Is separating the right decision?

[Random12345]

Hello mums,

I desperately need some advice and opinions on my situation. I feel like I'm at a huge crossroads and I don't know if I should stay with my husband or seperate.

I will try to condense everything down as there is alot to get through.

My husband and I have been married almost 3 years, he is Romanian and I am British. We got pregnant and married within a year of meeting, we didn't have enough pre marriage discussions about our expectations of married life. Over the past 3 years it has come to light how incompatible we are.

A quick sum up of my husband
• Before we met, my husband would come to England to work then return to Romanian for a few months of the year. When we decided to settle down together, he moved permanently to England. He has recently said to me he thought we would of moved to Romania after we married?

• He is extremely traditional which has it's pros and cons. He has alot of double standards for example he has go out drinking in the evenings and I can't. In Romania the men manage the money, the women have to ask for money to pay bills etc. The women are mostly homemakers in Romania (he is from a small villiage, in the Romanian cities life for women is more like the west)

• When I met him he gambled hundreds of pounds a week. I know, I am to blame for not seeing this as a huge red flag, I had fallen in love and had my rose tinted glasses on. After our daughter was born, he was still gambling, I borrowed money and ran up thousands in debt for him to gamble away. I cut him off this year and excluded him from online gambling, he still gambles a small amount weekly in the shop. As a result, I have been managing all the money out of sheer worry we will lose everything. He has accused me of financial abuse, I feel he left me with no choice? Also, I have had many conversations with him encouraging him to take over the household financial management but everything I bring it up he doesn't want the responsibility! I don't spend 'his money' on anything for me, I give him money when he asks.

• He does not like me seeing my family, and calls me a child not a grown women because of it. He says we are your family now, not your parents, bear in mind we live in a rural location, my parents take me and my daughter out when he's at work. He does not like us going out, and says I should be at home cleaning the windows, cooking and looking after the garden.

• He thinks it's unfair that he has to work and I stay at home doing nothing! I am a stay at home mum and I do EVERYTHING apart from contribute financially. He doesn't cook, clean, wash his clothes, garden, occasionally he will wash up.

• He believes the weekends belong to him as he works full time and I don't. Even when I worked part time he had the same attitude, on the days we both worked I would come home and cook and do the bedtime routine, he would sit around or have a bath. He says I have plenty of time to relax in the week!

• He criticises how my parents raise me

• He constantly wants to have sex, I am not really interested anymore as he has hurt me so much

• On the other hand he can be a great dad and caring at times, he likes a cuddle and kiss

I think he is lonely and resentful that we didn't move to Romania which I understand. He can't stand working 5 days a week - he used to work 3 months, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and then have a few months not working. He left his working away from home job after we had our daughter, he always brings it up and blames me saying that he regrets leaving.

I'm pregnant with our second, and I'm scared and worried about everything. What has prompted my post is he cam home drunk on Saturday night and started and aggressive rant about all the points above (which he has also mentioned to me when sober). He was so nasty, is this normal?

I'm not perfect, however I do believe my upset outbursts in the past have been fueled by his anger and nitpicking. It's driven me to frustration. He says how much he loves me but how can he say those things and love me? I love him still, which is what makes thus decision so hard.

I desperately need some advice and opinions on my situation. What I have spoken about is the tip of the iceburg.

Thank you to everyone who had the patience to read my post.

Separating is absolutely the right thing to do here but you need help in order to escape him. Women’s Aid could help and you also need legal advice. He is an inherent gambler, a misogynist (he is not being traditional at all, such men only act in their own self interest) and abusive to boot. Your marriage therefore is well and truly over. None of what you describe here is in any way normal. And no he does not love you either, words are cheap. Just look at his actions. This is also no stable environment for your child to grow up in.

And kindly put also, stop with calling him a great dad as he is nothing of the sort. Denying yourself your own truth re him does not help you one bit. Women in poor relationships write such guff when they can think of nothing else positive to write about their man.

Where are your parents here, are they at all supportive ?.

To answer the question in the title of your post..yes.

Not to make you feel any worse but a lot of mistakes have been made here which you already know and separating from him wouldn’t be one of them. There’s no shame in admitting you made mistakes.

I always try to speak from a place of compassion and I absolutely don’t say this to be mean but there’s rose tinted glasses and then there’s completely taking leave of your senses. Falling in love with him without looking at compatibility and getting married too quickly etc are mistakes easily made by anyone but getting yourself into debt for him and now getting pregnant for a second time show that all rational and sensible thinking has completely left the building.

All that is done now and all you can do is see the situation exactly as it is and move forward. Think of your children and yourself and the life you will all have if you stay married to this man. He doesn’t really want this life by the sounds of it and you’re scared and utterly miserable. It sounds like you have a supportive family so I’d speak to them for help and support to start making a plan to untangle all this and separate so you can all move on. Be kind to yourself and allow friends and family to support you. People who love you won’t judge they will just want to help.

