I need help before leaving

[grangegrove]

I need to leave my ‘D’H: he is very shouty and constantly gaslights. He’s nasty to our DS (5) and impatient with our DD (4mo) although much better with her than he’s ever been with DS.

We both work full time in the public sector but he moved to a job a year ago which offers overtime. As a result, he now out earns me by about £20k a year. I’m on maternity leave for another 4 months and this has led to lots of threats about ‘taking the money away’ and making me cut short my maternity leave.

His big issue with me is that I don’t have sex with him enough. This week, he’s said I need to stop telling him about the baby’s night waking (he has never done a night or a bedtime with either child) because, while he has to do night shifts at work in the cold, I’m whinging about ‘being in a nice, cosy bed with a beautiful baby’ - he forgets that he sleeps the next day after a night shift and I’m now functioning on 4.5 months without a full, uninterrupted night sleep.

He’s also told me he ‘doesn’t give a shit’ that I’ve got covid and so I’ve just gotten on with everything, while feeling rotten.

I feel, physically and emotionally, like a single parent, so I might as well be one.

Another, possibly relevant, detail: when I go back to work, it is a family member of mine who will do 100% of the childcare for us; this is the same arrangement as we had for my 5yo.

Now, he won’t leave the family home, so I’ll have to. I have a little bit of money saved up to rent somewhere but do I also need to pay mortgage and bills for the family home while I’m not living there? I can’t afford both.

Re. our children, he can’t have any routine in his contact with them because of his shifts. I’d be happy to facilitate contact every couple of weeks, working round his shifts but my DS won’t want to stay the night with him and if he attempts to, this will lead to DS being upset and DH getting angry. My son has never spend a night away from me, despite having tried a couple of times with family member who looks after him. He always gets to a certain point and wants mummy before he goes to sleep. My DD is exclusively breastfed so he can’t have her overnight.

He is really nasty to my DS. Things like forcing him to wear certain clothing when he’s crying his eyes out (DS has some clothing sensory issues) and then screaming at him if he doesn’t just comply. He is very quick to scream and swear. He has called my DS a cunt before when he’s not immediately compliant. You get the gist. DS does love his dad and would want to see him but the idea of DH having DS along for any extended period of time makes me feel physically sick. This is why I’ve stayed.

So what do I need to do? Sorry for the length of post.

@Duckingella yes and has been for a decade.

My DH is in the police and the stories I hear from him about some of his colleagues and their attitudes to women make my stomach churn. You will definitely need some evidence of his behaviour as unfortunately the default for most people is to take their word as gospel.

Okay: I’m going to work on getting proof. I spend so much of my time trying to appease his anger by keeping DS out of his way if he’s in a bad mood or getting DS dressed every single time so that DH can’t get pissed off that he doesn’t like his collars etc etc. I’m going to stop facilitating his unreasonable behaviour: it’s all just too tiring.

I’m so sorry @grangegrove it must seem like an uphill struggle for you.
He may be clever about evidence, but you can be be cleverer.
it so disheartening to learn about police behaving this way.
when you do gather evidence try to have a backup, my ex wiped loads of mine by having my Apple ID, send it to a new email address or something.
womens aid can also be very discreet with meetings/ advice if needed.

@Crispymandm great advice: I may start sending it to my mum. She knows exactly what he’s like and has witnessed incidents like this. As has my dad, which resulted in his being asked to leave their house over Christmas.

Good luck OP, you will come out the other side of this x

Horrid man.

Thank goodness your DS can now talk and goes to school.

As well as speaking to Woman's Aid I would let the school know and ask that they refer DS for support so he can start building a relationship with them before you leave.

Do not hesitate to leave via a refuge if needs be.

You can claim UC for a rental property whilst you divorce/gain an occupation order for the marital home.

Wishing you the very best in leaving ASAP

Thank you all. You’ve really cemented in my mind what I need to do now.

I will work on getting proof of his behaviour and then getting away from him.

@grangegrove if you leave, would be obliged to pay the mortgage as well as your new rent?

@Raffington55 i assume I would. I just can’t afford both but I suppose I can continue to add to savings. Hardly fair though when he refuses to leave so we have no other choice.

From what you've said, I'm not sure what grounds you would stop him having overnights with the children. Hopefully women's aid can give you a realistic expectation from their experience of what might happen for both you and the children. He sounds nasty, so hopefully you can get away and make a nice life for yourself and the sooner the better x

I would check that. If you are no longer going to be living there and he is, surely he needs to pay for it? And you for your new place. Why should you pay for his home when you leave?

You can claim UC whilst you still own half the house as long as steps are being taken to sell it. When it is sold and equity is divided, then if you have over 16k in savings/ capital you would not be eligible to claim UC unless the money was put into buying another property.