I gave up my job, married and moved across two countries with my husband. I am now living in London and am financially dependent on my husband. I have started looking for a job and hopefully will find something very soon.
My husband does not like that he is the sole financial provider and has called me a mooch, lazy, and a bum. Its not like I don't want to work but there has been so much going on in the marriage... he has always been so critical. He has called me stupid, idiot and other names. He also asked me to show my degree transcripts because he can't believe I could have passed. During a period of time I had to write what I am going to do every hour of every day and update him at the end of the day about the number of Jobs that I have applied to and what I did on that day. He also bought a house in the interim and my name is not on it. I have paid for service charges and such a couple of times from my meagre savings but he hasn't given me any money for the past 5 years and I feel very insecure about my financial status.
When I put the knife in the kitchen the wrong way, he has a few times grabbed me by the neck. I always felt that I am walking on eggshells and used to be scared of him coming back home as I knew I would be berated about my lack of job. When I did work briefly it still didn't make matters better, he said it's because I am on his visa, that I got the job because of his recommendation etc. We have had no intimacy in the marriage for the past 5 years and he has said that it's because of my lack of job. The lack of intimacy and his critical comments got to me and I fell into depression. I also developed tmj disorder and other physical ailments due to the stress. I always have to prepare myself before having a conversation with him because even if I say a word out of order or my tone changes... he will pounce on it. So before broaching any topic I think of all the cross questions that he could come up with and prepare myself with suitable responses to them and only then I am able to get my point across. But when I do make my point and if he does understand and agrees after cross questioning then the behaviour doesn't continue. It's this discontinuing of bad behaviour that gave me the false hope to continue with the marriage as I believed he listens to me and alerts his behaviour. There is so much more that has gone down but I dont think I can write it all down. Suffice to say I need to prepare myself to leave. His lack of interest in physical intimacy has at least ensured that I don't have children to think about it which I suppose is the only silver lining.
I find myself at the age of 36 with no job, kids or savings or any source of income and feel so embarrassed and ashamed about it all. All my friends have climbed the corporate ladder and have multiple kids, beautiful homes and social, financial and emotional security. And here I am in so much worse state than before my marriage. I am scared when I think about leaving and starting over. Logically I know it can only be better than what I am going through but I feel like I have no sense of my own identity anymore and have become a shell of a person I used to be. It might sound idiotic but I wish he would have just hit me or done something so very bad that can't be misinterpreted and would have given me no choice but to leave so I would have left a long time ago. This feels like a slow death by a thousand cuts or being a stone eroded by water... where nothing seems too big a deal or something that can't be worked out. But just living through it hour by hour and day by day , it's just erodes the sense of self to the degree that I don't know who I am anymore.
I know I have to plan my exit. So apart from finding a job, what else should I be looking at? How do I regain back my sense of self? I feel that I would feel better prepared to take the next step if I knew all the things that needed to be done...