Ok this may be long so bare with...
Me and H have been together 17 years, married 8 years 2 beautiful boys. We were teenage sweethearts, and I loved him so much. He was sweet in the sense of he would send me flowers, we’d go on dates, make a huge effort for birthdays (with help from my mum) you get the idea. 12 years ago we bought a house, our first house together, very excited, couple of months in the house he proposed. 4 years later we married. Since we’ve been married it was like he didn’t need to make the effort anymore. Everything took a nose dive really, even to the point where he just didn’t bother with my birthdays at all, not even a card, and at least 2 years in a row broke my heart by not even muttering the words happy birthday to me. That hurt. He always said it wouldn’t happen again but it did. Add to this, my mum and step dad paid for a lovely honeymoon to the Lake District for us because they knew we couldn’t afford one ourselves. I was over the moon with it, so grateful and he made out like he was. We got there first day and everything was great lovely place. Until the night (let me just throw in now that he smokes weed, didn’t take any with us and relies on it for sleep otherwise he cant) his mood changed, he was cranky, didn’t want to do anything, then early hours as I was trying to go to sleep he said he wanted to go home, that he thought it was boring and that we’d be bored out of a our brains. I spent the whole night sobbing, thinking how much my mum would be upset etc. Eventually I gave in, I’d have rather go home than stay there miserable for another 4 days. I was gutted. So was my mum. But tried to make out as if I didn’t like it either so he didn’t look as bad. I forgave him for this.
When I was pregnant with DS2 I ended up having to decorate his room by myself heavily pregnant cos he just sat around saying there was no rush, to me there was. This resulted in him falling out with my mum for 4 years cos she wasn’t happy with how he was being.
When our babies came along he wasn’t the best dad, he didn’t do nappy changes, feeds etc he helped make and sterilise bottles but that was about it. Even when our 2nd DS was a nightmare baby who screamed solidly for 5 months he would never take over from me to give me a break.
Team all that with him never wanting to do anything as a family, hating and ruining our first family holiday and not wanting to take our son to his football training( H loves football) things like u can build an idea of what sort of dad he is.
So the last few years I’ve been in and off with depression, and I’ve always put it down to all of that, never feeling loved and appreciated. When I’m depressed I turn to food and that’s led me to gain a lot of weight over the last couple of years. Obviously I get upset with myself about this, and then other things get on top of me and I have a bit of a rant about life in general. Rewind back to January and one day I did this, I had a rant cos I was feeling down about myself and hated myself, couldn’t lose weight, thought I was shit at my job etc. Instead of getting support I get a complete meltdown from him, he can’t help me it’s all his fault I’m this way blah blah and the short of it is we are still here trying to work something out now.
9 months of hell, deciding wether to stay or go cos I can’t take anymore and I still can’t seem to fully make the decision. Every time I say I’m leaving he tried to talk me out of it, saying he’s changing his attitude and we can work it out. The truth is I’m not sure I can put all of it behind me and move on, I don’t think I ever got over how he treated me, it still makes me angry. I feel like if I stay it’ll end up happening again at some point cos a leopard never changes its spots! He wants a lazy laid back life not doing anything, I want to go out with the kids and live before they grow up. But something is stopping me. I just don’t know what. I don’t even know if I love him anymore, I can’t even work that out. My brains fried 🤯
What would you do if you were me?