I have name changed for this. I have posted a bit before but my thinking has come on a lot and I need some help any help thinking about this will be gratefully received. Basically I think I need to leave my husband, but the story is so unclear in my mind I worry I might simply be going mad. I am full of uncertainty and doubt over the last decade of my life. We have two kids under 10. I am at a point where I have lost a lot of weight, am not sleeping, struggling to meet work commitments, am gravitating towards any signs of kindness from friends and finding it hard to have the emotional energy to hold a space to engage properly in my kids' lives. Although he earns a lot more than me I am pretty much a single parent he rarely spends time with the kids and sort of uses the house as a backdrop to his career. He's in and out, often bad-tempered, or sometimes with a very fake cheerfulness, which I almost feel he does to practice and get into place his work persona when he's got something social/a meeting. He has always refused to do things together. He will do things alone, his way, or not at all. One example has been refusing to join in with festivities that he didn't himself organise (though he never has time or volunteers to organise them). He will call me a control freak for going ahead and organising the kids' birthday presents and getting together a thoughtful bunch of things. It's like he will lash out if he doesn't have a hand in something.
It's been a terrible lockdown/pandemic from my perspective. We have been beset with illness and bereavement, but more than this my H has been drinking heavily, often refusing to get out of bed, several times he has had horrible outbursts at me and even left, or stonewalled me for days. He's never directly apologised and blames me for the dynamic. Don't get me wrong, I'm not perfect. But I don't think I can cause him screaming at me in the middle of the night while I'm asleep and so on. It's been terrible and I feel like I've caught my breath all the time. I've put in extra effort for the kids, all the effort I have, and I am deeply empty, almost going insane.
As I move toward trying to separate I have been thinking over the past of the relationship, trying o work out what happened. At the time I met him I thought of myself as very strong but I have noticed there is another story there. I am from a very traumatic childhood, a difficult family, with a history of eating disorders and an alcoholic parent. Looking back I wouldn't have identified as that but I was very vulnerable. I had always been extremely cautious in relationships. This was suddenly different. He was extremely persuasive and also cross when he didn't get his way, and within six months or so we were living together and married, and I was pregnant. He already had older kids that I barely knew and lots of acrimony. I look back and think how could I have got into this? If a young woman told me about that situation now I would urge her to run for the hills. I am really struggling with this and my role in it the fact that I made those decisions and it was my responsibility to choose wisely and I failed. I look back over the years and I worked so hard to make things seem normal. A lot of his behaviour frightened and shocked me and I certainly joined in with a lot of arguments, so I felt co-responsible. I felt such deep shame when early on I realised it was a mistake, and so ashamed that I didn't really make any of the decisions in a good spirit, that I kept going and was determined to paper over the cracks and 'be normal'. As was to be expected the paper has crumbled off and I am left wondering what there ever was in the first place. I feel like he created in me and enormous sense of obligation to stick with it and make things work -- off the back of a short, probably toxic whirlwind courtship. I feel so done over and also extremely guilty and ashamed, and weak, and I can't compute what has happened. We have all the photos and emails and cards to make it look like it was a happy relationship, and so I wonder if this feeling I've been supressing is all in my own mind.
I think at the beginning I really believed he loved me, though I disliked his coercive style, I was swept along. I feel so stupid and guilty now and also like I have ruined lots of people's lives, including even his, by not doing the proper checks and thought processes at that very beginning.
If you asked him he'd say we were having some problems but that he loves me. He would never look what things are really like in the face.
Does anyone understand my story or have any ways I can use to think about this?