Husband says it's over, wants custody of DD

[MollFlounders]

I would really appreciate some thoughts on my situation. I've posted a few times recently about DH. There have been issues in the past but things have been particularly rocky since I went back to FT work 3 months ago (DD is now 9 months old). DH has always been quite selfish and inflexible (previous threads on this are here and here) and this has, for me, become more and more difficult to cope with since having to juggle a demanding job and of course DD. Things are at the point where counselling is required. I found a counselling group who will see us each separately and then together in a facilitated session.

So DH and I had yet another row yesterday morning. It was very trivial. I was hosting an event for some clients. DH managed to get his own last minute invitation to the same event (going as a client himself, of another host). I offered to give DH a lift in my work taxi, but on condition we operated on my timing seeing though I had to get there to meet my clients (DH is usually late to everything). DH was very pleased about the lift otherwise he was stuck with a long tube trip. We agreed, I thought, that we would leave the house asap but would absolutely be in the cab by 9am. I was up and ready, having also gotten DD up and ready for her day, by 8.30am. As it happened, my taxi arrived to collect me at 8.40am. DH had gotten up at 8am and proceeded to faff around the house getting himself ready in slow motion. I asked him a few times if it was possible to hurry things along a little as the cab was waiting downstairs with the meter ticking along. He just kept repeating in icy tones "we agreed we would leave at 9. We will leave at 9". So we left at 9.00am on the dot, with me standing around waiting for him in the meantime. In the cab, I expressed my frustration at his inflexibility and I said that I didn't feel it was normal to be so incredibly rigid. He basically said "if you want normal, you're with the wrong person. I'm not normal."

I didn't see DH again last night as he went out with a friend after the event and came home late. This morning, he was monosyllabic. I reminded him that he needed to call the counsellor for his separate session. DH said "there's no point going to a counsellor unless you tell me that your behaviour yesterday morning was totally unacceptable and will never be repeated again". Apparently I was relentless in my nagging and this is totally unacceptable and tantamount to treating him with contempt. After all, I know he hates being rushed in the mornings.

DH then asked me if I want custody (I know it's residence) of DD and I said absolutely. Asked him what he wants, he says he wants custody. She is 9 months old. We have a daily nanny but I do everything for DD outside of that. A family lawyer has told me that it seems clear that I'm the primary caregiver and that I could move out with her if the marriage ends. My main priority in all of this is DD's happiness and stability.

I guess I've got two questions. Does the situation with DH sound hopeless? I feel we're at the make or break point but I'd go through counselling if there was a chance of it working. But if he's saying counselling is pointless then can you make it work?? Other question: what do people do with residence and contact when it comes to small babies? How often would be reasonable for DH to see DD and how do you do this (e.g. him coming to my place)??

Hi,
I am quite new to MN but have been lurking and following this thread all the way.

I have to agree in that I think that the OP's DH could turn very very nasty.

Not suggesting he would harm DD but I feel fearful about things getting much worse before they get better.

Just sat down and spent half an hour catching up on this. So pleased you are out of the flat Moll.

I agree with those saying he is not safe. Your diary entry was terrifying. And the bit about dropping your dd's car seat because you dropped a suitcase was chilling.

Set very clear boundaries and do not see him alone. I wouldn't see him outside counselling and I would start not replying to emails etc unless they're things that need to replied to. But no need to say whether you received any special deliveries or discuss the holiday you've told him you're not going on.

I'd also seek legal advice about child access because I'm not sure I'd trust him with dd. Getting that aired with a solicitor early on will at least give you your options.

Hi

I also agree that email only arrangements are the best thing to do, I wish I had done it 10 years ago

This thread has really shown me what a hold my ex still has on me, he is coming here tomorrow and I have cleaned my house, done my eyebrows (wtf) just so he cant complain about me.....

