He isn’t abusive. Aside from this throwing things away habit he doesn’t do anything bad. He’s supportive with what I want to do, he’s a good dad to our DS and DD, he’s a good stepfather and has always been good to my oldest son. He works hard and he’s very loving to all of us. He isn’t controlling, most of the time he’s in his own little world, and says yes dear no dear. He’s just stupid and thoughtless. He isn’t malicious either. He’s thick. I can’t think of any other way to explain it. When it comes to people and emotions, he’s thick. He is often very rude and he doesn’t understand he’s been rude. I have to explain it to him and then he will go and do the same thing again and be puzzled by the negative response he gets. His people and social skills are really bad. It’s like trying to train a dumb animal that enjoys running in front of trains or something equally stupid. He has zero people/social skills and he has onto have things explained to him in idiot terms like “X I am very upset and hurt because-“ and then after repeating that several times he might actually begin to understand for a week or two and then we are right back to square one.
He genuinely doesn’t understand why I’m so upset about “ruined” toys because we can just buy some new ones. He thought I’d be pleased that he cleared the shower room out as we’ve got relatives coming to stay soon. No, we have two other bathrooms and nobody uses the shower room so I store things in there. If I wanted it cleared out I would have said when you take the garden stuff to the tip, take the stuff in the shower room too.
He didn’t know about the sentiment behind the bear. Obviously he knew about the late miscarriage I had before I met him but I don’t talk about it the same as I don’t talk about the miscarriage I had between our DS and DD. Regardless, I had a life before I met him (11 years ago) and I have possessions from that life and those possessions are mine and I shouldn’t have to explain why I am attached to them. We are in our forties for goodness sakes. He shouldn’t throw things of mine out just because he thinks I don’t need them or they aren’t anything important. I cried and told him about why that bear was so important and he’s going to go to the tip first thing to try and get it all back. But I am beyond frustrated about him doing this. He’s apologised but I know he will do it again. Maybe not with toys etc but he goes on these mad cleaning sprees and nearly every time he bins something, appointment letters, cards from people, paperwork (I work from home), pictures our DS has drawn for me. He’s never thrown anything like this away before though. He’s admitted it wasn’t accidental and he said over and over that he thought I wouldn’t mind and I would be glad he did it and saved me the job of trying to fix them or throw them away myself.
He’s actually managed to throw away his own birth certificate because it didn’t occur to him to unfold it and see what it was. It isnt accidental, it’s a a stupid thing which he never seems to learn from. My passport for eg, he absolutely refused to believe he had thrown it away because why would he throw a passport away and tore the house apart because he had paid for a weekend in France for us and he was adamant he couldn’t have possibly have thrown it away. In the end he had to admit that he might have thrown the folder it was in away and couldn’t explain why or how he thought that clearing my desk out was a good idea and said he was just trying to help me out by tidying it up. I wish he would just leave things alone and when he gets one of his ideas about “sorting out” he just wouldn’t. I’m tired of going over it with him. He seemed hurt and puzzled by my getting so upset today about what he’s done.
If I threw anything of his away then yes he would go mad. He likes everything of his in the same place as he left it as he’s got this mad ocd type organisation and he can’t understand that his way isn’t my way. I don’t touch his stuff and I expect the same courtesy back. The house is not cluttered, it is clean and tidy and I have no idea what his obsession is about my things. He’s thrown half used bottles of expensive perfume away before now because I hadn’t worn it for a while. Make up. I don’t wear it every day, not even every week, doesn’t bloody mean I don’t want it. My books are all kept in my office and he’s always saying maybe you should get rid of some? He once threw some old ones away because they were battered. They were actually very old, like printed in the 1900’s old and he had to replace them all and it cost him a lot of money. I thought he had learned his lesson with that. He’s a ham fisted t*t who breaks everything he touches (seriously he can’t open an oven door without breaking it) and he drives me insane and he always thinks he’s being helpful when he’s not.
My boys toys though… I’m hoping other mums understand this. I was a young mum with my first son. I didn’t have a lot of money. I saved up for his nice toys, properly made wooden toys that he could keep for his own children. It’s made me smile for years seeing those toys… he gave them to his little brother to play with, and my DD (2) has played with them too. They were well loved and a constant feature for 20 years of my life. My eldest DS said when he had kids he would reclaim them as he liked the idea of passing them down. That’s a big part of why a bit of sharpie wasn’t going to make me just bin them. I would have fcking repainted them if I had to. They mean that much to me and my oldest son. I have two small children and I work full time, I just hadn’t gotten around to it. I hadn’t forgotten and I had actually taken a few bits and pieces out of the bags and started to figure out what I could do with them. Oldest son is aware of what’s happened and he’s said why oh why can’t he just leave things alone? They have a good relationship and he knows it wasn’t malicious but he also knows DH well enough to know that he won’t be able to grasp why I’m so upset or why those things were sentimental and why he should have just left them the fck alone. He (DH) says he thought I would be more upset at keeping ruined toys and being reminded about how upset I was when DS first scribbled on them. No!!!! If I couldn’t have got the sharpie off or repainted them then the sharpie would have just been part of their story and probably would have been laughed about in the future.
And that bear. When I first lost my baby, many years ago, at a stage where you are starting to feel the odd kick and thinking about nurseries and prams- I didn’t have anything to show I had given birth. There was no birth or death certificate or anything. I made that bear myself. A patchwork bear. It’s all I had. It’s been well loved, is in baby photos of my other children, slept with them and been present all these years and it’s always made me feel like my little baby is still very much part of the family. The idea of that bear sitting in a skip, abandoned and getting rained on makes me feel physically sick. I know he didn’t know, it’s just a bear to him, but the very fact it’s old and I’ve kept it so long should have made him think, hang on a minute. But no. I sometimes think he just has some sort of tunnel vision and is like the f*cking terminator when he gets an idea in to his head. I know he’s a bit weird, like he has a routine that he sticks to and can’t handle it being changed and these sorting out sprees are something he does but I am so tired of going through this and this is by far the worst thing he’s ever done. Losing documents and even my passport has been irritating and I’ve yelled at him countless of times but this time it really hurts. He’s really hurt me and he isn’t the sort of man who hurts people. That makes it worse iykwim.
He hates seeing me cry and he’s very apologetic now but if he actually listened and stopped doing this then we wouldn’t be here now. I can’t even look at him. If I can’t get those things back then I don’t know how we are going to move forward or if we can. I am absolutely devastated and beyond frustrated. I can’t even articulate how angry I am. The fact that he just doesn’t get it makes it worse. He’s being empathetic and trying to figure out how to get it all back but I know he doesn’t really grasp it. I know that there’s more important things going on in the world and my two little children haven’t noticed, but I really am so upset about it.