Hate my husband but can't afford to separate

[Namechangedforobvious]

Where to begin with this one.

Married 10 years, together 20. 2 kids. He was my first real boyfriend. Fell in love with him because he was funny, the life and soul of the party. We used to go out partying until the early hours of the morning, we'd host great gatherings for our mates, being young was super fun. For various reasons I was also a bit adrift when we got together (after all I was still a teenager) and he offered a lot of stability. We finished uni and he got a great job, encouraged me to do the same so that we'd have money and adventures together. I didn't really want a top paid corporate job, I wanted to do something in the arts but nothing paid well enough for the lifestyle he wanted so I got a job in finance for the money and figured it was OK to trade off my dreams as we'd have other dreams together. So far so good. And we did have a good time together for a long time.

Things started to go wrong around the time we got married. We were also buying a house and the stability he offered started to morph into being very controlling about everything, particularly money. He diverted my salary into his bank account (I KNOW it's stupid but we were getting married anyway and it was easier not to fight) and was always on at me to earn more, pay more as we needed more money for the house and wedding. Then as soon as we were married, he was on to the next thing.

He wanted to start a family (even though we'd agreed for years we didn't want children as there is a serious genetic condition in my family I didn't want to pass on). So we fought about that. And then he wanted a new house, and wanted to renovate, which we did. Except that we'd agreed a budget which he blew (it was very much his project and he didn't want me involved... at this point I was still pretty young, in my 20s, so again I let it slide) so it cost twice what we'd had set aside. Again, more pressure on me to work longer hours and haggle for promotions and bonuses (which I did), more arguments about money, and the first of many remortgages to free up cash.

As soon as house finished we're back onto him wanting a family. I gave in and we had two children. The eldest did inherit the genetic condition which has obviously consumed a huge amount of energy for us both now for years. He blames me for this as obviously the genes come from my side. I adore the kids but having seen various family members and the strain of variously living with this condition and parenting children with the condition, it's hard and wears you down. During this time my career has continued to progress, whilst his has stalled. He's angry and bitter about this. Always making nasty sarcastic comments. He continues to manage all of the money in the house, and we as a family continue to pursue a lifestyle we candidly can't afford with the non-disabled child in private school, best possible therapists for disabled child etc. Our mortgage is even bigger than it was 10 years ago as we've continued remortgaging every few years to free up money for life.

In the meantime, his being funny has rotted with old age into him just being sarcastic and unpleasant. Him being safe has turned into being bullying and domineering. The friends we used to throw parties for have all disappeared. No one wants to be around him any more as he makes obnoxious and offensive comments. I have a lot of friends, but just see them alone. No one wants to be around him and the husbands / partners don't like him. Where I have made friends who initially try and include him he makes excuses and always has an excuse not to want to be friends. He says they're annoying or aren't on our level. My family hate him. If I want to see my parents I have to do so alone, he never comes (he says their house is too shabby and he doesn't like visiting). He won't be in the same room as my siblings (who I adore and am very very close to). If I visit extended family he also won't come as he says he gets left out because they're more interested in talking to me than him.

He has a vile temper and yells and screams at the children. He calls them idiots. He calls me a c*nt in front of them. He's only happy if we're all on our best behaviour and ideally when I proactively think of everything he might like - cook his favourite meals, make sure kids are on best behaviour, house is tidy, and ideally take them out alone on the weekends so he can have a break. Noting that I work longer hours than him as am more senior in my job so I have to do all of this on top of working 50 hours a week so that he can lie around and scroll on his phone. If I ask him to do anything around the house he loses his temper. I never ask him to take the kids to give me a break as I know he gets angry and yells at them.

Where is this all going as a post (to anyone who has read this far). I just feel so trapped.

I work full time and am lucky enough to be very very well paid. But I do not have a penny of savings or anything to show for it.

The house is heavily mortgaged. With the equity in the house we could afford to sell and each my husband and I could afford maybe a tiny flat in our area we live in London. Obviously moving would be really hard for the kids.

Then there's the issue of childcare. My eldest needs specialist care which we've previously done through having live-in nannies (live out waaaay expensive megabucks and with working hours we need someone around all through school holidays etc). And I couldn't afford to get a place which was big enough for me, 2 kids and a nanny. BUT I also couldn't afford a live out nanny with the specialist skills required (as a benchmark c.£35k a year live in... JUST affordable, £60k a year to live out).

We could move out of London to get a bigger place but my job is tied to London, as are some of the specialist facilities my eldest needs (he attends a special school of which there are only a handful in the country of this profile).