I have a fab DS, a great p/t job around school hours, lovely house, enough money

My DS adores me and we are very very close, but this thread has made me think

My DS has always said I love you and dad the same, I thought I had done a great job not showing him what had gone on between me and my ex but I now realise my DS is as intimadated as me and wouldnt dream of even thinking he didnt love his dad as much as me because he would be wrong to think that(in his dads eyes)I feel sick to my stomach I have put my DS in this situation

I am really worried about this and in a bit of shock, but I know I have to sort it out somehow

Moll, make the break now, dont give him the benefit of the doubt anymore, get solicitors to deal with him, your nanny, parents anyone else

distance yourself from him, he will drain you and drag you down over and over again

but put a stop to it now or your DD will end up like my DS and its not right and not fair

I cant believe I have even wrote this

be strong now Moll, dont live for years and years with him being in control

My ex isnow but I WILL change that for DS and my OWN sake

take care

he backed me and DS into a corner with a hot frying pan

grabbed me by the throat with DS in my arms

tried to break a window over DS's bed

I never thought that any of that was abusive

I still find it hard to think it was an adusive relationship

but it was and STILL IS

10 fucking years

Im getting out now

Moll PLEASE dont be like me

God Moll, hang in there. I posted on your thread before because I was in similar circumstances and needed to seperate from my h. Well, I've done it. I went to court to get a protection order and my h left.

I too, have been bomb-barded with apologies and felt pity for my h who has appeared remorseful for his actions. I posted all of this on the Narcisstic thread, and still am!

However tonight, true to form, he reverted to his usual abusive self and I have received a string of angry texts that reminded me why I had to remove myself and my dc from this man.

Give him time and you will also start to see your ex h's anger emerge. It didn't go away, he is just playing Mr Nice because he is loosing control and he needs to get it back. He sounds very much like my h. You should look over the Narcisstic thread as I have received some advice from some very wise women!
Thinking of you x

Moll, been offline and just catching up. I rarely paraphrase Elvis, but a little less conversation and a little more action is what's called for here.

First thing Tuesday, please call your solicitor and instruct them to send him a letter suggesting a day's contact every other weekend. This can then be reviewed in six months time to include an overnight stay.

Your nanny (or someone else if she has the weekend off) can then do the handover in a public place. The time can remain the same every fortnight, e.g. 10am to 4pm. Then he has no reason to phone, text, e-mail etc.

Get your flat (if you own it jointly) on the market. Finalise your finances with your solicitor's help - get this side of things moving; it takes ages but will also show him that it's over.

Then focus your energy on you, not him. The spiel he gave you when you met for a drink is familiar. Unfortunately I had it both times I tried to leave and stayed for another three years. Guess what, nothing changed. And yes, the ostentatious bunches of flowers made me feel sick as well.

Finally, get that Why does he do that book back down off the shelf. The section on living with an abusive man chilled me as it was word for word what I lived with for seven years; hard to believe it's so textbook and I lived in secrecy and fear blaming myself. This is how you know it's not you and you deserve better.

Right, nagging over...

Moll,

Joint counselling will be a non starter with this man. He will never seriously go along with it, besides which most counsellors cannot even begin to work with narcissists. My guess is he will not go at all and even if he did he will manipulate the session (and counsellor) to make it all out to be your fault with him being blameless.

Quite apart from the apart no counsellor worth their salt would counsel a couple jointly within an abusive relationship (as yours is and has been to date).

I would not even be entertaining this idea in your circustances. Put distance both financial and legal between you and him.
You can make a better life for you and DD without his malign presence in it. For him this is all about power and control. You and your DD mean nothing to him, you are but possessions to him.

Moll, please don't engage with him anymore.
The flowers - hand delivered - are really creepy. He is showing he can get to you any time he wants to.

Send him an email stating that you do not wish to have further direct contact with him. He may email you to arrange visits with his daughter, but you won't respond to any emails or other forms of contact at all that do not directly relate to contact arrangements for DD.

No, he can't take her out of the country at all.

I would also say no now to the joint counselling. You don't need joint counselling, you need to build up your own self esteem so you can enable a relationship between him and DD. That's it. End of.

