To be angry with DH years later.

[Shineofduty]

I've just emerged from the trenches of parenting young children as my youngest child has now gone off to school. We've had one child have lots of illnesses which has required endless tests etc and the other one has had allergies and been an extremely challenging baby.

I've breastfed them, juggled work and kept the family home going throughout whilst trying to keep my marriage afloat when DH has been awkward.

Now I'm out of it all and I have a bit of time before I begin working Full Time again in January, I'm reflecting on these last 5 years.

The times that DH left me high and dry at night when I was sleep deprived, exhausted and needed his help, when he went out drinking when the kids were babies and he came home wasted and useless ay night and the following day. When I was 7 months pregnant and poorly with an infection, a stomach bug and a resulting pulled muscle in my stomach from vomiting and he still went to the pub when I pleaded with him to stay with me.

The time he went cycling on my birthday leaving me at home for 10 hours with a 2 year old and a newborn because "it's not like we can celebrate much anyway."

The criticisms from his family in the early days and his failure to stick up for me. Lots more. We've had a lot of talks around everything over the last few years and I thought I'd got past most of it, but it's reared it's head because it's all clear now.

Things aren't great at the moment as I'm angry with him for not following through on a couple of agreements we'd made, but mostly I'm sad for the past.

Those baby years didn't last long and I was so sad, so alone, so tired. But it could have been kinder, nicer and easier if he had been on my team. More than being sad that they're over- I'm sad with him, that he didn't step up and wasn't the man I thought he was.

I'm working through all the feelings in counselling and actually considering ending my marriage. I don't know why I'm posting really, other than, I want to express how I'm feeling somewhere safe.

@Pallisers I think a marriage can survive falling out of love better than it can a total loss of respect is spot-on @Shineofduty.

I too harbour a lot of hurt and resentment from previous years, and try as I might I just can't see me getting past it - I get flashbacks to awful moments that I just didn't have the energy to deal with when DS was small. I too am contemplating ending our marriage, but it's not easy when you have kids is it?

Your DH does not deserve you, he never has. Take care of yourself

@CheekyHobson - yes I have my two brainwashed about kindness, self respect, how to be treated in a relationship. The final nail in the coffin for me was when my then 10 year old asked me why his Daddy never kissed or cuddled his mummy. I was done then as I knew my children were starting to see the dynamic. I refused to let them think this was how to treat a woman.

@Harlequin1088 - I too got the "why should I go to counselling, there's nothing wrong with me, it's all you" speech.

So many of us with the same soul destroying dynamic. I feel for all of us who are in or were in relationships like this. It takes a long time to heal and to drag yourself back up onto your feet. for all of you

You mist be a Saint. My ex didn't pull his weight and the resentment grew and when DS was less than 2 I ended it, he's still be as useless and selfish since but has had to muddle his way through alone when he has him. I could never forgive that and forget.

When I was depressed by not being allowed to leave the house or learn to drive, I tried to explain to him that I was suicidal and that his behaviour was at the root of it. He told me that perhaps I should kill myself then.

You're caring for/supporting a man who abused you and isated and controlled you, and blithely encouraged you to kill yourself when depressed (mostly due to him), as well as not stepping up re childcare??!

Why?

Sort out the financials and gtfo.

He says he loves you now; now that he's the one who's vulnerable and down. But when you were he wasn't saying "I love you, please don't do anything rash", he cavalierly told you tk kill yourself.

He's still abusing you.

Get rid of him, he can get carers of he's all that bad.

You can spend countless hours wishing he was different, countless money in therapy talking it all through and countless times asking him to change but all of it will be a waste of time. This is who he is. It suits him and he has no desire to change. He's right when he says he's not the one with a problem. He's quite happy doing what he's doing. The only decision you have to make is whether you want to be in a partnership with him as he is. If the answer is yes, then find a way of making it work for you. If the answer is no, then start the process of leaving him. He really won't change and don't waste your life hoping and wishing he will. Reconcile yourself to the fact that this is who he is and stop tying yourself up in knots trying to make it otherwise. It sounds really blunt, I know but it's meant to be helpful. Honest! Put a line in the sand and go forward from today being very clear in your own mind about what YOU want based on who he is, not who you wish he was.

My situation isn't the same, but there has been resentment which is long-standing (different reasons). We have now split, and I realise that resentment has never gone away, it's from two decades ago for some things he did back then, but it was always there, just buried. When we were splitting it came back up to the surface.

So, I think what I'm trying to say is that if you do resent his behaviour (and I absolutely would in your shoes too), it's not going to go away and either it gets resolved or it will continue to hang around.

Given what you've said, I would not blame you for ending your marriage.

Possibly too, your mother is not all that emotionally nurturing? Did you ever feel that you had to tiptoe around your mum's feelings because she often seemed to be upset by you 'being yourself'? Or that she was very busy with her life and you kind of just had to get on with things and make your own way? Or maybe she wasn't very understanding of you but you reasoned that she's a different generation, or was just a very different person to you? Or does this describe your dad more? When adults are prepared to accept crumbs of love from their partners, it's often because that's a lesson they learned in childhood from a parent.

This definitely applies to me and I'm just in the process of trying to make sense of it.

@Trisha5657

This definitely applies to me and I'm just in the process of trying to make sense of it.

A big hug to you. It's a painful journey to recognise that a parent put an unfair emotional burden on you as a child because they weren't capable of supplying the nurturing you needed, especially when that parent retrospectively paints themselves as being quite an ideal parent.

It creates a fundamental distrust within yourself – you have long known something wasn't quite right, but you weren't allowed or able to address that, or if you tried to, your parent wasn't able to be genuinely reflective on their own failings, own them and apologise, but instead twists them around into you being a "difficult child" or "over-sensitive" or "very needy" – or conversely "you were always so mature and capable for your age, you never needed me", which is just a different way of invalidating your actual experience of wanting a more engaged parent.