Hi all. Going through a difficult time and needing some advice. Would post on the main forum but I’m pretty sure my DH is active on that and will recognise me from this post.
i’m married with two children. DS is in late teens and has additional needs. It’s been a struggle for all of us to cope with them over the years and whilst he’s come an awful long way to become a charming intelligent young man he struggles to regulate his emotions. This is especially problematic given that he is a physically intimidating lad. Since the start of the New Year we we have seen an increase in his verbal aggression. Things came to head about two months ago when in the middle of an argument with my OH my DS brandished a screwdriver at my DD.
My OH decided that she had had enough and took our DD and herself off to her parents a few miles away where she has been since then. I agreed with this decision and helped them move. For additional context by OH has had a very difficult few years with work and health issues and by any measure is completely burnt out.
Upon moving out my OH messaged me to inform me that any communications between us were only to be via WhatsApp and then only in connection with matters concerning our children. Awful enough as it was that she had moved out with my DD, I was horrified to find out that I was now somehow implicated in this whole story story. Since then my OH has used the terms such as “since we are now separated” and has attempted to impose constraints such as being unable to talk to her parents or not approaching their house (things which both they and I have simply ignored). I was also kicked off our joint email account by her, and she has also unfriended me on social media (petty though that was given that neither she or I post a significant amount on it anyway).
Despite all this, and to my huge confusion, after much prompting to clarify the situation, she has said that she is not thinking of divorce and hasn’t consulted any lawyers. She has not restricted access to my DD but has insisted that I be clear about what I am doing with her at all times. When she left the house, she took both her and our DD’s passports - from a home safe which our DS has no access to.
We had had a family holiday booked (which DS had never intended on joining, since he wanted to hang out with his mates), however my OH made it clear that she was not going to go on holiday with me as she was not comfortable to do so. After much soul-searching I bit the bullet and went anyway with my DD and I’m relieved to say we had a great time. Of course, I had to make sure beforehand that I was actually going to be given my DD’s passport (see above).
In the meantime, my DS has been living with me at the family home and his behaviour has been exemplary. Given that his sister had never spent that much time in the house given her panoply of extracurricular activities, there is probably only one conclusion that one can draw from this in terms of family dynamics.
So after this long rambling post, I suppose the point is that above and beyond the awfulness of what happened and the need for the family to be split, I am left in total confusion about my OH’s behaviour. They say if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck, so is the conclusion that this really is a separation - albeit a very badly executed one?
I really hope it’s not and that there is a way back for the family to repair this rift. But in a place where my OH is refusing to discuss any of this with me and doesn’t even want to be in the same room I have no idea how to fix it and I’m completely at a loss if this is something she even wants to attempt. It’s been like this for several weeks and I really don’t know whether I need to be physically rebuilding my life as part of a broken family or whether I should be doing something different.