Moll just catching up with you after returning from holiday. Reading the stuff that's happened in the last week I was hoping you wouldn't meet up with him for a drink, was not surprised that you did and not surprised how you felt so low afterwards, the man is an emotional vampire for you, he sucks the life energy from you. Not wishing to sound over dramatic about it but I think there's something to that. H is so incapable of reasonable emotional responses and reactions, he has got them from you in the past. First the arrival of dd and now you leaving means that there is a huge void in his life. It's not you he wants, it's your energy, he needs to suck that from you b/c he doesn't have that inside himself or doesn't have a way to access it. So sorry to say I don't think it's that he wants YOU and dd back, it's that he needs his emotional fix - that's what you bring him.

Then I saw that you refused to meet with him again - hoorah! Then that you agreed to speak on the phone, my heart sank. I think that was a mistake, you got sucked back in again.

I think the joint holiday would be a mistake. I think it would be miserable and I think it would solve nothing.

I don't know about H being a physical danger to dd. I remain concerned about him being a physical danger to you. I know he didn't hurt you physically when you were together. He didn't need to. He could control you without the need for that. Now he has lost control of you and his best efforts are not working. So where does he go from here? I don't know but as his options narrow, he may lash out and I don't want you near him when that happens. Please continue to protect yourself.

I think it can be a real problem when you are warned that he's potentially dangerous b/c it means that you look to protect yourself and one way to do that is by not provoking him. Which means you're still in that abuse dynamic, I hope your IC has something helpful to say about that when she returns.

I also agree not to get sucked into email correspondence. It would be best to just have your standard response so that eventually he recognises that's all he gets from you. Sure it's tempting to tell him you gave the flowers away but in the long run I do think it's best not to respond.

My SIL is currently going through a nasty divorce from a very abusive man, very much like your H. She left when her dd was 3 weeks old, that was over 2 years ago now. They're still not divorced b/c he's defending it - the whole thing is ghastly but the reason I wanted to mention it to you was b/c when she first left she met up with him, he guilted her into sex several times, she would listen to him for hours on the phone despite us all trying to encourage her not to pick up the phone, to change her number, email address etc. Now he's using all that against her saying it's clear the marriage isn't over. I don't want you to go down that road....

You're getting great support IRL from your family (especially your mum, she sounds great!) and your IC. Lean on them when you need them. It took a long time for you to get deeply into this abusive relationship, it will take you a long time to recover from it. Don't expect miracles from yourself, you're doing the best you can.

I think for me one of the reasons I managed to avoid looking at my abusive relationship was b/c I knew it would say a lot about me if I looked at it. And maybe that's the bit I didn't want to look at. It meant acknowledging that the person I thought I was (strong, independent, capable) maybe wasn't all there was - there were some very vulnerable parts to me that allowed me to stay in that relationship. Facing those parts of me has been tough - but necessary.

You continue to do so well, keep hanging tough Moll...

Hi Moll, how are you doing today? I hope all is well with you and DD When do you next see your counsellor?
Fingers crossed for you that you are making headway with disengaging from H. Don't beat yourself up if you slip though - practice makes perfect.
Take care.
x

Hello all. Sorry I haven't posted for a few days. I have been reading though and, as usual, there have been some fantastic posts. There's no update so far as H is concerned. I haven't heard from him at all since the "holiday haranguing" on Thursday evening.

In terms of the legal position, I got a family lawyer on board in the days after the "you hit me" incident and I've been keeping her up to speed with what has been going on. I've sent her an email this morning asking for advice on the best way to handle H and his access to DD.

I know some people have expressed concern about H's contact with DD and whether or not that should be supervised. At this stage, it's a theoretical question as he is not taking up the option of seeing her. During the week takes care of itself because he would always be meeting her with our nanny. At weekends, I would be ok (from a DD safety point of view) with him taking her out for a few hours. I know he has said a lot of rubbish but he hasn't done anything to make me feel that he poses a risk to her. However if my gut feel on that changed then I would be straight onto it. Taking her away on a long haul holiday for 2 weeks is a different story and there's no way I could allow that.