I don’t say any of this to make you feel worse but sometimes you really do have to own your life choices and face them head on. That doesn’t mean blaming or hating yourself or feeling shame though. It means being brave, sorting things out and reflecting on things so you never find yourself in a similar situation again. The poor behaviour happening now is on him but he’ll just carry on being a bully until you take control and do something about this. How you deal with it all, fix things and move forward shows you who you really are and who you can be. I really hope this works out for you to get back on track and get the life you and your children deserve.

Some people believe it’s brave and strong to soldier on and stick with a relationship to prove to yourself and others that choosing him wasn’t a mistake. Even if the relationship includes emotional abuse, bullying or cheating, even if it’s making you unhappy. I believe the brave thing is to leave and live your life free of poor treatment and lack of respect from a ‘partner’.

Of course you should separate from him but he will not like it and he could even abscond with the children to Romania and this would be what kept me in that relationship until my children were older.

Yes I would separate purely because he is being abusive and making you feel like it's you with the problem.
I've just come out of a relationship that had similar undertones although no children and men like this don't change, they have a mysoginistic "why should I" attitude and can't take ownership for their own choices or their own behaviour so you will become the punching bag for it and eventually so will your children.

I'd suggest counselling but at the end of the day, I did this with my ex and honestly it makes no difference to them, they don't want to change anything about themselves, they want you to accommodate them.

They see themselves as put upon and hard done by while you have an easy life, and frankly a partner should make your life easier not harder. Yes relationships are work, but when it's like pushing a rock up a hill on a daily basis that isn't going to work for you. You already have enough to deal with being pregnant with one child already.

He has gambling issues he's not prepared to deal with or even admit.

Yes you made mistakes, but you can un-make them as I'm finding out. You'll just learn in doing so that you can't unfortunately simply fall in love and think the best of people because a lot of them are bloody arseholes and you have to watch your back, especially around men whose only interest is self interest.

Thank you for replying. I know I haven't helped myself, I have told him enough is enough so many times. But somehow he sneaks back in, sweeping everything under the rug and pretends nothing has happened!

They would definitely support me if I decided to seperate, they don't know what's it's like to live with him on a daily basis. It's hard work.

When I think about leaving, I feel mixed emotions, I feel really hearbroken as a part of me always thought things would improve

Thank you for replying. I absolutely agree, I haven't helped myself and I have made mistakes too. Thank you for your kind words of support and encouragement.

It's strange I still feel feelings of love for him? Or maybe I'm just scared of being alone and worry how I will cope

Thank you for replying. This worries me, as when I have mentioned seperation in the past, he has said exactly this. Sadly, I wouldn't put it past him to go down this route. I'm hoping he can be a grown up and be amicable for the sake of our daughter

Thank you for replying. I'm sorry to hear you have had a similar experience. I have suggested counselling to him, but he refuses to see someone as an individual before trying marriage counselling.

That is exactly what it's like, pushing a rock up a hill! It's my fault for putting myself in this position and believing he would change and mature over time.

I hope you don't mind me asking, did you still have feelings of 'love' for him? I'm not sure if that's what I feel or maybe I'm worried about being alone or change?

Well I wouldn't be relying on hope and I think, and know from experience, that these men scorned can spell disaster, he won't just suddenly grow up, he will go to court, plead discrimination, and if you get unlucky with a judge he could be given shared care and permission to take them out of the country too. If he never comes back then that's it.

Do you have proof he said this?

My new advice now is to gather evidence of coercive control, abuse, and threats to abduct.

Without this absolutely do not leave.

Then go to the police about the above in the first instance.

You need to be smart here. And no, do not for one second rely on trust or hope that this absolute scum of a person will ever do anything other than go the whole hog in trying to hurt you when you finally leave.

Once he's been arrested that's when you leave the house for a refuge.

To answer your question, hell yes I still love him. I love him to bits, but when I really ask myself why it's probably because of a few reasons:

1. Because part of me saw his dominance and "my way" attitude as leadership/strength and maybe I wanted someone to save me. My dad was similar so it was familiar to me.
2. Because I was in love with what it could be, which I saw glimmers of on the good days, as i'm sure you are - it's called intermittent reinforcement and it is EXTREMELY powerful. It effectively trains people/animals. Please read:

https://tealswan.com/resources/articles/intermittent-reinforcement-why-you-cant-leave-the-relationship-r210/

I focused on "oh but he's done x for me" and in reality he'd done something very basic like buy me a box of cakes from the shop, but then he'd be calling me a c* and blocking me in rooms so I couldn't escape while I listened to his verbal tirades. Intermittent reinforcement is like a really fucked up slot machine that you keep pulling because you might get a nugget of "nice" that you cling to.
You also fall into the trap of thinking if you're prettier, happier, better, do things well enough, act better and agree with them that it'll help and ultimately nada... it doesn't. Not ever. Eventually you lose all sense of yourself and you get very ill which is what happened to me. My mental health was rock bottom and there were genuinely times where I thought that it was best to end my life because I was that useless.

Luckily just one day he asked something of me that was so strongly not ok with me that I just snapped, and his follow up behaviour was so clearly about punishing me and making me suffer that I just packed my stuff and left. I knew it would be a horrible experience leaving but I decided that it was either that, or the rest of my life would misery with tiny patches of bliss. It wasn't good enough for me quite frankly.