What was the moment that you realised you had to leave the father of your child/ren

[StressLevel100]

And how long from that moment did it take for you to actually leave ?

Bump

When I discovered he had a porn addiction but refused to do anything about it. When he kept inviting a female "friend" round after our baby was born - she was in love with him and chose to try and get with him when she knew I was weak. It took 12 weeks to leave.

I've now realised he was psychologically abusive.

And he's now with his "friend", playing happily families with my baby.

Cunt.

Pretty much the moment I found out he was cheating.
It took him 6 months to move out to another country and basically abandon his DD after all his promises. Cunt!

@hellsbellsmelons, that’s awful, was he a bad father before he left.. or just always a selfish arsehole?

@RLEOM, urgh what a prick and yet he gets to happily carry on with his life

@CassandraGemini, sounds a lot like me, I opened up to my sisters and later my best friend. They couldn’t believe how much I put up with and covered up and yet he is still begging for a second chance. I think it’s because he really couldn’t do more than a few hours of looking after DD with no one helping him. He’d forget to feed her, clean her etc

No he wasn't at all. He was a good dad and she was such a daddy's girl. But within a few months he had stopped paying anything and was living off grid. Never visited her after promising to do so every 4-6 weeks.
He just changed overnight. It was horrible.
She doesn't speak to him now. Doesn't want him to walk her down the isle. That will be my job and my dads job as we have both supported her and her dad hasn't. She actually hates him.
It's a shame because I made sure no-one bad mouthed him around her. Was always positive. I was the one to book flights to visit him and pay for them. But he did nothing and she soon realised what he was like.

She's now such a wonderful woman as well.
He's missed out and it's all his fault and he knows it!

Mine was death by a thousand cuts but the one that nailed it was when I had to bundle DD into the car to go and pick him up at 6am after he'd been on an all night bender. Again. He was with waiting with another woman he worked with outside the casino - I later found out they'd already been shagging for 6 months. He left a month later. We'd been together for 17 years and were married for 6. Two years on he's seen the error of his ways and is still begging me to take him back. 🙄 Over my dead body. Or his, I'm not fussy 🤷‍♀️

Mine was death by a thousand cuts also.

I put up with so much emotional abuse and financial abuse.

One morning I just woke up and thought I'm actually not failing or taking steps back going
Back to my mum and dad's to get myself and my child sorted.

Life is really too short to put up with his shit. So now I don't.

We are much happier.

He's still a cunt.

My girlfriend has told me the moment with her ex, hope it's ok to chip in with it:

She had already told him she needed to think of leaving him after he'd come from gambling again. The slippery slope was there - she had warned him she would several times.

But THE moment was a few days later, when she called from her parents (where she'd taken the kids to get some space) and he started just chatting normally. She reminded him that she was seriously thinking about leaving him and he simply replied "No you won't."

Not threatening, not pleading, just totally and utterly firm in his belief that he could fuck up as much as he wanted for the rest of his life, and she'd put up with it. That was the moment.

That was about four years ago . He does have his kids every other weekend - my girlfriend has pointed out that he actually sees them more and has a better relationship with them than he did when he lived at home (he had a workshop there, which was basically his "hide from the kids and drink and smoke den")

Imagine a pair of scales with happy and sad written on each one. All the time they tip towards happy the relationship is bearable.
When they are on sad at different degrees for the majority of the time it's time to leave.
You know when it's time.
First husband hellish divorce over a few years as he was too psychotic to let go, divorce 2 fairly quick and straightforward as he's a wet weekend and will never challenge anything.
Good riddance to the pair of them - both an utter waste of space.

@hellsbellsmelons, bloody hell what a waste of space. My stbxp hasn’t been great with DD at all and I’m convinced he is only stepping up to keep me around, I hope I’m wrong and that he continues to work on their relationship but even now he doesn’t really speak to her.

I’ve worked so hard to try and reverse my feelings and be ok again.. but I just don’t trust that this isn’t some fake version of his selfish self. I also would love to have more than one dc as I’m so in love with my DD and being a Mum but I couldn’t do it again with him.

I knew for a long time that eventually I would leave, but was paralysed for about 18 months because I was scared about the size of the task. We have 2 dc's and I only had freelance work.

Then one night I opened up about how I almost felt suicidal sometimes because of his criticism and how demanding he was. The next day he called me a lunatic and said "poor Grace (our DD) she'll be the one in school with the bonkers mum"

The love died instantly in that second. It was weird, like a switch, the last dying embers of love i had went out, and I no longer cared for him at all. He took cruelty to another level that day, and it was then i started really acting to get away.

