Should I stay or should I go?

[emmacemmac]

Advice, please. Have a lovely 3-year-old and want to know what would be best for the child.

DH and everyone around me (work colleagues, family) are clear that I'm too difficult to be with. I'm a 'moody cow' and 'too critical'.

What would be best for child? Should I just leave and break off contact now while they're too young to remember me so at least they have the chance to idealise or think their mum might have been someone decent? Or is it better to stick around, even though I'll damage them and they'll end up despising me?

Which is less damaging for the child?

Less damaging would be you to go to your GP and get evaluated for depression or other mental illness.

Because that's what this sounds like to me.

therapy?

You haven't included all the options, so you're setting us up with false choice. The decent thing if you genuinely believe you are going to end up damaging your kids (and believe me, I have those fears to) is to actually try to do something about it to prevent it - as some one else said, therapy. If you're serious and genuinely concerned then why not make an actual effort to evolve yourself for the good of your kids.

do you think you are miserable and hard to be with? Or is that just the opinion of others around you? May be there is a reason why you are so miserable?

Emma, please dont leave your child. Whatever it is, you can work on it. As others have said, if you think you might be suffering from depression, please go and see your GP.

If not, take some time out and just think about what others have said about you. Do they have a point? Even if they do, it doesnt necessarily make them right. How is your interaction with your child. Please give us some more details.

I am difficult to be with long term and worry about the effect it will have on my daughter, 7months.
I suffer from depression and I'm determined my DD is going to have a happy childhood. That's what keeps me going.

I think the fact that you care about the effect you will have on your child means you're already putting them before yourself, so you have the basis of being a fab mum.

Don't give up. Maybe between all of us on MN we can help you through.

Its late and I don't have more to add right now, but will be lurking.

Dont leave your baby - They will never understand why. Even with all the logic and reason in the world it will never be ok for them. And you will never forgive yourself - the fact that you love your child enough to even consider this road! shows that you have the will to do what is best for your child. Get help and support. It is better for a child to have a loving mother who is working to find her feet than no mother at all.

Ive never been so .

"should I leave now so they still have the chance to idealise and think their mum was someone decent"

This is about you. If she does sit wondering and dreaming of this lovely mummy that is missing in her life, she will be heart broken and unable to move on as an adult.

Never mind about you being despised or idealised.

Get help for yourself and them now. Do anything except abandon the child and leave her with no mother. Put the effort in please, it will be a very heart breaking life for her if she is abandonned by her mother. Thinking she was never loved or important enough to try for.