I am about to send this email to my husband (who is away from home at the moment). I should be pretty self-explanatory, but i just wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts...should I even send it, anything I can add that might make him realise he's become a bastard, recommendations about what to do next???
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where to start? i wanted to let you know how i am feeling and maybe get some sort of dialog going before we lose the ability to communicate completely.
i can not live like this anymore. i dont want the children to live like this anymore. i can't stop thinking that your anger and nastiness is only going to continue until you are on to your next family and you realise that you are making the same mistakes again. maybe by the time you get there you will be ready to do something about it. i just wish that it didnt have to come at the expense our beautiful children (and myself), who will be heartbroken.
it is ok and perfectly natural to be angry. what is not ok is using that anger on the people you love by swearing, shouting, calling names and lashing out. it is also not ok to get angry 10 times a day for fairly minor everyday occurrences. i know you think i'm blowing it out of proportion ("its not as bad as youre making out"), but i can already see the effects...x talking to me (and his brother) like shit because he sees you do it. x cowering when he makes a mistake. i still keep picturing x's face when you whacked him over the head with that inflatablel by the pool, sunglasses all skew-wiff, not knowing what had hit him. that's all i could think about when we got home.
you have so many fantastic fatherly qualities, but they are all overshadowed by the thoughts that you could turn at any time from loving, patient, generous and funny to scary and threatening. i feel ashamed that i have let this go on for so long, but never in a million years did i want my amazing kids coming from a broken home, shipped from parent to parent, no single place to call home. but i cant let it go on and, knowing that you dont think there is a problem on that front, i know that you wont do anything about it.
it's not up to me or the children to keep you happy to stop you from getting angry, it's impossible to stop anyone in the world from getting angry at some point...there is always going to be some event, problem, mistake, accident etc that is going to happen and the point is to know how to handle it in a way that doesnt scare, upset and traumatise your family. like it or not, there are times when you scare us. and those times are not rare.
deep down in my heart i know that things are never really going to change, you've as much as told me so by refusing to accept that it's a problem and getting some help with it. i keep hoping and believing and every time you tell me to fuck off or remind me how useless i am because i dont go out to work or scare or belittle the kids for some minor misdemeanour that hope continues to disappear and my hatred of myself for letting it happen gets worse.
i hope you can see this email for what it is...not 'having a go', not letting myself off the hook for my share of the blame (I certainly know I'm "not so fucking perfect"), not feeling sorry for myself, just being totally brutally honest about the breakdown of my marriage and the seriously shitty outlook for my family - the people i love the most in the world - for the foreseeable future. its completely shit and i actually feel sorry for you in some ways that this was the way you were brought up, living with an angry man, so this is normal for you. im also really really angry that you would wish that sort of childhood on your children. and ultimately, you are their most important role model for life. they look to you for how a man should behave, in life and in relationships and they are learning to treat the people they love with disrespect and aggression. to use force and intimidation to get what they want rather than discussion and reasonable behaviour.
and also we as a couple should be showing them how relationships should be...loving, mutually respectful, reasonable, happy...i dont see much of that on either side. in fact most of what they see is disdain and silence. we should be ashamed of ourselves. i know i am.
but again, we carry on, making the same mistakes, covering the same ground, having the same conversation about what life should be like. it cant go on. i dont want it to anymore. i just wish you would see it and want to learn how to control it, because its time to decide what we really want to happen and make it happen