Husband left six weeks ago-struggling need advice

[Samsaraschoice]

I've never posted anything on here before so please forgive me if I do it wrong. I don't know all the abbreviations etc.
I am also 50 years old so don't even know if I'm allowed to post on here.
The problem is my beloved soulmate, love of my life husband left me six weeks ago. This is following a six year marriage (no mutual children, I have three but they have all left home this year, he has two but didn't see them much).
We are very different. He is a tradesman with no education and a very bad childhood involving desertion by his mum, sexual abuse and violence. I am a post grad educated professional but had a pretty bad childhood too with an abusive mother and alcoholic partner. We met three years after my last divorce and fell deeply into fairy tale love. He put me high in a pedestal as his princess and he was my hero/knight. Until he left we were still very much in love and having regular beautiful sex and were very affectionate. But the big downside was that he had become nastier and nastier and seemed to go into rages at the drop of a hat. We lived in my nice house and had a lovely lifestyle mainly paid for by me and he became more and more resentful and lost his self esteem which I fully acknowledge was my fault for not validating him enough and for trying to improve him re speech manners clothes etc. (which he originally said he wanted, but actually deeply resented). After a year or so, he started to show occasional violence towards me and the children. He would do things like push me from one end of the house to the other, shout right in my face, hold a clenched fist in front of me and he attacked my two sons several times, once picking up my 13 year old by his t shirt and legs and throwing him out of bed into the floor because he had been cheeky to me. He also put him in a hedge when he was 17 and grabbed my 20 year old son by the neck gouging bloody nail marks out of his skin.
In the last few months despite ongoing affection, he has had a hair trigger temper and the tiniest thing I said would set him off.
After telling me repeatedly to fk off in the pub after I had been sitting on his knee watching a band and I disagreed with him about whether they were like another band. He demanded that I get the f*g car and drive him home imediately. I was so shocked that I was crying as I tried to drive and he told me I was driving too slow and he got out of the car and stomped off ahead of me in a rage. Eventually I persuaded him to get back in the car and once we got home he started to pack his stuff. He told me that I had five minutes to admit I was wrong or he was going. I said through my sobs, that I couldn't say I was wrong just because he was telling me to, so he went.
In the next two weeks he was nice by text and said his aim was to get sorted and he begged to come back, but I said he needed anger management first and counselling. He quickly changed regarding coming back and turned very cold and hard and has now said it is definitely over although he can't rule out regretting it in six months or a year and may then come looking for me.
Yesterday he came to mend my roof as I had lost tiles and it was leaking. I was hopeful that this kindness meant he was starting to think about trying to resolve it, but to my absolute horror when I got home, he had left me a bill for his time for £80 and he also took the money from a jar I had told him about (because I thought he would need it for materials).
I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. I had just about got over the horrific endless crying, insomnia, panic attack stages of aching loss and fear and have lost a stone in weight, but last night I couldn't sleep at all and feel really dreadful again this morning.
I am now beginning to think that this man is totally toxic and damaged too much and I should run, but there is another side to me that thinks I'm fifty years old and I have no one left at home and he is good looking and fit and when he is nice, there is no one more loving.
Part of me desperately wants to wait and give him time and see if I can help him, but the other side says to give up, that he is a selfish abuser and any man that sends his wife a bill for helping her is an absolute bastard with no hope. He cannot see that he is wrong in anyway for this and is angry that I have not thanked him for the work.
Any advice would be very much appreciated.

[TDada]

Some of the posts are on the wrong side of bullying?

[TDada]

Miranda hope u are okay

[BrandNewIggi]

Why are you talking about a reconciliation?
I'm sorry you don't like mumsnet anymore, but sometimes when you are inside a situation you can't see things with the clarity that those on the outside can. It seems clear that you can't see this situation for what it is yet, I imagine that is characteristic of being abused sadly.
Please value yourself and your sons higher than to return to this life.

[Junebugjr]

You need to forget about this man, and start looking and analyzing why you have carried on in an abusive relationship, and allowed your children to be physically abused, when you had the choice to end it.
I don't mean this in a negative light toward you, I really don't. Only when we understand the dynamics and hold an abusive relationship can have over someone, we can see things more clearly, and break the cycle of getting into another abusive relationship.
This thread is really unsettling, one of the posts describing a poster who seemed to stand back and see her 2yr old son mentally and physically abused has made me feel ill.

