Marriage troubles (long)

cobbingstones

Wishing you the very best OP.

MM

Mely

Worry worry...you havent let anyone down on here. We are just annonymous posters on an internet forum.
The thing is ....you want to work on things. But if its only you that wants to work on things, then it cant work...if you see what i mean.It has to be both you and your partner that want your relationship to work!
What worries me the most is your childrens situation. They must be going through absolute hell with a stepfather that beats them, and calls them the 'c' word! If the situation isnt resolved in some way asap, then you will have to answer to your children when they come to you as damaged adults,wanting answers. And they ask you why you didnt protect them as children being your their mother.
I wish you good luck xxxx

poet123

You know who matters,you know who doesn't matter. Only you can decide who matters most,and what you do about that.

consultant31

worry_worry wrote: »

Thanks again all. I'd rather try and make it work first. Sorry for letting everyone down for saying this.

I'm sorry to have to say that I think you're letting your children down.

It doesn't matter about anyone on here, but they do matter - more than anyone else, including you. They didn't ask to be put into this marriage, you made that choice and they are suffering the consequences.

I really don't mean to be harsh and I do empathise with you. You still love this man despite his problems, but I bet the children don't!

I think someone else hit the nail on the head when they said, if this were your sister's marriage and she asked you for advice, what would you tell her?

spendaholic

Walking away is not the easy option. If that were the case, OP would have done that without even bringing it to here.

OP isn't letting us down but letting the children down and herself. However if she decides to give it another go, I hope he never raises a hand to those children again because then she has to live with that too.

Good luck. I hope it doesn't happen again.

SammyD_2

He is abusing your children - the answer is obvious. Not so easy to go through with, but why would you put up with that sort of treatment of your kids? You owe it to them as their mother not to put up with this (leaving aside what would be best for you - which in this instance is the same as what is best for your kids).

While you are "trying to make it work" your kids will be abused again. I just don't get it.

tori.k

there is a line between a smack and abuse,the op said her husband has hit her children,not that he has been beating them,...it's hard to articulate by email,but i dont belive that worry worry thinks for a minute that her children are at risk from her husband or she would walk,she has brought up kids alone before,so know's the score....the worlds gone twisted as far as discipline is concerned,hell im probably just old fashioned but a smack never did me any harm,im of an age where the cane was still in use at school, i smacked my children as a last resort punishment when they where smaller,and i have no trouble with them,unlike some that are trawling the streets nowadays, i respect my children and they have been taught/grown up to respect other's,....their is two side's to every story at the end of the day....

[Deleted User]

worry_worry wrote: »

I'm a long standing poster here, but feel embarrassed to post all of this under my real name. My marriage is in trouble and I don't know how to save it.

A few issues have arisen and I've put up with them for a while but finally snapped last night and told him I was sick of the way I was being treated.

When we first met, I was working part time and claiming working tax credits etc., as a single parent. He agreed when he moved in that he would give me what I lost in single parent benefits. However, I didn’t factor in the additional expenses of him living with us such as the increase in council tax as I lost my single person discount, and the cost of his food, toiletries etc. He’s never increased the amount he pays me.

Due to the way day to day living costs have gone, especially food and utility bills, plus we’ve had another child who needs feeding, clothing etc., our expenses have gone up quite a lot. At the moment I feel a lot of resentment about this. Basically he is contributing about a third of his income to the household running costs, and I’m putting in 100% of mine and struggling to get by.

Although he has quite a lot of money left over for personal spending, he has somehow managed to run up a lot of debt. I’ve no idea what on as he won’t tell me. I’m scared to answer the telephone now as it’s normally people he owes money to and he won’t speak to them. He gets a lot of official looking letters which I think are debt related but I’m just speculating here as he doesn’t tell me what is in them. He just seems to be burying his head in the sand hoping it will all go away, meanwhile I’m worrying in case the bailiffs come round. I already have experience of dealing with these people, as the previous owners did a moonlight flit, and I had debt collectors calling for them. It wasn’t nice.

I’m currently annoyed as he hasn’t contributed a penny towards Christmas. I’ve had to buy all the presents for the children and all the relatives, and he hasn’t offered anything towards the food for Christmas dinner.

He borrows money from me and I don’t always get it back and asks me to buy him beer and ready meals as he won’t eat the meals I prepare, but I don’t always get the money back that I spend on his beer and food.

