Bastard bingo around the campfire

[helplesshopeless]

Hi everyone...creating thread number 2 (or at least, attempting to...!) Link to old thread here

If that link doesn't work, I'll be forever indebted to any of you more mumsnet savvy folks helping me out!

I'll come back in a bit to post properly, thank you all again for your help and support

I find it utterly extraordinary OP that you describe him as just a normal man trying to be a better person.

His treatment of you for years was nasty, vicious, and horribly unkind.
Because he could.

There is nothing normal about your husband.

Your posts are chilling they are so paralysed with fear, after years of his treatment.

He is trying and failing to be nicer towards you, and instantly wanting praise for it.

He is an utter horror and always will be.

I just find it amazing you had the clarity to have an affair.

It is impossible to suddenly turn a switch and behave nicely towards someone, not genuinely.

The husband who treated you like the dirt on his shoe is the man he is, and always will be.

That is the type of man he is.

You are terrified of him and whilst your gut is screaming at you to get out, your pure fear of him drowns out most of what your gut is desperately trying to tell you.

There will come a time in your life when you will see this man as the vicious terrorist he is.

I hope for your daughter's sake you will be on the other side because kindly, your protestations that he is a good father and will be towards your daughter are a joke of monumental denial.

Good men and good fathers do NOT behave in the way your husband has for YEARS.

@helplesshopeless
wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Congratulations, all of this sounds like an absolute breakthrough for you.

@QuentinBunbury is right, baby steps, one at a time. There is no escaping the fact that this is going to be horribly painful.

Try not to beat yourself up. You know you'd have done anything in the world to spare him pain, but you can't go on sacrificing yourself just to protect him from himself.

Your nerves will be screaming at you that you're doing it all wrong, because he will be upset, and you'll want to minimise his upset, and you can't, unfortunately.

There is no right and wrong way of doing it, and there are no right and wrong things to say. When he's making sure you know how upset he is, please don't let him make you feel it's your cruelty causing it. You are a kind and gentle person and if he wants to maximise the drama, that's part of his stormy nature -- not your fault!

And although he will react with shock and incredulity, he already knows it. That's why his sinister tone frightened you last night.

my own well-being is measured and determined by his feelings, to the extent that I am struggling to do something that upsets him because of the resulting impact on me. So in addition to not knowing that I want independently, even if I do quietly know it, I can't act on it because of the impact of upsetting him. Which I suppose is partly a normal reaction to the idea of having to hurt another person, but also partly due to the whole issue around putting his feelings first and ahead of mine

OP this is massively insightful, I can't imagine you writing this even only a couple of weeks ago.

The one thing I would reflect on is, is your latest realisation a result of having a small amount of calm and space to tease out your own thoughts (you say he's been a lot better recently)? Once he gets half a sniff of the sense that he's losing control of you, you might find this miraculous change reverses somewhat. Consider how you might maintain your internal resolve when that happens, as I suspect is probably inevitable.

You don't have to act tomorrow - as PP said take time to make plans, and talk to friends so that you have an escape route if you need it. I know you'll dismiss this but given your previous descriptions of his behaviour it might be worth just a small thought about what you'd do if he really did become nasty as you're obviously not going to be progressing in the way that he wants...he may be ready to call time on things before you are, in the end.

Wow @helplesshopeless your post this morning...way to go girl . You are doing so, so well...

Take the rest of it at your pace...ducks in a row first as @QuentinBunbury has said...maybe start with some legal advice so you KNOW what can/might happen when you're ready to say something to him; that way you'll have an expert opinion to listen to in your head when he starts with threats about custody of DD, or how he's going to dump you financially.

As @Cavagirl says he may try and pre-empt your decision because he can't bear you to be the one deciding, so have an escape route planned as well - one of your friends - that you and DD can go to if you need to.

It may not get this nasty...he may just crumple as he'll know that's what'll affect you most...but your realisation this weekend is a significant one...you've got this lovely, just do it in your own time and with all the back-up in place (with us bunch of harpies as cheerleaders !)

Do you have a friend you could visit once a week, to do therapy there?

that's a really good idea @ravenmum

@helplesshopeless so LOVELY to read your message this morning. I know this is a weird thing to say to someone I don't know, but I'm massively proud of you for finding your own thinking space even in the middle of all this sadness and confusion.

You're right of course that getting on well with someone sometimes isn't a reason to stay married to them (and is a pretty low bar! I bet you sometimes have nice chats with your doctor or at the supermarket but you're not about to marry them either).

