To not tell DD about our separation?

[Watchamocauli]

DH and I been married for 16 years and we have lived in the UK for 13yrs. Have a DD age 10.
Over the years his family back home has been just plain nasty to me. He has never stood up for me. Last few yrs FIL was terminal so no drama all goody goody and sought help from us. We lost him a month ago and now MIL and SIL started again. yesterday they kicked off and DH just stood silent and let them abuse me over texts and video calls. Now I’m done. Only thing is DD gets very upset with the word divorce and asked me to promise that I never to break our home. So the AIBU is -
To go ahead with separation (mental & financial) but pretend to be family for DD until she is mature enough to understand divorce.

Divorce will break her mentally she is a sensitive child.

No it won't, it will be the making of her, she deserves to live in a happy home as do you.

Change is never easy, but they do adapt better than you think when they are no longer living with a toxic atmosphere at home & mum is happy again

I would work with a counsellor to decide how to process this with her. You are doing the right thing by wanting to leave.

Yes I was wondering this too- surely just block them there are in another country. If you do separate though obviously you have to tell dd. You also need to move out or the izzie with the in-laws won't really change

Divorce will break her mentally she is a sensitive child

Her parents forcing her to live a lie for at least 8 years will break her mentally more.

I know, because I had that experience. My father tried to leave when I was 11 ... his guilt at getting caught meant he stayed, reluctantly, and didn't leave until my younger brother turned 18....I'd just turned 21.

That was 10 years of knowing my parents didn't love each other, a very stressful and fraught family life. A very long story short, I'm now being treated for C-PTSD because of it.

My older brother has told his wife he has no happy memories of our childhood. I haven't had children myself, and neither have my two brothers. We are all in our 50s now and still dealing with the consequences of my parents poor decisions.

Only thing is DD gets very upset with the word divorce and asked me to promise that I never to break our home.

It was ridiculous to make a promise like that to a child instead of having a proper conversation with her about it and helping her to understand and be less anxious.

Of course you have to tell you’re separating. It would be awful not to tell her, a huge breach of her trust. Also, she’s 10, not four.

Please don't lie to your children. They WILL find out (not least, from those malicious vindictive inlaws).

Lies and deceptions from a beloved parent cause terrible anguish destroying all a child's trust and security. . Far better to tell the truth and face reality together.

"Divorce will break her mentally she is a sensitive child.

No. It won't."
Her mum staying with an idiot will do the trick though. Her staying in a toxic situation will also do that.

Stop kidding yourself. Tell her what's going on. Calmly and swiftly. Explain why.

Divorce will break her mentally she is a sensitive child

Handled correctly, divorce can protect the parent-child relationships.

If she discovered you lied to her then you'll be in an even bigger world of hurt. She will be wondering what other lies you've told her and may never trust you. A teenager will take things worse than a 10 year old ime

@thatbigbear Thank you for sharing your story. It's given me some courage to ease DD into the conversation. I’m going to calm down and start talking about what normal loving relationships look like. And then go for there

@noirchatsdeux I’m sorry to hear about your childhood and impact on your siblings. I can relate to it. My brother doesn't have a normal family life due to my parents dysfunctional parenting due to mental health

I went LC with in-laws before FIL fell sick then had to support them by flying in and hospital stays and I was NC with SIL all the time. But now FIL is gone, DH is expected to support MIL. He can’t ignore her. Imagine she will be here at ours for summer every year, she will call SIL everyday for video chat. I won’t be able to cope at all.
I feel there is no escape than separating.

I agree with others. If this is the only issue (and I'm not sure it is) then you would need best having discussions on how to keep married. And your boundary would be no contact whatsoever with his family as they abuse you. None. If he wants to support her - that's fine. If he wants to spend time with her over summer - that's fine, she can come over and stay in a rental for however long and he can see her there. If he doesn't do this then you will leave. The decision is in his hands. But it's not healthy for your daughter to see her mum being abused by her gran and aunt

you're very welcome @Watchamocauli it's not an easy thing to accept, that you're going to have to up-end everyone's life, but in my case it was definitely for the best and that has got more obvious as we have gone along.

But as @DrinkFeckArseBrick (another fab name) says, be 100% sure that this is what you want first, as it's not for the faint-hearted and there have been many times when I have asked myself whether I'm doing the right thing. Thankfully the answer has always been yes, because if I'd been uncertain I don't think I'd have gone through with it - leaving someone I still loved is the hardest thing I have ever done, but because of the abuse I knew there was no option. And when his mother was abusive because of me leaving her precious boy, that made me doubly sure!

