Need advice. Husband worries. AIBU

[HeatherSea]

I think my husband has always emotionally abused me. He’s very dismissive, dominant, interrupts, talks over me, doesn’t listen when I’m talking, is always looking somewhere else or doing something else when I’m trying to speak to him. Over the years he’s stopped spending any time with me, doesn’t sit with me in the evenings. I feel I’ve fought to try and keep communicating but over time I’ve just given up. He’s now constantly anxious and angry and grumpy, he’s never happy. Every weekend ends in an argument because I ask him if he can at least smile or be pleasant to me. I don’t have the strength anymore to keep strong. Two weeks ago he was being his usual miserable self and I asked if he could please cheer up and he refused so I decided to just stop speaking and get on with my life. I had to leave for work for a couple of days and he just let me leave the house with my suitcase and didn’t say a single word. I then wrote a long message to him telling him how I feel, because he won’t acknowledge anything or have a conversation with me. He’s completely ignored this. I came back from work and he continued to ignore me, left me to carry my suitcase upstairs, I was ill at this point as well. I’ve been ill all week, trying to look after our children and work, and I’ve now told him I just want a divorce. Last night I sat on the sofa with the kids for the first time all day and he shouted at me and said I needed to get up and start the baths and he wouldn’t do them. He kept going until I finally bit and shouted at him. He then turned around and said in front of the children that this was an example of me throwing a tantrum because I couldn’t get my own way. We had a huge argument in front of the children and now we’re not speaking. I would divorce and leave if it was just me, but I have four children. They all adore him and I don’t want to destroy their family life but I can’t carry on putting a face on much longer. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I have to just get on with it, and try and block him out so I can keep everything good for the children but I know if I didn’t have kids I’d be out of here straight away. I don’t think there’s any resolving, he won’t communicate, he can’t ever be wrong, he talks over me, I don’t know what to do.

Your husband treats you with contempt and is 'king of the castle ', a man who sees himself as head of the house and you're in a subservient role.

This atmosphere is toxic for you and your children so I would take it a step at a time. Make an appointment to see a family law solicitor and gather all financial information you can before he gets wind of what you're doing.

With men like this, it's best to get a solicitor experienced in domestic abuse because he'll try and screw you over. Don't tell him what you're doing, just quietly organise things.

Wikivorce and Citizens Advice website have lots of information.

It is precisely because you have 4 children that you should divorce him. You cannot stay with him because of them. What do you want to teach them about relationships and what are they learning here?.

These children are the only good also to have come out of this entire relationship and it probably was his idea in the main for you to have 4 too (keeping you barefoot and pregnant is a tactic abusers often employ). You, and in turn they, are being abused by their dad. They do pick up on all the vibes here, both spoken and unspoken, and they hear and see far more than perhaps either of you care to realise.

And your children do not adore him so much as fear him; they've seen him having a pop at you in front of them and they fear the same being done to them. They become quiet and subservient around him in a vain attempt to not set him off. These men are volatile and remain so.

Your children are seeing domestic abuse within their home and it will harm them going forwards also particularly if you did decide to not leave him. If you chose to stay your own relationship with them could be damaged as a result because they could well see you as putting him before them. They are not going to say thanks mum to you for staying; they will call you daft for doing so.

Use the service of a local Solicitor and Womens Aid to help you to leave him safely. Your own recovery from his abuses of you has not begun yet and will not till you and he are apart. Abuse like this too can take years to recover from.

Function over form - the family is not functioning for your children in its current form. Everything is not good for your children at the moment. They don't need to live in the same house as him to love him but their family life is currently their parents arguing in front of them which I'm sure they'd love to stop.

"I feel like I have to just get on with it, and try and block him out so I can keep everything good for the children but I know if I didn’t have kids I’d be out of here straight away".

Please do not feel like you have to get on with it and swallow down your feelings; make plans to leave him. Start by speaking to Womens Aid and a firm of Solicitors local to you.

Your children already know things are very bad within their home and it is not the sanctuary it should be for them either. As I wrote earlier, it is precisely also because of them that you should leave your, and in turn their, abuser.

The only acceptable level of abuse in a relationship is none and your relationship therefore is over. He crossed that line the first time you were abused and it's not your fault nor your kids that your man has decided to embark on his own private based war against you. Look at his parents OP, chances are one or even worse both of them act the self same.

Your kids are having this dynamic normalised to them.

Would you want them to recreate your marriage in their own futures? It's teaching them that the woman is to be shouted at and denigrated and bullied - do you want that for your daughters, do you want that for your sons?

Show them this isn't acceptable and isn't how relationships and family life work.

Your children likely fawn over dad because he's the scary one to be pacified, not because he's adorable.

Start divorce proceedings asap Your husband is an ABUSER the sooner you accept that and dijorce the better for your children

How's it going op did you find the strength to leave he sounds horrid