ultimatum;divorce or adoption.

[mou]

18 months ago, following a tough time my H told me we either gave DS up for adoption or our marriage was over and at the time he really meant it. i knew i had to stand by my son and then H backed down. I really tried to get over this but relationship between H and DS continued to be 80% crap and i was continually picking up the pieces until about 2 months ago when i thought i was going to have a breakdown. H can be pretty shitty when he is drunk/angry or both and is so negative about everything. i have tried and tried to get him to talk to someone but he will only talk to me and i am exhausted.
DS's problems are monumental and we have been referred to CAMHS.
I am so sad and the anger at his ultimatum keeps bubbling to the surface, even though I know after all this time i should forgive him. sometimes i look at him and feel like I don't know him anymore, and I certainly don't know myself anymore. I'm terrified of the future but only feel calm when i am on my own. want it all to stop but fed up of feeling like i'm the one that is carrying the family as i'm not that strong anymore.
tired and sad.

i agree with georgiamama about where the line is drawn, today, tomorrow, next week, a year, and that is why i said give up drink and get help.
i think if i was in a bad place like he is i would want somebody to help me out of it, especially knowing what he was like, and maybe that is something i haven't honestly done, asked myself why this essentially good man has turned into someone i don't know.

The childrens wish for daddy to be here IS a tough one and onebatmother is also right. the decision about H staying or going is absolutely not their responsibility. But i do listen to a certain extent to the stuff between the lines and quintessentialshadow was right when she said DS is crying out for his dad to say with passion that he loves him and wants to be there for him. DS needs to know that dad wants to read to him, wants to sort out his playground fights, wants to de-nit his hair, wants to be there whan it all gets too much and DS has a violent outburst, which i can not manage by myself.

Instead of crying and begging for it to stop i am beginning to feel strong enough to take control and that makes a huge difference.

i don't know where we will be in a months time, but having a lot of people ask me some really tough questions has really made me look at myself and that makes a huge difference. his anger makes me withdraw emotionally, my emotional withdrawal makes him angry. and i stood up for myself and said it could be no other way if he could not change.

this does not diminish the fact that the children are of the utmost importance but to do the right thing for them I had to find that something inside me.

i had bottled it all up for so long trying to pretend to the world that everything was fine that it was destroying me. so starting this thread was the first step. IF and it is a big if it turns out that H is depressed, or having some sort of crisis, then whatever the damage done so far, he can heal himself, the rift with the children, and they have a future, scarred, but a future nonetheless. And if he can not do that, there is NO future. I need to do a lot of looking at myself and who I have also become, because already I am not quite in the same place as when I started the thread. maybe a little stonger.

He was once my best friend. and the sad thing is where he and i are concerned, I proposed.

I never really understood how much sharing a problem could really help tackle it and would probably not be in this mess if i had asked for help sooner. one thing is for sure, i won't make that mistake again. so no, my instinct tells me that the line won't be crossed in a years time because the person i am becoming won't sit in a corner crying letting it happen,

so thank you all so much, even if you said something i didn't want, but needed to hear.

Mou, good luck, I hope this thread has been cathartic and offered you some support. Please keep posting for support whenever you need it, that's what MN is for!

mou, one thing you said there really struck a cord for me. I too find it difficult to ask for help. When things go badly for me I retreat into my shell, and hope for the bad thing to go away. My dh and I went through some tough times after our children were born, and because we didn't talk to each other, and rebuffed our mutual attempts at support things deteriorated between us to the extent that dh had an affair, and after a really tough few years we separated.

During the tough times I had some counseling (through work, who were fabulous). Part way through that I had an action adventure holiday in the USA on my own, which ended up with me breaking my jaw and my arm. On the way back (two days post op, with my arm in a sling and my jaw wired up) I had a terrible flight (changes, delays and a very full plane, with nothing I could eat/slurp through a straw) and yet I could not ask for help. I just hoped that someone would notice and take pity on me. I remember sitting in the therapists room and having to have her tell me that there was something wrong with me when in such circumstances I did not feel able to come out of my shell and get the help that would certainly have been offered.

