Hello everybody,
Before I start rambling on, I would like to apologise – it’ll probably come across as complete dribble but here we go:
I have one son who will be two years old in March, and I am pregnant again and I’m now 13 weeks (am I mad, I know!) plus I am married. All seems pretty good so far but here’s where I need some advice ladies and gents;
My husband, whom I have been with for a relatively short period of time (nearly four years) is former military. When I met him, he was just breaking up with his now ex-wife who he has two children with and things seemed seemingly amazing. Hard, but amazing.
Scroll forward to my first pregnancy, and things began to change – he would constantly belittle me in terms of my personality, how I was a person, how little I did and had done in general. Our first pregnancy was very toxic in a sense that he seemingly enjoyed (one could say) to almost degrade me but he’d never admit that. When I gave birth to my son, at the time he was working long shifts – he would come home whilst I was off work and demand to know why certain things weren’t done, and why I was seemingly incompetent. Examples were washing, cleaning etc. I was mentally exhausted and also suffering from PND, but again he did and still refuses to admit that I was. I remember all I did was cry, and feel so tired. To the point where I couldn’t get up when he was home, all I wanted to do was sleep. That made me a target, as I became “lazy”. But I was on my own for up to twelve hours a day, exhausted by the fact I’d spent the whole day cleaning, and worrying I just wasn’t in the right place anymore. In the end, without his knowledge I got a cleaner in the house to ease what was becoming my workload. He found out and was furious. Fast forward to when I went back to work, I honestly sat at my desk and thought “I’ve not actually spent any time with my son” I did and still feel terrible.
We made decision money wise, that I would stay at work, and he would leave his job as it worked out more financially sound then trying to pay for child care costs, plus us being passing ships. He became a stay at home father. He is, and I stand by this, a fantastic father. One night though he got very drunk, and he has night terrors – and he’d passed out in bed. I put my son down and then attempted to get into bed, he leapt up and I can only describe he beat me so badly in the face I still have no feeling in the side of my face he punched me. He also began strangling me to where I blacked up, in the morning he had no memory of this, but even still to this day, he has no emotional attachment for what happened saying he can’t remember it, so effectively it means nothing and I should in essence get over it.
Fast forward to now, and to be honest I have never really got over what happened. However my husband, has through a bit of dragging gone down the mental health help, with PTSD – but this, hasn’t made it any better. I have paid for my property to be extended so his kids have their own rooms, creating a haven for us all when we’re together but nothing is seen in that manner.
Since we found out I’m pregnant, he’s slowly been ramping up again in terms of being absolutely mean to me again. So to keep it short, he just basically went down this unconditionally horrible tone with me.
He told me it was clear I had been unhappy for some time, to which I couldn’t really respond but he pushed me to do so. I just said I felt he’d been mean to me again recently to which suddenly spiralled into these words from him, I recorded them but to type them out:
“You’re lazy, you don’t do anything”
“All you do is bring money into the house, but apart from that you do nothing”
“You don’t even know what the outdoors is” – by this he constantly feels that we don’t do enough together, and when I reel off the list of all the things we’d done over past couple of months at the weekend, he refused to acknowledge that.
“If we were to split up, do you realise you’d actually have to be a mother to your son”
“You need help”
“I am trying to help you, but I need to put my foot down with you”
“I’ve been seeking help, and they have told me that there is nothing wrong with me, you’re the problem”
“I’m a bully”
“How would I cope without him, because I wouldn’t”
Whilst these statements were going on, I repeatedly asked him to stop as every time he forced me to answer, he would just jump back into something negative about me. I tried to answer almost in a completely unbiased way.
“This isn’t you talking”
So I answer with my view I just say “I can’t take anymore, if you truly believe all these things to be correct that you’re saying then there isn’t a place for this relationship anymore” and “nothing will make you happy, I don’t know why but for some reason you treat me like a military recruit whom you feel, that if you push to breaking point they’ll improve to your standards of what you deem acceptable and I in civilian life, it can’t be like that”
To which I just get a repeated knife in the neck, I honestly guys - can't take anymore but I'm trapped, he knows it. I can't afford to suddenly be on my own. He knows this and uses statements such as the ones mentioned, plus uses my family as bait - they think he's amazing, so they have no sympathy for me if I ever dare to say otherwise.
I am not saying I'm perfect, but I know I'm not all the bad things he says I am. I feel confused, lost and to be honest I don't know who I am anymore.