Demise of marriage? Feelings turned by one conversation!

[Freetodowhatiwant]

I don’t really know where to start. I have been with DH for almost 20 years and married for almost 10. We had a lot of fun for the 10 years prior to getting married – travelling and plenty of going out. I’ve been with him since age 25 and am now 45. He is 11 years older but this isn’t an issue, he’s very youthful in many ways. We have two children aged 7 and 4.

Our relationship has many positive aspects – when we have time to hang around together we laugh and share the similar interests. There are no significant domestic issues in terms of housework and cooking. He used to do much more than me pre-kids and now I do probably more as I am at home more (work from home). The house is a bit of a mess but this is because of the kids and we both try our best so that’s not a huge issue even though there is the occasional argument about this I think it's normal.

To my friends who’ve moaned about their partners for other reasons (two have DHs who don’t do anything around the house) I have always said that mine and DH’s relationship is 80% good, not perfect but enough to keep us together.

Herein lies the problem though. The 20% bad has been his anger issues. He had had them from the beginning. Most of the males in his family had the same issues. He often gets angry for no reason. Getting ready in the morning is a particular issue. He will shout and stomp around and if the anger is directed at me can sometimes seriously intimidate me. He has never hit me but he has loomed over me many times and his face and body are terrifying. He’s 6ft and I’m 5.5ft so he has a height and physical presence that can scare me. There have been times this has happened in front of the children and the children and I have all been hugging and waiting until it passes. He’s a mental health professional (I know) so there are times when he has been able to keep this under control for a while (taking St John’s Wort helps) but there have been many times when he is angry and I feel like I am treading on egg shells. Sometimes this has been on a daily basis, particularly for a few hours in the morning, and has ruined a good part of the day. He is always sorry afterwards and he knows he is out of order. I am not perfect of course, but I am just focusing on DH’s anger issues. I am by nature, I think, quite a happy person but when he has one of these angry episodes it really plunges my mood.

Here’s the weirdest thing. In January he had two angry mornings in a row, nothing out of the ordinary, and on the second morning something just clicked inside me and I suddenly thought ‘I cant do this for the rest of my life’. My mood plunged and I entered a low depression from which I didn’t emerge for a couple of months and to be honest it is still bubbling under the surface and although I am carrying on with life as normal I am still quite emotional. This is very very unusual for me as I usually brush things off but it was like all the angry episodes over the 19 years we had been together just built up into one homogenous mass that has eaten away at me.

Whilst I have been thinking about an alternative future it has also given me feelings - unrelated to his anger issues - about whether I want to be with him for another 20+ years. It now just all feels like an awful long time. I have told him all this and we have had a couple of conversations about our future. The thing is since telling him how my feelings have changed for him he has kept an incredibly good check on his moods, not perfect but I am not saying I am either. But my low feelings and doubt about whether I can be with him for the rest of my life haven’t changed though and I find myself trawling the boards here trying to find some solution, researching divorce, researching people who have stayed together and not really knowing wtf to do.

It’s like I am in a quiet crisis, carrying on with day to day activities and life. We are abroad for the summer and he has gone back to the UK to work for a couple of weeks and I haven’t really yet missed him. This upsets me because like I said the 80% that was good meant we had fun together. We are lucky enough to have family to babysit and we can often go out. But the fact is I can’t seem to get over the build up of angry moods and a huge part of me feels the pull of freedom seems more and more attractive. I have emotionally checked out of the relationship and I don't know how to get back or if I want to. I can tell he knows this and he is trying his best but it isn’t making a difference at the moment. The thought however of tearing our family apart is also terrifying. I just don’t know what to do.

If you have got this far, well done! Any thoughts would be amazing.

I remember your original posts very clearly op - there was something so chilling about them and the way he thought he was entitled to behave. I'm horrified that he continued to subject you to his rages during lockdown.

So so glad to hear that you are free - or almost free. You may want to think carefully about what access you allow him to have to your new home when you move in; maybe best to make it a completely exh-free zone.

Genuinely wishing you all the very, very best for the future.

Lovely update to read, you've just given me hope. I'm not ready to tell my story but will a push and hand hold when I do. I'm close, lockdown has been a time of reflection for me and reading your update was what I needed to see today. I wish you love and happiness x

Thank you all for your responses. It's so interesting to see it from an outside perspective. You think you're not being abused as it's every day life and not all the time and anger is 'just his way' but actually you're right it IS abuse. It only takes one bad move, one foot on the head, to cause serious damage and even the verbal abuse, despite the times we got on really well, was unacceptable. Anyway I did it! I feel like this is a really good step.

