RAW (Children & Divorce)

Member Name: chrissypops

Product:	Children & Divorce
Date:	28/05/02 (1100 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: If u ca stay amicable its better all around you can save the feelings of freindship

Disadvantages: CAn end up very bitter

RAW

Raw, like an open wound. Hurting, like someone has stuck a knife in my heart and has turned it about. Anger, something I’ve felt only once before and ate away from me. Relief, glad that I have taken the first step down an unmarked road in which I know with be the beginning of the end. Failure, not just failing myself but friends, family and my husband. This is only some of the emotions which I am feeling write now while I am going though separation and will finally end up as divorce
.
I’m purely writing this opinion for my benefit. I nee an outlet, something to express myself with, words on paper so I’m sorry that it might not make much sense. Living in the reality of things, stuff like depression, separation or anything traumatic very rarely makes sense. I will try and make it as balanced as possible, as I’ve tried to be well balanced through all this.

Anyone who reads my opinions regularly will probably have read my marriage opinion, if you haven’t, you can read it. Not so I get more pennies, that doesn’t matter. Log out if you like and then read it. If you do read it, and it was written about nine months ago I think, you will see that I loved my husband, well I tried my hardest to put everything I could into our 11 yrs to being together. I still stand by everything I wrote in that opinion. Now after all this time and effort its fallen apart. I’m devastated it’s ended up this way, ashamed too in a way, but I know in my heart it’s the right thing to do.

My husband is a proud man but materialist and obsessed with his career. There is an old saying behind a successful man there’s a successful women. Hmm I’m not sure I’m successful in a career sense but I know out of 11 yrs we have had some good times some rotten times and two beautiful daughters. The last four or so years have been a strain on our marriage, more so then what he will ever realise and
quite possibly after I have written this I will print it out and let him read it. For it seems no matter how much and try to tell him how much this hurts, words don’t come. I can’t seem to tell him what he has done to me and what is happening right now is ripping our family apart.

The first time I thought the feelings of love for my husband was going was about 4 years ago. He came home one day and declared that he got a job up north and we would be moving soon. Ok, nothing wrong with that, but I was 7 months pregnant, we had a house to sell and very naive of me to think that I could cope. I have written an opinion again on PND which I had after I gave birth and I really feel that being left on my own for 5 months with a baby while he was working up north didn’t do me any favours at all. I started to resent him, and my daughter, which wasn’t fair on any of us. Luckily after selling our house relatively quickly (6mths), lets face it, it could have been a year, we moved. It took me a long while to get over my world of depression and never even told my husband what was going on because I thought he would push me away or call me a unfit mother. In fact its taken me nearly 3 years to tel him Id even suffered from PND and my true feeling of what I felt towards my daughter, with I blame him for. Thus a seed was planted, growing slowly. I’m not one to hold grudges, far from it. In fact after a while things was better between us, so much so when my first daughter was 19 months, I fell pregnant with my second daughter. I have a realy rough pregnancy, with all day sickness, but none the less and a lovely birth. Things were fine, better than they had been for a long time, but sometimes things are not all as they seem. I think I knew then I didn’t love him any more. It even hurts me to say that. In fact it kills, I can feel it in the pit of my stomach, imakes me feel guilty and sick. But I know it to be true. You see I feel in love wi
th him slowly and I think Ive feel out of love slowly too. We have been through many rough patches and many might say that this could be another but I doubt that. Don’t get me wrong I don’t hate him, and I don’t think I ever will. I care for him greatly but I just cant take the emotional bullying anymore. Its almost like he doesn’t love what I have become and want the little housewife he had when we first got married. In reality Im a better person now than what I was 7.5 yrs ago. I’ve grown up, matured, I’m fun loving, I have my priorities right in my opinion. In fact, yes, he’s right I have changed, but changed in my eyes for the better.

Tim on the other hand hasn’t changed, hes stil trying to be as controlling as he always been, bullying and dwindling down my confidence, my persona trying to mould me into something I’m not. Rather taken me for who I am, he constantly had ago at me about my weight. Ok I’m not exactly slim but I wouldn’t say I’m fat either. I know I’m short with a big bum and broad hips, but I feel comfortable and confident with who I am. Weight isn’t the only thing he would emotionally beat me up for, housework, having a job, sex and generally anything he could throw at me all came into the equation. The odd saying * stick and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me* springs to mind. But what an untrue saying that is. Emotional abuse runs deep, very deep and can affect your whole outlook in life. Was bullied at school, that doesn’t help but this 11 yrs of emotional abuse has let me with little confidence. Im not just taking about meeting people or chatting, Im talking about whether I will cope without him. Will I find someone who will love me for my children and me too? Will I survive on benefits and single persons money. Or will I fall flat on my face? I know deep down I am a survivor, I know I will give 110 %, I have to, not for my
but for my children.

