NC for this sorry. It's kind of embarrassing. 
It's a bit long, (sorry!) but I didn't want to drip feed.
I am really struggling in my marriage, and with my husband at the moment, and what to do about it, if anything. I go from wanting him to fuck off and leave one day and not being able to be in the same room as him, to being perfectly ok with him, and having a laugh and a good time. I would say the marriage is two thirds good or very good, and one third below average to unbearable. When it’s good it’s great, when it’s bad, it’s absolutely intolerable.
My husband has terrible mood swings, and sometimes has very dark episodes. There are 3 day spells when I can’t say anything right and can’t do right for doing wrong. And there is rarely any reason for it. I am sick of waking up not knowing what kind of mood he is going to be in that day, or what is going to annoy him. Little things seem to piss him off, including little things that I do. And he occasionally has complete screaming fits in public; like if someone cuts him up in the car park, he goes off on one, then he spends the rest of the day in a rage. And he takes me down with him as he leaves a dark and toxic atmosphere in his wake. For the rest of the day, and the following day too sometimes.
He was so incensed at something that happened yesterday afternoon that every last person in the store that we were walking around, looked as he screamed and swore and threw stuff across the floor. Some people looked at me with pity as they could see me going flame red. I walked off to the other end of the store so as not to be anywhere near him, and he comes after me saying ‘I’m not angry with you, I am angry with fucking stupid ignorant people!’ I said ‘too right you’re not angry with me, I have done fuck-all wrong, and I see no need for an absolute meltdown in public. I recognised a couple of people who saw and heard you!’ ‘I don’t care what anyone else thinks’ he snapped. ‘Well I do!’ I yelled.
All the way home (half hour drive,) I just didn’t speak to him, and went and cried in the bathroom when I got in. He went to bed at 5pm in the spare room and is still there now. An entire Saturday evening and night ruined – AND probably an entire Sunday, because of his petulance and dark mood. He seemed ok earlier in the day, but said he had ‘felt stressed for days’ – fuck knows why as he has an easy life!
He works 4 days on and 4 days off in a supermarket and does 30 hours a week. The job is a doddle, and although we are not loaded, we are not poor either. We tick along ok. I worked for 37 years in a government job and took (early) retirement a couple of years ago, and I do a little job from home, around 12 hours a week. I think he deeply resents it that I get to stay at home and he has to work. (We are both in our mid 50's by the way.) He doesn’t mind me being at home as such, he just wishes he was as well sometimes.
Every few weeks I find myself fantasising about leaving him, and think I would be much happier alone, but then he is OK for a couple of weeks, and we have a few laughs, and I think ’I guess he isn’t that bad.’ Besides, where the hell would I go? Both sets of parents have passed and we have very little family. (Just 2 adult children and one sibling each who both lives 100s of miles away – one abroad - who we rarely see.)
I don’t fancy being poor either, and have seen many single middle aged women I know struggling to even top up the electric key, and fighting for hours at work, and struggling to pay the rent. I don’t want to be in that position. I bring in an OK income but would struggle to survive alone. Another thing is, we have a long term social housing tenancy which we waited 5 years for, after living in private let for some years, and I am not prepared to sacrifice my home. It’s a home for life, I love it here, and the rent is super cheap. (It’s a small 2 bed house.)
So I don’t want to leave as I would have to go to some expensive private rental house with no security. And the private lets where we live are very expensive. I would probably need to go back to work - probably full time - , and as I worked for 37 years and retired early, I am extremely happy to be retired, and have no desire to go back into the workplace. I would need to work full time too, and even then would struggle.
We have 2 adult children who left home several years ago and know nothing about how I feel, but they do know what a moody, awkward, passive aggressive pig he can be, and how you never know what mood you’re going to get from him that day. He has annoying habits too, like he follows me around when I am doing stuff and gets underfoot, and keeps talking and talking when I am watching something or trying to do something. And he always wants to know what I am doing on the laptop, and keeps interrupting me. If I say I am doing something, and can he be quiet for a bit, he goes into a sulk and doesn’t talk for a few hours! (Not every time, but sometimes….)
And he opens my texts and reads them but doesn’t tell me so I don’t know I have got them! I got a doctor’s appointment cancellation the other week, and I turned up because I didn’t notice the text because he had opened it! (It’s an old PAYG phone with no lock or PIN, so I have to bloody hide it now, so he can’t get to it!)
In addition, he is rather clingy and flat out will NOT go out anywhere without me. If he says ‘I need to go here or there or wherever,’ I will usually go with him, but if I say ‘ see you later then, I’m not fussed about coming out,’ he says ‘ummm, I’ll leave it then,’ and takes his shoes off and doesn’t go out!’ I say ‘oh for God’s sake all right then, let’s go!’ and he says ‘nah it’s all right now, I don’t wanna go now.’ And refuses to go.
So I end up feeling bad because I have stopped him from going out. (Yeah I know I didn’t stop him, but I feel like I did.) It’s like he’s doing it to ‘punish’ me for not doing what he wanted. I mean like he won’t even go to the doctors on his own, or the dentist or anything. So I end up going with him - otherwise he won’t go. God knows what he would do if I wasn’t here. ARGH! It’s so frustrating. Even when I worked, I worked 3.5 days a week, so he would book appointments and suchlike for my days off! I really wish he would get some friends and some hobbies.
He is fine with me going out without him by the way, he just hates to go out without me.
Apart from me and our 2 adult children who live away from home now, he literally has no-one else (his small extended family lives 100s of miles away and they have little contact and his folks passed many years ago.) I don’t think he would survive without me if I left to be honest, but I am feeling so suffocated and trapped some days.
I swear if I won a couple of 100 grand tomorrow, I would be off. Do I love him? I don’t know. Some days I feel I do, some days I feel I don’t. I care about him and don’t wish him any harm, and if I left I would still want contact and to see him as a friend, and he is the father of my 2 children. But I feel so low some days at the thought of spending the next 30 years (potentially) with him. And I am dreading him retiring. He moans about work every day and how ‘hard’ it is – taking in deliveries in a supermarket and stacking shelves – and he has been to the doctors no end of times this past 2 years, trying to get written off on long-term sick. But they won’t write him off as no matter how many ailments he says he has, when they do tests on him, they find nothing wrong.
Help! I am struggling. As I said, it’s OK maybe two thirds of the time, and I do have some good times and good laughs with him, and we do have quite a bit in common; but it's almost unbearable the other third of the time and as I said, some days, I dread the future with him.
I don’t think leaving him is an option for the reasons I listed earlier (financial problems, don’t want to lose my secure home etc, and it’s not a massively awful marriage,) but how can I deal with this?