Jay how can he 'withdraw support'?? Ridiculous! What is he trying to achieve by that... he may be stressed by the thought of financial pressures etc due to another child but as you well know, it is no excuse for acting like a d*ckhead. Don't blame you for the rage. It is out of character for him?
Nini sympathy! Why do they seem to enjoy causing distress... mine is the same way, his thoughts/needs are more important than anyone else's.
Your 'car scrape' stories got me thinking about something that happened about 15 years ago- I haven't had anyone to talk about since it happened. Sorry this is probably going to be long.
Backstory-- we started out in central London but with 2 kids we knew we couldn't afford to stay in our tiny flat and couldn't afford to upgrade in our area. So we decided to move out. For about 2 years we lived outside of London and H commuted in, we'd found a house that we bought as a 'project', it was livable but totally shabby and we had such high hopes of renovating it into a lovely family home. We could just afford it, 1 hour commute away from London by train, but we had no money to do the renovation.
H's work was on projects abroad and went on trips quite often, about once a month, leaving me alone with 2 DCs aged 2 and 4 for 5 days at a time, in a house that was more like a project. And every time H went away he would come back furious with me for something one time I remember it was because I'd stripped the paint off of a door frame, he was furious because he hadn't told me to... anyway for whatever reason the typical pattern became that I would expect to be b*llocked for something every time he came back.
One day when he was due to return I had scraped the side of the car on a post opposite our house. It was a very narrow road and sharp turn. I shouldn't have done it but... of course I hadn't meant to, and (in my defense) could have been worse just cosmetic damage and no other cars involved. That night I had to pick him up at Heathrow (2 kids in the car, late night why he didn't just get a taxi I don't know but I always had to pick him up, which meant waiting at the airport, etc. In retrospect I have no idea how I managed, thought I was superwoman, I did everything, FFS we didn't even have mobile phones in those days so lots of waiting/story tapes in the car for kids). Anyway, he saw that I'd damaged the car and was furious that night.
So the following morning he just wouldn't let it go, was still furious and I felt awful. I remember a huge argument with him, I kept saying to him that it was just a bit of cosmetic damage, but he didn't see it that way, was very important to him that the car looked good.
Next thing, DS came into the room telling me that DD had fallen out the window. The kids had been in the next room (hearing us argue). Somehow she'd been sitting on the cill and the (ancient) locks had come undone and she'd fallen headfirst onto the street one story below. It WOULD NOT have happened if I had been paying attention to the kids and not arguing with H.
So worst nightmare of any parent's imagination. But after 2 weeks in intensive care, then a big operation and a few more weeks recovery DD was fine ( BTW she is truly fine. We were truly the luckiest people in the world). BUT. H never forgave me for the car. He used to point it out to other people and tell them what a sh*t driver I was.
I was thinking about this earlier when reading here about cars (NB he will NEVER talk about 'the accident'... DD had follow up appointments for a few years afterwards, all OK now, she has a long scar under her hair on the top of her head but otherwise no evidence, I joke about it once in a while but if H hears he gives me a filthy look).
I thought about that argument. So tonight I asked him 'do you remember our old car, when we lived in ***. do you remember when I scraped the side on the post outside the house?'
OMG. He immediately got furious with me and 'yes you pretended you hadn't done it but I knew you had...' and went on for ages about it. I said to him 'do you remember what happened the day after you found out about it?' and he had no idea what I was talking about. So he never associated what we were arguing about at the time with what happened. I think he's deleted it from memory-- but at least he never blamed me specifically for what happened.
After that... we sold that house, moved back to London, I got a job and life went on. BUT I don't think we ever worked through what had happened, not sure if it would have changed things. Looking back, wish I'd had something like MN back then. I couldn't talk to anyone about it because I just looked like a cr@p neglectful mother.
I'm more annoyed now that he remembers the car in such detail-- obviously more important to him than people!