NC because SIL knows my regular name.
I don’t know what I expect to get from posting this! A little sympathy or a ‘woman up’ maybe… and a warning to younger MNers who are in bad relationships.
I’m 66. I’m legally married to my partner of 30 years. It’s a relationship that has always been one sided and volatile and I have absolutely no idea why I’ve stayed in it for so long. I’ve always known that he didn’t love me and was a cock lodger. He did do the whole love bombing thing at first and has reactivated that as and when he’s needed to over the years…combined with threats and refusal to leave. It’s been a mess.
He’s rarely worked and when he has it’s only been for a day or two a week. I’ve paid for everything and he’s not been prudent with my money, the only good thing I’ll say is that when his parents died he inherited a reasonable sum and did put that into the joint pot but he is (not so) slowly working his way through it. I inherited my family home and that is where we now live and the profit from selling my flat paid off the huge amount of accumulated debt and for renovations and furnishings etc.
The situation now is that he isn’t working at all and has no income. He is 63 so another 3 years until he gets his pension which won’t be full as he hasn’t paid much in, although we have paid up as many years as we could. I get my work and state pension and we live on that but he is expensive (cigarettes, drink, ‘best of’ everything etc) and, while he insists we have a budget, makes no attempt to stick to it.
I could just about put up with all this but there’s no love or affection from him and never has been. Physical affection only ever related to sex and that fizzled out about 15 years ago. He doesn’t even really speak to me unless he wants something done or to moan about something. We sit in separate rooms but do still sleep in the same bed (super king so no danger of physical contact). I don’t think he’s had affairs, certainly not recently. He’s always had a bit of an issue with erectile disfunction so I don’t think he’s that bothered.
I know that if I left him I wouldn’t find anyone else although I have had opportunities over the years that I didn’t take. I’m ‘good for my age’ and can pass as early 50’s on a good day and I’m ‘young minded’ whereas he is happy to just sit indoors and watch TV.
I’ve tried telling him I want a divorce but he just ignores me and carries on as if I haven’t said anything. He can be very stubborn, as an example the other day he got annoyed because he asked me something and I had my headphones on, I said that I had to as his TV was loud and I couldn’t hear my music; since then he’s watched TV by peering at subtitles with no sound, this may well go on for weeks. He over-reacts to any perceived criticism.
Sorry, I don’t even know what I’m asking really. I just don’t know how to extricate myself from this. If I do try I know it will turn nasty. I am so angry with my younger self that I didn’t have the nerve to get out of it when I could but he was extremely volatile and I just kept putting it off.
It’s really just the knowing that I’ll never have love or affection or sex again that is really getting me down. I have been lucky and had 3 genuinely loving relationships in my past and I cherish those. It’s the cuddles and the laughs and the non-sexual intimacy that I miss the most and it’s become unbearable that I’ll never have that again.