Hello all,
To begin, as a point of reference, we live in Australia.
I have read here silently for the past two years or so, knowing that something is gravely wrong with my marriage. We have been married for nearly 24 years and have 9 children, including two young adults and a 2 year old. 8 of the kids still live at home.
My husband has always been manipulative in this marriage. Over the course of 23.5 years, I have been effectively silenced from raising grievances (of which there are many, and they are significant) that I have with him. He has done this by blame shifting, gaslighting, minimising, coercing apologies and so on. I have changed to accommodate him in order to keep our marriage “happy”; he has never changed, or only slightly when he feels pressed.
My husband has been neglectful and avoidant in his care for our children. He has been volatile and frightening when he loses his (very short) temper. He can go from fine one moment to yelling uncontrollably the next. The kids and I have lived our lives walking on eggshells to avoid setting him off.
My husband lives most of his life, as an able bodied person, in bed. If he is at home, you can be 99% sure that he’s in bed, on his phone and his computer, with a deck of cards in his hand. He has rarely helped with the children, rarely spends time with them, actually avoids them (because they are noisy, energetic, and behave like children behave). He has not helped with the running of the household in the least - not inside the house, nor maintenance or upkeep outside the house. He has not helped with finances, making arrangements for any family events, basically he goes to work (or, as often as possible, works from bed at home) and that’s it. He doesn’t usually even come out for meals.
He sexually assaulted me while drunk about 9 years ago and seems to think I should be over it by now. He does not seem to grasp in any real way the effect that his behaviour has had on me and the kids. My oldest four children all struggle with depression and anxiety to the point that they’ve needed emergent care on three separate occasions. I see signs of emotional issues in most of my younger kids as well. Recently I’ve been feeling like the only way out of this is for me to die, and I can not and will not ever abandon my children. So dying is not an option and now I must do the brave thing and end this marriage. It is literally a choice between the two because I can not keep doing this.
About 9 months ago, he flew into a rage over a minor incident with one of our children. He threw a solid wood dining room chair across the room, which hit my 2yo child in the back of the head. She hit the tiled floor with the front of her head. Thank god she was okay, she could have been killed. I told him to leave so I could think about what to do. He did; we spent three days talking things through and I set boundaries, required him to get help and told him if anything like that ever happened again he would be gone. Then he came home.
Since that incident, he has not had a major incident of rage and while he does still lose his temper with the children, it is not as extreme anymore. He is seeing a psychologist. Things seemed slightly hopeful, but I told him I’d be watching him, and I have been.
I have realised that, although he is making some changes, he is still manipulating me when we have a disagreement and at other times. I have come to realise that he is not capable of true and meaningful change, and that as long as he has his safe bubble at home to retreat into, he will never adequately address the real issues that he has. I have begun to pull away from him, and I know he senses this, and he is scared that I’m going to leave him. He has been increasing his love bombing to annoying levels, saying I love you a million times, asking if I need anything, offering me mints even though he knows I don’t like them and always say no. It’s like he’s grasping at any pathetic means to “be helpful”. He seems to think I’m having an affair or something too as he will video call me about totally nonsensical things when I’m out, or question why I’m going somewhere and so on. Basically he is feeling massively insecure, and with good reason.
I’m preparing to tell him we are separating. I’ve tried very hard to make sure my kids and I can make it on our own, and it is going to be tough financially, but I think we’ll be ok. We have a fairly high mortgage payment that is my main concern, but I have done the figures and I do think we’ll be able to make it. I still have lots of little things to consider like how to handle joint bank accounts and how to fairly divide the money we currently have and so on. I am not prepared to ask for child support at the moment, as his job is religious in nature and he will likely have to resign over this. He should not be in ministry anyway. But I want to give him a chance to get on his feet before I chase child support.
My main questions here are: as I prepare to separate, what other things do I need to be looking into or be aware of?
And: is it normal to feel completely horrible about doing this, knowing he’s been making at least some effort? It may be bare minimum effort (he’s been taking out the garbage nightly and making sure the kitchen is tidy before bed, which is the first time in our marriage he has ever consistently done anything to help) but he’s going to say “but I’ve been trying so hard!” What do I say to that?
And: what does my exit speech look like? Any tips?
And: do I wait until after Christmas? My counsellor says to do it as soon as possible and I feel repulsed by the idea of having to have sex with him; I have been avoiding it quite well so far but it will probably become an issue and I want to make sure that I have my safety plan in place when I tell him we’re separating, so any disagreement rn feels very precarious.
And: is it normal to be really scared?
Thank you.