I split up with exH 6 months ago, for a number of reasons. I'm still under the Mental Health team and spoke to my main contact today. He wants to put me in contact with one of their teams who deal with abuse. But in my head abuse is violence, name calling etc, none of which my ex did. I've outlined some of his behaviour below, but it seems so small and petty compared with some examples of abuse.
2 years ago we attended Relate (at my insistence) to address the problems in our relationship that were already evident. T made lots of promises at the time but his behaviour didn't change. This eventually led to a sharp decline in my mental health, to the point where I had to be under the care of the Crisis Team. During this period T was very unsupportive, and in fact refused to take time off work and seemed surprised that I wanted him involved in discussions about my ongoing care. One evening, after a particularly bad day he knew I needed to talk to him about something but sat playing with his phone. This incident involved the children but T seemed unduly concerned and went to work the following day as usual. It was only after we separated that he used this incident against me, saying he had 'long term concerns' over my ability to parent the children and demanding a report from Social Services to confirm the children weren't at risk.
T only contributed half his salary to the joint account and was unwilling/unable to account for the remainder. He was more than happy for all of my wages to be used up for childcare.
He refused to sell his unused motorbikes despite us needing the money.
His continually being late for work was a major contributing factor to his being made redundant in November 2013. He spent 3 months doing nothing to look for work, during which time I returned to full time work in order to support the family. Once he found a job, despite my expressing concern over his punctuality, he made no effort to get up or leave on time for work.
He knew that the legal side of our house was causing me stress, yet he refused to involve me in discussions about what was happening. Indeed his father once told me 'there are things happening which H knows nothing about', meaning that I, his wife, knew less than his parents even though it was supposed to be our house. He admitted that me getting so ill gave him 'the kick up the arse he needed' to start the process, having done nothing for a year.
When we moved into our house T wanted to move his guns into the property, when I expressed concern about having guns in the house with small children I was told this was 'non-negotiable'. This has been a frequent phrase uttered by T over the course of our marriage.
When I gave up work to look after the children, I asked him to sort out life insurance so we would be covered if anything happened to him. He didn't see the seriousness of this and never sorted it.
After I asked him to leave, he announced he was going to return to the property and live independently in the box bedroom. When I asked him to wait 24 hours so I could get advice from my health visitor to find out how this would impact the boys, he refused, forcing me and the boys to take refuge with my father. His continued refusal to leave the house effectively forced me to find alternative housing and made the boys leave their home. He is still living alone in a rent-free, mortgage free 3 bedroom home while the boys live in a rented 2 bedroom flat, and has said there's nothing wrong with that.
For ages I had expressed concern over the state of the garden which contained a half built garage, rusting land rover and massive milling machine. T saw nothing wrong with it despite our neighbours eventually erecting a 6 ft fence to block out our garden, thus cutting off contact between our sons and the boys next door who are the same age. The milling machine has never been uncovered but again it's continued presence was 'non-negotiable', as was the garage halfway up the garden. T only sold the land rover when I issued an ultimatum that either it went or I did. My concern was that it was a danger to the boys because it had big rusting holes in it and leaked oil. T refused to see any danger at all.
After the very traumatic birth of our youngest son I was very upset. The midwives had found a private room for me which meant that T could come back into the hospital and spend the night. When I called him in tears and begged him to come in he refused as he was 'too tired' and going to bed. He promised to be at the hospital the minute visiting hours began but was very late.
I'd love to hear opinions. I'm so very angry with exH (T) and I don't know how to overcome it.