Hello lovely Mumsnetters. Long time lurker here but first time posting in AIBU.
I am 39, living in Australia and have two kids, a boy who is almost 3yrs and a 5 month old baby girl. I have no other family here.
Sorry, this is a long one. My partner is a drinker, and every couple of months will buy weed which lasts him about 4 weeks. There is very rarely a day where he has not had a drink, and when he has weed he smokes it every evening and will drink as well.
We have some really good patches when I'm really happy, but in the bad weeks I am miserable.
I do most of the care for the kids, and when he does help he often has to be asked to help rather than think of it for himself. Both my kids are not great sleepers and I do all night wake ups and share a room with both of them, while my partner sleeps in the other room.
When he's on a bad run he is useless. He will smoke and drink as soon as he gets home and often be passed out on the couch by 7.30pm. When he's not asleep he's just a pain in the butt, and for some reason thinks it's funny to annoy my boy, sometimes until he cries which I absolutely hate. For example, about a month ago my partner was watering the lawn and three times sprayed my boy in the face with the hose which made him really upset. My little boy is still talking about this daily and mentions his wet face and says 'stop Daddy' when he talks to people and is playing with his toys.
He will tell my boy he's being an arsehole when he's having a tantrum, and has a couple of times told him he will 'kick his arse' - he never would and he thinks it's a funny joke, but I do not and I don't think my boy is able to make that distinction at his age, but he does know what kicking is.
My partner has been very insecure in the past and earlier in the relationship would accuse me of cheating when he was drunk and would get very angry. He has worked hard on managing this and was much better for ages, although partly because I just stopped socialising as much and I'm careful to make sure it is an 'appropriate' setting if I do meet with friends. But just before my girl was born he became very suspicious again as I was on mat leave for a couple of weeks and he thought it was strange that I wasn't home every time he came home for lunch when he thought I should be home resting. Mostly I was at appts (midwives and appts with a clinic to manage gestational diabetes). It became a huge row one night and he accused me of seeing someone and said maybe the baby isn't his. I was so upset and it turned into a big shouting match and he ended up throwing a can of beer at me, only just missing my stomach (which was massive at the time being 37 weeks pregnant!) I had really bad cramps the next day and then my waters broke, I'm convinced the stress put me into early labour!
We had a huge chat and he promised to sort himself out. But 4 weeks after my daughter was born he bought weed again and for a month I really struggled with both kids as we were all still adjusting, and I was so resentful - we couldn't even use the living room most evenings as he was passed out in there and it was upsetting my son.
Things have been equally good and bad since then, and he has tried to stay at least conscious until my youngest goes to bed but I'm just so upset with his behaviour.
When I have brought up how I am feeling he has said he deserves to relax in the evening because he works his butt off (he's a plasterer, and I know in a lot of pain after 20 years of doing it). He has said he doesn't want to give up the drinking or smoking completely and I should accept it or leave. He also says that I am overreacting and it's just because I choose to look at it so negatively.
I'm currently in the process of being referred to a free legal service here who will help me access support to leave. But I keep getting the wobbles when I think about actually doing it. He's my best friend when he's good. But then I can't stand the other person that comes out at times. I've been in two other relationships that were much worse so I'm finding it hard to distinguish between what's acceptable or not.
I think I'm just here to maybe get a kick up the bum to make the move finally. My babies are beautiful and I want nothing but the best for them. Thank you so much if you have read this far 🌺🌸🌺