DH and I haven’t been getting on for a good while now. We have an 18 year old DD still at home. There’s issues going on in our marriage that I’ve tried discussing with him, most of the time he shuts me down, minimises and invalidates my feelings. He’s called me crazy and I feel he uses gaslighting tactics. Occasionally when I’ve tried bringing issues up, he’ll agree with what I’m saying and apologise but then doesn’t change and admits later that he just said it to shut me up. So whilst I think we’re on the same page and moving forward, we’re not.
We work in the same industry that I introduced him to years ago, this has caused problems in our marriage over the years, he has discussed our marital problems in detail with mutual colleagues. When I try to tell him I don’t appreciate this and I want to be professional at work and I deserve privacy at work, he says that I shouldn’t do things I’m ashamed of and then he wouldn’t have bad things to tell people. These are just about regular marital issues. I have had friends/colleagues tell me that he’s chatting shit about me behind my back which Is so embarrassing. I brought this issue up a couple of weeks ago and he said he wouldn’t have a reason to do it if I wasn’t such a c**t. It’s like I can’t bring up anything with him because I know he’ll tell anyone who’ll listen and make out I’m a bitch. In the past he has sometimes acknowledged that this behaviour is hurtful to me and has apologised, promising not to do it again, but he always does.
He used to do the same with his family when we first got together, he would run to his mother with every disagreement we had as a couple, instead of discussing things with me. He would never include our daughter and me with his family, one night he came home after spending the day with his mother with a list of rules that I should have to abide to, that him and his mother had concocted. They were just ridiculous rules. It feels like my DH doesn’t want anyone to like me or even know me. I haven’t known any of his family or friends, whereas I have included him with everyone, family, friends and workmates.
When our DD was a baby, DH would spend his days with his mother without me and our daughter, he was a taxi driver at the time and would send the baby to my parents whilst I went off to work and he went to his mother’s to gossip about our marriage troubles and then go out to actual work on a night when DD and myself were both home. He would lie about it having been quiet at work during the day so he would have to go out to work at night, even though he had been at his mother’s all day, quite often he would go to his mother’s on an evening as well when he was supposed to be working, never involving our DD or me.
I was so desperate for his family to be involved with our DD and I would ask them to visit, ask if they wanted to have DD for the day, I would always give them first refusal if we were after a babysitter, even though my parents were always there to help and it would always be received with a sly dig and I was told they were too busy. DH’s mother went months without seeing DD when she was under one even though DH would see his mother all of the time, visiting without us.
When DD was just over one, my husband received a text from his sister, an ultimatum saying that he had to choose between them (His family) or us (DD and myself) and that blood was thicker than water. WTH, it doesn’t get much more blood than your child. I still to this day don’t know where this came from or what had been said for them to take this stance. I had only actually met them a hand full of times and had always been polite even after I knew what awful things they had been saying about me. MIL’s husband told DH that he should F*K both of us off (DD and me).
I was still trying to involve DH’s family in our DD’s life. My husband would tell me what was being said but would still relay our issues to them. Looking back it feels like he was playing both sides off of each other and it turned into an absolute drama. Growing adults playing games. When people ask me why we don’t speak to DH family, I honestly don’t have an answer, I don’t know why they gave that ultimatum or what my husband had said for them to make that decision. Even after all of this, I wanted to contact his mother to try and work things out, DH wouldn’t let me. DH has told me growing up he felt that his Mother favoured his sisters and he would have to do without. He was passed between His mum and dad’s houses, neither of them really taking on the responsibility of looking after him. I feel my DH has tried to gain his mother’s attention.
Anyway, it looks like we’re going to separate, DH has taken out a 10k loan for a car that I didn’t agree to, we moved into a house 2 years ago that desperately needs work doing, we agreed to wait another year to save for a new kitchen and he’s taken out this car loan.
There’s loads of other niggly problems, I can’t ask him to do anything without him taking offence, he is glued to his phone when at home. Literally on his phone constantly. On Whatsaap, often at 2am, when I brought this up, he snapped that I was being ridiculous and he’s just talking to work mates, til 2am?
He had an outburst the other day when I wasn’t happy about the loan, saying that I had a wardrobe of designer clothes and handbags, I absolutely do not.
He has recently accused me of being financially abusive, because I didn’t want the car loan. He has 2 current accounts and credit cards that I have nothing to do with and we share a current account which we both have full access to, he’s the one who’s taking out a 10k loan.
My sister was getting married the following day and he refused to go, DD and myself had to go to the wedding and pretend DH was Ill. It was awful having to lie.
He is now saying, after 19 years that it’s my fault he doesn’t speak to his family. He said this in front of DD, who reminded him that that he has told her that he wouldn’t want to see them. he has also admitted in the past that he knows he played a part in the fallout and he knows that I tried to help solve things. His Nan passed a couple of years ago and I tried to encourage him to go to the funeral, he didn’t want to as he said he didn’t want to be around his family.
It feels like he’s trying to rewrite the narrative of what’s happened so that he can go back to his family, tell them that I’ve been stopping him from seeing them for all these years and put all of the blame onto me, the designer clad, financially abusive, crazy wife. That way neither him or his family will need to be accountable.
He similarly made out his ex wife before me was crazy and abusive, even though he left her when she was in a mental health unit and he’d been having an affair with a woman he worked with.
I’m not sure what I want from wring this down, I guess I just want to put my feelings down in writing. It’s really hurtful that DH family did this all those years ago. DH has never listened to how this has affected me and what impact it has had on me, it is heartbreaking seeing people who should be supportive and loving reject us as a family, now DH is trying to shift that blame onto me.