These last few entries make me realize that I have decided about my Marriage, and it’s time to close out this goal and start on the next – Get Out of My Marriage. The better to feel myself definite and decided on this.
Last night he came home so reeking of pot, (I guess he smoked some just before entering the apt. or something), that I smelled him walking past me before I had noticed him. After a while, the odor dissipated, but for a while, you could probably have gotten high just on the fumes left in his wake. I realize that should he get into any trouble about this, it’s my trouble too, since I’m knowingly living in a place where there’s an illegal substance being owned, and there would be a presumption of ownership on my part as well. Additionally, writing this constitutes evidence that I am not unaware of the situation, (though I don’t know precisely where he keeps it).
I’ve found out good news/bad news, if I leave, it wouldn’t be ‘abandonment’, but it would be something akin to kidnapping, with the worse result being that he could sue for custody on the grounds that I kept him from seeing her, (!). The idiocy of the law, the same laws that say that until he hits her, he can’t be prevented from hitting her arghh. If I leave, he gets her, but if I stay, I’m also in legal trouble, now I’m really in the soup, we’re going from bad to worse.
actively working toward finding a lawyer and an apartment. (no I don’t have a lawyer yet, even though he thinks I do) saw that someone else has the same goal, but ‘this year’, and decided, after reading my blog back for 2.5 years that yes, it makes sense to decide THIS YEAR, and in fact I have, except when I haven’t. Right now, ever since an incident where he left his pot stuff right where our daughter could reach it, he’s been on exceptionally good behavior, so it’s kind of hard in this moment to see him as the treacherous villain he is, but news of various tax issues affecting our mutual financial credibility and stability are helping me not to get drawn back in this time. So, this year, it is, but I have to be a little less short-tempered about it. Zelda was getting on my nerves earlier, and I just really yelled at her, and was nowhere near as patient as I wish I could have been.
...so by now I’ve figured out that what he’s doing cou;d reasonably be called emotional abuse, and that some of the things he does potentially endanger our child. But I can’t leave because then I’ll be ‘abandoning’ him, giving him grounds for a ‘fault’ divorce which could be big trouble for me, or so I’m told. If anyone out there is familiar with NY stte divorce law and can let me know how to get out without getting screwed, please comment!!
Friday night, while I was bathing our daughter, I found his pot stuff sitting right in the basket (within her reach) where her bath toys are. Fortunately she hadn’t noticed it, and I just said, oh, this belongs to Daddy, and whisked it out of there. He’s been cut to 3 days of work a week, so now we can take a guess at what he’s busy with on Mondays and Fridays, it certainly isn’t any form of helping with household chores, because the apartment is usually in the same shape I left it when I get home from work.
I was going to ask him to pick our daughter up from school on Fridays until he’s working on Fridays, rather than me paying someone else to do it, but then I thought of the pot and realized, I don’t want him driving her anywhere after a day where he’s likely been high much of the day, (too high to notice that he left his stuff out!). So I’ll continue with my current arrangement, while also being careful to be the one who drives her places. In truth, his driving style has always terrified me anyway, and his flashes of temper and profanity at other drivers who are inconsiderate or stupid is a real potential for harm.
I need to get out, but I’m afraid that now I can’t.
after going down in flames in counseling, we are living separately together, me in the living room, he in the bedroom. We eat dinner together, but otherwise are completely separate. Neither of us has $ or credit rating for a new apt., let alone the legal means to formally divorce, so we’re in a holding pattern. I fantasize about just taking our daughter and leaving, but the truth is, this arrangement seems to work for now: no one has to spend $ they don’t have, and our daughter gets to see both of us every day.
I keep thinking I could get interested in him again, but then he opens his mouth and whatever comes out reminds me of how mean he is at his core, how twisted, and why I cannot trust him with anything. Unfortunately it all makes me sad, though perhaps I should not be, I imagine the day he’ll bring home another woman, and I’ll just have to smile and let him – we’re effectively roommates at this point), but how will it feel? how ill I handle it?
The thing that bugs me the most is that being, both of us, intelligent people with good verbal skills and a heavy incentive to make things work, why can’t we speak civilly to one another about anything substantive? (we can make good dinnertime conversation, but try to get into household responsibility or if a person should be expected to help out even if they’ve completed their own ‘assigned tasks’, and all hell will break loose.)
I wish this wasn’t so painful and so impossible because if it was just sheer desire to not be divorced we’d be fine, but somehow we can’t get past the petty stuff. I’m resentful of his just sitting around playing when there’s work to be done, and he resents that I expect him to get up and help out – and this is our most insurmountable hurdle. Also that though he sees me trying to change the things I do which annoy him, because I haven’t changed, he jeers at my small amount of progress rather than cheering it and encouraging me to keep up the effort.
At our final session, he once again leapt at me, shoputing in my face, and the therapist had to remind him to behave properly, so even if on the surface, he hasn’t hit me in 1.5 years, that violent temper is still just below the surface, even though he’s been in therapy for a year.
...but it’s funny, even as I was looking over the entries on the subject prior to this one, I just felt this great exhaustion come over me, just too tired to do anything any more. It’s getting clearer and clearer that the right path is out, and though there would be a few years of pain, it would eventually resolve, and even that pain would be periodic, not nightly.
problem is $ to move, $ for lawyer, etc. I amy have to wait to act, but as I’ve watched him unwilling to save for a vacation together, but happy to buy himself a HD TV and DVD player, and when he was supposed to take some $ from my parents and put it toward a medical debt of mine, and instead has spent it on himself, and etc, etc, how can I not just get away from a bum who is so nasty to me and then thinks that buying some groceries will make it all go away.