As you say, settle yourself first, and sort out the practicalities so that the only uncertainty DD needs to deal with is what's going to happen between you, her and her dad, not where she's going to live or go to school; ideally keep both of those as they are, continuity in as many areas of life as possible is good.

And then when you do tell her, keep it all as calm and manageable as you can, with lots of reassurance (she'll be much less rattled if she's confident she can depend on you to take care of it all) and plenty of cuddles. Lots of those because somehow that physical reassurance of your love really helps in this situation.

1. You can't pretend everything is fine and lie to her.
2. Even dickheads can get a brief pass when it's only a few days (28) since somebody has died. Whether the dickhead who gets consideration for a pass/strategic ignoring is your husband or people directly involved/in the same country as the Deceased, that isn't clear. It would be more surprising in my experience for somebody who is ordinarily a dickhead to be pleasant in the immediate mourning/grief stages. You know, that Anger stage.
3. You are making this about you instead of your husband having just lost his father. Did you honestly expect him to immediately cut off his other living relatives?

@NeverDropYourMooncup
Where did I say DH needs to leave his family? Is that what you understand from the term standing up?

A simple message to say - “no need to be unpleasant to my wife” Or saying “when you say nasty things it hurts everyone incl me.”

Is this too much to expect from a husband of 16yrs?

I’m leaving him because there is no respect or love. And my post is about my child who is my future and only family. I want to do right by her.

In the four weeks immediately after he's lost his father, I do think it's a bit much to ask, yes. Especially if, as you say, they hadn't done it for a long time. I'm not claiming sainthood in the slightest, but I still strategically ignored my mother telling me that the wrong child died three weeks after my brother's death. She was and has always been an abusive arsehole, but hey, it's not the worst thing she's ever said to me or about me, and I suppose that on some level, she was feeling the loss. If I'd been more of a dick in real life than I am on the internet at that point, I could have pointed out that the last time I had spoken to her, she'd said she hated him and wished he was dead. But I don't think that would have particularly helped matters for anybody else to reopen World War III before the crematorium had even closed for the evening.

But as you're saying, you don't respect or love him. So the best course of action isn't to play games and try to pretend to a child who is easily old enough to know you're lying to her that everything is just the same. It's get on with it and do it properly so she doesn't get damaged by not just the fact that you clearly despise her father and all her other relatives on that side (with good reason, but a ten year old doesn't need to know that), but by being continually gaslit that she's being silly, Mummy and Daddy aren't getting divorced and everything is just the same as it always was. Well, right up to the point that Daddy meets somebody who likes him and he leaves, at any rate.

@thatbigbear Thank you again for an emotionally intelligent response and advice. Truly grateful. @DrinkFeckArseBrick as you said, I shall take time to re-evaluate my relationship with DH to see how he responds to my and DD’s needs. And take it from there.

@NeverDropYourMooncup I think I will offer no more explanation since you are have comprehension issues with my post. Thanks for trying though, I mean it sincerely.

I also think it's way too soon after a major bereavement to expect anyone to be acting rationally or fairly, especially if things had been peaceful for a while before.

And I totally agree with this.

Fair bit of interest in the reason for my decision. So here it is-

for last 4 yrs I’ve reminded DH to call his parents every single day for checking in on them. FIL health was very up and down and we took multiple long haul trips costing £800 per head , unpaid leaves from work, vacation times, endless hospital visits and stays, even during pandemic we took trips just because MIL would call DH and ask him to come. We risked covid infections flying midst raging pandemic, home quarantined. And when restrictions were lifted we also missed weeks of school so FIL can see DD. I made this happen despite their history of nasty behaviour.

while SIL was in another country and did not fly even once. All the while knowing that we could lose FIL anytime.

So bereavement I get but everyone had a very long time since they all saw it coming for a years at least.

the other day on call she accused me of not being supportive and called me an embarrassment to her large family. She said DH did all that I had zero contribution. DH read all the text and sat next to me and said nothing while she was talking.

I feel used, my kindness abused and betrayed by this family and DH including. So I’m leaving him so that he can show them he can single handedly do everything all over again when MIL ‘s health starts to decline and be a perfect son that he is.

I never said I don’t love or respect him, as another poster said. If I didn’t love him would I do all of the above?