Oh hang on- got to go, will come back on later (work intervenes)

Sorry about that abrupt post and ending- I had to do something at work. I just wanted to say that I am giving a lot of consideration to H's access to DD. My post makes it sounds like I'm being very easily dismissive of the safety risk and I'm not. I think what is going on is that I'm moving from having been hopelessly controlled by H and in a kind of dreadful thrall to him to now having broken free of the spell. Now I'm free of the spell I can see that a lot of what he did and said were just blatant attempts at control and manipulation (well, they were more than attempts- they worked for years). They seem almost laughable now I'm at a distance from them (although I still go into the stoat/ weasel/ rabbit/ headlights mode when I'm with him). Free of the spell, I don't feel the fear and so I don't believe H is a safety risk to me or DD. I'm aware that this probably sounds hopelessly naive. I think boundaries are the key, as saintlydame and IAU say.

I'm also quite nervous about the whole residence/contact thing because there seems to be so much media coverage at the moment about FT WOHMs losing residence of their children. I don't want to do anything that might make it seem that I'm preventing H from having access to DD such that court intervention might be required to protect his rights. I'm talking to my lawyer about that and am probably just jumping at shadows.

Anyway, I wanted to say to IAU - thanks so much for posting on this thread. Your ex sounds horrific. I hope you're ok and dealing with your situation. Therealme - I've followed your thread as well and can't believe what a horrendous time you've had. Thank goodness you're out of that situation. You've achieved amazing things. Queenofdenial - you are yet another inspiration! I like your Elvis quote. I agree about regularising the contact arrangements too so they just take care of themselves rather than requiring constant discussion between H and me. I'm keep on with Why Does He Do That? I'm not sure if you had this experience but when I was reading that book (secretly) before I decided I had to move out I was constantly distinguishing H's behaviour from what is described in the book (i.e. "oh H isn't that bad, he just does X, Y, Z"). Now when I'm reading it I feel I see H's behaviour for what it was more clearly. I suppose that is a natural consequence of actually removing myself from the confused and confusing world I was living in where H was constantly telling me that he knew exactly what was going on and I didn't have a clue.

Attila - power and control, yes. And, also to dollius, on the joint counselling, I think this will have to be only about our joint role as parents. One for discussion with my counsellor (I'm seeing the holiday substitute on Thurs and then again next week, and then my usual person is back mid Sept).

nje3006 - that's interesting what you say about the fear of violence and the continuation of the dynamic. I do need to discuss that with my counsellor. I don't feel fear of him now as per the above, like switching the lights on and realising that the scary monster isn't there after all, but hopefully that's not a naive view. Your SIL's experience sounds dreadful. I will be resisting that road with H. Your point about avoiding looking at your relationship is really interesting. I feel very much the same way about the person I thought I was (and most people see me the same way) but the vulnerable parts are there as you say. I'm looking forward to counselling eventually moving to focus just on me (and building myself back up again) rather than being clouded with dealing with H's issues as well.

Cheerfulvicky - thanks for checking in!

In terms of how I feel, I'm generally ok. I still have massive pangs of guilt and uncertainty. This morning I woke up feeling terribly guilty again for having abandoned H, how hurt he must be that I've told him that I don't want direct contact with him, how hurt he must be that I've said I don't want to go on the holiday. But I know now to tell myself that it's ok for me to prioritise my own feelings and that if I don't want to see him I don't have to. Sounds very silly written down like that! Small steps...

Moll - just checking up on you again and have been catching up on this thread as I've been on hols from work for a couple of weeks. The offer of a coffee etc. still stands (I work in the City, but live in the burbs). I think you can contact me through CAT (but being a technodinosaur, I'm not sure what that stands for!)

Keep going, stay strong. You're doing fantastically well and you're very brave.

