To think if my husband ever left me I’d leave him with the kids

[DieAntword]

I’ve told him this, if he ever leaves, he isn’t going to swan off into the sunset and have a whale of a time. He keeps the kids. I can’t cope with looking after them after being abandoned like that and I need the space to pull myself together emotionally.

I’m currently a SAHM and absolutely the primary caregiver and I don’t think he actually would ever leave, but he isn’t saddling me with the life of a single mum if he does. He can be the single mum and I can be the fun part time dad thanks.

I’ve paid my dues. If he wants to do with out me he’ll have to pay someone for childcare.

I think the lack of achievement is the real issue OP and causing the anger. You feel like all you are is a parent and don’t have your own identity.
You want to be able to have the opportunity your DH does to build a career/business. Totally fair point.
Except you also want to be at home with your kids right now.
You can’t have it all ways but it sounds like possibly your partner could do more to help you achieve some contentment with your work life balance

I’ve had this discussion with DH but I would keep the kids. In my case my ‘threat’ is that I would move down the road from his family

His parents, two uncles, sister, grandparents and brother all live within a couple of roads of each other. His parents coordinate what is effectively a family nursery - his siblings and partners work 4 days a week and all take their turn assisting with childcare for all the ‘family children’ at his parents house.

I’m a SAHM and we’ve kept out of that dynamic as I would find the obligations suffocating. But if he ever cheats on me I’ll move next door to PIL if I possibly can! The kids will have the loss in their lives somewhat made up for by seeing granny and grandpa every day (currently twice a week). I would be able to work. His parents would be so glad to have contact with their grandkids they would help me out with getting settled into the new home etc. And he would have to feel the burn of shame knowing that his parents are parenting his kids / seeing his kids more than him.

I’d probably ask MIL to be the go between and be the one who phones him with updates about the kids. Just to put the boot in.

Evil? Twisted? Me? No.....

Got a little off topic but OP point about not working but having no freedom and all this fuss just made me think - well try having to work too then see what you would prefer. Massive eye roll moment

I'm sorry but what has the fact that you resent having to work got to do with OP?

because the term freedom is subjective!!

To me freedom means financial independence, career choices

To others freedom may mean going out to lunch and the gym when you want to

So when your business ideas go wrong you take it out on your DH basically.

This. I will add: " ... take it out on your DH and your DCs basically.*

I changed my mind about you based on your latest posts. You sound like a entitled brat who won't compromise. This is a situation of your own making because you refuse to consider other options. Good luck to you. Poor dcs.

Are you seriously calling OP a financial abuser because she's a SAHM?

No, I am a SAHM myself. I’m saying she’s a financial abuser because she has a husband who has supported her to do exactly what she said she wanted to and the OP is complaining about looking after her kids and never having a job like it’s his fault!

If someone financially supports you to do something you have always said is your ambition, then someone chucks that back in your face along with threats about abandoning the kids buggering off to shag some random bloke then that makes the OP a financial abuser.

A person who makes threats like that in attempt to control their spouse is emotionally abusing them. And making threats to make them stay because you want their money is financial abuse.

The OP doesn’t have anything nice or kind or loving to say about him. He just sounds like a wallet on legs to her. Everything is his fault when he’s only ever supported her to do what she wanted to do. It’s awful and nobody, male or female, should be subject to such manipulative behaviour. The Oh he won’t ever leave me so I can say this stuff’. And make no mistake, OP is threatening that if he doesn’t keep her sweet she will punish him by hurting the children emotionally.

And OP, you’re a martyr too. Nobody is pushing you into these business plans. I assume they’re the usually Mummy business tat. If you were really that bothered there are lots of ways you can upgrade your skills and retrain, some without even leaving your house. But I don’t imagine you would do something that sensible and lose your stick to beat him with would you OP?

he will just disappear one day so that you have no choice in the matter.

Yeah, have you not noticed that the OP doesn’t think he will ever leave and the OP is the one threatening to disappear? Not all relationships split up. Not all fathers dump their kids. And to say on a thread where the mother is threatening to leave and dump her family that the father is a bastard is some level of cheek.

Can you imagine if a woman came on here and said he didn’t care if she left him because he’d have a massive party and fuck around with loads of new women’? The cries of LTB would be fucking deafening. The hypocrisy on here is awful sometimes.

In fact I think if he left and took the children he would be perfectly justified.

Not complaining wtf. I have a great life and both of us are on board with our setup. I didn’t take anything out on them either what, I had a little private cry and then got on with things.

And don’t know where you got wouldn’t care if he left from, I would be devastated.

