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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Relationships

XH living in a shit hole, feel awful, dont know what to do

93 replies

fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 17/02/2013 22:51

STBXH moved out 6 months ago. Lives in a bedsit and wont have kids over night as it isnt suitable.

He is really really poorly. Ive been trying to persuade him to come and stay, so we can feed him/look after him and beacuse he has no heating. he refuses

So I went round with dd1 today to check on him. i cant stop crying. He lives in a SHIT HOLE. I mean REALLY REALLY REALLY hideous. His room is ok, but damp. But the communal areas/bathroom/kitchen are condemable. The toilet leaks and the house stinks of piss. The bathroom is black with mould.

I feel so so so guilty

OP posts:

Report

Dottiespots · 18/02/2013 01:19

now

mathanxiety · 18/02/2013 01:19

You are a good woman FH.

Sometimes there is a big difference between the course of action that is right and the one that feels right (for 'feels right' you can read 'familiar' or 'rewarding' etc).

It is often harder to do the thing that really is right. Would it help if you were to try to see it from the pov of your DD coming upon her father lying in his own vomit and your responsibility to her?

You can't change his script. What you offered him in the past, what your children offered him in the past, wasn't enough to change it. He will have to get to his own personal rock bottom before he can start to change. Nothing you say or do will save him. It has to come from inside him.

It is heartbreaking but you need to be strong for the sake of your children and love the right way.

fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 18/02/2013 01:28

I did call the police a few times when he lived here, but not because he was violent. Because he went missing...twice. just drunk. We used to fight.

I just feel so ashamed that it went so horribly wrong. I can barely look at my children

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mathanxiety · 18/02/2013 01:29

What makes you feel so ashamed?

fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 18/02/2013 01:34

I feel ashamed of the way I behaved. I don't think I treated him well. I don't think I accepted him for who he is. I think I made him feel bad/worse about himself. I used to get do frustrated and angry

I am ashamed that I didn't recognise it was never going to work. I shouldn't have had children with him. They deserve better than this

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badinage · 18/02/2013 01:40

I hear what everyone's saying about him being an adult who makes his own choices, but this is a sick adult who is the father of your children and seeing as they've seen him in a bad way today in terrible living conditions, any help you can give him will be as much for their sake so that their father stays on this planet, as much as for his sake. I think if I came across anyone living in these conditions with those health problems, I'd do anything I could to better their lot if they'd let me, especially if that person was living in a foreign country.

Offer help and point out that as he's not from the UK and doesn't know the system as well as you, it makes sense for you to make some calls and try to get him better housing and care. I'd think your kids will need a lot of reassurance and some explanations that you're helping their dad out but that you're not reconciling. You're just being the good samaritan to a fellow human being in a time of crisis. This will teach them compassion and boundaries.

fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 18/02/2013 01:46

And I regret not doing something differently...I don't know what, but something to make it ok

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mathanxiety · 18/02/2013 01:48

The best way to move forward from your feelings of shame is to now draw a line under what went before, to give yourself a break, forgive yourself, try your utmost to disengage.

You can't make the past right by ruining the children's future or sacrificing your own life to someone whose primary relationship is with alcohol, not with you and not with your children. All you can do is focus on what you can control and that is you. The only lives you can hope to improve are those of the children's. You and the children have a real relationship. Take that day by day.

When it comes to his alcoholism, you didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it.

You need to take the relationship with the alcoholic day by day too. Don't dwell in the past. Focus only on what you can control and that is you. You can't change what happened yesterday. You can't control what happens tomorrow.

Guilt is not a position of strength and will not benefit the alcoholic.

Have you ever been in touch with Al ANon for families?

Dottiespots · 18/02/2013 01:50

Is he an alcoholic?

mathanxiety · 18/02/2013 01:51

I don't think I treated him well. I don't think I accepted him for who he is. I think I made him feel bad/worse about himself. I used to get do frustrated and angry

You need to let him be himself now.
Try to get to the bottom of your frustration and anger and guilt. Try to end the cycle.

fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 18/02/2013 01:54

I went to al anon for a short while before we seperated. I found it really really helpful. Very painful.

I think I would benefit a lot by going to some meetings again. I just don't have ant child free time to go.

That's another thing that I feel guilty about. I should have recognised the alcoholism much earlier than I did.

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fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 18/02/2013 01:56

I just want to go to sleep. I don't feel like I can^ let go. It feels too big and too bad

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fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 18/02/2013 01:59

If he had married someone else, he wouldn't be living in that shit hole now

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badinage · 18/02/2013 02:01

This misplaced guilt isn't going to help anyone is it? Let that go and try to think with a clearer head what you intend to do, if anything.

mathanxiety · 18/02/2013 02:09

He would 100% be living in that shithole.

You didn't cause this and you can't cure it.

cronullansw · 18/02/2013 02:19

As the ever caring and charitable have said - fuck him,

eg; ''he is an adult...don't feel guilty about him''

Don't worry about him being ill and needing human compassion to help him get well. Don't worry about his mental state.... don't offer him any help. After all, he's only the one you loved, the father of your children.

Just think - if it were you in this desperate position, would you want some help? Of course you would, so do the humane, charitable thing and help him.

And to all those here saying, 'tough / his problem', maybe some similar misfortune might come to you one day: soon, hopefully.

mathanxiety · 18/02/2013 02:24

There is help and there is sacrifice and then there is risking damage to your children.

Help by pointing him in the right direction or reporting the squat where he is living so that he will have to be helped by the LA ultimately. But you can't help him by moving him back in. That would be the opposite of help, and worse, it would damage the children.

fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 18/02/2013 06:43

Thank you for talking to me last night

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Longtalljosie · 18/02/2013 06:52

How are you feeling this morning OP?

Hopefully Shelter will be able to give you some information. If he's on minimum wage, is he entitled to housing benefit etc? If all that's holding him back from renting somewhere clean is a deposit, is there anything you can do to help with that?

BranchingOut · 18/02/2013 06:53

Sorry, but I don't think it is fair to point him in the direction of a shared-house if he has drinking problems. Why should other people have to live with that either?

fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 18/02/2013 06:58

I feel like shit josie

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fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 18/02/2013 06:59

No, I can't help him financially. I struggle to pay mortgage and bills nd have 2 kids to take care of

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Longtalljosie · 18/02/2013 07:04

OK - I'm not suggesting you ought to necessarily, just that if you could it might be a way through.

Do you think if he wasn't drinking he'd be in a better flat or is this purely because of his job?

diddl · 18/02/2013 07:14

I get why you feel bad-but your daughter found him in a pile of vomit?

Does he have no self respect at all?

I agree with environmental health as a start.

Or phone his GP for suggestions re housing help?

fuckinghellwhathaveidone · 18/02/2013 07:20

I don't think he is in the house he is because he is drinking all his money. His wage is low, but he could find somewhere better. He landlord is a 'friend'.....I think when he moved our he was emotional and scared and just went there because it was easy. I don't know why he has stayed there. He is very chaotic. I don't understand slit of his decisions/choices

He is not a in the gutter drunk....he works full time and studies a lot. I think he probably feels over qhelmed at the prospect of funding somewhere else and moving

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