I could get a new job with the hours to be able to do childcare myself but I don't know what job would enable me to work 10-3 each day (no after school clubs for disabled child) and have 20 weeks off a year for school holidays and pay even enough to be able to feed us, let alone pay for housing, council tax etc. A million percent nothing in my sector that's for sure.

I feel so stuck.

What am I looking for by writing all of this? I suppose just to get it off my chest. Anyone else got through a similar experience? I want out of this marriage so badly. I don't want my kids exposed to their father's angry domineering behaviour. I want them to have the experience of seeing what a healthy relationship can look like. I want them to see a happy mother. My youngest each day begs us to stop arguing. He draws pictures of his dad with an angry face, and also has adopted his father's awful mood swings, he goes from smiling and happy to hitting me and telling me he hates me.

It's all such a mess.

You are minimising his abusive behaviour and by doing so you are putting your children at risk. The type of home you are describing leads to long-term trauma.

There is the famous fight or flight response but also 'fawn'. Your children probably love and cosy up to dad to keep on his good side, all while slowly convincing themselves that they are the ones at fault. They must have been bad and that's why dad is so upset. They'll hug him and say sorry and will do everything they can to placate him. They will walk on tip toe never knowing what will set dad off next.

You are telling them by your inaction that this is a normal, healthy relationship since otherwise why wouldn't you take them away and keep them safe? They will internalise this and as adults will be predisposed to fall into the same abusive relationship pattern.

I'm sorry, OP, I'm being blunt in an effort to get through to you. By staying with this man and pretending that he's a good dad/husband, you are setting your children up for failure.

Walking out on you all for a week and leaving you without access to money for food for your children, as you described in one of your earlier posts, is abusive. A good dad would not do that.

If he has a nasty temper and you all know about it, you're all aware and not looking forward to the next eruption. Which will always come. You just don't know when.

This is horrible way to live. And yea, it's abusive. Just being careful not to poke the bear in case it kicks off. Nasty.

But you've all done it for years perhaps so you're used to being very careful not to anger him.

One day, he will get angry and bully you all because he feels like it without reason.

It never gets better. Only worse.

It's the modelling as much as the day-to-day anxiety. As a pp upthread said: As our children entered teen years they began to treat me the same way DH does.
I have seen this play out with the sons of people I know. And then those adult children having difficulty forming healthy relationships.

Just as an aside for a possible job change that would fit with the needs your children have.
Civil service roles often have term time/part time roles - there's a team in my division that work 10-2pm and although will pay less than what you're currently on you'd need hardly any if any at all child care.
Could be a short term solution.

There’s absolutely no point in paying money out for private school & specialist therapies when you’re not meeting your DC’s basic need to be safe and away from harm. He’s abusive and damaging your DC. You need to keep them safe.

Dumb question here but... I'm guessing other husbands aren't like that? He's been my only ever boyfriend so this to me I guess is normal. My dad is lovely I guess but definitely never lifted a finger round the house

It's not dumb but I am sad for you. I've been with my DH for 13 years. He has never, not once, raised his voice at me or called me a derogatory name.

I know you are struggling with the idea that your DH is abusive. But I think you should consider the possibility - the moods, the name calling, the financial control.

OP, you have said that you have trouble recognising your husband as abusive. There is an old Mumsnet thread, The Abuser Profiles, in which a user copied and pasted the different profiles from Lundy Bancroft's "Why Does He Do That?".

You may find it useful, and as the author states, many abusers do not fit neatly into one category and many "borrow" techniques from other profiles. The end game is still to humiliate, minimalise, and intimidate their partner and family into silence.

It is a 2002 text, but it may start to give you the framework into which you can put his behaviour.

Your DC's SEN school seems non-negotiable.
But London being what it is, there will be cheaper areas not far from where you now are from where you could still access the school and your friends. Or even a little outside London (commutable for you), assuming the nanny drives DC around currently anyway?

Your younger DC sounds quite young and would adapt to a change of school.

Once you've taken some legal advice and have got more of a handle on the overall finances, these practical possibilities will come more into focus.

Haven’t read the full thread but I’ve read your posts and he is economically and emotionally abusing you, it’s a crime called coercive control. Please keep reminding yourself - what he’s done is criminal!!! Make a list of everything bad hes ever done, please don’t sweep it under the carpet and lose yourself to his selfishness x

If we were face to face I’d say he’s not abusive he just has a bad temper. And that temper is exacerbated when he’s stressed, and he is a person who just handles stressful situations really badly, so the kids and I try and protect him from being stressed. Obviously me leaving would make him stressed so he would take it out on the kids no doubt.

It’s only reading it written down that it sounds really messed up.