Of course our daughter needs to be considered carefully, in that if we seaparate, then he will have her alone on visits, and I would not be around to buffer his temper. This will probably be the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do, I only hope it’s the right choice.
Yom Kippur approaches, and I’m still unhappy and undecided in my marriage. Back in the Spring, at Passover, I had decided to at least give things until Yom Kippur, but I’m not sure they’ll be clear byy then, I may need more time…either I’m pathologically unable to let this go, or else there actually is something worth saving, but I don’t know which yet.
Was all-but convinced that we were through when our final session of a counseling program ended very badly. I was scheduled to be out of town for a week, and had made arrangements for someone to live in with the pets, and was really braced for continuing life on my own. He asked if he could stay with the pets instead, arguing that I’d save a lot of $ and the pets would benefit from someone who knew them. I gave in at the last minute, mostly because finances are so bad that I couldn’t really justify spending the $ if I didn’t HAVE to.
Our agreement was that he would go when I got home if I wanted him to. But we spent a lot of time the weekend of my return talking and working out some ground rules, and he seemed calmer after a couple of his own therapy sessions. The fact that he had gone out of his way to come for us at the airport instead of making us take a cab also made me a little more generously disposed toward him.
So we’re living together now, and part of me is thrilled and relieved, and the other is waiting for when he gives up his act, I don’t know, but I had come home from my trip resolved to give things one last try before walking away. Our counseling program had promised us a spot in another program, but that didn’t materialize, so we’re on our own for now, holding things together with duct tape and Krazy glue!
Well, a few weeks ago we had yet another fight, (we’re always either fighting or in a deep freeze), and twice he grabbed me, once from the front, to stop me from moving around doing stuff as we argued, and the second time he lunged and grabbed me from behind. He didn’t actually hit me, but having seen him shatter a baby gate a week prior, and have him literally break down the door to our bedroom despite a mutual agreement with a marriage therapist that I was entitled to take private time to cool off rather than be pushed into saying or doing things I would never otherwise do, (and boy can he provoke me!!), andway, watching him grow more violent with time, I spent the next day while he was at work deciding if I would take the kids, dogs, etc and move out with nonexistent funds or have the locksmith come to change the locks. I did the latter and packed a suitcase of somethings for him to tide him over while we figured out where to go from there.
One of my girls talked me into calling him to let him know before he arrived home as a courtesy. After he finished deriding and degrading me about it, (you know this is bullshit, etc….), he then threatened police action if I did not let him in. I pretty much told him, ‘do your worst, I don’t care.’
Well as you might imagine life hasn’t been a bed of roses. We’re in couples counseling ostensibly trying to work it out, or if we decide we can’t then to get referred to a mediator in order to divorce more peaceably. But basically most of his family thinks I’m shit, which makes no sense to me because if anyone would know about his violent tendencies it should be them. And I spend afternoons and nights alone with our daughter, trying to work out walking our two dogs and taking care of her.
Tomorrow morning he has a sort of visitation-babysitting with her while I go to teach (ironically, Sunday teaching used to be like a freebie because I could do it without paying for childcare and knowing that he’d get some time with her), anyway, I’m kind of scared about letting him into the house unsupervised by anyone but a 2 year-old, but I can’t find babysitting coverage either, so I have to just go to work and pray…
Ironically, though I’ve sworn off of any love life ever again because the past 2 have been such disasters, I’m also so lonely I could scream. Though part of that is that if I didn’t have a small child, I could take myself out to the movies or read a nice book, or do anything just for me, I think having to do everything to take care of her, she’s not old enough to do much for herself as yet, is what’s got me so screamingly lonely, and when she gets older and I build in a better network of babysitters, I think I’ll be feeling better. For right now I’m trying to get through each day, sometimes each hour and just focus on the task at hand. I think I’ve decided about the marriage, but I’m not quite ready to mark this one ‘done’ yet, perhaps an 11th hour stay of execution, though I’d be living in a total fantasy world if allowed it to happen without some serious anger therapy on his part!!!
...and I don’t want it to fail, but it’s also very hard to envision that this will be my situation for the rest of my life! I don’t trust him, no matter how much I try, I know he’s doing stuff he shouldn’t. He’s way overweight, but drinks gallons of Coke and eats tons of chips and ice cream, and he thinks that 1/2 hour 2x/week of physical therapy is going to make him slim and trim. I can’t say anything to him that’s even remotely critical or he blows up and goes on this whole jag of how I’m not perfect myself and how dare I criticize him, etc. He basically sits around playing computer games while the rest of us clear up from dinner and do some chores and take care of things. I guess really it’s jhard to find a single thing to like about him, except that he loves his daughter dearly.
The question is, in light of that I really can’t stand him these days, should I be trying to make this work for the sake of the baby and not having her grow up in a split household, as all of the older kids did, or is it healthier for her to be living in a happier environment? and what about me, since I spend a lot of time feeling pretty useless myself, angry at him, but unable to say it because it’ll just get him angry and then it’s all about calming him down because otherwise he just has this foul mouth and says the meanest most derogatory things.
right now I’m just so unhappy
PeaceHopeLife cheered this 2 years ago
