How do people know if a marriage is over or is worth saving?
Been with husband whole adult life, two gorgeous boys together.
He's always had a problem with his temper. There were a couple of isolated incidents of violence many years ago (some pushing), each time I left him, he promised to change, and he has never laid a finger on me since, not the kids either.
But he still can have a horrible temper. He rubs up against our eldest child (9 years) a lot and on occasion will really lose it, screaming and yelling that he's stupid or horrible or whatever awful things are on his mind. Not often, but a few times. Once I thew him out and wouldn't let him back until he promised to get therapy after one yelling incident at the kids. He promised but then never did. But again a year or two would go by and he wouldn't lose control as badly and I'd think oh well things have calmed down.
The thing is he doesn't cope well with stress. But as we're getting older, our parents are getting older, there is inevitable stress about money and life and so his flare ups have happened more and more often. 9 times out of 10 it's at me, and will be screaming, ranting, swearing and often - which is the thing that really bothers me - in front of the kids. And often about really inconsequential things which also destabilizes me as I never know when he'll go off on one.
For a long time I'd talk to the kids about it after and say 'it's wrong to speak like that, and dad's sorry, but he was stressed' and try and give them space to talk if they were upset or worried and let them know loud doesn't mean dangerous... it can just be loud. Because I didn't want to pretend it hadn't happened. But more recently I look at them and think, whatever I say, they are learning this is how you treat people. And someday they'll yell at their own families.
Most of the time he's a great dad (does all the school runs, there for every school play, takes them swimming etc) but is it possible to be a great parent when you have these flare ups?
It happened this weekend and I just thought... I'm done with this. He'll never change. (Context: I was ill and had asked him to get up half an hour before me to do breakfast for the kids whilst the meds kicked in so I could take the kids to their morning sports games. Got back a few hours later and he was seething that he'd had to do EVERYTHING as he'd also taken the bins out and emptied the dishwasher in the 2 hours we were out).
But of course asking for a divorce is going to make him more angry than ever. I already told him I want one but now he's calmed down and apologized and expecting everything to be fine again as it usually is as I'm so busy with work and kids and it's so much easier to just paper over and keep going each time rather than nuke everything and have to start again.