Dozeykate
re your comment:
"I do not feel like I am in an abusive relationship, communication is so little that’s it’s hard to have an argument anyway! I don’t feel I’m being abused, but disrespected maybe. There is absolutely no evidence where I prove any kind of abuse. His disrespect is subtle, and through body language, insults disguised as jokes, not acknowledging me when he walks in from work, silent treatments, making my job appear not to be important, but this is not all the time! There’s the good and bad like in most relationships but this makes it even harder to point out. He is a great provider financially and takes care of our needs but makes it clear that if I go I will leave with nothing other than 50% of the kids. I start a new post in a few weeks and reckon I can manage to put £500 a month away (while living as a couple) I will need rent deposit, car deposit, and money for furniture. It a seems like a lot to accomplish!"
What is your definition of abuse then if not your relationship with this man?. I guess you never got the memo that the only acceptable level of abuse in a relationship is NONE. Abuse is about power and control; it is not solely physical in nature if you are thinking about and of abuse in those terms. This man has got absolute power and control over you here and he knows it. His silent treatment is an example of emotional abuse and a way of "punishing" you for any slight or misdeamour you commit in his head. He targeted you because amongst other things you were young, highly impressionable and easy to manipulate due to having no real life experience. I am not altogether surprised he is 20 years older; a woman with more life experience would never have wanted a relationship with him. So he went for a younger woman deliberately.
"He’s already told me he will never ever want us to separate and if we do it will be my choice so I’ll leave with nothing as I came with nothing. He will purposely not accept any contributions to the mortgage as he doesn’t want me to have any hand in it at all… his trail of thinking just doesn’t equate to what I feel a family lifestyle should be. But I often get told by him that I don’t know how lucky I am to have a man like him, there’s no one better, and I’d be living in the gutter without him because he does so much for me. I’m genuinely worried I will be living at rock bottom without him and worry that I won’t be able to cope on my own and my kids will miss out of many of the comforts they have now. It such a big and scary decision"
He does not want to share and never has either. His decision not to marry you or share assets is deliberate. Mean with money, mean with love is a phrase I would apply to him. I am not surprised he does not want to separate from you; if he does his cushy life at your overall expense because you do everything comes to an end. He would then have to find another sap of a woman (these men hate women and all of them) to take your place and he is far too lazy to want to do that. There are better men than he; you cannot spend the rest of your days shackled to such an abuser. Better to be on your own with your kids also (again this wanting 50% of the week is often cited by such men again as a means of control) than to remain with your abuser under any circumstances. They will know, if they do not already know, that you as their mum are being controlled and otherwise abused here. Creature comforts count for nothing where there is abuse present within the household. Its time you found out who you really are and bust out of this cage of his own making he has put you in.
Do the kids have his surname?. Yet more power and control handed over to him if this is the case. Is this really the role model of a relationship you want to be showing your kids and for them to potentially emulate too. No it is not. Children are perceptive and they will pick up on all of your reactions here, both spoken and unspoken. Worse still, they could blame themselves for their parents relationship troubles.