I love and adore my husband. I don’t have a bad word to say about him. But the imaginary husband who decides to leave me after we built so much trust and love without so much as telling me he was feeling unhappy of course I’m angry with that husband. Thankfully he doesn’t exist but mumsnet like to remind me again and again that wonderful husbands can turn into the other kind without any hint of it in advance.

Gingerrogered said it like it is. I totally agree. OP, if you disagree, this is how you are coming across.

You have far too much time on your hands to dream up imaginary scenarios which you claim do you chime with your life or your dh. Do you realise how deluded and frankly unhinged you sound?

You never imagine potential future scenarios in your head and how they’d play out?

Honestly, op, this is very odd. You've imagined this to the last scenario.even your anger and where you will live.

You have no experience, no work history, yet are going to start your own company, whilst home schooling your kids, then if your husband left you, you'd leave the kids, so they would go into school, and you'd have to get some form of job, whilst running this hypothetical business.

A business that's so important to you you cried the other day when you realised an idea had no potential.

It does sound like you're deeply unfulfilled. You're not happy being s stay at home parent, but you don't want a job either.

For me you need to address the here and now. You only get one shot at life.

The business thing is really a red herring. It’s a thing I’d like to do because I want to homeschool - I need something I can do at home so I’m available and need to be able to set my own hours. Otherwise I’d be able to do any job. Maybe I’m not capable of it. It’s quite possible but it doesn’t hurt anyone to try.

If he left it would be pointless. Whatever happened kids would have to go to school. Both parents would have to work full time. They wouldn’t get to see one of them for most of the week and the other one on weekends. Absolutely everything would have to be different and there’s no protecting anyone from that. Of course I’m going to imagine it when every other day there’s threads on here saying “husband of 20 years left me for another woman, completely out of the blue” and they had no idea and totally trusted him and can’t even imagine how the person they married could do that.

Never worried about it before coming on mumsnet.

You never imagine potential future scenarios in your head and how they’d play out?

I do. None of them involve me fucking off and leaving my kids to spite my would be EXDH

You never imagine potential future scenarios in your head and how they’d play out?

I'm sorry but no, not to the extent you are. This is very very weird. You talk about your reliance on your husband, your parents and even your cousin - you are a grown up! You seem to have lost perspective on how to act like one.

I've had the exact same thoughts OP. It has occurred to me that I might well be closer to the parent I want to be for my children if I were the "weekend dad" in the aftermath of a devastating break-up.

You never imagine potential future scenarios in your head and how they’d play out?

I am all for disaster planning. That is why I have a full time career, insurance and savings, as does my dh.

I don't come on mn to project my anger at a hypothetical situation about a loved one that has only 1% of materialising. That is not proportionate nor rational.

From my perspective, you are living dangerously (though I appreciate many people organise their lives similarly for various reasons). But instead of doing anything to make your situation better, you are casting your fears onto your dh.

You sound powerless and trapped to me in a cage of your own making.

Never worried about it before coming on mumsnet

But this isn't normal. Are you maybe depressed? I'm on mumsnet all the time, and I never imagine these scenarios. There are a shit ton of different topics on here.

Maybe try not to read the ones that are upsetting you and driving you to worry like this? It's really not healthy, for you or your family.

Do other threads have the same impact on you?

Got a little off topic but OP point about not working but having no freedom and all this fuss just made me think - well try having to work too then see what you would prefer. Massive eye roll moment

I have massive respect for my friends who are WOHM's but the simple fact is we do not do what each other does. They don't provide childcare and feeding between the hours of 8-5 with feeding and all assoc mess. I clearly don't work. The two aren't comparable.
But I also have very little freedom with a preschooler which OP clearly has several of.

To others freedom may mean going out to lunch and the gym when you want to where do people hide their preschoolers whilst they're at the gym, having long lunches somewhere not full of screaming etc.

And not every SAHP is one out of choice.

if you did not have any work history or experience of managing a business, I would not invest in it either. Funnily enough, investors look for track record for good reason.

You'll be better prepared for it if it does happen having had the thought but I wouldn't dwell on it once you have a plan in mind. Like those who get critical illness cover etc. What are the recent figures on divorce that only one party wants, it's more common than 1% isn't it?

It’s not an investor just a customer but I completely understand their perspective and I don’t begrudge it, they need to know that the product they use will be well maintained etc. Just sad that it means I can’t do it that’s all.

And yes, when I read a thread I imagine myself in the shoes of the protagonist whatever it’s about.

Perhaps it worth thinking about what Jon you could get OP that would give future customers more confidence in your ability to deliver a proffestional service. It's fine saying you never intend to work for someone else but if you want your own business you need to plan how to get it and some of that is building up a reputation

What would you do in my situation? My DH died