It sounds like a family walking on eggshells round a person who makes their emotions your problem to manage.

Nobody here who has been through it thinks that because he is abusive it means he can never behave nicely… we know that’s it’s exactly because men like this flit between different behaviors that you get drawn in, stuck, confused, depressed and beaten down by it all. This is how you get trapped. If our abusers had spent every minute of the day screaming and cursing or worse then none of us would have got stuck either - we would have seen it coming a mile off. That’s not how this works.

If you have trouble with the term right now in one way that’s fine. But in another, it will hold you back from getting the help and making the changes you need, because your mindset will continue to give him ‘credit’ for this and that, or to try and see his point of view on this or that. Men like this are vilely manipulative, and the more robust your view of his behaviour the easier it will be to block out all the things he will say and do to try and get you to carry on as normal, allowing you to stick to your guns.

What PP have said is absolutely true, especially about the children. Abused children do not hate their abuser - they learn instead to hate themselves, and that’s the legacy the abuse leaves.

It seems messed up written down because it is messed up.

He walked out on you for a week, leaving you without money. You felt ashamed about this. You feel a need to conceal how bad he is from the world. You are still trying to minimise now on this thread how bad he is.

You are blaming yourself for an able-minded grown man's behaviour, the clue is when you talked about hoping that there's a sweet guy that another woman might bring out. News flash: that sweet guy doesn't exist and what you are seeing is the real him.

The occasional outbreaks of "nice" performance are called breadcrumbing and they are calculated to keep you there.

I honestly despair, OP. You are word for word describing an abuser but refuse to admit it because he occasionally goes a day or two without calling you a cunt.

You yourself have written that the kids and I try to protect him from being stressed. Your children are being abused. You are teaching them that they are responsible for a grown man's temper. You are telling them and us that your husband is a lovely man really and that it's not his fault that he gets angry. No amount of private schools and large houses will make up for the trauma they are being subjected to.

What was your own childhood like? The only way I could even half understand your reasoning is if you yourself grew up in an abusive home and normalised it as a coping mechanism.

I hope you had a good Mother’s Day @Namechangedforobvious . I thought about you and about the other mums who must be out there fighting battles in private that don’t have any easy solution, and are making sacrifice after sacrifice and still no light at the end of the tunnel. You are a brilliant mum, and you will find a way through this mess you are in because you are a survivor by nature and you can graft, and plan, and you are NOT a broken person - but you are trapped with a man who is. For now.

One thought I had is … might MIL be a secret ally? She sounds okay, perhaps she could help - even if it’s just being ready with supporting your dh whilst you are finding your feet after a separation ? It sounds like he won’t cope with being solely in charge of the kids. Could you sound her out very subtly?

He doesn’t call me a C—- regularly just occasionally when he’s angry 😂

sorry seeing it written down makes me see things more clearly. But I am big on facts (because of my job) and want to be factual that the really bad stuff is not all the time, just sometimes. That’s not an excuse! Just factual.

My childhood would be a whoooole other thread.

the really bad stuff is not all the time, just sometimes

But you and DC are all on tenterhooks all the time waiting for the hammer to fall again. The really bad stuff only has to be occasionally for you and DC to fear it every second that he's at home.

The "not all the time, just sometimes" is part of the abuse because in the good times you're all trying to appease him, keep him happy and prolong the peace before he erupts again. During that 'good time' you and the children are still being abused by the fact of his almost total control over you all. You might not realise how much stress this is causing you and the children but it will be there and will be constantly reinforcing the false belief that you are all responsible for his behaviour. I think it would help you a great deal if you did some more research into abusive behaviour and its impact on partners and children because you all deserve better.

@Namechangedforobvious

I think you have got some good advice on this thread. However, I am a bit irritated by some posts as they are so far from reality or what is possible for you right now, as well as showing a lack of understanding of abusive relationships, that they are very unhelpful.

I had a very abusive marriage - but didn't recognise it as such until after I left, despite the myriad of evidence.

