Looks like I’m going to have to get a D. H and I were separated for over a year and came within 24 hours of D about eight years ago. I was DBing and he backed down. Now I wish I hadn't bothered trying.
H and I have been living in different states for over five years now. We mutually agreed that I should take a promotion out of state, and he would stay behind a few weeks to finish up repairs on our house and be out with me in a few weeks or months at most. He can work anywhere, so that seemed reasonable. That was a very long time ago.
I like him. I even love him. I just don’t want to make life decisions with him anymore. He has held me hostage to the house renovation promising me that he’ll be done soon. On several occasions in the first few years, he recommitted to the idea of finishing our old house quickly and moving here only to tell me that things didn’t go as planned or that something new came up. In 2006, I moved into a hovel for what was supposed to be six months…I spent three and one-half years there with all of my belongings in storage. Over and over he told me that the house wasn’t ready for a contractor and that he only needed a few more weeks. In 2009, we started seeing Michele and I was pretty much done trying to be patient. Finally he agreed in counseling that he would hire a contractor and that we could rent a nicer place. We got the nicer rental, but he never hired the contractor. He said it was impossible to find someone who would do the job, even though there are contractors being hired all over the city every day. It’s been over a year since that promise and he’s still telling me that he’s almost done.
H pressed the issue yesterday, saying that after five years he is getting ready to finish the renovation in our house. He said that if we sell it and buy one here then we’re making a commitment similar to marriage. He wants to know if we will be together before we do something like that. It’s a fair question. (Of course it’s just like him to compare buying a house to marriage. I always thought marriage was a considerably more important commitment than a house, but I’m weird that way.) As it is the idea of spending ten years with him under the same roof is not appealing. I’m very used to running my own life without him now that I’ve spent more than half of our married life without him around. When he is around, he’s hypercritical and insecure.
At first I thought the delays on the house were because he was on a mission to do what he had promised and that was fix up the house for a good sale. Not a bad assumption since the front porch had been torn off and there was a ceiling repair in the back that still needed to be done when I got my transfer. The projects kept growing in quantity and size. Then he started tearing out walls and I realized that he didn’t want to live with me. He was probably avoiding living with me, because I was really PO’d after a year of waiting. I went into divorce mode in my head and haven’t left since. After the first two years, I tried to be more zen about it and accept that he needed to finish for his own sense of accomplishment – maybe I could take the insult of him choosing the house over me if it would give him some self-esteem. My feelings were still hurt, but I could sometimes rationalize that he “needed” this. After three years I decided that if he really wanted a marriage he should swallow his pride; and console himself by building something with me. Of course, that would have meant I’d have to take an interest in building something with him. Maybe I would if he showed more of an interest in being with me.
I thought when he and I went to counseling and he committed to hiring a contractor that he was taking the baby steps toward that, then it turned out it was just another one of his lies. He lied to me, he lied to the counselor, but really it was just another one of the many lies he tells himself. Poor H. I wouldn’t be surprised now if he doesn’t want to finish, because he thinks I’ll divorce him first chance I get – because all I needed was a handyman??? Anyway, he may well be right, because it’s all disintegrated into absolutes. So now, H promises he’s almost done, and he probably isn’t … but there’s still that insidious question “what if he is almost done? When H told me yesterday that I need to make up my mind, my first thought was “then I guess we’re getting a divorce.” I couldn’t bring myself to say it, but the truth is I don’t want to live with him.
He’s the sort of person who needs to be in charge… erm… so am I. I come from a family of debaters, so a good argument about the minutia of everyday life is fine with me, so long as it ends in some mutual understanding. Our arguments just end in stalemates. Agreeing to disagree doesn’t work so well if it’s the only way every argument ends -- from how much closet space we get to whether we have kids to the position of the toilet seat. Ultimately, what happens is that one of us imposes the resolution on the other and the losing party spends the next … forever… being PO’d about it. Who wants to live with that? I tried to be open minded, to see things from his point of view, only to have my views dismissed out of hand by him. We’ve both been lonely. We’ve both been overwhelmed. I’ve tried to consider his need to accomplish this project and keep in perspective, but I don’t see him considering what I need or what I want. He likes to tell me what I need, even when I tell him that he’s wrong.
He also likes to tell me what I think. He likes to tell me what I feel. He even tells me authoritatively what I’ve done and not done, based on NO first or second hand information. I digress… the point is that when I consider his feelings and open up to the possibility that I’ve got something wrong or misunderstood something or that there’s another perspective as valid as my own, I’m met by a person who takes that to mean that he must be right, because I’m the one who is in doubt. It isn’t fair, it isn’t considerate and it isn’t respectful; I’m the only one in this relationship who is going to look out for me. I’ve tried looking out for him, and all it gets me is miserable.
Lately, the threat of D has been the only thing that has ever gotten him to back off of his ultimatums about how we’re going to live our lives. Unfortunately not any of the important ultimatums, there are some things he’s more than willing to divorce me over, and maybe he’s right on those points, maybe I should be thinking more like him on those issues. I realize now more than ever that the big D is the ultimate line in the sand. If I choose to stay with him, I lose all of my leverage and then I’m as good as saying that we’re going to do everything his way from now on. Maybe some women can do that. I’m not one of them. I really want out of this. Just wish we could be friends and leave it at that.
