I had two moments. He decided he didn’t want more children after our third child. I said ok but then get a vasectomy. He went ahead and ‘booked the procedure’ except he didn’t and I ended up pregnant with our 4th child. I wanted to keep the child, he didn’t. He drove me to the abortion clinic with the kids in the back seat and made me go in and get it done. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. I went ahead with the abortion because I was scared of being vulnerable again and him being more and more controlling. I had managed to stay employed but a fourth child would make it harder and delay me leaving him. I was awake for the procedure because I wanted to feel everything and never forget what this man had done to me. He picked me up afterwards, I asked to go to a diner for comfort food and he bitched and moaned the whole time that the diner was terrible, there was nothing on the menu for him to eat (it’s a fucking diner with 10 pages of options so there is always something to eat asshole) and complained when I went to take a nap in the afternoon because he wasn’t Mr Mom.
I had a second moment when he left our youngest child in the car while he went shopping in the mall with his sister. It was about 6 months after the abortion and 30C outside and thank goodness a lady saw my daughter’s bright hair and raised the alarm. He never took responsibility for leaving our daughter in the car and blamed his sister. I started preparing to leave him at this point but doing my research and speaking to people I decided to delay because he would have so much time with the children. As it is he has them every other week. It’s a nightmare and I don’t regret waiting until my youngest was able to wash/groom herself, prepare a bowl of cereal and knew to go to a police(wo)man if not feeling safe and give them my phone number. This came in handy when he lost her at the airport transferring planes and the police called me to locate him.
Covid hit and we were stuck in a house together. He complained about the house being too small. No joke it is a huge home worth millions. People were dying all around us and there he was complaining that a beautiful home filled with his wife and children wasn’t enough.
I did think carefully before completely ending it with him. His friend verbally assaulted me because I spoke up about my husband not pulling his weight. Apparently I was demanding and a jerk because poor working class guy (who had never done a working class job in his life) didn’t feel comfortable living in the ‘wealthy’ suburb with the best schools, close to the beach and best leisure facilities. I never told my husband this has happened and waited for him to call me to make sure I was ok. Two years later he finally mentioned it. He brought it up to our child’s therapist and said I can’t be trusted and I’m a liar because I didn’t call him to tell him what his friend had done. It wasn’t on me to tell him. I knew his friend will have told him. My husband never defended me despite me being required to defend his indefensible behavior. The therapist was open mouthed and called him a hypocrite, which he didn’t like.
I do understand staying in an abusive relationship when you have young children. I did it knowingly and it was very tough but I protected my younger two children. He worships the eldest child and has pretty much discarded our son who is quite autistic but brilliant and he is meh about our youngest who is a tomboy. He is now telling her she is a boy, while telling everyone else that gender doesn’t matter. If it doesn’t matter why bloody talk about it with others?!? She is a young child and I consider it healthy she has shared her feeling about this with me. I don’t discuss it with anyone who isn’t in a need to know role (teacher, doctor, therapist).
Our eldest child is manipulated by him so badly. As an example, he has told he she must go slowly. This doesn’t work when you have 3 children. All 3 have to follow the schedule or it’s chaos. If their schedule is to get up, eat breakfast and get ready is 7-8am, and her siblings accomplish this, it’s not fair they have to wait while their elder sister ‘goes slow’ just like Daddy told her, and isn’t ready until 9. Her siblings regularly lose their temper with her taking so long. Her little sister threw her across the room once because they had waited forever, older sister was singing and dancing instead of getting changed. They were running late missing out on activities. Understand that these behaviors are a result of the abuse. It’s exhausting to deal with it.
You also have your own abuse you have to deal with. Basically it made me have some ADD symptoms. I have high anxiety as I don’t feel safe all the time.