Hello everyone. Wanted to come on and pour my heart out really, about past things now, but just to share and to say how it was for me and how it is.
13 months ago I left my husband, and we share custody of our two sons. He has them two nights a week, usually at the weekend (skimming off the cream if you ask me, but then I do like the rest, so it's doable, and I get one weekend a month wth them.
We met at university when I was 19 and he was 22 (he was a postgrad) and got together very fast. I remember him telling me, early on, how amazing it was that I knew just how to calm him and handle him when he was upset - and I was flattered. It took me almost twenty years to work out that this was a very early sign that he had no ability and no inclination to handle himself, and would rather lean on me relentlessly for support and reassurance.
Eighteen months ago I found myself deeply depressed, eight stone overweight and cutting my wrists in the kitchen. I got counselling, in which I talked around my feelings and relationships. I had no self-esteem at all and was worn out caring for my sons and their father. The boys are hard work, as both have secial needs, but so rewarding and loving and nice, whereas their father undermined and belittled me in return. I ran the house on a smallish housekeeping allowance, despite him having a good job, but found I couldn't afford things like new glasses for myself - I wore glasses that were so scratched that I could only really see out of the sides of them for over a year and he never helped me out. It turned out that his drinking problem was worse than I knew and that he was drinking between £100 and £200 every month in secret whilst pleading total poverty and that he could have helped me at any time but just didn't.
Instead I got a constant hard time about how poor a manager I was and how his mother used to manage her house - what a lazy housekeeper I was, despite doing everything ... EVERYTHING ... from the front hedge to the back wall except the few things he really liked doing - like reading the bedtime stories - which was also my favourite time of day. The cooking (my very good cooking) was never right even though we only ate what he liked and rarely what I did. I was reminded all the time how well off dual-earnings couples he knew were in a way that reproached me for being at home. But he also poured cold water on all my plans for my future.
He can't bear competition, or people looking like they might be further ahead than him, or more knowledgeable or cultivated or anything than him. To an extent which upset friends of ours who found his paranoid comparisons wearing - and felt reproached as I did, almost as if they were doing it on purpose. Not a compromiser. Ever.
And latterly I was pressured into sex and called cold - an ice maiden - when I was reluctant. The last time we had sex he wouldn't let up until I gave in. He told me I owed him. I wasn't clear in my mind until quite recently that there's another word for that, but it was the thing that tipped me over the edge anyway. I finally saw that nothing I wanted or needed was any kind of priority for him. That basically all my needs were seen to be in direct conflict with his and were a cause for anger (killer looks - real rage - though no hitting - he didn't really need to as I was well controlled by sulks and fear). Even my need for rest when ill - it always angered him, and I was ill quite frequently in the last two years of my marriage.
I left him last November and haven't been ill since. I lock the door and I'm safe from all judgements, all coercion, all criticisms of my opinions and habits and looks and behaviour and hopes and needs. It's wonderful. I told him I was leaving in about July and it was an appalling summer while I made my plans and arrangements and managed his tempers and panic and heard really vicious things about my mothering and being to blame for his drinking problem (which he's had since he was 14 tbh, so hardly my fault really).
I have to say that I'm not angry with him at all. Sometimes when I remember things I feel a great deal of anxiety and fear. I wasn't in touch with all my responses at the time - I felt kind of dead really - so often now I deal with feelings that I didn't really access at the time and that can be very stressful, but I do it safely at home, in my home, and I can do it ok.
But not really anger, not now. Just a bit sometimes, and it fuels me to be better and stronger and genuinely assertive and really the bigger person (even though I've lost 6 stone :-).
I know, without a doubt, that while he's ignorant and spectacularly selfish he's got very little malice in him. Just zero awareness. Given the true appallingness of his upbringing its a genuine miracle he's only as appalling as he is. And however appalling he is to be around, it's far more apalling to be him and I never forget that. I just can't be around it any more.
I'm studying for my dream career now. I'm in good shape. 2012 has my name ALL over it :-D