Hi Moll, hope everthing is okay and that the conselling is going well. How is life in the flat? Has H decided what to do about the holiday (i.e.will he goon his own do you think? or is it just a case of accepting that money has gone?)
Sending you strong vibes.

Thanks lemony and Blackduck for checking in. Everything is pretty good - counselling today went well. It's shocking, but such a relief, to hear someone objective (who has heard all the gory details in RL) affirm that H was concertedly emotionally abusive. It's shocking because.... well, as others have said, you don't believe you would ever be the type of person to end up in that situation. But it's a relief because it makes it real, not some crazy thing you dreamt up or blew out of proportion when in reality your H is just the lovely guy everyone outside your marriage thought he was.

DD and I are very happy in our new place. My mum is coming back for a few weeks on Saturday and I'm looking forward to seeing her. H saw DD for lunch yesterday, which I arranged for him, but other than that I haven't heard from him since the call we had before the weekend.

I remember someone saying on this thread ages ago (sorry but I can't remember who it was and it's now a looong thread) something along the lines of how it's shocking how quickly you are absolutely 100% good as soon as you get out of the dreadful situation. That's how I feel. There will be downs to come I'm sure, but my overwhelming feeling is that I've escaped from jail and it feels amazing, as ridiculous as that probably sounds.

Moll, glad to hear that you are feeling positive. Your mum sounds like a star!!

Have a great weekend!!

fabulous! so glad this is working well for you. you were not imagining it and it wasn't your fault. here beginneth your life, as they say.

Wooooo! Go Moll!

Moll, I've been following your thread but not posted before. Stay strong!

Just wanted to say that I know someone who was also in a bad relationship and she only realised it was time to end it when she went abroad alone on business for a while and felt this weight lift off her as she walked around the city she was visiting.... She knew then that her dh was having such a detrimental affect on her well-being.

Lovely to read that, Moll. Have a great time with your mum.

Congrats, moll. From my own experience (as always, ahem), I truly think the hardest time is when you're trying to decide whether to leave. In the relationship or out of it, the sheer momentum of everyday life carries you along, but changing direction - wow, that's hard. It's why in short term, staying looks easier. (To lurkers: but it's not, honestly!)

Moll, it all sounds good. Your tone is so different and you sound very different from how you did when you started this thread. I bet you feel more like your old self as well.

Yes, there are ups and downs, but the ups predominate. It's only now that I'm really starting to see how insanely controlling and manipulative my ex was (is - I don't believe he'll stop). My line at the moment is to tolerate not even the slightest deviation from our arrangements. If he's ten minutes late collecting her, I make the point. Yours and mine will keep checking the boundaries and pushing them as far as they can.

It's tedious, but then, hey, so are they. Keep going and keep doing all the good stuff. You're a star.

Hey Moll,

Someone posted this on another thread and so much of it seemed to chime with your experience.

Don't know if you've come across it, but thought the last section about how to handle things after the split might be useful. here

So pleased you and DD are safe and happy.

Have just read this whole thread with DD asleep on my knee. Parts of it have brought me to tears and I have had to wipe DD's forehead dry twice

I walked away from my emotionally abusive/cheating fuckwench of an ex when DD was 2 weeks old, she is 5 weeks now. Massive guilt also consumes me on a daily basis, and if she weren't here, I expect that I'd still be under the same roof as him, putting up with the crap I put up with for the past 5 years of my life. I have post-it notes on my bedside table telling me I am doing the right thing, that DD deserves so much more than being raised in an abusive environment, that I wasn't responsible for the breakdown of the relationship, one happy parent is better than two unhappy parents etc; as I find night times are when it hits hardest, when you get into bed alone and doubt everything you have done to tear yourself away from such a horrid existence.

You're an absolute inspiration, you really are. You should be so very proud of yourself for making a better life for you and your DD, and for leaving before she is old enough to see your unhappiness on a daily basis. You have done the right thing, don't ever seriously doubt that. One day at a time huh stay strong.