong and wouldn’t actually describe myself as depressed.
We’ve talked about parting loads during the big blow ups (which often last for weeks after the main event) and the biggest problem I have is that we both know we want out but he refuses to leave the family home. I don’t trust him and he doesn’t trust me... he’s always reading my texts and emaaafes and is jealous of my friendships especially those within my industry some of which are male. We own the home together and are tenants in common in the equity (which there is plenty....too much for me to ever to be able to afford to buy him out). He says he won’t leave and proposes separate rooms which I won’t do for the sake of the children. It’s bad enough for them without living in a loveless house with parents as room mates! Eventually after a couple of weeks I give in and soften because I’ve been advised by a lawyer before never to leave the house or the children, so what choice to I have. I eventually start to give in to his approaches, the twice weekly sex, & the miserable existence until the next blow up. I was feeling so low a couple of weeks ago and I drank a bottle of wine over several hours between kids tea and him getting home at 9pm. We had a massive row which resulted in a barrage more abuse and I sobbed that I didn’t want to be here anymore. I told him that I thought everything would be better if I had the balls to kil myself I then stupidly jumped up and grabbed a knife. I wouldn’t have done anything, it was just a cry for help and I realise I wanted him to understand how low I felt. Stupid and of course now he’s holding it against me and adding it to his list of reasons why i’m an unfit mother.
In the past couple of years the blow ups have gotten nastier... more physical and the verbal abuse is back. He also now threatens me that he’ll take the children away from me on the grounds that i’m mentally unstable (temper plus violence even though it goes both ways), that I can’t parent the kids (developing relationship with my son), and that i’m an unfit parent because I occasionally seek solace in a bottle of wine and enjoy letting my hair down with friends. I’m no alcoholic but I enjoy a drink and getting out the bloody house! I worry that because of the violent past and my emotional state he really could get the kids in a custody battle... which I genuinely think he’d fight all the way. So I stay and I really don’t know what to do. I’m 42 and have been unhappy in a loveless sexless relationship for 10 years. Surely I deserve more than this? Losing my Mum at 62 makes me realise life is too bloody short. I really want to stay in our home but I have no rights because we’re not married. We’d have to sell it because neither of us can afford to buy each other out. I just want some stability for my children, I want to stay in the community where I have loads of amazing friends that would be a massive support, and I want to stay in the house where I have lots of memories of my Mum. That said I am now thinking I have to get out and might have to rent somewhere and take the kids with me.... but I know that would result in a full custody battle which according to him I can’t win.
I know and accept I need to get some counseling for me. To cope with with grief, for my own self esteem and to get on top of my anger. The stupid thing is that he’s been telling me to do this for years but now I feel I can’t talk to him about this or anything because he’ll add it to the ‘unfit’ list.
So long rant over. I just need some advice about what to do to get out of this mess, and how to keep my head up and keeping putting one foot in from of the other. I feel so trapped but I appreciate I am lucky because I can afford to live alone and could start again and buy myself a house once our family home is sold. Truth is I just don’t want to leave this house, don’t want to put my children through a custody battle because I know my partner would be truly awful, but most importantly I know this can’t go on. I will make myself very unwell if I stay in this mess.