Reply to Do you think you might get divorced once the kids are grown?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Difficult to respond to your post because yours is an unusual story I think and I can't picture being disabled PLUS having behaved badly for five years.  What is your illness?  I admit that I identify with your husband because my husband has been so nasty to me so many times that I simply can't feel anything for him any more.  I was committed to the path of staying until the kids are in college, but I've changed my mind.  We are no longer angry with each other, just loveless.  He's not willing to risk divorce but he needs a push so he'll find someone who can offer him the love that I no longer can. And so I think we can have a respectful divorce.  Papers being drawn up as we speak.

[/quote]

My husband has been extremely nasty to me as well, and my reactions to that are part of my "bad" behavior.  There was one time where i completely fucked up, other than that it has been mostly about me gaining weight on steroids (which I have lost), but can cause a lot of rage (the medication and getting fat), and being for a while on too many painkillers so I was sort of out of it, and being completely focused on my illness and not on him. In my defense, I was also completely focused on my kids.  My parents are toxic and wreaked havoc on our marriage and now that I realize it I no longer want to be around them.

Nonetheless, I have to say that I am starting to realize that before I did a few things that were actually really bad, he would go on rants about all the other unforgivable sins i and my family had committed etc.  So in the long run I'm not sure the one awful thing was the tipping point (it happened four years after he first asked for a divorce).  I think perhaps the Rubicon was him asking for the divorce in the first place.   He says at that point he just did not want to be married to a (physically unattractive because I was overweight) disabled person, and now he does not want to be married to whatever I am - a self centered entitled bitch, terrible mother, mentally impaired, crazy, take your pick.

I did really fuck up by kicking him off our vacation and keeping the kids (the plan had always been for us to stay that extra week and for him to leave, but I panicked and called the cops when he wanted to take the kids.)  We used to have a nanny and he worked more and I had lots of alone time with  the kids and was very close to the them, but all that has changed in the last 3 years because he has basically taken over and convinced them i am incompetent. For me that is when true hell started, and i frequently feel I am in it.

It is not usually an entirely miserable situation, i love being around my kids and would not be able to go to their performances or be nearly as involved in their lives as he lets me be were I not in the house.  The unconditional love and admiration i get from my son, the pleasure I have in the conversations with my older daughter when she opens up, and the sweetness inside the little tyrant who is our youngest make life worth living.

I just have to function in a constant state of denial.  But I do wish he would stop the rants and sometimes open hostility.  Loveless and not angry would probably be better than bitter, resentful, and critical in a way that is not constructive and just rips me in two.  The more I write the more crazy this sounds.  And as I've said, I still love him.  And I can't really imagine staying for ten more years if I ever completely stop loving him and just feel grateful that he is allowing me to hang around.

He is a good father and used to be a wonderful guy, but if I am no longer loved because of what I've done, the feeling is almost mutual.  I keep hoping for the old great guy from 2007 and before to come back, and sometimes I see traces and it gives me hope, and then it is dashed.  But I am definitely a shell of the person he married 15 years ago, primarily due to permanent disability that includes chronic pain and no driving and prescription narcotics, but also due to the low self esteem that comes from no longer having a job and frequently being treated like shit.

So in some ways I am totally dependent, and I understand that he resents it.  As he said recently, he thought in sickness and in health was either you die or you get better, not a life sentence.  So we are staying together for the kids and then after 25 years of marriage (and 35 years of being on and off in love), the game will be over.  I have stopped thinking that I can win him back because I just get crushed over and over.

So I try to live day to day in la la land pretending I am in a true partnership to the extent he will let me and trying not to as he says "get cosmic" because every time I go there I just end up crying and crying and crying - for my old self, for his old self, for our old relationship, for my old stronger relationship with my kids, for him treating me so cruelly.... It goes on and on.

And finally, for the fact that while he is right that I will probably never find anyone who loved me the way he did for the first 20 years of our relationship, I am deeply afraid that I will never find anyone else to  love me at all.  Kids grow up and leave and you have to let them and then for me there will be no one left and he will go on his merry way, because he is not disabled, because he can.  He says I resent him because of my disability but THAT is what I really resent - his ultimate ability to walk away without a care in the world and leave me in the dust, hoping at that point that my kids still love me.

Please do not advise me to get out - I cannot, for a variety of complicated reasons, one of which is that I would go bankrupt trying to take care of my kids because of the help I would need, and ultimately as he has pointed out they will decide who to live with and it is a very easy choice - the driver or the non driver who cannot help them with their homework.  I guess I just wanted some sympathy from cyberspace.  Perhaps tomorrow I will have a cup of tea.  The pain keeps me up.[/quote]

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