Despite all of this, he’s just spent a few hundred pounds on himself buying a games console and some other gadgets.

At home he washes up after tea, although there is often food left on the stuff and he never cleans the sink out afterwards, so I end up re-washing stuff and cleaning the sink. That’s his sole contribution to the household. I do all the other cleaning, laundry and other household jobs. He says he works full time, so he needs a rest on an evening. However I work full time hours too, and it builds resentment when he’s laying around watching a film or playing on the computer on an evening, while I’m still working. He had a week off work recently and did absolutely nothing, whereas I was poorly a few weeks back and went back to bed for a couple of hours, and he wasn’t very happy about it as he had to look after the children. I don’t mind hard work, but I feel it’s unfair that he isn’t pulling his weight around the home.


We’ve got no sex life whatsoever. I’ve tried asking for it, and I bought some stuff to spice things up. He took that and it’s not seen the light of day since. If I do get lucky, it’s not like it used to be – just quick and mechanical, with little foreplay etc. I’m a bit shy when it comes to sex as I was sexually abused in the past, and I don’t really know what to do about this at all.


I don't like the way he treats my children from my first marriage. He has no patience with them, and they get sworn and shouted at a lot, and he hit them a few times which concerns me. I don't agree with the way he disciplines them, but if I intervene, then I'm siding with them and I get into trouble too. Our parenting styles are very different and it causes conflict.


I think I just feel like a skivvy rather than a wife. I just feel like I pay for everything, I do everything and I get little back in return.

I’m sure I’ve got my faults and I’ve obviously done something to make him treat me like this, but I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong as he doesn’t like discussing relationship stuff. I’ve asked before if we can go to Relate or similar but he said I’d have to go on my own, which defeats the object really. I've tried to discuss bits of this in the past, but I always get accused of being in huff and it gets swept under the carpet.


Just wondered if anyone had any ideas of how I can tackle this and make things work. Although I feel resentment at the money, household jobs etc., I still love him and still like him as person, so I don’t want to lose him.

Sorry it’s so long.

Oh dear. I know you're not going to want to hear this but he sounds like a bit of a loser.

I think the trouble is you let him get away with this from the beginning and now its just getting worse.

You need to tell him to start contributing or get out.... :mad:

aliasojo

tori.k wrote: »

there is a line between a smack and abuse,the op said her husband has hit her children,not that he has been beating them..

I agree. Although it is a very fine line. I've been thinking along the same lines since the thread started focusing on 'beating' more than anything else.

I dont agree with the OP's husband's treatment of the children, not for one moment but I dont think it's an open and shut case of child abuse tbh. I think he has been far too heavy handed in his disciplining and ignorant in his dealings with them and this needs to stop immediately but that's not quite the same thing as out and out abuse, imo. If it was, then most of my generation would have been raised in children's homes because our parents would have been in jail for smacking us etc. I'm not saying it's right, far from it. I just think perspective has been overshadowed a little by emotive words.

Of course, that's dependant on how often he has been 'hitting' them. And whether 'hitting' is a smack or something worse. He shouldn't be calling them names at all and I can't understand why the OP hasn't dealt with that part at the very least but frequent verbal disgusting coments and hits/slaps/smacks are a different story entirely. If his disciplining involves one or other of the above every time the kids do something wrong, then I'm more disgusted at the OP for allowing it, that I am him for doing it tbh.

I can understand the OP wanting to make her marriage work, she loves her husband and it's the only option in her mind because of that. Regardless of her other issues with money and home etc, I hope she sees clearly enough to know when it's acceptable for her to put up with things but also when it's NOT acceptable for the children to have to. I hope she's honest enough to be able to be the carer her kids need and not so caught up with her own feelings that they are second place.

My worry is that she is clearly not able to be assertive (otherwise she would have nipped all of this in the bud when the issues first arose)...and he is clearly more of a self orientated person which means the OP and the kids will always come AFTER him.

Abyway, it's all really rather academic now isn't it?

Mely

The op`s husband is calling her children the 'c' word! That alone (and goodness knows what else he is calling them) will damage them emotionally. If hes the type of guy to be so mentally abusive to children, i cant imagine him giving them a little tap on the bottom for being naughty!