husband has asked for a split - what should I do?

[dazedandconfused1980]

Sorry for the v.long post (I don’t want to drip feed) but I am in quite a horrible place at the moment and I can’t work out what is going on.

My dh of 5 years (together for 10), snapped at me, then left the house, on 29th November. I went to my mum’s the following day and I haven’t seen him since (have spoken civilly and texted however). I felt we both needed space to process all the things that have happened over the past 10 years (and this year in particular). These include:

• trying for a baby for one year without success.
• me getting into debt spending on alternative therapies/counselling etc.
• Dh’s book deal (his life’s ambition) falling through.
• Me becoming very depressed and being off work for 3 months.

My depression/debt/trying for a child has been key I believe and I am still trying to work out how it all came about/unravelled.

The backstory is that my dh (who is 53) has been very reluctant to have a child, even though when I was 25 (10 years ago), I gave him ‘5 years notice’. I thought that would be enough time for him to ‘come round to the idea’. I brought the subject up several times over the years and he sort of ‘acquiesed’, and we got married in 2010.

In June 2013 we started ‘trying’ and I was very excited. I thought I had done all the hard work (i.e. persuading him) and it was time now for us to go on this adventure together. But month after month it didn’t happen. I suppose I was very naïve about conception, I had no idea how hard it could be. I then fell into a deep depression and recovered, with my Dh’s support, over the course of this year and I am now back at work.

I thought things were getting better in my life but after he snapped he said that he wanted to split with me and he said that “the time for words and feelings is over, I want action’. This confused my because we barely speak about ‘meaningful’ things. For example:

• I thought that he was still reeling from his book deal falling through last year, but now he says he’s fine – it seems like he spent most of this year not speaking and doing diy and now he is feeling more positive. All this has happened and we have not really spoken about the transition.
• He has now said that he won’t speak to me about having a child because he is only doing it out of duty and he will go along with the mechanics of it but doesn’t think he can give me any emotional support along the way. He says he has never had a baby and so can’t relate to it – and I should talk to my female friends – although he believes that he will be a good, responsible father should a dc come along.

I just feel so alone and confused as he has also said a few other things to me that were hurtful – e.g. I start projects and don’t finish them (e.g. I come up with ideas for short stories but don’t write them), and he also said that it annoys him when I speak as I don’t pronounce all my t’s (!!).

Now, I am trying to take back control because I feel that he has been calling the shots for a long time but I really am now at a loss for what to do next. He is going to email me on Friday 19th with some information about what is feelings/views are and I am going to respond. But I have no idea what he is going to say.

My mum says that, at 34, I should cut my losses with him and move on. But I still love him/like him, and feel that maybe I have brought this all upon myself by being too needy/insecure and not understanding that men’s ways of communicating and different to women’s…?

Any advice welcomed please, particularly before he emails me on Friday….

Maybe his book's actually shit? Either that or very niche only of interest to a very few publishers (I presume the one who had offered him a deal went bust or got bought out or something).
But it's not your problem. There's nothing you can do about his book so leave him to it. Prioritize yourself from now on - you are a person of value, not this man's servant or appendage.

Putting your life on hold whilst waiting for a book deal is a crazy plan. But I think that's a side issue. To over-use a current MN phrase at the moment, he's just not that into you. Get out and get on with your life. Find someone who is into you.

Smile. Let him have his living room. And go to a solicitor and make damn sure you get 50/50 of everything - all three flats will be assets of the marriage - and divorce him. Whereupon you will be able to buy your own flat, near work, and do what the hell you like. Including IVF with donor sperm if you wish to go down that route in the future...

You've been together a long time and the marriage is not particularly short. Even the flats he owns outright will be in the pot, though you may not get 50/50 of them. You may be able, for example, to go for a clean break with you getting the flat you have now outright in exchange for not claiming on the other two flats and his pension. Lots of options. PLEASE, do it all through a solicitor and don't waste energy talking to him at all. It's pointless.

thanks all, I just had a minor wobble/set back yesterday. he told me that 'one day' he sees us living in the countryside, with a child and he will have written his book etc. and he will be a contented, happy-go-lucky chap. But it's just talk isn't it? I have waited long enough... years in fact. I need to take the control back.

I will report back after speaking to a lawyer on Monday/Tuesday.

