Advice on leaving vs staying for your child

[GlasgowMum92]

Hello,

Never posted on one of these forums before but looking for advice and if anyones been in a similar situation.
Me and my husband havent been right for a while, feel like 2 people living in a house together with a child rather than a team.
i feel like i have to push him to do anything at first it didnt bother me but as ive got older and have more aspirations the more ive realised he has a lack of motiviation i practically had to kick him to get a dead end job and was "looking" for a new job for years while we were together before he actually bothered to do anything new and that took my son to come along. Told him to go back and retrain if he wants as i was earning enough to support him doing this but he was full of excuses. He got a new job that was a 3,000 pay rise but even still theres places to go from there but he has no want to do this, and he cant ua a work life balance as and excuse aa during lockdown he was doing 60 hour weeks if not more, leaving at 6am and coming home well after 7pm when my son was in bed and not being paid for it. Which meant i was working from home doing everything for our son, all housework, all cooking, bedtimes bathtimes etc. (I think this is where my resentment began too)
Says he wants to do an open university degree too which i fully support and as he is in Scotland would get funding but its one excuse after another to avoid doing it.
He has terrible money management i take control of all bills, he couldnt even tell me who our gas electric supplier or cost of the bills are.
He had responibility before and gave him the benefit of the doubt, he defaulted on something after 3 years of me trying to repair both our credit scores as when we moved in together we made some bad choices and he lost his job(his own fault). So he has put us 6 years behind trying to get a mortgage as currently private letting.
I still love him but dont feel like im in love with him anymore, we have a small child hes 16 months, hes a good dad but does struggle with him a bit. And can be a bit short with him.
If we split i know i earn enough and will be finacially stable to run a home. But i worry he wouldnt manage and couldnt afford to live himself and look after our son. (i earn more than him.and money is house money bur i never seem to have any for myself but he can for cigarettes)
Our house isnt a tense enviroment or issues so thinking should i stay for the sake of my son as he lights up when he sees his dad, and he can see his dad this way. I just have to do the if hes ill take time off work, take him to nursery or grandparents on my way to work, pick him up, make all his dinners. Just feel like i have started to resent everything i have to do and expect help. If i was on my own i know what needs done and dont have to rely on anyone or expect anything from anyone else
Ive stopped moaning about things not being done and just accept the way they are.
I havent felt truly happy in a long time but dont know if im over thinking small things ive tried to talk to my otherhalf but he shoots it down like im over reacting to things. But my sons happiness comes before everything else, what would you do ?

Sorry for the long post. Just didnt know who else to ask as my mum has told me all.couples go through phases of this but i think she resents the fact i want to leave and she could never leave my dad but phases dont usually ask this long, and truthfully i would have left had i not got pregnant.

What do you get out of this relationship now?.

If your child as an adult was in such a relationship, would you be advising him to stay for the sake of the kids or to leave?. I am sorry that your mother has not been more supportive of you here and her counsel really is pretty much worthless.

What do you want to teach your son about relationships and what will he learn from you both if you choose to stay with your H?.

Staying for the sake of the child rarely if ever works out well and your son is not going to say "thanks mum" to you for doing that to him. He will come to realise that you stayed purely because of him and that is a terribly heavy burden to place on a child. Whose sake would you be staying for; would it be his or just as likely yours because it is somehow "easier"?. As our children grow older, they tend to replicate relationships similar to what their parents modeled. 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.” Living in mediocrity or worse burdens children with very confusing messages about relationships and happiness. It certainly instructs them that loving marriages and partnerships are not their birthright.

Your own life with your H sounds very much like a parent and child relationship too with your H being the child (you being the responsible adult). When you separate what he does and where he goes is not your problem; why would you want to make it yours?. Are you codependent in relationships also, why are his needs more important?.

You've stated that if you had not got pregnant you would have left. That really tells you all you need to know. He has not really changed in all the years you've known him; you've basically carried him and probably also carried on where his mother (a woman who probably waited on him hand and foot also) left off.

Not infrequently, people are simply afraid to move on with their lives and take their own responsibility for happiness. Financial concerns or the fear of being alone often motivate such paralysis, hidden beneath the mask of staying together for the children. Unloving or conflicted marriages often follow a lineage as they are passed down from generation to generation. And so the cycle continues. 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 not failure, living in such unhappiness is.

He will bring you down with him . Don't let this happen to you .

I am in the exact same situation. Nothing terrible has happened I’m just fed up with the monotony of it all. Like you I earn more he pays towards some bills but that’s it, I pay for everything else, any days out, anything for our child. I am suppose to just accept that he doesn’t have any money left. I want to stay for my daughter (she is 11) and about to start secondary school but I can’t bear this relationship

@Blossombo

I am in the exact same situation. Nothing terrible has happened I’m just fed up with the monotony of it all. Like you I earn more he pays towards some bills but that’s it, I pay for everything else, any days out, anything for our child. I am suppose to just accept that he doesn’t have any money left. I want to stay for my daughter (she is 11) and about to start secondary school but I can’t bear this relationship

Why do you see that as a gift to her though? Showing her that a woman's role is to do everything even if she is unhappy and unfulfilled, and a man's role is to do the bits he wants to opt into... don't you worry about the fact you're teaching her that is what a relationship dynamic is supposed to look like?