I was biding my time, applying for jobs and saving up and checking what I would be entitled to, but he must have noticed that i had emotionally checked out because one day he read my phone and exploded at me for messaging a friend saying i couldn't fucking wait for him to go away to work. It was a blessing in disguise. That was April 1st and fast forward to now I have a perm job, the kids are settled in nursery and im just waiting for him to buy me out of the house.

I can honestly say this has been the hardest year of my life though. But I couldnt stay.

When he was brain dead on a ventilator and my neurosurgeon colleague took my hand and said “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”
I had 24 hours after his fatal brain haemorrhage before he was harvested for organ donation, to try to come to terms with losing him.
My DDs were both babies at the time so have no memories of their wonderful dad.
To anyone who is scared of coping alone, and thinking of staying in an abusive relationship, I’d say pluck up your courage and leave.
I had to lose the love of my life with no warning in one awful day, but I managed to raise the DC alone and get back to full time work. That was 28 years ago, and we survived it somehow. The DC have now graduated uni and own their own homes, and I’m recently retired and at last having some “me time”. It is always possible to cope.

When our (then) 3 year old revealed his (last) affair. I told him to get out, he did,
(physically)r unning away from me and our child. It took him 5 minutes to set up home with the OW (including new puppy and his 3 older children). Our child was cut off 3 months later.

First of all I didn't leave, he had to leave because it was my house.

I think there were quite a few times before I made him leave that I should have done it sooner. The final straw was when he yelled at me because I complained he'd been at the pub all weekend. DD was only 10 months' old. He did much more terrible things than this, but for some reason that was the point at which I'd had enough. Had I not owned my own house, it might have taken me a lot longer.

Flyg
Your post made me cry!
So glad you left

Mine was a lot of back and forth.
However, the last and final time was ...

My Dp (at the time) he gone out for the evening. His brother & girlfriend came over asking where he was and came to see out dd’s. He turned his phone off and refused all calls. I broke down to his SIL that drugs had become a problem AGAIN. However, it was my daughter that said “I don’t like it when dad comes home as he’s always moody. It makes me anxious”.
He came home at 2.30am that morning out of his phone with no explanation of where he’d been, spent all money and told me to “oh just shut the fuck up”.
I lost it and kicked him out.

Hearing my daughter say that, took me back to my own childhood of walking on eggshells with an abusive father. It has been a hard year dealing with other personal problems and I’d began making excuses for his drug use. Yet I wasn’t falling off the wagon, I couldn’t.

It’s amazing the strength our children give us in the time we need it.

Sorry that was meant to say out of his face
A bender as usual.

After years of cheating and awfulness, the moment he actually held me by my throat against the wall and I knew he'd kill me if I stayed.

When he ran after me with a knife - that was the final straw after a lot of problems.
Never ever again !

He grabbed my hair and smashed my head against a wooden sofa arm over and over again. I had suffered years of sexual, psychological, emotional, physical and financial abuse and coercive control. The morning after this incident it felt like I had a long cord in my body that stretched every time I was abused and it finally snapped. I left. The second one was an alcoholic. He was good at first but as time went on he became more and more dependent upon alcohol. He became aggressive and eventually violent. I had him arrested and he spent a couple of weeks in prison. I tried to make it work but I couldn't. We did not have sex for four years. Someone said can you imagine yourself with him in five years. The thought of it scared me so I left. I am now engaged to an absolutely amazing man. Having a normal relationship was difficult at first because I didn't know what it was supposed to be like but it it is awesome.

15 years together, mostly ok. 5 weeks post partum and section , huge birth trauma thing he said the amount of time you are taking to recover is ridiculous, you are deliberately not coping for attention. He didnt take one day off work. No family support. I confided in friends, they stood by him. 8 weeks in he pushed onto our bathroom floor, shouting at me, withholding my son. He told me ss would take the baby if I tried to live alone. A year later he punched me. So many other things in between. Baby is now 22 months, we've lived away from him for 2 months, rehoused into social housing. House owned jointly. It took that long, even with Womens Aid support, you have to slowly change your thinking and daily life in order to get away, adapt slower than the shitty behaviour because it comes from someone who shouldn't. it wasn't instant, a necessary process. I'm glad I moved out. Grieving. Sad, but relieved.

Pretty much happening now. I am beginning to stand up to the emotional abuse and general nastiness which happens at regular intervals. He has not responded at all. Not trying one bit. Won't even talk. I am so angry with him. He just can't be arsed.

I knew I needed to leave the first night I brought the baby home, 4 days old, didnt say that bit sorry. He mocked me for not being able to walk easily, for struggling, called me a cunt, after the section. Made fun of me, shouted, swore. He'd been a dad 4 days.