Excuse if what follows doesn't seem entirely balanced but i've been carrying this around with me for some time and i just need to let off some steam so this may sound paranoid or crazy but it's how i feel right now. I have a one year old daughter with a man i've been with for 4 and a half years. Before she was even conceived he cheated on me and spun me a whole web of lies to cover it up. I found out about it, got mad, and eventually agreed to try and put it behind us and start again. A few months later we had the surprise of finding out I was pregnant, so there wasn't much time to fully adjust and get over the affair before having to adjust to becoming parents. I know, i know perhaps having a baby with a man i couldn't trust wasn't the best move, but i really wanted the baby as soon as i found out and couldn't face another termination. yes, i must be completely irresponsible. anyway both of us have a great relationship with her and you couldn't imagine a happier or more sociable one year old, she's the light of my life.
But of course i suspect he still lies to me about practically everything, for example if a bottle of wine disappears and i ask him if he drank it he always claims to have spilled half of it. unlikely given that this happens every few days. anyway his borderline alcoholism is another matter...
The point is if i know he's lying to me about the little things, how the hell can i ever trust him on the big things? As a result i am constantly on edge and trying to second guess him, which is no way to live. I'm constantly snapping at him and picking fights and hes forever asking me what's wrong, which only winds me up further. It's no environment to raise a child in and i know that at the very least we need some serious counselling. But i wonder if theres any point given that i doubt very much if he even loves me at all, so there's no foundation to try and work from. He says he does, of course, but i don't know if its just my paranoia but i don't feel anything from him when he says these things. Its almost as if he's reading from a script. Our 'relationship' at the moment seems to consist of him coming in from work and accusing me of being moody,us getting the baby to bed and then sitting in front of the TV bickering. I mean good god, i'm not even 26 yet, is this what my life is doomed to be? (sorry about the self pitying tone). The thing that hurts the most is, stupid cow that i am, i actually love him, so its not as easy as just saying 'its over, lets separate' as i have nonetheless attempted to say over the past few months. To make matters worse, most of his family just hate me with a passion, especially his mum and his sister, and far from defending me against them he basically lets them think that he backs them up. He probably does, in reality, not that he tells me that of course! plus as i'm a stay at home mum, he has total control over the flat and the mortgage, i basically don't have a penny to my name, so i suspect if we were to split he could quite easily get custody of our daughter, even tho we're not married, because he's on her birth certificate, and he seems stable and settled, whereas i'm a jobless, propertlyless, clinically depressed f&*@up whose only redeeming feature is being a fairly good mum. i keep asking him to put my name on the mortgage so that i have some kind of equality with him and he keeps just not managing to get round to it, so i suspect more and more that he's just biding his time. he has said on more than one occasion that he thinks he'd be far more likely to get custody of her, if we split up, for the reasons listed above. I was sceptical at first but i'm starting to realise there might be some truth in it. If i lost her i think it would be the last straw. i've got barely anything to live for as it is. mind you, perhaps it would be better for her than being dragged round hostels or bed and breakfasts with me and then a life on benefits.