So I finally broke the news to him. I didn't go into blame or history or any other garbage that doesn't really matter. I just told him that it's clear we can't both be happy in this relationship at the same time, and I'm ready to end it. His response was to tell me that it's out of the question because he doesn't want a divorce... his same unilateral attitude has now determined that divorce is off the table because HE doesn't want it. Then he went on about how he accepts responsibility for what he has done and that he's put me through all of this for the sake of our relationship. OMG! He's been telling me for years that he's in the wrong and not once has he changed his behavior. Now he claims that his behavior has been "inconvenient, inconsiderate and not constructive" was all for my sake. The arrogance of his abuse is off the charts. He's essentially telling me that he's not really sorry, he's self-righteous. Anyway, none of that really matters as much as the fact that he missed the point completely. I don't want him to make me promises to change (he's proven he won't) or offer me appeasement. I never want him to be in a position to lie to me again. I want a divorce. The fact that he'll lie to me to keep me from divorcing him for having lied to me all of this time is just insulting.
I couldn’t come up with anything nice to say to H’s dismissive email, so after a day or so I finally wrote back telling him to just let it go. He responded with five paragraphs about how I’m having an affair (I’m not) and how I always get my way and how unfair it is that I won’t talk to him. God knows, I’ve tried talking to him for years, and I know this is just a ploy to guilt me into an argument. He sucked me in a little, because I wrote back to tell him there was nothing to discuss, because he dismisses everything I say and if he wants to know how I feel he can refer to my first email on the subject. (I refrained from pointing out that he obviously hadn’t paid any attention to what I said in it.) I addressed his lengthy assault on my fidelity by just saying that I’d never cheated on him and had never considered it. (I left out the part that it was insulting for him to even make the accusation… and oh… the idea of having a man in my life right now is sickening.) He’s hurt. He’s trying to pick a fight so he can start some kind of dialogue wherein he can bully me back into his life. I get it, but it does not make me thing “Wow! I’m really gonna miss that.”
No word from H today, though I wasn’t really expecting anything. He won’t contact me unless I contact him. That’s probably a good thing. I’m still steaming from yesterday, so I guess I’m venting today. Despite all I say here, I really am trying to be nice about this and let it go that we’ve both done our share. Honestly, I feel like I’m being magnanimous in this, because H is a classic verbal abuser. He criticizes me out of the blue for whack stuff and then tells me it’s my fault because I’m overly sensitive or I’m defensive or I’m the one who attacked him. My favorite is when he says he never said what he just went off about ten minutes ago or for two days. (Like the time he berated how I change gears when I drive, and when I changed my driving to his preferred method he berated me because I wasn’t driving the exact way he’d just told me not to drive.) His emails this weekend were fraught with accusatory theories about my motives and multiple choice questions in which I’m either a) stupid, b) a b!+ch or c) just plain wrong. I’m trying to respond as little as possible, because I’m not interested in playing along anymore. It’s time he takes responsibility for his own behavior. I wish, truly wish, he would listen to what I’m actually saying and stop trying to infer meaning to suit his own purposes, but then we might not be getting a divorce if he weren’t so busy putting thoughts in my head for me. He actually went into a rage last month because he thought I moved the drain cleaner… problem was I had searched the house for the drain cleaner myself and I couldn’t find it, which makes moving it pretty well impossible. When I couldn’t find it I thought he’d used it all, so I went and bought some. I cleared the drain myself, and then he got mad because I didn’t do it well enough… a sure sign that I hadn’t read the instructions. Boy, he was mad when he though I hadn’t read the instructions on the drain cleaner. I know that’s pretty unforgiveable, except I had read the instructions. He wanted to argue with me about whether or not I read the instructions, even though he wasn’t even there when I did it. He has told me twice this weekend that he’s still the man I married. No. The man I married did not lose his grip on reality every time I did some whacky thing like pour Liquid Plumber down a drain or buy windshield cleaner without direct supervision. The windshield cleaner was another good one. I used all of it and threw away the bottle, so I couldn’t physically prove I’d bought the right brand and he couldn’t just take my word for it. How I got to be 40 without dying in horrible windshield wiper fluid related accident, I’ll never know.
Hey Z, wow. I'd say take some time apart but it sounds like you've had plenty. You mentioned a counselor, what about trying that again?
Unfortunately many humans (including my stubborn self) don't know how to change until the sitch gets desperate and we are kicked in the butt. The problem with that is that the other spouse is hardly giving an empty threat of leaving at that time.
Yeah. We've been to a few counselors. He pushed around all but the last one. The last one told us to spend more time together, and we did for a while, but then he went back to "I'll come out to see you when I'm done or there's a major holiday." I decided I like it better when he's not here. Go figure.
Had a pretty good day yesterday, despite or maybe because of the ranting. It's hard to concentrate with all of this hanging over me and I've got to get a lot of things ready for next week. Started filling out the divorce paperwork. This whole thing is going to cost me a lot, especially the hit I'm going to take on the house. I don't mind splitting the equity with him if there were any. I have a choice between paying the mortgage and not eating until the market recovers or walking away with no equity. H likes to tell me that he's put this five years of sweat equity into the house for me. And I usually tell him to stop doing me favors and work on his marriage. It's not his fault the market slumped, but he did more than his share to cause the marriage to fail. Pretty soon, I'm going to have to contact him to get the mortgage payment info and copies of our last tax return. He was so combative this weekend that I anticipate he will not be cooperating.
Wow! I was reading through my last thread and my H is really messed up. Not four years ago he still wanted to divorce me, now that I want the D he's all opposed to it.
Then there's the verbal abuse garbage. I must have written pages and pages on this site about the crazy stuff he's asserted about me over the years.
