KAREN43 SAID: It does sound like your H has lots of expenses, but you do as well.
He does have a lot of expenses but his total household income is way higher than ours. He makes about $120,000 a year, his mom has his dad's pension which is close to $40,000 a year, and his aunt has his uncle's pension which is pretty decent as well. Whereas my dad, my mom, and I all work, and we still bring home less than $40,000 a year between the 3 of us. So it tends to infuriate me when he uses his mom and his aunt as "excuses" as to why he can't help me out more with things like a new car or tuition for S. Yet he just bought himself a brand new car last week and his previous car was only 4 years old! Not to mention the motorcycle and the pickup truck that hardly ever get used but he has to have them anyway. Boys and their toys you know!
I've had my son tested for Asperger's and that's actually when they diagnosed the SID instead. H's brother has Asperger's and I think H probably does too but he has continually refuses to get tested. He does have some problems with short-term memory loss and concentration that are most likely due to heavy drug use in his college years. When S was about 6 months old, we went to a bookstore one day and were browsing in different departments, and my H forgot we were with him and went home w/out us! It's a very annoying problem but it's also the kind of problem that will keep him from getting any kind of overnight custody which is definitely a good thing from my perspective.
H actually showed up for a few hours this afternoon - w/out calling in advance. H and S played football in the lawn and flew a kite and played video games for a while. I totally ignored H unless he spoke to me first. He finally actually asked if I was mad at him and I said what did he think after the way he broke his promise to come out last weekend and made S cry for the better part of last Sunday? After that he pretty much stopped trying to talk to me and I just sat on the couch and read a book for most of the time he was here. He'll probably show up next Sunday as well - he almost always shows up on the weekends that his CS is due which is always the first Sunday after the 20th of the month. Plus with it being Father's Day assuming he remembers that. He never showed up for Mother's Day, his mother guilt-tripped him into spending it with her instead of me even though she has him every day and I only get him about once a month.
Is anyone here familiar with Stockholm Syndrome? Where people get "addicted" to their abusers? Sometimes I think that is why H is so tied to his mother's aprons strings still. My BIL told his wife, who told me, that their mother abused them terribly when they were boys - including sexually during the years when their father was on the road for months at a time. I'm sure that's a big part of the reason why both of them have so many emotional issues. I often wonder why BIL was able to cope to the point of discussing his past with SIL, whereas H has never brought this up with me. But after the way she treated them when they were kids, it's hard for me to understand why he not only lives with her but supports her now that he is almost 40 years old. BIL and SIL ran for the other side of the country as soon as they could and haven't been back since (S has never even met his cousins) - why hasn't my H reacted in a similar fashion?
