Husband’s texts when I was out of town
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Anonymous
This is what I see, too, parsing though all of the very one-sided in the OP’s posts. She has said not one thing about her DH being a neglectful or abusive father to the kids. Obviously, there is a deep-seated pattern of pettiness and undermining EACH OTHER as parents. OP, you can spend all of the time in the world trying to psychoanalyze him, set boundaries, get him to “understand” - but to what end? Just get a divorce already and co-parent with strict limitations on your communication. Just do not engage. It is clear that you two trigger each other for some reason and that will never change. It just isn’t worth it for anyone. |
Anonymous
We did have one therapist who asked me if he was on the spectrum. Another one asked him point blank what his diagnosis was and asked to work with his therapist. Another one made him do individual therapy (with the MC) alongside the couples sessions. Yes, we are on the fifth therapist. Several of the others were online and they just couldn’t keep him calm enough to do a session. The man now is very good and experienced with trauma, speaks his language. It’s been two months and no more yelling since we started. I am going to give it four more months. If he doesn’t have some kind of breakthrough or get a diagnosis/treatment then I will leave. |
Anonymous
Yes. I am moving off text and email and onto a parenting app. We have a parenting schedule —ostensively because he said he needs his time and autonomy to himself to pursue his hobbies, travel, go out with friends — but I embraced this because I just do not want to interact with him if possible. I do extra childcare and driving on his days to make him happy (he doesn’t want the kids in activities) but it’s worth the price of just not having another complaint and issue. Everything becomes an unpleasant drama. It’s so unnecessary and such a waste of energy that I am at the end of my rope. |
Anonymous
| Wow. I don’t think therapy will help this guy. |
Anonymous
| It is worse with two houses. This won’t stop. |
Anonymous
He used to be more trigger happy with them as well. I explained to him very bluntly after our oldest wrote an essay in second grade at school about how he said some mean things to her that hurt her feelings that the next essay would be about how he hurt her when he grabbed her, and CPS would be here. We also did a parenting class. Since then he has calmed down a lot. He is in general fine with the kids. He says he does not want to do the “grey work” of cooking, driving etc. He likes to be the dad who spoils them and says yes. Fine, whatever — I cannot change that. There is some yelling when he is triggered but it’s not enough to change custody. I have checked. He will get 50/50. Another reason I am reluctant to exit quickly. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
I don’t know what happened. He got progressively worse since COVID, but he wasn’t like this all the time and so severe when we married. |
Anonymous
That’s an interesting link. I know he has anxiety and he has referred to his OCD a lot but I don’t know if it’s an official diagnosis. For sure he has trauma. He told our therapist the other day that he was struck by how our therapist could understand my feelings. He said I listen to the same words but I can’t hear what you hear. How can I do that? He is extremely literal. I feel like I need to translate things into very simple, blunt, concrete language for him to understand. And his work requires high level math. |
Anonymous
This is what I experienced during the separation. He could not leave me alone. He would send me sometimes twenty emails a day about trivial practical stuff. As in twenty different threads plus replies etc. He would pick things apart and get very triggered and threaten me and call me names. I get upset just thinking about it. Plus the coordination was terrible. Required a lot of back and forth. One house is much better. We nested and did not tell the kids, we alternated almost daily and just said mommy and daddy have to work late. They didn’t mind at all. I feel glad at least we spared them that anxiety. |
Anonymous
| OP how old are your kids? |
Anonymous
It is not a big thing in my life. I realized once it came out of my mouth that I needed to address with DH — let him know what I said and head off the inevitable drama. I forgot and this is what happened. I will look into CODA. Already have a DBT therapist, she’s very good. She has not recommended DBT or CBT for me. She is mainly focused on trying to get me not to minimize what’s going on. She clearly thinks the marriage is abusive and that I’ve stuffed my anger down to cope. |
Anonymous
+1 million . I have a husband like that, too, and I wish I had left him 20 years ago. I see the effect staying with him has had on our family. In hindsight, I would have been better off on my own. |
Anonymous
Did you read what you are responding to? NO, we are not normalizing what the psycho DH did. The OP's conversation with her kids was a normal reaction to a very small situation. People are going all apesh*t on OP that she put her kids in the middle and blah blah blah. I know people on DCUM will twist ANY situation so that they can dogpile on the OP, but this is beyond the beyond. This is all on the DH. |
Anonymous
I am the PP you responded to. Agree completely. People don’t understand this and they assume that when you get divorced, the stuff just stops when really it doesn’t and it only gets worse and more complicated when there are two houses because when they were kids, there is no freedom until they grow up and her out of the house. Divorced almost 4 years and it’s not better—and now we are going to start nesting probably again because the two house thing with this behavior is so much worse than being married and being in the same house. |