Sorry, this is a long and complex one! I've been married to my husband for 12 years, together 15 years. We have two children, girls 6 and 10. We are at a crisis point in our marriage and are now deciding if a period of separation preceding divorce makes sense.
I need advice on if this relationship is worth saving and if counselling might be worth it? He’s not a bad person but as a couple, we have a few pretty serious issues. We both have lots of baggage from childhood. My Dad was an alcoholic manic depressive and his Dad used to violently abuse his Mum. I’ve done lots of work on my issues (counselling, daily meditation, self-hypnosis, regression therapy etc…) and I continue to work on myself daily. He’s never done any self-development work and doesn’t want to – he thinks there’s nothing wrong with him and everyone else is flawed. I’m tired of being the one doing all the emotional labour in our relationship.
I'm still in love with my husband. He feels the same way about me but we don't know if love is enough.
He is a very critical person. I cry or get emotional when he criticises me - not all the time but it builds up over time and then we have a blow out. He thinks this is me being emotionally manipulative and that I should be able to handle criticism without getting upset.
We've had two bouts of counselling already. The first time, early in our relationship, I thought we made good progress. But I only found out recently that he didn't think it was successful and that the counselling failed because I "spent the whole time lying during the sessions". He waited a decade to tell me this! He did amend his behaviour but instead of criticising me every day, he'd huff and do passive aggressive body language, keep silent but save it all up for a massive blow out every couple of months during which he'd vent everything he'd suppressed. That pattern has continued to this day.
The second spell of counselling was last year. I don't think our therapist was very good. He did give us a few useful tools though such as the 'feedback sandwich'. My husband seems incapable of giving praise though. Except to tell me I look nice when we go on a date, he doesn't praise anything else. He consistently finds fault with my parenting. This particularly grinds my gears given that I do 75% of the childcare! He said I get to be 'fun mummy' but he has to be the disciplinarian. I take them to art galleries, museums, days at the beach, parks, etc… We always ask him to come with us and would love him to but he refuses. I do actually discipline the kids. He is a perfectionist and has so many rigid and arbitrary rules, many of which I don't agree with, but I follow them anyway as I don't want to undermine his authority. However, he has no problem undermining my authority, criticising what I do in front of the children. This has led to our kids thinking he is the 'boss' and I am his subordinate and hence they now treat me with disrespect too which means it's harder for me to discipline them: a vicious circle.
Our most recent fight was over the kids' hair. Last week I picked up my daughter from school. Her gran had done her hair (our mother in law lives with us). I complemented her on it. She said “thanks” but looked sad so I asked her what was wrong. She said “Daddy asked grandma to do it because he didn't think I'd done a good job with it”. Then she said “I don't think Daddy even likes my hair”. I asked her if she had spoken to Daddy about this, she said she didn't want to as she didn't want to upset him. This made me feel really sad and was a hot button for me. We have mixed afro/euro hair and there are already so many messages in society telling us our hair is not as good as European/straight hair. I didn't want my husband's negative comments ruining her self-esteem so I resolved to mention it to him later, even though I knew this would likely end in a fight. I am trying to teach them independence so I let them do their own hair (I started doing my own hair when I was six). He doesn't agree with this and when he's getting them ready he does their hair for them - fine, he's a different person, he doesn't have to do things my way. But he is intolerant of people's differences. To him, other people's methods are not different, they are wrong.
When I told him what my daughter said, he blamed me. He said if I had tweaked it when she did it, it wouldn't have looked bad and then he wouldn’t have had to say anything. I said I'm more interested in fostering independence and positive self-worth than the way she looks. He said she'll get bullied at school if her hair doesn't look good. I said she doesn't need to get bullied at school - she already gets it at home from you. He called me a neglectful mother and said I don't care about the kids. His evidence for this is that while they're having a shower, I read a book, check emails, order the groceries to be delivered etc... I'm with them every night. He cooks them dinner then I do their homework with them, help them practice their instruments, reading practice, play games etc... Then, even after lights out, they're calling every fifteen minutes for this and that and I'm up and down the stairs for the next hour. He has them for two hours on a Saturday morning, taking them to a class. Then he checks out for the rest of the weekend and I'm left to deal with them alone. We visit my parents once a month. He refuses to come hence I'm a single parent while he gets a lovely weekend off. As I barely get any time to myself, I snatch what tiny snippets I have ie when they're in the shower, to do what I need/want to do.
He said I put so much care and attention into my other projects ie. work and my side career which I'm trying to build and transition into full-time one day, but I don't put as much care and attention into the kids. I said it’s the exact opposite - my side career is not taking off as I don’t have the time and attention to put into it given that I do the bulk of childcare. I accused him of not being supportive of my side career – he often makes comments like “lunch isn’t ready yet? What have you been doing all morning” when he gets home with the kids on a Saturday (they get back at 11h30!). He knows full well I spend that time working on my side career. He thinks he supports me as he pays more into the joint account allowing me to have a lower paying job that gives me the time for a side career. We actually pay the same percentage of our salary so although he pays more, he also earns more – a fair system IMO but it doesn’t mean he’s supporting me more. The support I need is a more equitable childcare split. When I say this to him he says he’s already ‘exhausted’ by the amount he does and it’s unfair for me to ask him to do more.
The things he accuses me of during fights would make you think I’m the worst human being on the planet. He says: I’m gaslighting him; he can’t say anything without me getting upset so now he walks on eggshells (I walk on eggshells around him because of the criticism and blame); I’m a bad listener so he’s given up talking and become a person he doesn’t recognise (I constantly try and initiate conversation by talking to him, he listens but doesn’t respond. Then later, in a fight he says I just expect him to listen all the time!) Everyone else in our life loves me – the children, his mother, our friends, my colleagues etc… Sometimes I wonder if he even likes me at all as a person. We have great chemistry in bed but aside from that we don’t have much in common.
What I’m struggling with is – I don’t know if divorce will solve our issues. Our fights revolve around how to parent the kids and around childcare. We’ll still be co-parents. It may just be costly and inconvenient. We’d still be fighting but from separate homes. I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place – divorce is unlikely to solve our problems but therapy has also failed us in the past. What do I do?