if you're a "no divorce expect with abuse / cheating" person - what would you do in this situation

[Anonymous]

You and your husband are supposed to be a TEAM. It seems like you cover for him 99% of the time. And he gets to play video games and watch football all weekend. This guy might talk a big custody game, but he will never deliver. Life is too short. If he doesn’t want to get help, move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:" I could see him doing anything from fighting for 50% (even though he travels 80% and plays no dependable day to day role in their lives now) to walking away from them and basically never seeing them again - both would be horrible for the kids."

So he's barely in the kids life now. He does almost nothing with them, for them, or with you, or for you. How would he get 50% if he travels 80% of the time? It would be better for the kids if he saw them every other weekend but was ENGAGED, alert, happy, caring.

Because he’s a man, presumably in the DC area. If he asks for 50/50, he will get it. Regardless of his 80% travel. OP will likely get ROFR, so she will have the option to take the kids more.

And once he sees what child support looks like, he will undoubtedly ask for 50/50.

Or he will change jobs for something lower-paying, which will change the child support calculation.

But 80% travel is being gone four days every week. Of course he can’t commit to a Monday pick up, or taking out the trash every time it needs to be taken out, because he’s not there, Monday through Thursday night.

Real talk, OP, from someone who has been there: suck it up and stay married until the kids grow up. Being a married single mom is far easier than being divorced, and still having to deal with his crap, plus potentially his big feelings about you leaving him, and also worse off financially.

Go to therapy and work on detaching emotionally. Outsource the things you can. Then find places to be on the days he is home (take up a hobby, train for a marathon, or get a volunteer job). He will naturally need to step up parenting on those days.

Make Saturday dinner his responsibility, and if he doesn’t make anything, you order in or go out. It’s not the end of the world.

Lock down your birth control, and re-evaluate things when your youngest is 16 or 17. At that age, they are more independent so a lot of the coparenting BS goes away.

And in case you’re having an affair and looking for a plausible escape route: break off the affair now. I assure you, your AP is not worth it.

[Anonymous]

How and why did you marry this man?

[Anonymous]

Therapy, therapy, therapy. You need a marriage coach to teach you both (mainly him) about how to create an equal, respectful marriage/family. He will never listen to just you, and resentment will build. He needs an independent 3rd party to help set expectations and a fair division of labor. Probably even sit down together and work on a fair chore chart. Literally, write down the major family tasks and divide in a mutually fair way.
Plus HIRE AS MUCH HELP AS POSSIBLE. I recommend a full-time nanny/house manager to keep up with daily house chores. It may seem expensive but IT IS SO MUCH CHEAPER THAN DIVORCE!

[Anonymous]

And as someone mentioned, one of you get sterilized. Seriously. 2 kids is manageable. 3 would entirely break you

[Anonymous]

How would it negatively impact your kids if he's already a deadbeat while living with them? A divorce might be the best thing for your kids, let's be real.

[Anonymous]

If he is traveling 80% of the time (so gone 8 our of every 10 days) aren't you already in a routine of doing everything yourself?

If he sometimes cleans the whole house and sometimes takes the kids to activities during his 6 days home a month - that is pretty good.

Given he also has a chronic condition, your expectations might be misaligned.

I know many on here don't believe in mental illness or say that he should not have any signs or symptoms of it - but that isn't realistic. If he had no functional impacts, he wouldn't be able to get a diagnosis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Therapy, therapy, therapy. You need a marriage coach to teach you both (mainly him) about how to create an equal, respectful marriage/family. He will never listen to just you, and resentment will build. He needs an independent 3rd party to help set expectations and a fair division of labor. Probably even sit down together and work on a fair chore chart. Literally, write down the major family tasks and divide in a mutually fair way.
Plus HIRE AS MUCH HELP AS POSSIBLE. I recommend a full-time nanny/house manager to keep up with daily house chores. It may seem expensive but IT IS SO MUCH CHEAPER THAN DIVORCE!

We tried marriage counselling....he'd either react with anger to the smallest raising of an issue and leave the session or promise a change that would last exactly a week before he stopped (and to the pp - of course I don't expect someone to commit to something impossible to taking the kids to school on monday even when traveling - it was take them one thing (literally anything school....sat swim lesson) when you're home. he'd agree do it for a week, and then stay in bed the next week and snap at me when I tried to get him to follow through. Marriage counselling resulted in either way outsized defensiveness and no change or false hope and no change. I've finally accepted that he's not going to change despite what he says. Whether incapable or unwilling.

we are both in individual therapy but he's not changing anytime soon

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Therapy, therapy, therapy. You need a marriage coach to teach you both (mainly him) about how to create an equal, respectful marriage/family. He will never listen to just you, and resentment will build. He needs an independent 3rd party to help set expectations and a fair division of labor. Probably even sit down together and work on a fair chore chart. Literally, write down the major family tasks and divide in a mutually fair way.
Plus HIRE AS MUCH HELP AS POSSIBLE. I recommend a full-time nanny/house manager to keep up with daily house chores. It may seem expensive but IT IS SO MUCH CHEAPER THAN DIVORCE!

