What the he!! is happening now?

[maelstrom]

Hi there - newcomer here but I have been in a similar situation.

Last spring H took up with OW, back and forth etc etc all summer, couldn't make his mind up. So in the end I set my boundary in stone (only one so far). That if there weas OW then we would be getting a divorce. I called my solicitor and was all ready to go. H had some sort of crisis, went to see his sol and then 'seemed' to realise what the future might hold in store.

Anyway he allegedly dropped OW like a hot potato and came back home. I say allegedly because I have no real evidence that he is back home at all. Oh yes he's back physically, but not mentally.

Well the part that is similar to your sitch is that he says he cannot understand why I would want to divorce him. His idea was that he would continue to have a happy family life when it suited him and go back to OW for the rest. My jaw hit the floor when he said this - how could he possibly not understand why I wouldn't put up with this situation!

Before I went to the solicitor, we went round and round the houses discussing finances - we have a lot of savings and I have been a SAHM for eight years. So his view is that all the money, the house, cars etc are all his and I can have crumbs as far as he's concerned. He wasn't willing to share out the savings fairly, he was not willing to contribute to the 'family' expenses i.e money I spent while he was away working even though I spend very little on myself, it was mostly household expenses. I would certainly have been better protected financially if I had proceeded with either a legal separation or a D.

So, now H is 'home', we have separate bank accounts (I now have a job). He keeps all his finances secret and a minimum in the joint account. He gets all his post forwarded to his work flat and even keeps his own laptop locked up. Not a good recipe for R. One piece of good advice the solicitor gave me was to keep as much money as possible in my own account so that if H starts to mess about with the finances then I will have a safety net to fall back on.

Now he has all this independence he has started a new tack - I am apparently keeping the children from him, or influencing them against him. Never mind that he works away all week 400 miles away and acts like a vegetable when he gets back at weekends. Oh and he's moved into the spare bedroom because he wants his own space.

I think it's just going from one crisis to another. H is trying to pull me in and make me as miserable as he is! Not gonna happen. It's his mess and he can sort it out. Until he stops blaming other people for his problems and starts to look inside his own head I can't see much hope for our R.

I am still here because of the man he was and because of my kids too.

This may not be much comfort for you and I am told that it does get better in time, but what a roller coaster ride. I think that your H has control issues from the sound of it - much like mine. The best thing I do for me when he's like this is just to go dark for a while. It helps me get a better perspective on what he's trying to do, also discussing it with close friends who know about the sitch. Usually we have a good giggle about it.