Several years down the line I still find it hard to ask for support, but I have learnt that when you do people are very happy to give it to you. Indeed now I have been in the position to provide support to others I realise what a privilege it is to be able to support other people in their hard times.

dh and I are now back together, and I think our relationship is stronger than it has been for many many years. He has learnt to ask twice if I am alright, and I have learnt the strength to say when things are not OK. I am not saying that our situations are in any way comparable, but things can with hard work, and thought and support become better for you and your family. Whether that is together (and I hope it is, because what you are embarking on is brave and I think admirable) or apart.

Just make sure you grab hold of every offer of support, and remember that you will not be a burden when you take what is offered. Helping other people is very life affirming.

part laughing at your picture of coming back from USA. So like me. i was in road accident and apparently i kept saying 'no, no i'm ok, just let me get back on with my journey' and apparently if i hadn't gone to hospital i'd have got to the end of the road and that would have been it. i'd split my skull in two, with no outer signs and had a bleed in my head. it is so not funny really but for some reason i'm laughing.
i actually kind of hope people won't notice me so i can fade into the background, but i'm learning.

And you are so right about helping other people

I'm glad that struck a cord with you too . It's important not to value yourself by how tough you are. There is nothing wrong with being sensitive, and we don't always have to cope with everything. There are I am sure other things that are great about you as well as having (or pretending to have) a high pain threshold.

I am well known (esp at work) as being very laid back, and in some ways I am. I don't get easily upset by things on the whole, and I am fairly quick to see the other side and be forgiving. But I can also really hold on to bad things and beat myself up for what I see as my failings. My therapist said I was almost two people. One happy go lucky and the other very angry. It has been tough reconciling the two.

One thing that she said about my dh was that he was following his own path, and I should not see his behaviour as being in any way my fault or responsibility. I found that incredibly liberating. That's not to say that our interactions affected the decisions he made, or that I had no responsibility for what I had done/not done, said/not said, but that his actions were his own.

Quattrocento, i missed your post. i hope i am not still vascillating. and yes it is generally unlikely for middleaged people to change, so why did he? (asking of myself). i'm a lot younger than him, so maybe a second family too much for him though it was what he wanted. older children in their twenties.

What will change and how those changes will become permanant is my main focus at the moment but talking things through has put things in perspective

I may not be getting it absolutely right but i'm really trying to make sure the chidrens needs are coming first. i suppose from that point of view i want them to have the dad that he was to his first children. I can't put my needs first at the moment because i'm not sure what i want for myself, apart from the hurting to stop for everyone. When the children are more secure, then and only then will i ask myself what i want.

thanks for your posts, i value their honesty.

Mou - I hope you are OK. I still think that a bit of time away from each other would only be helpfull - to you all. You can tell DS that dad has gone on a course or something, but you can then see how things are without him, if it should come to that. I recognise that you are trying to keep it all together for the kids and to re-find the man he was, but everything sounds so muddled at the mo for you. Just a month of separation. No-one else need know.

I admire you for putting the neeeds of everyone else before yourself, but do think twice. You have needs too and can't hold it all together if you are break underneath it all.

i'm sort of going down that road as best i can and getting a weekend/evening job. will help financially, get me out of the house. i normally work from home so i get overwhelmed by being somewhere that has been fundamentally negative.

In between the worst moments we never 'rowed', so at the moment there is a fairly bearable atmosphere and DS has had 3 brilliant days. i'm very, very busy around the house, it's never been so clean. DD had a bit of an outburst and shouted at DS and H 'I don't know why people don't think before they open their mouths around here!'. Out of the mouths of babes, I actually left the room to smirk. She really is a little star.

mou - found you!

This is so awful

Where are you with things atm?

think u need to get ur h into councling or something.he sounds very angry at something and it seems at times his vent for anger is u and ur son. that isnt good, but if he gets to the bottom of why hes doing what hes doing perhaps he will realise and stop himself.im sorry u have had such a bad time recently and not making excuses but perhaps the medical history in your h family is a reason as to why hes behaving like this.i would gently encourage him to talk to his doctor.if he refuses then u wouldnt have a choice really, u cant have your son going through this again.did u know that many undiagnosed mental issue sufferers self medicate with drink or drugs?im wondering because of h behaviour is very similar to a relative of mine.