And selfish to only be staying for DD

[manfromCUK]

I have reached the end of my tether with DP - no point in doing a Jeremy Kyle about it on here - but another thread got me thinking.

My plan is to stay with DP (we can keep it civil 99% of the time) until DD is 18 (she's 3).

But - I'm doing this for entirely selfish reasons. DP makes me miserable, but I don't have to put up with it that much as we both work, and as I said, we can keep civil most of the time. But I know that if we split up, I won't see DD very much. In darker rows DP has threatened to move away with DD and ensure I never see her again. I also really don't want to have to be a weeked Dad. But is it fair to DD? She does witness an occasional crossed word despite our best efforts.

Are you kidding? You get to be FunDad!

She doesn't have to tidy her room at yours, (though she ought to, it'll be good for her..) she gets to stay up later, every time you will see her you will be focussed on her and go off and do fun things with her. EVerydayMum can't compete with that!!

If you KNOW she has made threats of abduction, you can get legal framework in process that will slow her down, stop her. Don't let your DP hold your life to ransom.

As long as you can maintain a good loving relationship with your DD and the split is handled in the right way I cant imagine your DD would resent you. I am sure she would rather her lovely dad was happy than living a sad lie.

When she is older you can sit her down and explain to her that if you had have stayed, you and mummy would have argued, said and done things that would hurt each other's feelings and that it's not right for a man to treat his wife like that, or the other way round.

If you talk to her openly and honestly when she is old enough, you can over come these issues.

If neither of you is abusive, and neither of you has a drink/drug/MH problem, then why don't you go to Relate or somesuch? Not necessarily to fix your relationship, but to help you separate amicably and form a good co-parent relationship.
Staying in a couple-relationship that's gone bad is never a good idea as, almost always, resentment gradually poisons the whole thing.
Also, something that you don't seem to have considered here is that you are only 50% in control of whether your relationship continues or not. Your DP may decide that she has had enough and either move out or tell you to move out. If you don't see a way of making the relationship happy and positive again, it's much better to try to put it out of its misery in as civil a manner as you can.

I understand that you are trying to do the right thing for your DD. I am in the same position and I really believe that she is better with both parents at home and I couldn't bear for her to not see her Daddy every day. I really think after reading your post that the best thing to do is calmly talk to DP explaining that this is how far your feelings have gone on this matter and what everyone seems to be advising you is to leave. She may have an opinion on this and maybe would try to make the marriage get back on track or decide on an amicable split? I personally don't always think that splitting is the best option for the child as have been there and saw the effect it had not only on me but all my siblings. I think if 2 parents really love their child they can work something out to make the child suffer the least. People forget that children don't choose to be born, so parents shouldn't always follow the knee jerk reaction