I’m looking for a bit of advice or guidance, or if anyone has experience of similar.
My husband told me a year ago he was having an affair. He moved out straight away, leaving me and our then 5 year old.
He’d been jobless for a while, but had just got a paying job. He paid minimally towards bills from his account (no joint bank account) and I paid for nearly everything, as well as the deposit for the house and the monthly mortgage payments. I supported him fully while he was unemployed and then while he worked on a long term internship for no wages to gain experience for the job he wanted, and eventually got, just before he left us.
He moved out and started living in a van because he wanted to save money on living costs. As far as I know he splits his time living in his van with his affair partner, sometimes staying at his affair partners house with her mum too, and house sitting for her friends and other random people on holiday, with his affair partner. I work part time from home and have had minimal financial help from him, I pay the mortgage, gas, elec, internet, etc and he has continued paying the water bill (£30 per month), the council tax (c£100 per month), my phone bill (c£12 per month) and 2 extra curricular clubs for our child (c £40per month). He gives me nothing extra. He claims he’s generous because he ‘still pays what I used to pay before I left’ but that means nothing because what he paid before he left was based on him having no income, and I’d transfer him the money each month to cover these bills anyway. The bills were never fairly split.
He hasn’t helped with school runs at all this last year. He says he can’t because of his job. He doesn’t care that it affects my job too. Up until 3 months ago he’d visit our child on our home two evenings a week. This allowed me to go to evening classes.
He is continuing his relationship with the person he was having his affair with. She’s a part time laser tattoo remover, dances in a burlesque group and gets fairly naked onstage judging from pictures online, and is also an actress in local short films (that’s where she met my husband who works in film/video editing). It’s been a year since he told me and left, so now he wants to force me to allow him to take our child to the van or any of the random homes he stays in so he can spend time with our child and his affair partner together. Including overnight. (Perhaps including all 3 of them sleeping together in the van - he said this.) I am not happy/ready for the affair partner to be in my child’s life and so I have refused. I’ve told him he’s always welcome to see our child and take them out, but not to his affair partner or the area she lives in.
He’s become angry about this, and has stopped visiting on evenings, saying he’ll only look after our child if he can take them to meet his affair partner. He is also saying that he will initiate divorce because that’s the only way he’ll get to be with our child and do what he wants where he wants with them.
He doesn’t do any of the day to day things like school runs, bathing, washing or cooking. Managing all this and the house work and house maintenance is difficult for me, along with looking after our child and working 4 days per week. I’m not entitled to benefits. Since he left I’m also massively in debt, due to covering the living costs and additional home maintenance (roof needed replacing for years, I had to finally do it when the leaks got too much just after he left). I have nothing left of my wages each month and am using credit cards for general spending for the first time in my life.
If he gets his visits on his terms, I’ll still be left with all the hard work, school runs, parenting responsibilities and financial hardship. He’ll just get the fun days/nights out.
Yesterday he said he knows he ended our relationship in the worst possible way, but he has to continue being selfish for his own mental health. He doesn’t want to step foot inside our house he says, but just take our child away and bring them back. And that if I don’t go along with his demands, our child ‘might not have a dad much longer’.
I’ve been kind and decent to him this whole year, any arguing and disagreements have been very minimal as I’ve just accepted what he’s doing and tried to get on with mine and my child’s life. It’s been painful and hard, only made worse with house and financial worries.
My questions -
Does this situation seem unfair?
Is he contributing fairly as a parent, or even just financially?
Would a divorce really give him the free access to our child he wants on his terms, occasional visits and sleepovers but no parenting duties (eg school runs), taking into account his living situation?
What would you do?