"Things like seeing friends, having them visit etc, especially when our daughter was younger, just wasn't worth the hassle and so I became quite a flaky friend for a while as a result. I do constantly drop or rearrange my proposed plans if he shows the slightest sign of being put out by them" This bit of your post was sad to read, but I hope remembering this - knowing it was long before your affair and just about the least threatening set of circumstances (in your own home, chaperoned by a tiny baby, probably female friends) - and he was STILL being an arsehole about it, has reminded you that you didn't create his bad side. He is that person.

At the same time I'm sad for your friends and I'm sad for you that your connection must have been damaged by this - out of interest, do you retain those friendships now or have they fallen by the wayside? Your friends who are still around must have had to put up with you being a flaky friend (they won't have known it was his fault) and probably had disappointments when things have been called off etc at his whim. They must like you a lot but who is he to try to stop women being friends with each other? I cannot trust any man who is intimidated by female friendships. It has the air of lions trying to pick off a gazelle from the herd...

This is a revelation indeed.
I agree, the best advice is to be prepared, because even if he is "your friend" he isn't going to behave like one once the separation is announced.
at some point when he blows up & says "I cant take this anymore" you can say, "I agree, this has run its course".
You can make tiny plans, open a new bank account, investigate a good divorce lawyer, visit a couple & choose a good one who understands domestic abuse. Make an aptmt with the CAB, & see if you are likely to be eligible for any benefits.
Get copies if all financial info, bank, mortgage, savings, pensions, his salary.
Remove this paperwork & leave it with a friend.
Make sure he doesn't know your media Log ins & delete any joint clouds....
Information is Power, things are less scary if you are informed.

@helplesshopeless
Partly because of how he'll be, but actually increasingly because I can't bare the level of hurt I'll be causing him, I just keep thinking that in the space of about 4 months his whole world has basically fallen apart, out of the blue from his perspective, and I'm just really so sad for him. When he's sad I just want to make it better for him
But what about you? Where have his thoughts of your happiness been all this while? Even now things like giving you space, you having individual therapy, being free to go and see friends without him checking up on you or making it difficult for you. This control he has isn't about making you happy, it's about keeping you in your place.
It's hard to make the call, it's hard to say the words out loud, it's hard to stick by those words especially when the nice behaviour is in play. I get it , I really do. I was in your position just six months ago but actually, in my case I feel like he was waiting for me say what he couldn't. He was angry, upset, probably a bit surprised (what?! He's not the catch he thought he was!!) he's accused me of having someone else (because that's the only reason he can think of why I wouldn't want to be with him) but actually he took it far better than I had anticipated. There's been the thinly veiled threats about the children but I know that he hasn't a clue how to look after them so I let that wash over me.
I wish you luck with whatever you decide to do, it sounds from your posts that you have made a decision now it's just about how to voice and act on it.

Thanks everyone for your support  

Thank you @Mix56 and @QuentinBunbury for the prep tips! Financially it's fine, we've already said we'd split everything 50/50, he's said he won't pay maintenance but we can deal with that further down the line.

In terms of immediate childcare arrangements, there's no way he'll move out, and I'm the primary caregiver so I won't either. So I think he'll want to have some sort of birdnesting arrangement with 50/50 presence until we sell our house, which I'm not happy with as she is very attached to me as her main carer and I'd much rather a very gradual approach. But we'll have to see where we get to.

Your nerves will be screaming at you that you're doing it all wrong, because he will be upset, and you'll want to minimise his upset, and you can't, unfortunately.

This is what's happening even anticipating any sort of conversation!! If he is near me and things feel tense I immediately need to try and dissolve the tension rather than allow it to be  I just cannot picture being able to actually speak up and spit it out.

Once he gets half a sniff of the sense that he's losing control of you, you might find this miraculous change reverses somewhat. Consider how you might maintain your internal resolve when that happens, as I suspect is probably inevitable.

Yes, and that is my concern, that I'm going to spin this out for ages and continue to torture him in the meantime because I am so desperate to make things ok whenever he's angry or sad. I have zero internal resolve. You're right though, he is likely to call it before me if I don't manage to sufficiently act like I'm ok. I'm just feeling very very sad for him whenever I look at him and I think he's picking up on that.

