Very late to this thread and am quite shy of posting, but I will go ahead. In 1979 a cousin in my family swanned off to the U.S "for a year", paid for by his sister so that he could escape the financial mess ( he is an alcoholic and fraudster and thief) and a possible prison term that his reckless, enabled behaviour caused. He married a woman bigamously in the U.S and lo and behold he turned up two weeks before christmas in 2011. His wife in all the thirty one years that he was away( he did not send back one red cent for his now grown children in all the time he was away) had not divorced him ( despite obvious evidence that he cared not one jot about her or his children. Older and wiser women than me had to counsel her to get a divorce as the shame of her children and him fighting over the spoils should she die would be too shameful. You see, despite his abusive, narcissistic behaviour, SHE took her marriage vows seriously and despite being a lovely woman, she is somewhat a professional martyr ( she hasn't had a man since he has been gone).
When you shack up with an abusive partner the fallout for the kids can be enormous. My cousin's eldest daughter is a forty eight year old mother of four who has NEVER left home, who uses her mother as a crutch (learned from the father?). She is also the child he used to take to his fancy women's houses as "woman bait", behind the mother's back. She is also the child that used to chastise her mother when her mother was struggling to make sure that her children did not go without food whilst paying off the debts that her husband had left behind. I remember being told that the oldest child's friend had to tell him that his father was in the local paper for stealing from work. You may not like this, but when deceptive people get with strong "never gonna give up" people, they KNOW that with the love and determination, your weakness is your pride. They KNOW that whatever it takes, you will manage to get things done with or without them. Look. I come from a culture (Jamaican) that is over infested ( and seemingly always has been. The "Yardies" despite their brashness are NOT the pioneers of skullduggery) with strong, blind women and weak over virile men. Your husband KNOWS you. You do not KNOW him. You are preparing to solve a problem that is not of your own making and of which you do not appear to want to know the full facts. Get rid of your pride. Trust me, when I had to get rid of an idiot last year( at the age of forty one) I said "no more, never again". In order for me to reach this enlightened point of view, I have had to drop my ego in order to fully see what possible weakness I had to attract such an arsehole to me. I couldn't get caught up in any petty "what has she got over me, What have I got over her" malarkey. It was a kick in the gut, the realisation that my ex is a monster and in fact "loves" a woman as long as she conforms to his rules. You, unknowingly are conforming to "rules" that your husband has laid down for you without your knowledge. Don't be like my cousin's ex wife who threw away her youth away for a wastrel and has turned to church for comfort and company whilst she keeps a lid on her grown daughter's behaviour. For all her appeasement and enabling, HE left her - the final disgrace AND came back to Britain after thirty one years, not to beg forgiveness, but for his British pension that he could not access in the U.S! Your husband like my cousin (despite him being a pisshead of monumental proportions) knows what he is doing. Don't let him inflict what could be an even more devastating blow to you. Weak people like to drag strong people down with them. P.S gamblers do not make good parents. How much money has he taken out of his kid's mouths? Do you want to know, or are you afraid that the knowledge will cause you to HAVE to split? Put your children first, because your husband doesn't.