This feels so huge I have thought about writing it down for a long time but never really had the courage to until now.
My husband and I have been through some really difficult years and as a consequence I have really shut down emotionally from him and can't really see a way to regain any closeness. But I also feel very strongly that our children, who have difficulties of their own, deserve to have a financially stable home with two parents in it.
DH and I have been together since I was 24 and he 29. He was already in a stable professional career and when we met, I was just finding my feet in a career in media in London. We moved in together after a year - I moved away from London to his city as I found a trainee position near by. He has always had a temper but in the early days it was mainly road rage or recounting stories of people he had encountered who were, in his eyes, incompetent and he would rage on about them and honestly, I often found it quite funny in a sort of Basil Faulty way. I rationalised this by consciously noting that he never shouted at me and, in fact, never directly at other people just through a car window or afterwards when telling the story of how useless they were.
We married when I was 30 and moved abroad with his work around the same time. Initially it was for 3-5 years but we are still here 16 years later. The city we live in is basically the global centre for his industry but there are vanishingly few media jobs in English there. I initially found a maternity leave cover at a media company that worked in English. Then we had our children - I haven't returned to work since.
He started becoming more of a difficult character to be around after the birth of our first son, but very much more after the birth of our second. He would shout at us all a lot and could be quite controlling; he didn't like me going out in the evening with new mum friends and he often lost his temper with people in public. He developed a very arrogant attitude towards local people and has never bothered to learn the language fluently. I am fluent, which also caused problems as I would often talk to public officials, tradesmen, shop assistants etc and have to translate for him which he hated and would try to muscle in on the conversation and take over in his very basic language level. My father became very worried about his behaviour and wrote to him, sending a book on anger management.
I considered leaving him around this time and we had some marriage counselling but I decided it was worth continuing as we were just in a stressful situation. We both decided to stay in France beyond the initial contract. We had received a lot of financial help from DH's work as part of our relocation contract; rent paid, language lessons, money towards settling in etc but now we were going to manage on just his salary so we bought a house that needed doing up and DH did lots of the work himself. He had been having major work issues and was in trouble for shouting at a colleague so he decided to make a sideways move at work and throw himself into the renovations instead.
Our children's behaviour was also becoming a problem at this time and we were getting called in to our eldest's school. Eventually they were both diagnosed with ADHD and our eldest was prescribed a lot of out-of-school support which I was driving him to. This along with managing the renovations delayed my planned return to work. I was contacted by the place I did the maternity cover and asked to apply for a job they had but DH said we wouldn't be able to manage - it was a long commute. I find myself thinking about that job a lot.
Things became really, really difficult at home and there was a lot of shouting. He would often shout at us in public. There was also an incident where DH beat me repeatedly around the head with foam kneeling pad for closing a door he had said to leave open. Unsurprisingly there was little physical intimacy between us. One night after a day of him shouting and an evening of him drinking I went to bed early and refused his advances when he came to bed. He turned over violently and his closed fist hit the small of my back. I screamed in pain and said: 'Why did you hit me?' He insisted he hadn't hit me, he had just rolled over quickly and accidentally made contact with my back. Then he did the same thing again 5 minutes later. The next day I woke with pain in my lower back and ever since I have had recurrant pain in this area.
Then Covid happened. As with everyone, this was a very difficult time compounded by the fact that my dear father was clinically high risk back in the UK and eventually died from Covid. For a short time afterwards DH was very supportive. Then it went back to shouting, criticism, 'you'd be nothing without me' etc. I realised during Covid I needed to stop drinking almost completely and just focused all my efforts on the boys and trying to keep as much household stress away from DH. I managed the boys, their ADHD appointments and medication (very highly controlled where we live), schools and everything to do with the house. DH only had to manage work and the property we rent out in the UK. He had free reign to pursue his cycling multiple times a week, go on weekends away with his friends etc.
However, the same patterns keep repeating - DH gets a new role at work and eventually gets into trouble for shouting at someone and moves department. His career has now faltered and he's been very close to losing his job. Our son is now at an international school owned by his company - he would have to leave if DH lost his job. DH is on antidepressants and sees a therapist. Our home life has fallen into a pattern where we effectively lead separate lives - I get up early with the boys and get them off to school and manage all after school and weekend activities. He goes off to work, we eat dinner all together then I take the boys upstairs to bed, I stay upstairs and he sits and watches TV until late. Mostly we sleep in separate bedrooms. I rarely feel like being intimate with him. At the weekends he will stay in bed all morning, then go off to walk the dog all afternoon or go off cycling with his friends for the day. We rarely have friends over.
I've mainly lost my friendship group as I never managed to participate in many of the nights out or weekends away where they all bonded. I'm trying to get back to work but I have a 14-year career gap and it's not proving easy at all. I feel guilty that being the sole breadwinner has added to DH's stress but we aren't struggling financially - we own more than one property and I live fairly frugally. I swing between feeling I should stay with him to support him through his stress, or I should leave him and set him free to find someone who loves him in the way he wants (someone who want to have lots of sex with him). The boys already have difficulties in life with their ADHD and doing school in their second language. If we split up, that would be another disruption to their childhoods plus we would be financially worse off. There are clearly occasional good times between us and I recognize that DH has tried to change by seeing his therapist and working on his anger, but it's just not enough to make me feel remotely romantic towards him. I'm almost 47 though, so that might be down to hormones. I've seen stats say that life satisfaction is at its lowest around this age. I think I really, really need to get a job to at least give me some options and maybe see if DH feels better when I'm working.
I've seen seen other couples work through this tricky midlife phase and come out stronger the other side, I just don't know if I can forgive some things.