@FoxgloveSummers in terms of me being flaky with my friends, they've all stuck around luckily, they're a lovely lot  my husband wasn't trying to stop me from socialising or seeing people for any sinister reason, his main concern or irritation would have simply been things inconveniencing him or not fitting in with what he'd planned for himself. Just part of his extreme dickhead persuasions I suppose!

@wrigglewriggles thank you, yes you're right that he's not really been thinking of me properly. But he has been trying very much to process my affair, attempt to forgive me, and still desperately wants us to be happy together. I've asked a lot of him these last few months in terms of things that have stretched him emotionally and I suppose I didn't have much bargaining power after cheating, but he's tried his best to make things work. And I'm not trying to defend him here, just feel very sad for him, as I may have mentioned once or twice

Just don't know how I'm going to be able to do this to him!

OP a very wise poster on here called @eckhart who may well be on here under a namechange once said something I'll always remember, which I'll attempt to paraphrase.

You aren't punishing him by leaving. What is happening is a natural consequence of his own actions. When you drop a glass, it breaks. We don't say "that's gravity there, punishing the glass". The glass breaking is a consequence of it having been dropped. You leaving is a consequence of how he has treated you. You bear no blame for that, like gravity bears no blame for breaking the glass.

Yes, he will be sad. I also doubt whether the kind of meek, broken-hearted sadness at losing someone he utterly cherished that you are attributing to him is actually what he will feel. I expect it will be more complicated than that, and will involve significantly more rage at loss of control and jealous possession than true sadness. But remember that these are all consequences. You will unfortunately, it seems, be the one to turn off the life support machine on your marriage. But you weren't the one that put it in hospital.

@helplesshopeless

Just don't know how I'm going to be able to do this to him!

I felt the same, more than two decades ago.

My first marriage eventually came to its end at a moment I hadn't expected. It was ridiculously early in the morning, maybe 5am, and I'd got up because of insomnia and my racing thoughts in a similar (ish) situation, (long-winded, fearful, indecisive, SO many conversations, couples counselling etc) was just about to take first sip of coffee when dh1 appeared, wanting to talk. I said - 'don't do this now, I haven't even had my coffee yet and I'm telling you it's not a good idea to try to have this conversation now' and gave him a hard, warning stare. He said, well I think we're done. And I said - yes. Yes I think we are.

It was horrendous, it was unbelievably sad, but finally it was a relief. It had been eight exhausting months.

Just keep on doing whatever feels right for you, OP. Eventually one of you will crack

Thank you @FantasticButtocks and @Cavagirl

We were very close to ending it last night and he kept saying we made a commitment to giving our daughter a stable home when we chose to have a baby and he can't believe she's going to have a life of being ferried between two homes and two parents.

Can anyone help me avoid getting sucked into that train of thought (outside of the argument of her not having a stable loving home if we stayed together as I think we could give that)?

Better two happy homes than one, unhappy one.

Just agree. You can't believe it either, it's not what you expected to happen.

You don't have to engage. In fact you are better not engaging.

Listen to the song "Liquid" by Ruth Anne and channel that.

Did you make a commitment to give your child a stable, happy home when you had her though? What were your thoughts? What did/do you want for your daughter? I suppose for mine, my main concern was that she was healthy and as she grew up, happy and secure in her own self. I did assume she would have two parents living in the same house, but her dad left pretty soon after she was born, so that went out the window. He met someone else, with whom he is very happy and she has half-siblings. It did not occur to me to use this argument to try and get him back.

The way to avoid getting sucked into the narrative that you both made this commitment to provide your daughter a stable, happy home is to recognise that it is not your narrative. His narrative works because it builds on things which are important to you (stability, love, family) and wraps them up in the status quo.

So

1. Stability can be provided through a consistent contact schedule and amicable co-parenting (if you are serious about separating, start pushing your counter-narrative which demonstrates that you expect decent behaviour putting your daughter’s best interests at the centre; this will make him look unreasonable if he starts threatening over contact and not considering what is best for DD). Arguments about contact should not be a way of continuing control, so try and head that one off.