Just 3 month ago my husband threatened me with a choice. Either I lose weight and get a part time job or he wanted to separate. I was dumb struck. Neither of these things I could do straight away. Losing weight takes time and the funny thing was since Christmas I had actually lost nearly a stone in weight and everyone had noticed apart from him. As for the job, we were in a little bit of debt, but I had decided that I would go back when youngest was at school, which were a few years away. I thought it would be better to cut the cost of living down for a while and see how it went. I actually went away for a few days just to make sure he had time to think about what was important in our marriage but when I came back he was the same. I was in a state of shock that he could ever think about emotionally blackmailing me like this but after trying to pull myself together, I went to see a solicitor to find out my rights.

After doing this I told Tim about what would happen if we separated and I thought that he should leave the house and see if a trial separation would maybe give us a break. I also told him about if it went to court, that the house would be mine, half of his savings, pension. I could push for higher maintance for the children. Over night his whole attitude changed, he wanted to make a go of things, but only of certain terms. It was then I really questioned the reasons why he was staying. Was it because he loved me? Or was it because he knew it was financially more viable to stay. Well after about a month I had figured it out. He didn’t want to change and didn’t take long to slip into his old ways. I assure you Im not an angel in all this. I can be a bitch; I can be nasty but only in retaliation. I was away one weekend in april at the local college on an assertiveness course of all things when things started to hit home. I actually went and sat in one of the beautiful gardens they had there with one of my ma
tes and laughter and cried as I remembered everything we had gone through. All the good and bad times, all the things we pulled though for and it ws then I realised that I haven’t loved him for a while. I had been standing at a crossroads, thinking for years whether our relationship was built on trust love and security. It had been, a long time ago, but not now.

Now I was faced with the hardest decision ever…. Telling him.

I did it that night when I came home. I sat him down calmly, as balanced as I could and told him that although I cared for him still I didn’t love him any more. I was amazed how well he took it. And I think he was relieved in a way as he felt the same. We discussed about what we would do about the children, the house, money and everything. I had been sleeping on the sofa for the past month, so we decided that it was time to put the two girls together and we would stop co habituating. I wouldn’t do his washing, ironing, cooking, nothing. He agreed that we would stay fro a while until he could afford to move out but in the mean time give me £175 for food. Just food that is. Nothing to live on as I have my child benefit money as well. As for as he’s concerned 275 a mouth is enough to put petrol in my car, food stopping, pay out for school trips, groups I go to with my children. At the time the first week was good, in fact we talked more than ever, the weight been lifted. But it didn’t last.

The weekend we split, he had made arrangement to go on a blind date with a mate and two lass’s, which I said ok, that’s fine. Personally I’m not ready to get involved with anyone else. I need to find my feet again. Make time for my children and me. Lick my wounds and heal so to speak. He didn’t even need time. For now just over a month down the line, he’s spent a lot of time with her, stayed over her house quite a few times, even taken our eldest to meet her and take
n her to see his mum. I know I agreed that we that we could see people but its all happened way to quick. My instincts tell me perhaps he was seeing this lady before we split. Although he denies the fact. But I’m not convinced. I just cant believe how quick I feel I’ve been replaced, or tried to be placed. I know that I came to the decision to split; to call it quits before it got too nasty and bitter like both our parent’s marriages did. It just goes to show that whatever happens in separation things always end up nasty and there’s no way you can live in the same house.

Things are getting very tense. He still tries to emotionally bully me, throwing everything he can that he knows that will hurt me at me. Anything from telling me the house is untidy to telling me I neglect my children, because they are independent enough to do things for themselves. Still he wont leave, believing that its better for him to stay. Does he not realise that by staying hes actually eating away and my positively, the positive feelings that I still hold for him, that caring that I hold because hes the father of our children. The fact that we have spent 11. 5 yrs of our lives together? He cant see that by staying hes actually doing more damage than what he would be doing if he was to go. Hes so short sighted because again he is thinking for himself because he knows that if he goes he would have to pay quite a bit of maintaince as he hs a well paid job. I would get half of whatever savings etc he has. He feels that Im being greedy by wanting all this. He can’t see that its not for me, but its for his children. His responsibly to his children. If I could just move with the kids I would. I would just sell the house and go, but why should I? All I care about is the welfare of our children. To put them through a total move and unsettling them completely as well as us separating would be the worst thing I could ever do. And yet, it might even come to th
at. Now, in a living hell, I have two opinions. I can either, give up hope and humanity and say ok we shall sell the house, half of everything and start a fresh. Or I can stay and fight, take it to court and as some people say * screw him for everything he has* I don’t to do either, both hurts; both have consequences that would devastate me. Both opinions are hard, harder than anything I have ever been through. I don’t want to take him for every penny he has, being nasty isn’t a strong point of mine but have a really got an option? I’ve written this as how I feel it.. I’m not asking for advice or what I should do, but as a piece of writing to show people what its like to go through it, an hopefully like everyone, we will come out the other side stronger. Will update this soon… I promise

Summary: