This is a bit of a long one so I do apologise.
My partner of 15 years cohersively controls me but has never been physically violent. He is 12 years older, and relevant to mention that I am from the U.K. and he is from Pakistan.
Our children are now pre-teens / teens and are the ones who brought the control to my attention. He tries to control what they do now what they wear, what they believe in etc and there is just a general clash of culture that we have never been able to get past but the difference is that they stand up to him and I support them in doing so but struggle to do it for myself. He was fine when they were small and impressionable but now that they have a voice he has issues with them constantly.
Last year was the first time I tried to leave. It was peak abuse, he told me I couldn’t leave the house alone, he was getting increasingly aggressive towards our teen daughter also. I took the kids and went straight to the courts and got a protection order, police removed him from the house and I phoned social services to request an intervention so that he could not get access to the kids alone.
That’s the first time it got that bad and that we have ever involved outside forces. He then became a missing person, it spiralled into admission into a mental facility and the doctors explaining to me that he wasn’t himself when he acted that way, the courts dropped the order, social services made him get counselling and dropped the case. Between us he agreed to move to a different city because my daughter didn’t want to live with him anymore, his work is flexible, and now only visit once every 4-6 weeks.
It’s been almost a year now and I can see him slipping back into old ways. He is becoming increasingly religious, and using his culture to disguise as religion. Pushing back on the kids more, putting me down etc. He has a new job starting next month that will make his visits less infrequent and I would like to prepare to leave.
I work full time in a law firm and make reasonable money (35k) but I cannot seem to get secure enough to pay all of the bills. I pay for everything currently aside from the mortgage and so I cannot see how I would pay for housing when I am scrapping the barrel at the end of every month. Be on the other hand gets paid at least 65k and will only pay the mortgage and nothing else. When everything transpired last year I also found out that he had never put me on the house name or mortgage despite telling me he had, I thought I could fall back on that but that is no longer an option. I really need advice in general but mostly on how I can provide everything for my children.
I also worry that he will have the ability to request 50:50 custody. This is what has kept me in the marriage since the beginning. I would fear for my children and I always worried about abduction. My kids are old enough now, and actually can’t stand their father which is devastating so I know a capture of those sorts would be difficult for him to
pull off but even thinking of him alone with the kids scares me and them. They want me to leave so badly, I just do not know how the logistics will work.
I sometimes think he pretended to be mentally ill to get us back, and I feel awful for thinking that way. I had a mentally unwell mother my whole life so he knows it’s a soft spot for me and my family. I think this way because once when he didn’t want me to leave the house he didn’t pay the car insurance without my knowledge, I got stopped by the police and got given 6 points. Then I doubt myself and think I am being unreasonable.