[ageofgrandillusion]

We discussed them with the counsellor, he apologised to the boys and agreed he was wrong. I do think I was overly influenced by the counsellor, but you go to them for guidance don't you?

Alternatively, one might go on a mother's instinct to protect her children.
There is something deeply unsettling about this whole thread.

[Lweji]

For some reason and after all he did to you and your sons, you still seem to expect him to be a decent and caring person.

He's not. And I suspect he'll do his best to hurt you and to punish you. At the moment it's leaving a bill, because he knows you'd be hurt.

I can understand that the hurt probably comes from the realisation that your hopes were dashed of him coming to his senses and becoming the loving husband that you thought he could be. Because he never was, but you hoped he was. You thought deep down he loved you, but he doesn't.

For me it came when I saw how exH treated our kitten. I almost threatened to divorce him over it. It was clear then that it wasn't bad temper or stress, or whatever. It was pure cruelty.

It's very sad when we get to that point.

Take your time to grieve for your hopes. For that to happen, for you to heal, and to safeguard you, the best for you is to go no contact. Get the lawyers in and cut all the links.

[JuliaScurr]

OP - yes he had a rough start in life. SO DID YOU.

Your description of the hurt child inside him is also true of you. Please focus your care on you and your children from now on

//rightsofwomen.org will give you free basic legal advice

[perfectstorm]

I'm sorry, too. I posted very late and very hormonal (extremely new baby) which is never wise. I'm so sorry you are feeling as you are, and hope things improve soon. This is such a hard time in your life, but I think it's very hard to understand why you aren't angrier with him, basically. Perhaps you are in shock right now, which would be only too understandable.

I will say that the other thread you mention - there was an OW, and the OP is now handling that. People were, sadly, correct and I think helped her cope with the reality when it became apparent. It proved to her that it was not her fault, because the prediction made alongside that statement was so accurate. Miserably it usually seems to be on here.

[SauceForTheGander]

Not previous! Precious energy!

[SauceForTheGander]

Oh OP I'm sorry to read that and sorry if I wasn't gentle enough in my advice.

6 weeks isn't very long and breaking up is absolutely vile. Of course you feel wretched and hurt and vulnerable. Heartbreak is crap. It will pass, I promise.

He's billing you for money - well who knows why - maybe to hurt you / because he's cruel / because he's greedy. Who knows. Try not to let it eat you up. Try not to waste your previous energy second guessing his actions. Focus on you and your recovery.

The assaults and aggression you described we're so shocking it seemed impossible that your DCs would be unaffected by them but of course we can take your word.

I hope that you continue posting on this thread. It can help.

I don't know about the other thread you mentioned - only to say I've see 100s where the OP was adamant there wasn't another woman including my own and there always, always is.

[MirandaIV]

Sorry I forgot to say, I have changed my username as I think it was too recognisable to people who know me.

[MirandaIV]

To answer some questions.
Serina The £80 was for his labour, he also charged me extra for materials which I don't mind. Am I missing something here? I am really hurt by the fact that someone who was my husband six weeks ago and lived in this house as our marital home has written me a bill for helping me and taken the money?! If he came to me with an injury or illness, I would never ever charge him for treating him (or indeed any friend or relative). How can it possibly be right? It's callous and hard and incredibly hurtful and had I known beforehand, of course I would have got a workman to do it. I thought he was doing me a favour because he still cared. He was my husband living in this house with me for six years.
He is living with his mother, yes the one who abandoned him as a child. She is selfish and insensitive, but in his eyes can do no wrong. He won't hear a word against her.
Perhaps I don't seem as reactive about the assaults on the children as everyone wants, because they were over 18 months ago. We discussed them with the counsellor, he apologised to the boys and agreed he was wrong. I do think I was overly influenced by the counsellor, but you go to them for guidance don't you? In retrospect I think we should have been going to domestic abuse counselling and that would definitely be a condition of any reunion.
My middle son is adamant that he has not been damaged in any way by the attack. I asked him again today and he still likes H and has stayed in touch. He says people deserve chances. Also everyone please don't forget that they all live away from home and are no longer very affected by it.
I do know the abuses were awful, but I thought they were done and dusted. The pushing and shouting at me has been more recent though, but very much in the dramatic last few months of splitting up when emotions have been very high on both sides.
Lastly, I would say that I have been very vulnerable and at times suicidal and still cry many times every day. A few of the more recent posts have been insensitive, opinionated and harsh. I would ask those people to be more careful of what they say and how they say it. To criticise me for not protecting my children properly may well be true, but is a dangerous thing to say to someone so recently left and desolate.
For that reason, I will no longer be looking to Mumsnet for support. Most of you have been wonderful, but I can't risk reading abusive posts when I am so vulnerable.
I have noticed this bossiness in other posts. For instance one in which another poor soul has been left by her husband and is desolate. Many posters have been going on and on insisting there is another woman without any evidence at all to prove this, just that he left. How cruel and insensitive is that? She is in bits and they are just making it worse.
This must be the unpleasant side of Mumsnet that I have heard about.
I expect I will get some vitriolic comments about this too, which frankly will just prove my point.
Lastly thank you to all the many sweet ladies who took the time and care to write to me. I really appreciated it. Love to you all.