Have also queued up Middlemarch on Iplayer.

And on a more positive note, I'm going to be babysitting my extremely cute 2 year old neice on Mondays for a few weeks.

solid his book is about ww2 but because he didn't take the academic route after his phd he doesn't (I believe) have the credentials for his premise to be taken seriously. He is good at writing but I don't think any publisher is interested because he is not a 'name'

An awful lot of people spend years writing their 'masterpiece' and not getting it published because it's shit. These days they could self-publish. Though there's still no guarantee of making a fortune, self-publishing (for unusual books) is no longer regarded as losers-only.
But he sounds more like the sort of person who wants to have written a book rather than to write one, so he's just going to carry on wanking about indefinitely. Leave him to it and best of luck with your new life.

this clearly can't go on forever. He actually through up this morning because of the stress of it all. He's not a bad person, I don't think, just stubborn and perhaps a bit calculating. Things are never clear cut but I am certain now that I need to end all this uncertainty.

thanks again for all your input.

One day when he's old and wrinkled and you can no longer have children...

He's trying to keep you under control by dangling a possible carrot. 10 years is long enough to wait for a flipping carrot, if it's not happened by now it never will.

I can't remember if he's a historian or wannabe novelist or both, I recall WWII but not if he's writing fact or fiction. I know a lot of (published) writers and academics and if he spent 8 years trying to get published and failing there is a reason for that. Dr Casaubon's book proved to be derivative and out of date...

xpost. It may be that he falls between two stools: he's neither an academic as such, nor a popular historian - although you can be both like David Starkey & Simon Schama.

I worked for five years at a military history publishers and know that world very well. It is a world of obsessives, one cannot help observing. Why hasn't DP done a one-page outline and had the book commissioned on that basis? You don't need to write the whole book before it gets taken on for publication. Most authors don't.

By the way, advances for 1st-timers can be around 500 quid.

Writing for a living, or at any rate to get published, is not an ego trip. It's a process, and a business, and although deeply fun, no one in their right mind would use it to prop up their self-esteem.

This is one of the saddest threads I have ever read. Seems like the scales are finally falling from your eyes.

FWIW I don't think he's an entirely bad person. He seems to have been upfront when you were 25 that he doesn't want children but has "gone along" with you. You want different things and I doubt you can provide them for each other or if you can, it won't be without some resentment on either/both sides

Good luck OP.

So he's not an academic historian and not a journalist or an established writer of popular (non-academic) history and wants to get a book contract for something about possibly the most written-about period of all time (WW2)? You don't need to be a name to be published, but you do need to have some reason why people should take you seriously - and being really, really keen doesn't count. Can you imagine how much will have been published about WW2 in the eight years he's been writing on this? In that time, there will have been people who started PhDs on WW2, completed them, published them, and have had PhD students of their own start and finish PhDs on WW2, and get book contracts for them. And publishers should take him seriously because...? OP, if this is what he's hanging the rest of his life on, and more importantly expecting you to put your life on hold for, you need to step away because it's never going to happen. He sounds very vain and self-absorbed, and in urgent need of a reality check.

His pipe dream/carrot of living in the countryside with DC is hardly achievable based on his actions at the moment! Agree with pps that the book thing is unrealistic.

Did he tell you he threw up with stress? Sympathy seeking? You are under major stress too, largely caused by him.

Agree with your mum that if you want DC you should cut your losses and move on.

Equally, think of what's been declassified on WWII in the last 8 years that would make a good book on an area that has not already had a huge amount published. I can think of one such example for WWII - a very interesting area. But he'd need to get a shift on.

So he never had a book deal at all, just a vague promise of one? You really have wasted enough of your life on this man.
Get your legal stuff sorted and start living a life that's about you.

twinkle et al. how amazing that so many of you know about military history and/or publishing... mumsnet really is amazing!

Anyways, the bedroom is going to be my space as of next week. And tomorrow I am calling a lawyer.

Oh and I am watching Middlemarch on Iplayer... Dorothy/Dodo has just met Mr Casaubon.. I keep wanting to shout at the tv to her.. "get out while you can!" Seriously though, it just shows you how amazing George elliot's writing was... and how my life has become a Victorian cliche

Just you wait...

twinkle now I am intrigued!