Can I ask you for some advice on how to leave my husband and make sure that I don´t hurt him more than necessary (that I do it in a nice way); don´t activate his aggressive punitive side and so he doesn´t end up taking the children away from me? I know this sounds a difficult combination so I´ll give you a bit of a background.
My DH can be fun, good to talk to, full of energy and takes on responsibility for the kids (3 of them, 4, 6 and 8). When he is nice, he can be lovely and I find it hard to imagine anything else. But he has a dark side too. He can be emotionally aggressive to me and the children i.e. calls me an idiot or the children assholes (if they challenge him or answer back´). He is not physically aggressive though would push back at the children if they pushed him (even if it was an accident). He gets very angry at small things, particularly any mess I´ve created. It feels to me out of proportion to the situation. He believes I do it deliberately rather than just being absent minded. He will open the bathroom door from outside with a coin if he wants to shout at me and I do find it a bit scary. I´ve come to the conclusion that some of his behavior is very controlling – maybe not in the typical kinds of ways like not letting me have any money or letting me go out, but psychologically e.g. there is no way I can find to ask him to do something or consider something or even, forbid it, criticize him. If I do, he says I am shouting when I am not. If I try and say it nicely, he ignores it and says I need to be more direct. There is just no way of doing it. He makes a big fuss if we do anything that I want to and he doesn´t (like eat in a particular place) so we don´t do it. He openly admits to enjoy finding peoples weak spots and then pressing them on these. As an example, I hate not to be able to sleep and so he may tease and taunt me before bedtime and then refuse to discuss or make up. He would do this typically before I have something important to do the next day so I normally hide anything important so it doesn´t happen then. This is partly fuelled by alcohol at this stage – I usually go to bed early to escape before he has drunk his 1.5 bottles of wine. He will also try to push the children when they are upset – almost to make it worse rather than trying to calm things down and teach them how to regulate their emotions. Perhaps the worst was after my brother died. In the weeks that followed he was even nastier than usual and very critical of my Mum (who had lost her son). He shouted at her to get out of our house when she dared to turn up without phoning to discuss funeral arrangements. He is very critical of everything I do – leaves me to do it then gets cross about it. He threw a heavy box I had packed because I used the wrong´´ box. He was pleased when everything fell apart and said that he got what he wanted now as I would have to repack in the right box (which I did, so perhaps he was right). In the bedroom he would say things like I stink or breathe through his mouth very obviously to not have to smell me. I´ve spent a long time thinking these things are partly my fault or that we can work on them together. We can discuss these things and he will often say that I am right and he shouldn´t have shouted at the children. But then it doesn´t improve.
As he really goes to great lengths to find weak spots and press them (and is extremely good at it in what I´ve come to fear in a sinister clever way) I´m worried about leaving. If I leave him can I take the children with me or is that aggressive to him? I don´t want to leave them alone with him immediately after the break up but I think this will activate his aggression and make it difficult. If I could be reasonable with him, he is more likely to co-operate, but I just can´t guarantee it. He may feel like he has more of a claim to the children as he is not working right now and picks them up from school each day until I get home. So he may see himself as the primary care giver though I think I am in an emotional and real sense. So in an ideal world, I would discuss it with him and we would agree it was the best option. But I think he may just open the door, push me out and then he would be there with the children. As it would look like I had left them, it might also affect my chances of making sure I have at least joint custody or joint residency with them. Can you give me any advice on how to handle it? I´m not doing it tomorrow and want to plan over the next few months so everything is as good as it can be.