[SerenaBracken]

You said he packed a bag, but I must have missed where he had retreated to.

I see nothing wrong in him billing you, as you stated more than once that this is your house. Yours, not both, even though you were married.

£80 for a roof repair is materials only. Believe me it is.

None of the above excuses abuse. Posters have told you to dispose of him and I agree.

You are 50 years of age sitting on a man's knee watching a band in the Pub? Yet you are worried about being alone?
I don't think you'll be alone for long. Get back down to that pub on Band Night and sit on someone else's knee.

[SauceForTheGander]

It's only been 6 weeks - it can be hard to reconfigure someone you love, and someone you thought was your soul mate into someone who is manipulative and violent. This takes time but please be open to the harsh but true words here - this man is not a force for good. No adult human should be fixing another one at the expense of their safety.

I'm sorry this has happened but this man is showing you who he really is. It's perfectly ok to grieve and to feel conflicted. That is normal. But hear everyone clearly - he has crossed a line and cannot return. He should be facing charges IMO.

Your DCs are the innocent priorities in this scenario. Protect them and their futures from violence and the psychological repercussions of abuse - which you are so sympathetic to in your ex.

There are places that can help you untangle the mixed feelings and emotions. I would be looking at domestic violence charities for guidance.

[Lavenderhoney]

It's not your role to fix him. You sound well rid of him. Imagine another 30 years with this man and also your dc knowing you put him above them if you do go back.

You cannot go back anyway, after all he has done. You know that, I think.

Forget the £80- get someone else to do the work, change the locks, go nc and arrange some time with friends, go and visit your dc, and congratulate yourself on seeing the light before he really hurt you. You're not a punchbag emotionally or physically. Neither are your dc.

You have a chance to show them even if someone is ok some of the time, its not good enough if they are a fucking nightmare the rest of it. And you don't have to put up with it. Morally or otherwise.

Let him sort himself out and worry about you. Why on earth would you go back for more?

[tribpot]

TDada - she was not aware of the worst act of abuse, against the 13 year old. But she was aware of the rest, including the incident where blood was drawn.

[Lweji]

And correcting myself, he is dangerous also because he has been dangerous towards you as well as your children.
He would do things like push me from one end of the house to the other, shout right in my face, hold a clenched fist in front of me

[TDada]

Guys - I understand why Samars tried to help her partner and she wasn't aware of his abuse to her sons I believe. Please be gentle and compassionate to this nice caring woman.

[TDada]

Samaras- you sound like a thoughtful and gentle person. You have been rational and measured in how you dealt with him especially not backing down on your view and demanding anger management.

I recommend intensive exercise and sports ( eg tennis, jogging, gym classes) to help you through this period. Hugs

[fishybits]

You can't polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter.

Change the locks and don't look back.

[Squiffyagain]

He's had opportunities at relationships and parenting, he's done the counselling, he's had the good breaks. And he's still a cunt.

And he'll still be a vicious controlling piece of shit in 10 years time. You understanding why he became like that doesn't alter the fact.

[perfectstorm]

Yes, some compassion is in order. To the children you brought into the world, are trying to raise, and allowed this grown man to choose of his own free will to terrorise.

I'm sorry to be harsh, but that's the reality. His childhood sounds unspeakable. But it's also over. Your own kids are still living theirs - surely you can't think allowing him to make theirs unspeakable in turn is right?