We tried marriage counselling....he'd either react with anger to the smallest raising of an issue and leave the session or promise a change that would last exactly a week before he stopped (and to the pp - of course I don't expect someone to commit to something impossible to taking the kids to school on monday even when traveling - it was take them one thing (literally anything school....sat swim lesson) when you're home. he'd agree do it for a week, and then stay in bed the next week and snap at me when I tried to get him to follow through. Marriage counselling resulted in either way outsized defensiveness and no change or false hope and no change. I've finally accepted that he's not going to change despite what he says. Whether incapable or unwilling.

we are both in individual therapy but he's not changing anytime soon

Then your kid doesn’t go to swimming that day. “Daddy isn’t feeling well, so no swimming today.”

[Anonymous]

Why do your think your kids want him around? I wanted my abusive drunkard father to go away and never come back. He was abusive towards my mother, not us, but it was very hard to watch. We get along fine now that he lives alone, but there was no reason for him to be around when I was a kid. I begged my mom to move away from him. I didn't care where I lived, but I wanted the two separately.
Even if he goes for 50%, he will give that up in no time.

[Anonymous]

It depends how much you love him and enjoy being around him. It also depends on how much the income imbalance is and whether you can live where you want on 1 income.

My parents and my in-laws have both been married 50+ years. We come from low/no divorce families. And yet, I have seen friends in your scenario divorce and absolutely thrive after they get through the first 1-2 years of adjustment. For my friends who divorced men who did nearly 0 parenting and household tasks, the hardest part has been yardwork and landscaping because it takes time and they couldn’t pay to contract it out on 1 income. They were already cleaning the house, making dinner, etc. For them, a townhouse instead of a SFH made sense.

Your kids are young. As they get older it will be harder and harder to imagine moving schools, changing friends. You have a whole life ahead of you. You can divorce now and still remarry and be with that person for 25+ years. If you stay and think “next year will ne better”, you may have 8-10 years lost in a haze of resentment and treading water.

If you aren’t sure, spend the next 6-12 months preparing yourself financially and researching the process in your state. Invest in your friendships so you have a safety net. Interview lawyers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How would it negatively impact your kids if he's already a deadbeat while living with them? A divorce might be the best thing for your kids, let's be real.

The way he typically interacts is he's "great super fun dad!!" for a little bit until he's "overwhelmed" (or just tired of it from my perspective) and has to actually parent - like get them ready to leave the house or just deal with their noise and energy when you're over it. Then he checks out - sometimes for the rest of the day "to protect everyone from how triggered I am" and sometimes will try again several hours later. If he's not able to check out (i'd used to fight it, now I just let him go without pushing at all) he'll react with a lot of anger and cause everyones mood to spiral.

So from the kids perspective, they love him and have fun with him - though probably feel his mood is unpredictable and he's not dependable. But I'm dependable so they turn to me for everything. I think its still better to have their dad in their life versus a dad that they'll always wonder why completely checked out after divorce, but don't know that for sure

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Change the illness from mental health to say something like MS. What would do if his illness physically prevented him from helping around the house or if he chose not to attend PT?

It’s not. Too many people with mental illness are simply malingering.

OP, I would try to hire help until you are ready to leave. It doesn’t sound like you want to spend the rest of your life with this person and I wouldn’t either.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do your think your kids want him around? I wanted my abusive drunkard father to go away and never come back. He was abusive towards my mother, not us, but it was very hard to watch. We get along fine now that he lives alone, but there was no reason for him to be around when I was a kid. I begged my mom to move away from him. I didn't care where I lived, but I wanted the two separately.
Even if he goes for 50%, he will give that up in no time.

This is a very fair question. As a kid, I wished my mom would have left my dad. It didn't happen until I was in high school, and by then, I had lost a lot of respect for my mother. She should have left long before that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Therapy, therapy, therapy. You need a marriage coach to teach you both (mainly him) about how to create an equal, respectful marriage/family. He will never listen to just you, and resentment will build. He needs an independent 3rd party to help set expectations and a fair division of labor. Probably even sit down together and work on a fair chore chart. Literally, write down the major family tasks and divide in a mutually fair way.
Plus HIRE AS MUCH HELP AS POSSIBLE. I recommend a full-time nanny/house manager to keep up with daily house chores. It may seem expensive but IT IS SO MUCH CHEAPER THAN DIVORCE!

We tried marriage counselling....he'd either react with anger to the smallest raising of an issue and leave the session or promise a change that would last exactly a week before he stopped (and to the pp - of course I don't expect someone to commit to something impossible to taking the kids to school on monday even when traveling - it was take them one thing (literally anything school....sat swim lesson) when you're home. he'd agree do it for a week, and then stay in bed the next week and snap at me when I tried to get him to follow through. Marriage counselling resulted in either way outsized defensiveness and no change or false hope and no change. I've finally accepted that he's not going to change despite what he says. Whether incapable or unwilling.

we are both in individual therapy but he's not changing anytime soon

Then your kid doesn’t go to swimming that day. “Daddy isn’t feeling well, so no swimming today.”

Well they're 3 and 5yos so they still need taking care of so I just take them. Its not like I can (reasonably) leave them with dad refusing to get out of bed.
That was an example of how I can't depend on him for any aspect of it and its 100% on me to be the dependable and present one. It sounds like you'd land on "suck it up and stay together, the alternative is worse" - which is fine, I really am asking for opinions on it