To end my marriage tomorrow

[Shedding123]

Apologies for the dear Deirdre style title. Sat in shock on couch and just need a quick unbiased metaphorical talking to here.
DH and I been struggling for a long time now, stress of 2 kids one with physical disability and one with mental health challenges. Anger has been simmering in him for a while, he’s made digs about putting the kids first, not meeting his needs (we no longer share a room as I’m in with our dd who is on oxygen overnight and I can’t sleep unless I’m next to her, this is one of many many many examples).
we’ve been bumbling along essentially as flatmates under the same roof and I guess I thought once things more stable with the kids things might improve. Anyway it all kicked off tonight and I’m utterly devastated. We are away for half term in a placr
dear to our hearts and he’s been so moody for the last few days. Tonight the kids were squabbling and I eventually
had enough trying to deal with it solo so went into the room he’s been in all evening reading and asked if he was planning on coming to help me at all. Passive aggressiveness never good, I know. He lost it, stormed through, swore at the kids, my daughter told him it’s not nice to swear and he just started ranting on about how she’s too much like me, rude, how dare I be so rude to him, how dare I blame everything on him, I asked him calmly to stop in front of the kids and said this needs to be an adult
conversation between us and he laughed and said no chance, it’s good for the kids to hear how manipulative I am. It was horrendous. Our daughter was crying, our son was just stuck begging it to stop. He then calmly put the kettle on and handed me a cup of tea and told me to be grateful and is now reading in the other room again. I have no idea how a divorce would work, he is 68 so has said in spiteful moments he will retire if I leave him so he won’t pay anything, I earn low as am a carer for our daughter, I literally cannot imagine how we could run 2 houses. But there is no coming back from tonight is there? I know he will blame it all on me to the children but this feels so abusive towards them too having had to sit through that😭

He sounds utterly selfish. He takes little to no interest in his kids, even though one of them needs high level of care, he indulges in his hobbies twice a week and trips away and at the first serious sign of resistance from you he threatens to leave you penniless. He basically wants to swan around doing whatever he pleases and leave you to run the family. That's not being hands-off, it's being totally detached from being either a husband or a parent. I also can't believe he wasn't prepared to agree to specialist treatment for his daughter, utterly despicable.

First things first, he doesn't get to say how the finances will be worked out if you divorce, lawyers and courts will decide that. Second, you and your children can't tolerate this. I know you put your kids first as you should, but that doesn't mean you need to martyr yourself to an insufferable relationship that will steadily erode your own mental health.

You're worries about money are almost certainly overstated. However the finances pan out though, you will make it work because you have to and you're clearly very strong.

Responsible adults within a relationship, who love and respect each other, take responsibility for each others’ behaviour if they recognise that they are even partly the cause of it. If a man posted as OP has here, he’d be handed his arse on a plate for allowing the relationship to deteriorate to the point where his partner had to have a melt down in order to get his attention. There is fault on both sides. If her husband felt listened to he wouldn’t have exploded in front of his children - that’s a last resort when the pent up anger and resentment has reached boiling point. Why does he refer to her as manipulative and rude ? Why do you think that only the woman is allowed a point of view here ?

Two things stood out for me here. The fact that OP insists on sleeping with her DD every night. As far as I can see there is no actual medical need for this - OP admits she can’t sleep unless she is next to her. She also admits that they have been co-parenting essentially as house mates. This will undoubtedly have been a factor in DH’s outburst. It sounds to me as though he has tried to approach this in the past and has been stonewalled because OP is entirely focused on the children, to the exclusion of all else. And that isn’t a healthy foundation for any marriage either.

The child maintenance service is clear that pension income , including state pension, is included as income for calculating maintenance. He will not be classed as on benefits. It may be however that his pension income will be a lot lower than income when working so a much lower sum.

Ah. The classic "he wants a wife and kids but doesn't really want to be a husband and father" scenario. He goes out all the time, goes away alone, you don't share money, and he sits in another room when you're on holiday.

This is dead in the water.

@DotAndCarryOne2 Really?

"Why does he refer to her as manipulative and rude?"

Because "manipulative" is code for "pointing out things I have done that I don't want to admit are shitty" and "rude" is code for "isn't doing as she's told because I am The Man".

I’ll help you understand.

He’s has an entrenched misogynist addict dry drunk victim and blaming others mindset.