Hope things are ok with you @stoptheride and that you manage to work out your next step ASAP. In a way DH did me a favour by treading on my head on NYE as it gave me that final push to say no more. But of course it shouldn't have got to that point. Be brave! You can do it.

OP I used to do the fractioning thing on here when recounting my exH’s terrible side, too. Countless posters gave me excellent advice for years and years which I somehow managed to ignore, for years and years, but I knew.

When you try to reconcile it in your mind and it doesn’t all quite add up, remember this: you don’t have to put up with this for the rest of your life, but if you stay, you almost certainly will.

It took me nearly 20 years, 10 of them married. 2 years free and I am SO SO SO SO much happier. I realise now that even the ‘better’ times — equivalent to your 80% —that I thought were okay were not ok—the eggshells were just quieter underfoot.

Wow, OP. You are very courageous and you, and your kids, will be fine. It will be tough but you have done the worst bit

This was the exact relationship of my mum and dad!

I now am emotionally fucked and have had bad relationship after bad relationships councilor tells me it springs from what i grew through

The constant walking on egg shells my mothers face drained down trodden

My dads a good man deep down never physically violent that i knew of but damn do i try and recreate what i saw growing up

Please see it effects the kids more then they realise now

Thanks @Helpimfalling that’s a really interesting perspective and other people have said similar. I am glad I have now separated from him. I know it might be difficult on the children but I also don’t want them to have a lifetime of walking on eggshells.

Same experience here as PP. Nowhere near as bad but grumpy, slightly selfish emotionally unaware father and appeasing, pleasing, kind, mum. Guess what kind of relationships I have pursued.....

Thank you for the updates and well done for getting out.
I completely understand. I lived for a long time with an angry man, but it certainly wasn't always bad and that's what made it so hard to go.
When I think back to what I put up with, I can't understand why I did. It never seemed bad enough for me to go though (it was!) and, like you, it was a final incident that ended it and gave me that push.
I don't want revenge, I don't want to break him, I don't want the kids to see a terrible fall out and in order to get this I am prepared to be overly reasonable with divorce arrangement...I just want to be free and live a simple but satisfying life and that is hopefully what will happen x

I see that you've separated from your h now by the looks of it, bit I was going to comment that unless he has rages, fits of temper around, looms over etc. his clients, colleagues and others, he doesn't have "anger issues". He chooses his victims - his wife and kids.

And I agree with the posters who says his looming over you, intimidation, leaving you and your kids huddling together etc. is fundamentally domestic abuse, just *non contact domestic abuse" (just made that up, but you know what I mean).

I guess he knows where to stop short in order not to have the cops at the door, and his job and reputation affected.

As a total aside ... and this is not saying he's not an abuser, because he is, but it's interesting that it's always (?) in the morning,makes me wonder if testosterone is playing some part in his aggression/urge to rage (because it's highest in the morning I think), or perhaps it's just mood related to having to get up a and out of the house and the whole unpleasant hamster wheel thing.

It's also clearly learned behaviour from his male relatives too.

I’m so glad you’re free, please be careful in future with contact arrangements, as pp said perhaps supervised contact following the horrific NYE incident? He’s a danger to you and your children. That was totally unacceptable on every level.

Also your initial 80% good, 20% bad and whether that was enough to leave. As others have said before, you can leave for any reason, there will always be good bits as abusers know it can’t be all bad or the other person wouldn’t put up with it. It’s a fine balance the abuser controls. I’m always minded of the shit cake analogy. If you had a cake with 80% delicious ingredients but someone had added 20% shit and mixed it in, would you eat it??

@ProfessorPootle

“I’m always minded of the shit cake analogy. If you had a cake with 80% delicious ingredients but someone had added 20% shit and mixed it in, would you eat it??”

OMG! This

Sorry op, o should have looke back through the thread more thoroughly before my latest post, I had t realised the domestic abuse became physical as well.

I suppose with someone indulging themselves in that level of anger/rage for so long .. and essentially being an abuser .. that was quite likely.

The only choice he left you was to get out and the demise of your marriage is entirely down to him (no matter what shit he and his supporters may come up with in future).

OP, well done for making the decision to separate..... nobody deserves to be curled up in fear - ever!

I do encourage you to tell the kids asap.... I am sure they will benefit from this change, but they will need time to emotionally adjust..... it can be tempting to avoid telling them until the last minute but that basically can increase their feeling of being out of control and in shock.

Good luck.