I’ve been with my husband for a decade, married for 5 years. We have a 2yr old together. We had a long engagement because our lives were in flux. We moved abroad, moved back, changed careers, etc. From my perspective, very valid reasons for having a 2yr engagement. From my husband’s perspective, it was me just not wanting to commit.
A year into our engagement, we had booked the venue, etc. Planning was underway. My father was diagnosed with cancer. This was a huge blow to me because I come from a small but close family. I moved hours away to Uni and stayed away, but visited regularly. My now husband was fine with this. I did the vast, vast majority of wedding planning. I kept a spreadsheet of everything that was done and had to be done. The issues really started around then. Every evening, we would sit down and I would have to give a progress update. We started at item 1 (set date) and worked our way through the 200+ items on the list. Every single day. I organised everything. My now husband couldn’t even buy himself socks for the day without me there. This meant that instead of visiting my unwell father, I spent weekends doing stupid stuff like looking at socks and hours and hours over multiple days looking at shoes for my husband. The stress of it all was awful. He became different, started going through my phone and questioning me every time that I made or received a phone call, message or email. I bitterly regret not walking away then.
We got married and the next year was absolute hell. My dad was given the all clear but my husband suddenly changed completely. He got very nasty about my family, insisting that I saw them once every six weeks at most. We were living close to his family but in a place where I knew nobody else. I had to account for every penny that I spent and everything that I did. I traveled a lot for work (not overnight, just early starts and late finishes due to distance). He would rage all night so I couldn’t sleep. He would lock me out of the house or if we were in the car together, he would scream and shout at me. I was completely isolated. I was so ashamed of myself for marrying him. He’s such a charming person to other people.
I refused to buy a house with him because I just didn’t want to commit to anything. I was finally making progress on leaving when lockdown happened. I was pregnant at the time, unfortunately. He turned into the nicest person in the world. He was like how he used to be. I inherited a house near my parents, so because we are both working remotely, he convinced me to move into that house.
My mother has since been diagnosed with cancer. We haven’t been told that it’s terminal, but none of the treatment has worked and the cancer is spreading rapidly. I see her daily now, because she’s really not got long. It’s very obvious. My husband wants to move hours away to his parent’s village. He wants to sell this house and move now, because he’s far from everything and he’s so unhappy. I honestly don’t sleep much anyway these days, but he wakes me at night to tell me how unhappy he is. I’m not budging this time. He says that he knows that I’m sad about my mother but we need to move now.
I know that if we did go, he would stop me from visiting her. I also know that I absolutely despise him. The issue is, he will not leave. He refuses to spilt up. He says that if he does go, he’s taking our child with him. He has nowhere to go but back to his elderly parents, who will not welcome him because they are not close and they are all about their high standing in the community. A broken marriage would reflect badly on them. He knows this, so he’s just digging in and making my life living hell. He won’t stop until he gets what he wants. I’m so exhausted and broken. If I address any of this with him, he tells me that it’s not how any of it happened and that my mental health is really bad and I need help. I probably do need help, but I believe it’s because my husband is a controlling and abusive man.
Any advice on how to get him out or away? He controls absolutely everything. He’s got the new, big family car. I have a 15yr old Toyota Aygo, so I can’t even really manage anything more than a quick outing with our toddler without his car… just another example of control. We have close to 80k in ‘joint’ savings, so money really isn’t an issue.