Can you keep a family unit together but live apart from your H?

[NaturalIndigo]

I know that most advice is to leave quickly and not to drag out a bad relationship, as it can be damaging to kids. But in my case, our family life and broader social interactions are good; I just dislike spending time with my H on a one to one basis.

He can be funny and charming, especially when in a group of friends or strangers and I enjoy seeing him like that. But when we’re home and the DC are out/asleep, he’s just a negative pessimist and he drains me. I don’t enjoy conversing with him and we bicker a lot when we’re alone.

My DM could see this personality trait when we first started dating and she advised me that we were not well matched, but I stupidly ignored her advice. Sadly she’s long dead now, but she was right that my H was emotionally damaged by his own parents’ very acrimonious divorce when he was a toddler.

We have busy careers, 3 DC and quite a lot of help at home (nanny, cleaner etc), so we thankfully don’t spend much time together on our own and our issues aren’t about domestic chores as such. He’s just a nag. His own mother is anally retentive and a perfectionist and as a result, my H gets stressed about small things like a pile of magazines being on the kitchen counter or not enough variety of vegetables at meal times. He’s a fuss pot.

Whilst our DC are at home, I can deflect some of the solo time together, as we’re often busy and most of our conversation is around our DC and their education/outings/presents/parties/activities etc. When they have all left home for uni at 18 (which is actually 12 years away) there will be a lot more free time outside of work to be home.

So I suppose my question is if a family is going to break up, when is the least damaging time for the children? I would really appreciate anyone’s experience or thoughts.

My heart hurts at the thought of sharing custody of our DC. I don’t want to live apart from them. I suppose my conclusion is that it makes sense to separate when they have started to build their own lives independently of our family home. Thankfully we’re financially comfortable, so at that point I could just move out to another property. I wouldn’t need to formally divorce him (unless he wanted to) nor would we need to sell the family home.

From the outside it probably looks like we have no problems. I would have a hard time trying to justify why I’m throwing a grenade into our family life. One solution could be that I decide that I want to live by the sea and hope that H decides he prefers the current location more. That way I wouldn’t be a bad person and we could hopefully come together all of us to celebrate birthdays and Christmas together.

I’m trying to make a plan, as we came back from holiday a few weeks ago and it really was too much one to one time with my H. That always makes me want to run away and I need to know that I’m not stuck. Thank you if you’ve read this far

I don't know if there's an ideal age. I do know that your life sounds shitty, do you want to carry on like this for more than a decade?

What does your husband think of the way things are?

I’m in a similar boat. We have separated, and are living separately, so seeing each other and DC each day, we’re throwing a party together tomorrow. He’s a lovely man. I’m assuming it’ll change when he meets someone else and she won’t want him to spend time with me/us as a family

Either you’re together or you’re not. How can you just bumble along with someone you don’t really like? Do you love him?

I’m in the same boat so totally understand OP. Up until now the thought of not seeing kids each day keeps me here in limbo, with a man who quite obviously detests me. I can deflect as long as I maintain nodding dog status. We are polite but have no interest in each other at all. It’s draining but the balance is to not see my kids grow up. Not easy.

I know it’s easy for me to say but it’s so damaging to kids to stay in an unhappy relationship for the sake of not breaking up tutor family. They need happy parents in happy, positive relationships (or happily single of course). My parents’ Divorce came as a relief to me- aged about 8.

In a similar situation and watching with interest.

I don't get what you mean about moving to the sea. Do you mean now, or when the children have left home?

Families and marriages are all so unique that the only person who can work this out is you. You will have equal numbers of people on here saying their parents divorcing fucked them up / was the best thing ever. There are so many variables in your own situation. If the children are happy and the two of you don't argue or have horrible atmospheres, then they're probably happier with the status quo.

For now I've accepted my lot in life. I have so many great things, beautiful children, amazing house, interesting job that I just try to ignore the fact that my marriage is a disaster. Most of the time this works and I do feel that I and the children would be more unhappy if we divorced (he would want 50/50 custody and that would make everyone unhappy).

Good luck with whatever you decide

@wonderllama, I think similar. I don’t think my H or I like each other, but there’s a familiarity and our family unit when all together is lovely. We both adore our DC and I think that’s the sticky tape over some gaping cracks.

I think we could be happy spending as little time together as possible. I often mute my own ideas if I can’t be bothered to engage in a heated debate. It is draining and quite sad.

Once our DC are grown and living their own family lives, there’s not much to save. I realised that I wouldn't care if my H had a dalliance with someone else, so on that basis our relationship (outside of being co-parents) is pretty terminal. It’s a very long time in the future though!

