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Thinking about Divorce

Tania89's picture

Submitted by Tania89 on Fri, 06/19/2020 - 11:12am

First post here and maybe looking for a little push. I have been married for 7 years. My husband is 12 years older with (4) kids from previous marriage (19)sd, (17)sd, (12)ss, 10sd and we have (2) together (7)ds, (5)dd . He doesn't have a healthy relationship with alcohol and sometimes goes on binges maybe once every 2 months. This means that after work he will say he got invite to go to dinner and dinner turns into drinks and that turns into him coming home at 2am or later with no calling  or texting. Things between us have been rocky for a long time now and the skids definitely had to do with this. He has a lot of guilt for "leaving" them even though we see the younger 2 very Wednesday and every other weekend. We live in the same city and he attends their school events and is pretty hands on trying to make everything perfect when they come over. 
 

There are a lot of issues with relationship with the older 2skids now (19) and (17). The oldest lived with us for about 6 months June 2018  and ended up stealing our vehicle and selling it. Unfortunately she had been on house arrest and had to go to jail for a period of 2 months also drug abuse is in the mix with her. He is a good man with a good heart but there are so many issues outside of that and it feels like now I'm anxious all the time, like ALL the time paranoid that something bad is going to happen whether is be drinking/driving, skid drama, bm drama. That my bio kids are seeing things they shouldn't around their older sibilings. I don't know how to protect them and am scared to move on and not have some sort of control about what they see.

Adding to that, I make more than him at my job and am still expected to keep the house tidy, take care of the kids and all other housewife duties. With almost no help on this. I feel like the world is falling on me and I'm just trapped. 

Comments

CLove's picture

Submitted by CLove on Fri, 06/19/2020 - 11:59am

the good news is that the skids are aged out of visitation. You do not have to see them if there are issues.

The bad news is that if you leave, your husband will be able to request the right to see the kiddos, and they  will still have to see these things.

So - before you make any decisions, lawyer up and see what options are available to you. If you make more than him, you might just have to pay alimony. The time to explore your divorce options are now, because these things take time. Here in California if you are married 10 years or more, there is "spousal support in perpetuity". Toxic Troll tried to get DH to file after the 10 year mark because she worked for the school system - no social security paid, so she wanted her benefits to be based off of his...but I found out that he would be on the hook for life-time spousal support. She got very angry and wished all kinds of bad on him. So - if you do file get ready for WW3. Get ready for things to be really nasty and ugly.

If you decide to stay, you can TRY to get him to stop drinking. But he has to want to for himself or it wont stick.

Keep reading and posting - loads of valuable exit plan information!

thinkthrice's picture

Submitted by thinkthrice on Fri, 06/19/2020 - 12:32pm

 If you decide to stay, you can TRY to get him to stop drinking. But he has to want to for himself or it wont stick.

Amen!  Took a health scare for Chef to stop abusing alcohol

shamds's picture

Submitted by shamds on Sat, 06/20/2020 - 8:04am

Many years i dealt with the same mentality of some backwards men, bulk of household and child raising duties fall on women because its our domain, like its a free pass for them to check out selfishly and its not healthy.

i came across this article/post tonight (alot of it resonates with me)

https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=902039273485276&id=10001...

 

i’ve had alot of time since covid pandemic to reflect on things.... 3 months plus with my husband in an overseas country, our government just confirmed they would not budge on allowing travellers in from overseas till next year (march) unless they meet compassion/exemption criteria. The fact we have 2 kids and i miscarried recently isn’t a good enough excuse. So i am dealing with 1 year as a single mum of a 3 & 4 year old, needing speech therapy and developmental paediatricians along with somehow managing fulltime university studies and the usual chores at home and moving into a new home dealing with the usual landscaping and renovations here and there.

i’ve been quite oftenly asking myself what am i getting from this marriage except money every month to care for kids all on my own and even if my husband is temporarily here, he’s not actively involved teaching soeech therapy etc. 

weak husbands, weak parents do not make for successful longterm partners.. it’s something you hope to never think of but you know in your heart when your partner/spouse has failed you continually and let you down, covid pandemic has just brought up what should have happened ages ago to happen now because we’ve realised life is too short, we’ve been taken for granted, treated horribly and our spouses or partners have been extremely selfish.

a few co-workers of mine got divorced/separated a few yrs ago (1 her husband had cheated on her and left her for another woman, another woman found out her husband was a drug addict and disappeared since yrs ago- they don’t knownif he is dead or not)

both surprisingly met amazing gentlemen who have been such amazing role models for their kids and their kids are not like the ferals we routinely read about on steptalk.. their mums held them to high standards, no guilty parenting. Happiness can happen when you least expect it.

if you know in your heart you have checked out of this marriage and there is no turning back, no option for counselling and active change because too many times you have been let down, it is ok to want divorce because that is the only option that frees you. Why carry deadweight when you don’t need to right??