Hello everyone and apologies, I've not posted a lot but have changed names anyway just in case my H could identify me from the old one.
I'll try to keep this concise. I've been married for about 7 years, living in the UK (I'm from abroad) for about 5, have 1 DD now 3 years old. There have always been problems in our marriage and this year has been especially tough. I have kept slogging along partly because "marriage is hard" yadda yadda, but this year I spent 3 weeks visiting my family. The first 3 weeks I'd spent without my husband since I came to the UK. And I realized that human beings, even married couples, can live together and still speak nicely to each other and be relaxed and happy most of the time, instead of tiptoeing around wondering when they will next be treated with anger and contempt for some minor rule violation.
I just read the Lundy Bancroft book recently (that man should get a medal) and while my husband is by far not the worst emotional abuser ever, and in fact I know that he does sincerely love me very much in his own way and isn't a conscious manipulator at all ... I still felt like I'd been gathering jigsaw puzzle pieces for the past 7 years and finally been shown the picture of what I was putting together. Since then I've felt doubt (oh, surely it's not so bad, surely I'm to blame too, surely I'm exaggerating ...) but I'm holding onto a little piece of that clarity I found.
So I haven't moved straight out because it's hard to find the emotional strength of course, but also logistics. All my family are overseas and I'm very socially isolated here. I do work fulltime and love my job (hooray) but unfortunately I have a long commute and am gone from 6:30 am to 6:30 or later pm on weekdays. So if I moved out now, I don't know how I could see my DD during the week (OK, I could pay a childminder to do the nursery run, maybe, but I'm not sure I could afford that and I'm also not sure she'd benefit from spending more time with a paid carer and less time with family--right now H does the nursery run as he also works fulltime, but locally).
So I've been trying to just cope and get stronger while I wait for a local job to come up (I'm in a pretty specialized job with not a lot of opportunities at the moment, but something local should come up within a year or two if I can be patient). But it's hard to keep all this tamped down and of course given that my husband is already constantly questioning my commitment to him and my emotional state, we ended up having a difficult conversation this afternoon in which I said yes, you've been trying harder to be a good partner lately, but I still feel unhappy and am considering separation.
Oh god I'm sorry this is stupidly long! I just need to say that I know I need to be strong. I know it's hard for him (his entire emotional wellbeing seems to rest on his image of us as a happy family and having me as his partner) but I am also aware of the ways he's trying to get at me. He's very subtle but there's a definite message that he "will not make this easy for me" and I am worried about what the future holds. I don't think I'm in any physical danger, it's just going to be a sucktastic emotional slog.
Thanks for listening, I just needed to get it out. I don't have a lot of people to talk to.