Marriage over - help me

[Mightymum05]

My marriage is over. I’ve decided I cannot live with my husband long-term. There are a great deal of issues - including anger. And ultimately we do not make each other happy any more.

My children are 12 and 10 in year 7 and 5. They love their dad of course and I am very worried about the repercussions on them. I could potentially survive another 5 or so years so their childhood is settled. I wouldn’t be happy, would have to navigate his anger but I could probably survive it.

However if I was just considering myself I would leave now. I can afford a much better house in my own if I moved back to be near my family. My job is hybrid and I could make this work with the support of my family. My children have cousins there who are a similar age. But of course it would be a huge disruption to them to leave their home, their school, their friends.My Husband would probably accept having them every other weekend so we might be able to make this work.

All my thoughts feel selfish. Should I just stick it out for the sake of the kids and start again when they are older?

Don't. If it was just you, fine but children don't deserve to have to suck it up and grin and bear it.

Don't stay if you're miserable and you know in your heart you're done. If you're miserable everyone will be miserable, and the kids will end up feeling guilty knowing that you felt obliged to stay and be miserable on account of them.

In 5 years would you move back home anyway? Because the children maybe settled where they are and then you are two hours away from them.

Thanks for the replies. The anger is not caused by me or by our relationship. Therefore I think it would exist anyway. The children would be around this without me being there to calm situations down. This worries me.

I agree with all the comments about moving away although I feel if I asked the kids they may well say they’d like to live near family. But one step at a time and I think the first thing to do is to separate. I’ve been with my husband since I was 18 so this feels hard.

Is shouting abusive? Really? Surely everyone raises their voice sometimes.

It depends. Explosive anger is horrible to live with and it makes everyone in the house tread on eggshells to avoid it. I guess that is a form of emotional abuse. But of course everyone gets cross sometimes! Either way, it sounds horrible for you and your DC.

Have you talked to him about this OP? Is there anything he could do now that would make you stay? If the answer is no then rip the plaster off. There are a few horrible things to get through (first Christmas after split, house admin, long talks to discuss future etc) but once these are done it starts to get easier. 6 months after the split I felt lighter than I had in years and everyone was commenting on how much better I seemed. Sometimes you don’t realise what a weight you’ve been carrying til it’s gone.

if he was that bothered about his children he would not be shouting at you and or all or sundry in the first place. To these men it’s always someone else’s fault and never their own.

You do not want to stay and it certainly will
not do your kids any favours to put up with their angry dad for the next five years either. Staying for the sake of the kids is a statement that often does not stand up to scrutiny. Your son would further learn that this is how men behave in relationships and your daughter could think that this is acceptable to you so will be acceptable to her.

Teach them properly that the only acceptable level of abuse in a relationship is none. Feel the fear and carry on with your plan to separate from him. The kids as well are not glue nor should be used as glue to bind you and he together.

Do you think that he will really be all
that bothered about seeing his children going forward?. I would formalise all contact as well
using a contact centre. No informal arrangement should be entered into.

Shouting on the odd occasion isn’t abusive, but that’s not the picture you’re painting OP. You’re talking about regularly needing to calm things down, you’re scared of leaving the children with him because of his temper. This sounds really unpleasant and not a good atmosphere to be living in. Find somewhere local and get yourself out of there. The kids will soon be old enough to decide if they want to spend time with their Dad and it seems likely they won’t.
To give you some kind of gauge DH &I have a proper shouting raised voice maybe once every six months, and that might be a couple of sentences, it’s never an argument that lasts at that level, but emotions have to be running pretty high for that to happen, it is absolutely not a normal occurrence. It wasn’t for me growing up either, I raised my voice as a shouty slammy moody teenager, but my Dad just about never raised his.