AIBU to think you can still stay together for the sake of the children and it work out

[fluckered]

we cant seem to live together anymore. things out of our control his depression and my lack of tolerance to live with it anymore. we have one child. 80% of the time we are just living as lodgers no arguments. every once in a while it kicks off but we both shield our son (either in school or asleep). therefore i feel it will be worse on him if we seperate as we can actually live with eachother. no physical contact, very little emotion, just going through the motions. i feel deep down we still do love each other but i feel trapped and stuck but because i can just get on with it (other than it flaring up once in a while as i'm sure other couples do) think its better for ds. he is my focus, my world, my reason for living. so aibu to think this arrangement is less damaging for him? he is 5 btw

Oh god yes, it's horrible when your parents are keeping a secret from you and you have to pretend that you don't know. You feel all sick and churned up inside.

It's a hard one. If you actually LIKE your husband, but perhaps you aren't very loved up and don't have sex then maybe that's not too bad - your dc will see you respect and like each other.

But, if there's no warmth or respect there, if you secretly loathe the guy most of the time, your dc will pick up on this however hard you try otherwise.

FWIW my parents pretended to be happily married but it was all a sham, I don't say lightly that it has wrecked my siblings and I from having decent marriages,in fact none of us has ever got married as we are so aware of how shit it can be.

and

CN, don't regret opening up here

Your denial has a finite lifespan

Keeping it forcibly clamped down fools no-one, and won't fool your children

Your life was not given to you to enable the dysfunction of another. By doing so, you devalue yourself and no favours are meted out to your children.

All the best to you Changenamer.

You and your DH are a role model for your son. You are modeling how his future behavior with his own partner should be. Do you want your son to quietly stay in a loveless unhappy marriage?

Your son should be observing a healthy parental relationship - where fun, love, meaningful friendship and resolving arguments are all clearly seen.

My mum did exactly what namechanger is doing. I first realised when I was about 9. I had a very unhappy childhood, it's such a huge responsibility to put on your children. After an awful time in my teens/early 20s I finally sorted my head out, spent a fortune on counselling and am now finally, at 31 in a successful relationship. It took me a lot of work not to end up in the type of relationship I had modelled to me by my parents.

I still feel angry at my mum for doing it when she says 'but I did all that for you'. I used to beg her to leave my dad, wish that I was dead, self harm and even attempted suicide to make it all stop.

I have a strained relationship with my mum and no relationship with my dad now. Do what you want, but don't expect your kids to thank you for it.

Changenamer, I don't want to sound harsh, and I appreciate it has been hard for you to open up about this. But why have you taken the responsibility for his drinking upon yourself? Surely you realise that it's his choice to drink? He has no reason to change, you're there to pick up after him and since you "gave up" he has no incentive to stop in the form of your pressure. You are enabling his drinking by staying with him and making it okay.

Why should be stop now? He gets to drink as much as he likes, his DC are there, his wife enables and supports him, his house is cleaned and tidied... he has everything going for him.

You say that if you leave him, he will drink himself to death. Well, that's his choice, isn't it? On the other hand, it might be the kick up the bum he needs to realise he needs to stop. Because as an alcoholic, he will need to straighten up before the courts allow him unsupervised access.

I'm baffled as to who you think is actually benefiting from the current arrangement. You aren't, in either the long or short term. Your DC won't be in the long run, when the truth comes out (which it will), and your DH will die from his alcoholism, because you're not giving him any reason to stop.

So why, really, are you doing it?

My parents finally separated a few months ago, and all I and my siblings felt was relief. When we were little they were convinced we had no idea they were unhappy, but to someone who lived with them 24/7 it was patently obvious that they couldn't stand each other.

However much I tell myself it's irrational, I can't make myself believe I'll ever have a happy, healthy relationship with a man, because the most significant relationship in my life was nothing like that, however hard dp pretended.

My parents divorced when I was eleven. They remarried when I was twenty seven. Which basically makes me think if they'd tried hard enough, they could have avoided the sheer bloody hellish nightmare that was their divorce, our subsequent shitty childhoods, my ridiculous father issues, not seeing my dad for years at a time and a mountain of resentment I have against them both. My dad died last year and I all I could think of was the wasted years. So if you think you could make a go of it, really really try.

ChangeNamer, you are so convinced this is the best thing for your daughter but how are you so sure she won't end up like all the posters here, knowing her parents relationship is a dysfunctional sham?

What if she is as good an actress as you think you are?

Sorry, ChangeNamer, my friend told a very similar story to LaQueen about how difficult it made her childhood to always have to pretend in front of her mother that she didn't know what was going on. She was the one who ended up with trust issues.