1. Loving: both of you will still love DD. This is independent of whether you still love each other. However, I think this is where you will come up against your desire not to hurt your husband because implicit here is that you don’t love him, which is what he doesn’t want to recognise and he thinks can be resolved by creating an emotional concept which you both buy into (a loving home instead of love for each other). This has the potential to work because you recognise this emotional concept could be provided, so you need to be very clear about the costs v benefits of this (as you see them, not as he does)

1. Home. Cliche alert: home is where the heart is. It is probably difficult for you to imagine an alternative home if you have not looked at alternatives and seen a lawyer etc. But can you visualise this alternative home? Or for your daughter, alternative homes? It is a truism to say that it is not divorce which breaks homes (to use your/his emotive phrasing) but everything which happens before to lead up to that point. You and he will have different perspectives on when the things started which led up to separation, if you decide to separate, but the point remains that the damage is not caused by separation and divorce but what happened before. You are giving fixing things a jolly good go, but what you have learned is that his behaviour is controlling for whatever reason and the only time there is calm is when you are not rocking the boat. So future stable, loving home with him = helplesshopeless not rocking the boat. You can fill in the gaps of everything not rocking the boat means.

In my experience, separating from a controlling person was not a linear process, but more like the ebb and flow of a tide which takes you closer to the point you want to be.

My final point is that you need to be clear in your own head what you want to do and why, not because a lot of people on MN think something. I don’t mean that to sound patronising or like you don’t know your own mind, but that this is not our lives or our experiences, but yours. Whatever you do, at whatever pace, is right for you.

we made a commitment to giving our daughter a stable home
I see your commitment to your dd, OP. But I'm afraid I don't see his. Stability doesn't mean having one single brick-and-mortar house all your life. It means having loving, reliable parents and knowing they have your back. Before your dd was born he was already acting unreliably: having temper tantrums, disrespecting you. Sometimes nice (wow!), sometimes nasty so you never knew what you were going to get. Where's the stability in that?

The ideal scenario if you break up is that being apart allows each of you to calm down, get your heads straight and find a position of peace from which you can offer your daughter the stability she needs.

Remind your husband that the more peaceably this goes, the better your shared parenting arrangements will work and the sooner you can establish a settled routine. My bf lives in the next street to his ex. His 11yo can walk from one home to the other in a couple of minutes. My kids are adults but I also live a 15-minute walk from my ex so they can just pop round easily. How much ferrying will your area require?

Can you/he articulate what is so dreadful about it, from your daughter's perspective?

A lot of the language you have used (and apparently he uses) is actually around what expectations you have for what a good/successful/happy family looks like.

he can't believe she's going to have a life of being ferried between two homes and two parents
This really does sound like "I can't believe her life isn't going to be as I planned it" - he's not saying "gosh are we sure her life would be better with us separated, how can we minimise the impact on her" etc. And OP you've made similar comments, re. sibling, your measure of success as having a nuclear family, etc.

There's no shame in any of that, of course you have dreams about the perfect life for your DD. But actually none of the train of thought you're referring to is focused on her, it's about how both your expectations of the life you are capable of giving her as parents, given the state of your marriage, is different now.

And for your own, personal train of thought - far far far better for her to have a happy mummy, a mummy who isn't tiptoeing about daddy's moods, who doesnt cancel plans with friends because "its not worth the hassle" she gets, who - if in a relationship - feels loved, valued and cherished and models that relationship to her daughter - or is single and demonstrates that no relationship is better than a bad one. I honestly would fear for your daughter if you stay, because by staying you implicitly endorse your marriage as a model of The Ideal Marriage to her, and you endorse his behaviour as This Is How Husbands Treat Their Wives and your behaviour as This Is How Wives Manage Their Husband's Moods - and that will be her foundation for a life of attachment.

Well OP, your response to that is "I can't believe you treated me the way you did for years, so yes life doesn't always work out as we planned".

I realise you wouldn't dream of saying that but it's the truth.

Agree with him that "yes I can't believe it but things don't always work out as you hope".

helplesshopeless different circumstances, but my partner and I live together with a lot of emotional distance between us .Our son is nearly 30 ,lives at home ,very limited social life ,works ,seems content .He has never had a relationship.

I am sure that being brought up in a household where I have struggled hugely with unhappiness and feeling trapped (although on the surface things are ok ) has affected him .And not in a good way .

Many children nowadays have seperated parents, they don't see themselves as being ferried between parents and homes they just see it as going to a parent and their home.

If there is a schedule in place that is stuck to it just becomes part of life.

Even children whos parents live miles apart don't see it as ferrying, its just travelling time and is part and parcel of seperated parents.

Your husband is projecting completely and knows a nuclear family is your ideal and is trying to make you feel guilty.
No one has children planning to split from the father but sometimes life gives us a curveball and we have to embrace it.