He may not be drinking but the whole dry drunk personality is contemptuous and resentful to the people they see as denying them their wild free abandon - even if you are not actively surveilling him. Maybe sub consciously he feels he needs to be dry for your DD?

Ask me how I know? Because mine (after years of therapy) was honest that his whole mindset to me was he thought I ‘was a cnut’ - he had never raised his voice to me but our relationship (4 DC, all ND one significantly) was fraught / unbalanced / exhausting but I couldn’t put my finger on how or why as he was quiet (and my experience of a bad man was angry, aggressive, loud, volatile) - but it was grim. Addicts live in their heads, constantly emotionally detached and plotting and obsessing about their next manoeuvre and anyone who gets in the way has to be annihilated. I think this mindset stays as the dry drunk - the unconscious simmering anger, selfish behaviours that they need to keep them sober (hobbies, zero contribution to family life emotionally or practically, indulgence in his social life etc).

I wonder what your own family background was to tolerate his behaviour as normal.

You deserve much more. As does your DD. Money is nothing if your DDs MH us screwed by the emotional violence of her DF directly to her or what she saw her DM endure.

I was the child ( without the disabilities) in this scenario playing out in the 70's and 80's. My father was 26 years older than my mother and loved the idea of children when we were young and cute. (And my mother stayed at home and did all the hard graft) By the time he was late 60's and we were teens, he was frankly disinterested and checked out completely. It has affected me my whole life, in many different ways. By the time he died, I think my parents hated each other, my mother was eaten up with resentlemy and my father was ill, old and tired.

Having said that, the way your husband behaved was completely unacceptable - can he reflect on his own behaviour? Is he likely to apologise ? Yes, this was a terrible scene, and things need to change, but is he able to accept his part in the mess you are in now and work to shape the future? If not, then yes, I think your marriage is over. If he IS able to consider how he might change, and what might be needed for this to be a happier home / relationship, then it needednt be the end.

What do you actually want ? Possibly right now you don't know, so I would visit a lawyer and gather as much information as you can, knowledge is power. He is 68, realistically he does not have many working years left. I'm 61 and much more tired than I was 10 years ago.

Take some time, if you can, to process this and see if anything can be salvaged. Yes he has behaved very badly, but why is he so angry? does he need therapy of his own to explore his feelings and ( possibly) disappointment with the situation he is in ?

It’s not clear whether he’s worked long enough to amass any meaningful private pension entitlement and OP doesn’t know what happens to the rest of his wages after he has covered his contribution. If he retires and is in receipt of state pension alone, he will be classed as in receipt of benefits and the ‘flat rate’ of £7 per week will be triggered.

Responsible adults within a relationship, who love and respect each other, take responsibility for each others’ behaviour if they recognise that they are even partly the cause of it.

Well first of all there's no love or respect in thus marriage so you're starting from nothing. Even then, though, no... a grown fucking man should not be outsourcing his self regulation. "Even partly" can do an awful lot of heavy lifting. It's code for "anything other than endless coddling".

If a man posted as OP has here

Oh here we go. Totally expected after the car crash start to the post. Can't even read any further, my eyes are both rolling and crossing.

My maths isn’t great but by my calculations you were like 26 when you got with a 55 year old right?

Why? I know it’s too late to turn back to clock now but I’m curious and it may be worth unpicking why you wanted a man who was probably the same age as your father . And why he wanted a woman young enough to be his daughter.

At 26, the only 56 year olds I knew were work colleagues or family friends and I didn’t think of any of them in that way.

Again we can’t change the past but I think this is a cautionary tale. It’s not only the fact he was so old that was a red flag, but it was also the fact he had substance abuse issues for a significant chunk of his life. If someone does want to marry a significantly older man they should be at least as fit and healthy as they can be with great finances.

Did you read my post where I also said it doesn't look like there's any love left to pursue... It's kinda relevant to the point.

So he has no point of view at all ? He just has to put up with the home situation as OP sees fit to handle it - which is prioritising the children above everything else, even when elements of that are her own choice rather than a necessity. Not buying it. I haven’t seen a single thing in any of OP’s posts indicating that she’s even thought about the effects of the situation on her DH. The fact is that he’s now an old man trying to grapple with having two significantly disabled young children.