1. You talk about him not doing things 'all the time'. That's exactly how abuse works. If he did do it 'all the time', you'd be clearer he was bad; and would probably have left sooner. It's because he does it episodically and can be ok / decent in between, that you are unsure, and actually normalise it.
2. It's clear you have very specific financial and practical issues that are making it hard for you to move to the next stage. An early poster on the thread gave you a useful list of next steps, and I would echo this, including:
3. Get legal advice straight away. Make an appointment with an experienced family law solicitor and talk through the issues. [I left my marriage after having a consultation with a family law barrister who starkly made it clear my marriage had no future. It was like a lightbulb]
4. Face the fact that it is likely you will have to make a career and some significant life changes. I don't say this lightly. But I do not see a way that you can continue the type of role you have and the corresponding expectations while managing a child with health needs (and your other child). I was not in the same situation as you but I did have to accept a very different picture in terms of my career than I'd had so far (and it is not easy, and I regularly have to accept that there were no perfect choices for me and remind myself I did what I had to do).
5. If you have a sympathetic, practical boss that you can talk to, have this conversation. That's very dependent on your organisation and whether this will be helpful or another hassle for you.
6. Disengage from your H as much as you can. Do what you need to do for your DC and you. This seemed crazy to me when it was my advice years ago - but one of the issues was that my H was never going to want to leave because I made his easy for him - did all the parenting, housework, practical tasks and so on. In my case, I didn't have to withdraw for very long because once I made up my mind that he had to leave, things moved quickly and he did actually leave (although it precipitated a decade of hell)...
7. ... to my final point: So many people told me how it would be great, and all this bright future I would have ahead of me. It has not been great. Yes, this awful man left my house and I was able to bring up my then-very small children in relative peace (if he'd stayed, I 100% would have had a breakdown). But he has continue to abuse us all in whatever way he could, ever since. Everything was a battle. The divorce took a decade. Finally got divorced last October and he is still making life hell, albeit in a lesser way. It is hard to describe how hard he has made our lives. On bad days, I feel very despairing because I wonder will I ever see the benefit of ending the marriage, in the sense of any financial security or peace? BUT I remember - the alternative was worse, and terrible to contemplate. It has not been perfect for my DC, but it would have been so much worse otherwise. Life isn't always easy and sometimes it's about accepting that one situation while still challenging is better than another.

I'm saying all this not to be pessimistic but to say that the initial steps you take may seem small, and may not seem like they make life better, but they will be better than what you have now. Good luck. 💐

But no one behaves abusively 100% of the time. If he's 'only' angry, shouting, screaming and calling you a cunt 10% of the time, the other 90% of the time you and your children are on tenterhooks trying to placate and not stress daddy. That is abuse and it is monstrous.

It's not normal to ever be called a c-nt. Anger is not an excuse for unacceptable language or behaviour. It's not a get out of gaol free card. "Oh, I was angry when I screamed at the kids and broke a chair, it's not my fault". That's not how it works. Good men spend decades in a relationship without ever hurling abusive words at their partner, even if they've had a bad day or are feeling grouchy.

Hi @Namechangedforobvious I read your post this morning and have been mulling it over since then. I've read some but not all of the replies so can see you've had good advice.

Your circumstances do seem to have you trapped but I just wanted to ask a few more questions.

I had initially thought you had said the mortgage was in his sole name - not unusual for a financial abuser so my advice was going to be to move out and leave him to it but I see that's not the case. You mentioned not having a "spare million" to buy him out so I guess the house is worth a couple of million. You said you had equity that would buy a couple of tiny flats so I'm guessing about £600k. So you're already servicing a mortgage of over a million. With your £300k and a mortgage for another £400k I am sure you could find a 3 bed flat in a reasonable area. I live in zone 2 and there are a few in my area (I live in one ).

Is your mortgage repayment or interest only? The new mortgage charter allows people to move to interest only for six months. You could move to interest only, frame it to your ex that you want to build up a buffer so that he signs then move out, leaving him with the lower payments until the house is sold in the divorce.

Many, many men simply walk out on their wives and children leaving them to manage alone (mine did). He will just have to find a way - and he at least will not have the children on top.

It's good that you are freeing up the money from the school fees - do not let your husband get his hands on that money.

Can you speak to the benefit people and say you are leaving your abusive husband and the benefits need to be transferred to you? Women's Aid may have advice on this.

Again sorry if I've repeated what others have said but I wanted to offer some support.

I grew up with a dad like your DH. I was a daddy’s girl. My DM would have said that I would have been heartbroken to ever leave my dad. I loved him when I was little, of course.

But the strain of living on tenterhooks was unbearable. I saw him for the abusive man that he was by the time I reached my early teens. The explosive temper got worse and became far more regular.

I used to beg my mum to leave him. I lost all respect for her for staying and trying to keep our family together. In the end he left for his 25 year old secretary. My mother was broken whereas me and my brother couldn’t have felt more relieved.

Growing up with a constant feeling of anxiousness in the pit of your stomach, worrying that something, anything could set him off has resulted in lifelong damage to both me and my brother. I sometimes wonder if it would have been better if he was abusive all the time as opposed to randomly. It’s the living with the constant fear that he could change at any moment that’s the worst part and your kids will be feeling that right now.