This is historic. But in the past I had shit boundaries and made some serious relationship mistakes. Would this have been instant LTB for you? Now - I think yes. I should have kicked him to the curb immediately. Of course, I put up with his crap for a lot longer. Here’s the situation.
I gave birth to DC3 (our first together) We had a son. My ExH is from a culture where boys are a big deal. He had girls from his previous marriage. Our son was of course his first. Totally irrelevant to me but the context is important. I had awful PND (I’m Bipolar but this wasn’t known at the time so it was likely Bipolar depression too.) On meds. When our son was 3 months old, he took extended paternity leave. I went back to work. Told me he was going to teach language abroad to help poor and destitute people - a charity mission if you like.
I was struggling, but encouraged him to go as out of self-sacrifice and and I felt guilty that he wanted to give up his time to help those who needed it more than me.
This is obscene as I’m typing it. What a fool I was. He went. Whilst away, he emailed his sister but accidentally sent it to me. Saying ‘don’t tell me misses I’m in Dubai.’ I did some digging and found out he’d gone on a lads holiday to Dubai (not the country he’d told me he was going to) for a whole MONTH. After the month, he came back and said he couldn’t get a visa for the original war-torn destination so flew out to his mates instead. There was very little contact between us whilst he was away, as I didn’t want to interrupt his work and he said contact would be hard.
We’d never had a holiday together. Aside from two days in a UK cottage that I had to pay for. And it bloody rained constantly.
Fucking liar.
This should have been a deal breaker right? I can’t actually remember how I reacted when he came back. As I was pretty ill at the time, I think I just stayed quiet. 12 years on, we’re divorced and I’m still raging.