@GetRid, I mean moving to the coast when we’re older and I no longer need to be based in the family house to be with my DC (probably when I’m not working full-time, too). It’s just an idea really of putting physical distance between us without explicitly or publicly stating that there’s a massive split. That’s selfish of me I suppose, as it would be nice to be friendly and on good terms for family events, without animosity.

@newmefor2020, it sounds like you’ve got a good balance at the moment. Another party involved would always change that. I think that’s why I hope we can be married, but not living in the same place all the time. I think it’s wishful thinking on my part though

NaturalIndigo,

What are you getting out of this relationship now?.

What did you yourself learn about relationships when you were growing up?

Why would you at all want to remain married to such a frankly dreadful sounding person like your H?. Better to be apart from each other and potentially happier than to be together, still married and bound up in your own respective miseries. Children are perceptive and pick up on all the vibes both spoken and unspoken here; they know that something already is amiss here and you cannot protect them from that given that the two of you still reside under the same roof.

Your children are not going to say thanks mum to you for staying with him if you were to choose to do so; they will call you daft for doing so and could also accuse you of putting him before them (thus affecting your own relationship with them going forward). The children here are not and should NOT be used as glue to bind you and he together.

What do you want to teach them about relationships and what are they learning here from you two?. Do you really want to teach them that a loveless marriage is their norm too, some legacy that would be to leave them.

When marriages are angry, conflicted, or terribly mediocre, parents often default to staying together for the purported sake of the children. I wonder whose sake it’s really for. As our children grow older, they tend to replicate relationships similar to what their parents modelled. As parents we’d never say we want our children to suffer or struggle in their relationships. Yet that’s the greater likelihood. It’s not what we say, but what we DO that matters. Telling our children they deserve healthy, respectful, and loving partnerships isn’t taken to heart if we don’t have the courage to live up to our own words. What we model for them is very much what we might expect for them in their future relationships. From this perspective we might question the sincerity of the expression “for the sake of the children.”

Waiting for the children to go off to uni at 18 and then divorcing may make the kids feel guilty that their parents sacrificed their own happiness for them. We owe our children much more than the physicality of an intact family. We owe them our truth.

Not infrequently, people are simply afraid to move on with their lives and take their own responsibility for happiness. Is that what you're doing here?. Financial concerns or the fear of being alone often motivate such paralysis, hidden beneath the mask of staying together for the children. At other times, it’s easier to blame your partner for your discontent than to come out of your sense of victimhood. Unloving or conflicted marriages often follow a lineage as they are passed down from generation to generation. And so the cycle continues. Is this what we really wish for our children? It is much more challenging to come to terms with our own circumstances and face our fears than it is to hide behind them as we stay together “for the kids.”

Divorce is indeed a major life transition and in some cases traumatic. Divorce isn’t failure, but living in unhappiness is. Divorce, in and of itself, need not be harmful to children. It is the adversarial and contentious process of divorce, if continued, that may wreak damage. Yet research indicates that most children adapt to their new circumstances within a few years. Having two parents successfully move forward with their lives teaches an invaluable lesson: that we deserve to be happy and to feel loved. Conversely, remaining in relationships that perpetuate anger, devaluation, and lack of positive interactions leaves an indelible scar on children.

@newmefor2020 it might not end up like that. I regularly see both my ex and his girlfriend and sometimes go for meals there. Long incremental process to get there but ever so glad we can be like that for both mine and DC's sake.

Do not model behaviour you don’t your children to repeat. Kids aren’t stupid, the weird dynamic that comes from Mum and Dad not being alone together will be noticed and normalised because it will their norm. Can you imagine the pressure on them to alway be present so that you two are never alone.

On paper, your proposal sounds plausible but in reality it will be a difficult dynamic that your children will be forced into living.

In a similar boat: we're separated, but live separately-together and coparent.

We have our own space within the home, if DD is around we do family time, i have 3 nights 'off' a week and so does he, tho its flexible. I go visit my bf. If we are both in and DD is out (rare), we just wont interact much, i can remove myself to my room or go out if i wish, just get on with my life.

Ohdeargodwot- your situation is different. You’ve separated but are living like flat mates, you’re not pretending to be together. Does your daughter know you’re separated? How old is she?

I agree it’s probably not for the sake of the kids’ happiness; more because the adults don’t want to miss out on their kids’ lives.

We LAT and it has saved our relationship and its now mostly fulfilling, but tbh, I dont want it to be forever either.

LAT?

OP, when did 'not being the bad person' become so much ore important than your own happiness? Why would ending a relationship that makes you miserable be 'bad'?

There's so much good advice on this thread. I would only add that you are assuming divorce would be a 'bad' thing. This assumption is not necessarily true.

What does LAT mean?

here, let me google that for you

www.google.com/search?q=lat+relationship&oq=LAT&aqs=chrome.0.35i39j0j69i57j69i61l2j69i60.3103j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8