Changenamer (((hugs)))

I actually met a girl this weekend who knows I'm no longer in a relationship with dds dad. And she congratulated me. Her parents stayed together 'for the kids' and split up when the youngest turned 18. This girl is carrying so much pain & had such a tense and unhappy childhood. She and her siblings grew up in a pressure cooker of emotion. Her parents thought they were protecting her but it was so damaging. Children are excellent at picking up the unsaid!

This girl is young, bright, beautiful, educated, everything ahead of her, but is crippled by her experiences in the family home. She is beginning counselling shortly. She could only dream of growing up with separated parents, who were honest with themselves and each other. It was very sad to see.

Op, hope you're ok. I'm not saying it's easy. But things could be better than you've ever imagined.

Changenamer, I hope you find courage life is so short. Get some good legal advice and go from there. Please dont be held back by fear.

To return to the OP...
fluckered - do you feel this thread has been at all helpful, or just worrying?

OP, this was me around a year ago. Christmas 2011 everything came to a head and I told my husband I wanted a divorce, his response 'Why, you've got no grounds!' He'd been diagnosed with stress, then depression, then come off the anti-depressants cold-turkey and turned into a complete lunatic.

His behavior killed all the love that I used to feel for him, and for months I would drive to work every day in tears chanting to myself, 'you can divorce him' over and over.

It felt the way that I imagine you might, I didn't want to be with this man anymore but I also didn't want to be 'the bad guy' and leave him when he was unwell and it wasn't his fault. In the end I decided that if he had so little self-respect to insist on staying with someone who wanted out then I would make the most of it. After all I could do what I wanted and if he decided he wouldn't take that anymore I got what I wanted. I drew my line in the sand, I knew exactly how much I was prepared to take and under what circumstances I would decide it was truly over and leave him, although I never told him about it he's managed to stay on the right side of the line so far.

After that I took back control of my life, he rarely goes out anymore, his choice, so I have regular child-care whenever I need it, ds2 is 8, if there's something I want to see at the cinema I go see it, I've joined a Martial Arts club and generally go 2 or 3 times a week which has done wonders for my self-confidence. I've taken up running, I'm doing a half marathon later this year. I write fanfiction, I work full time and I love my job.

What I've found is that since giving up on caring what my husband thinks or feels, I'm now actually happy, which was quite a revelation when I realised it, and whilst I doubt I'll ever again love him the way I did, things are definitely getting better, I certainly don't hate him anymore either.

Oh darling girl I think you already know the answer. Why not trust your instincts. Bite him in the arse and tell him to p.o. You deserve to be treated better than this x

So much of what people have said on this thread has resonated with me. My parents also had a sham marriage - they pretended for years it was fine, then when I was 15 it became clear that neither of them could carry it on, both had affairs (which I found out by snooping in my Dads briefcase), cue messy divorce where my mum revealed she had kept together for the sake of me and my sister. And how I should be grateful for this. Thanks mum I also imagine her giving herself a congratulatory pat for martyring herself like this.

Like LeQ, I was brought up being good at pretending everythings fine which has had a real knock on effect in my personal life, cue a series of shitty relationships, one took me 6yrs to get out of and realise I didnt have to pretend to him and my family everything was ok and take crap off him. It may seems like a short term fix but its not. The problem is you can't undo the damage this lie will cause. Please look at the long term solutions and conseqeunces.

But staying together because it seems to be the best option for all doesn't have to mean living a lie ? I guess it's a matter of degrees of happiness/ unhappiness for everyone when making difficult calls (ie. decisions)

Maybe that's a clue to things, whether you feel you are having to pretend about your relationship ?

Not read whole thread but my mum stayed with my dad for a long while "for our sake" I remember crying tears of relief as a child when they finally sat us down and said they were splitting up.

Couples on the brink who don't think their kids know they are struggling to live together are sadly mistaken.

It's hard to explain, but we are a very good team me and her. It's us against the world
Changenamer101, you are burdoning your children to fulfill an adults role. You are getting your emotional needs met solely by your children, who are not mentally or emotionally capable to handle your adult needs. This is grossly unfair and downright selfish. You say you are doing this for your children's needs, but you are not. You are doing this to alleviate your enormous feelings of fear and guilt. What a thing to teach your children about the world. What a burden to bear. This will be your biggest regret in life.....and your children's.

Nothing wrong to me though about caring more about your relationship with your children than any other relationship. Seems very natural to me. Unlike my mother I put my children before my partner - I think many in our generation do.