Your daughter will be fine, she is still young and this will be the norm for her.

I split from my daughters dad at the worst time possible, the year before her GCSEs but you know what, she did great, she has just finished college and is off to Uni in September.
My daughter has told me more than once that she wished we had split earlier because then she would have had a happier home.
My marriage was emotionally abusive snd full of emotional affairs on his side and I thought I hid it well when in reality I was a moody, angry mum a lot of the time and we all walked on eggshells around my husband/their dad.
I regret not leaving earlier.

My daughter loves having 2 homes, the main plus is 2 lots of presents and 2 Christmas dinners 😁
Now she is old enough to drink her dads place is convenient for town whereas I live in the middle of nowhere.

When her dad and I split all her school friends were jealous as they wanted 2 houses and 2 bedroons decorated differently - teenagers are so fickle🙄

I hate the fact my marriage ended, I hate the fact my children come from a 'broken home' because I wanted a perfect family but when we split no one cared, no one judged me,honestly its so normal no one bats an eyelid.

If you mention broken home to my daughter she says she is not from a broken home as that implies damaged and unfixable but she is from 2 happy homes as her parents split.
If you keep positive about the situation so will your daughter, I never moaned about sharing my time with her, the travelling or her dad and she is now a well rounded young woman.

I can see a lot of myself in you albeit my husband had the emotional affairs, I might post later my story which will hopefully give you hope and courage in ending your marriage, it took me years to end mine and all the thoughts you have now are exactly what I had.

@helplesshopeless I never had children (= personal Hiroshima) so I can't comment on that side of things, but as the daughter of parents who shouldn't have stayed together, please don't worry on her behalf. I'd give anything to be able to put the clock back to when my mum was younger, and somehow have myself as an adult contemporary who could encourage her to escape and make a better life for herself. It torments me constantly to think that she has had nearly 70 years of this marriage, now, when 20 (even 10!) would have been more than enough.

Re you hurting your husband. I know we can talk till we're blue in the face about the logic of this; you know as well as I do that this whole situation is not of your making and you are not deliberately inflicting suffering on him. He has brought this on himself. (I think one of the fundamental principles of tragedy is that the hero[ine] creates their own downfall? This is why theatre is so cathartic -- we all recognise this fundamental pattern in life.)

(In a way, you have also brought this on yourself by being kind, supportive, self-effacing, etc, and other fine qualities that will serve you much better outside this relationship. So in a sense, this is your personal tragedy too.)

Just don't let him twist the themes so that you're painted as the cruel baddy. You don't have a malicious bone in your body.

You have nurtured his feelings for as long as you can remember, sensitive to the slightest upset. And now you're going to be the "cause" of that upset and there will be absolutely nothing you can do to make things better (your best efforts will probably backfire). It is a ridiculously painful and difficult task, and at times it will feel impossible, and at times you might give up because it's too overwhelming.

It is possible, though. You just have to keep telling yourself that his feelings are no longer your concern. I know this is like saying a baby's feeding is no longer the mother's concern. But separating his feelings from yours, and taking responsibility for YOUR feelings instead of his, is what you must do -- not only to leave this relationship, but to become completely whole as a human.

And he must do the same.

It is horrible, but it is vital in the long run.

It's going to be hard enough getting through this. Try to focus on your own feelings and don't try to take his on board as well, or you will exhaust yourself.

It might help to keep reminding yourself that he is stormy by nature. So what looks like intolerable suffering to you might be a state that he considers... well, not enjoyable exactly, but certainly much closer to normal than if you were feeling that way yourself.

@helplesshopeless

We were very close to ending it last night and he kept saying we made a commitment to giving our daughter a stable home when we chose to have a baby and he can't believe she's going to have a life of being ferried between two homes and two parents.

Just change 'a stable home' to 'a decent life', OP.

How about-

"Yes, DH, we made a commitment when we had a baby to give her the best life we can. I am still committed to that. Are you?"

Thanks all. We've had a very emotional morning discussing what to do. I've been unable to provide him with any more commitment than I've already given him so he's said he can't go ahead any further on that basis. Unfortunately he said he was about to submit the divorce filing but now won't tell me whether he did actually do it or not, so everything is a bit up in the air at the moment

What a knob. Seriously. Everything has to be about him.

Stick to your boundaries helpless you've done all you can. This is now his choice. Please see a solicitor ASAP and think about what is non negotiable for you. Write it down and keep it safe. Don't let him call the shots