At 41 OP can’t possibly know how it feels to be 68 and if he’s tried to talk to her previously about his feelings and been dismissed, as I suspect is the case, simply from OP’s attitude in her posts, then it was always going to be the case that the resentment would boil over and there would be a huge melt down.

I’m not saying he was right to behave the way he did, but it’s understandable and trying to exonerate OP from whatever part she’s played in his outburst - some of which is clearly indicated in her posts - by saying that he’s reacted as he has purely because he’s a man, is ridiculous and misandrist. If a man posted as OP has here, he’d be handed his arse for allowing his wife to get to the point where she had to have a meltdown to get his attention.

I’m sorry this happened to you.

I think many of us women & men are guilty of loving kids when they are little & cute, but not finding the years of graft all that appealing.

OP I don’t agree with your husband’s behaviour, particularly calling a 9 year old manipulative.

I also think if my DH only came near me when I was thinner I’d get the ick.

But your DH pushing 60 having kids, dealing with addiction issues and now dealing with children with additional needs kids, it sound like it’s all too much for him. So maybe lowering your expectations might help.

Agree. But if there isn’t any love left, then OP has to take some responsibility in allowing their marriage to get to that stage. It takes two.

To a point it takes two. That doesn’t apply on all cases.

However, the bit I think OP where you do need to take responsibility as such is having kids with a man who was not only late 50s but had previous addiction issues to the extent that he was out of work for years. Both are not ideal, the second is a red flag. I don’t say this to be cruel, what is done is done, but maybe owing this part of your story might make you feel less resentful. The man is 68. At more than 20 years his junior you can’t possibly understand what it physically feels like to be 68.

He won’t necessarily be in receipt of state pension now - he may have deferred it if he’s still working. And as has been pointed out he may not have enough NI contributions for full state pension. If missing so much of his work life means he has no meaningful private or occupational pension entitlement then state pension is likely to be his only income on retirement, which could be the reason he’s still working at 68. If that’s the case then divorce would mean he would be considered to be on benefits (state pension is defined as a benefit) and he would pay the flat rate maintenance of around £7 a week.

I’m almost 58 and I’m already knackered. He may well live his job (I love mine) but I hat doesn’t mean he isn’t knackered. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t look forward and wonder how the fuck he’s going to carry on working until the children reach adulthood.

I have 2 boys with autism, it’s not easy but he wasn’t 59 when I had them

He’s behaved like a prick but he’s old, he’s tired and all he can see is financial obligations for the rest of his life. And you should NOT have taken out a £25k loan that he didn’t agree to, regardless of why. How would you feel if he’d have taken a loan out for that amount that you didn’t agree with?

But I’ll never understand a 59 year old man agreeing to have children. He’ll be EIGHTY before they’re grown up.

When he was 58 he was playing his part in conceiving his second child. If he was already exhausted he probably shouldn’t have done that.

Agree wholeheartedly. I also think the fact that this row happened in front of the children - not to mention some of the things he said during it - indicates that he’s tried unsuccessfully in the past to talk to OP about how he feels. The resentment was bound to boil over into a scene, and as I posted upthread, if a man had posted in a similar way to OP I think he would have been given short shrift for allowing his wife to get to the point where she had to have a major meltdown to get his attention.

And the same could be said of OP. I’d be interested to know whether the enthusiasm for having children was equal in both parties.

you married a alcoholic who is 25 years older than you and you thought it was a good idea to have kids with him
the mind boggles

It takes two to tango, so to speak. If he didn’t want another child then there’s a fairly simple solution to that.

Agree, but it does sound as though neither party has given their future with children much thought, given DH’s age and past substance abuse problems, which usually come home to roost in later years. They clearly didn’t factor in that because of DH’s age, there was a much higher chance of their children having special needs.

I just don’t understand his anger towards me
@Shedding123
I'd say he's angry because he feels threatened. He wants to believe that he is the prize, the important one and you should be focusing on him rather than spending your time and attention on your children. His ego is threatened because deep down he knows that you're a much better person but he wants to carry on indulging himself and ignoring his responsibilities.
I think I would adopt a persona and pretend, keep things calm while you make a solid plan to get rid of this waste of space person.

Whose idea was it to have children op? Did he get a say? Has the medical equipment worked that you took the loan out for? He sounds depressed. He’s old , wants to chill and retiree and he can’t. He shouldn’t be snapping at the kids or you .