Another One Bites the Dust?

[MommaDucki]

First off: *apologies cuz I am a rambler, but will give this my best shot to keep it simple and to the point (me=that girl who makes a 5 min story into a 3 hour novel)*.
Secondly: feel free to just call me, "Ducki". Lol!

Moving on...been a lurker, and feel so much empathy for so many here. Have learned a ton, and am finally "unlurking" to gain some insight into my own sitch.

*what follows is the history between H and I. It is rather long, but I tried to condense it as best I could...just trying to give details. If you don't care/want to know this back history, just scroll on down to my response post.
Thanks in advance!!!

a brief history: me 30 H 28
H and I met almost 8 years ago via an online chat room. We'd been sort of on-again, off-again for 4 years.We got together for the first time as a dating couple in Nov '05, and had a long distance relationship that was the best relationship either of us had ever had. In Feb '06, he proposed, and in Aug '06, we got married. After the wedding, I moved from Indiana, back down to Texas, where he lived, and where I had previously lived and met him initially.

After the wedding is when he says things went downhill. That everything about me was different than I'd said I was. I also found out things about him that I was unaware of. I feel as if I was being more of a realist to the sitch though...I expected that we'd learn new things about each other once we started living together. I have had a hard time dealing with certain things about him as well. He's always had a skewed view on marriage...marriage is easy, couples don't fight or argue ever, and if they do, they should divorce because arguing, fighting, or being in disagreement over something, isn't what a marriage is about. He did have other insights about marriage as well, but overall, I felt nothing I did was meeting up to his expectations. Of course this led me to being frustrated with him early on, and our "honeymoon phase" ended rather quickly, and even now, I'm still trying to move past that transitional phase and he wants nothing to do with it. Says he feels a god marriage will forever remain in a honeymoon phase.

Gah! moving on...3 months after our wedding, we had a friend move in with us. In my opinion, this is truly when our problems began. It was supposed to be a very temporary situation, and the friend ended up living with us for 7 months. In that time, H just assumed that it was ok that since we both had jobs and now, we recieved money from roomie, that it would be ok for roomie's $ and my income to pay for all the bills and H started shopping like a maniac. One thing he and I have never (and probably won't ever) agree on is money. When he would approach me about a big purchase, I could point out my reasons behind why I didn't think it was a wise investment, and he'd buy it anyway. We'd end up not having that money for a utility bill or whatnot, and he'd get mad at me for, in his words, "overreating to the <insert utility bill here> getting shut off again". Rent on our house starting falling behind, our landlord was getting frustrated with us, H quit his job, found another and quit that we well.

Then, June '07, we found out we were pregnant. Around the same time, H was still unemployed, and found a potential job in another city about 400 miles away. He approached me one morning right before I was about to leave for work and said, "W, *friend of mine* down in *new city* has job openings where he works and I was wondering how you'd feel about a move so I could work to support us and the baby." I told him I'd consider it as long as we could sit down later and discuss it in detail, and then I left for work. When I got home from work that night, he'd talked to his friend, made all the arrangements for our move, talked to our landlord about us leaving on set date, arranged for us to live with friend temporarily, talked to roomie about how he'd need to find a new place to stay, and even put down a deposit on a moving truck. Of course, this set me off big time and once again, he got mad and said he didn't understand why I was once again "overreating".

Instances like this have happened on too many occasions to count where he brings up and idea to me, and before I have a chance to even catch my breath, he just finalizes all the plans for the both of us. I've tried to explain to him that I appreciate him taking initiative like this, but I feel a bit controlled...that I feel as if my opinions of what happens in our life don't matter to him...that I feel he makes all the decisions about my life, and that all of this hurts.

His reasoning behind this decision making process is that when he approaches his dad about things like this, he has to have all details worked out and finalized before he talks to his dad, or else his dad lectures him about life's choices being made by him "too vaguely". Again, I reiterated to him how this felt a bit unfair to me because I'm not his father...that I can understand why he'd go about decisions like this, but that our case is different than he and his dad's case...His father isn't directly affected by these decisions...I am!

I also need to include some other info as well here...Now H and I are both flirty people by nature. I've always known this about him, and have come to accept it. Some might not understand, but it's just part of who I am. H liked to be that guy to sit around and flirt a bit with girls, and I never took it too seriously in the beginning, but then it started turning into a problem when I found out all his flirting was bordering on EAs with various women. He likes to feel that initial thrill of a new relationship I suppose....but I wasn't too happy with him being this way. I told him about all of this and his response was, "W, I may be flirty and whatnot with other girls, but you're the one I come home to every night. You're the one who gets to be with me every day. It's really only you I want to be with, I mean, look at all you do for me! How could that make me not want to be with you?"

I tried to get him to just listen to me as I explained to him how I felt about all of this...that I heard what he was saying, but felt that he wasn't really with me...He was physically there, but mentally engrossed in some other woman's life. That I felt more like a maid/cook/secretary for him. Didn't have that level of intimacy I used to have with him any longer, and I missed it...I was lonely, and on top of it, playing maid/cook/secretary to roomie as well...and now pregnant on top of it all.

Well, because so much had been finalized about the move and new job, I felt I had no choice but to hand in my resignation from my job, seeing as I'd have no place to live if I kept it...lol. My last day at work, I took a fall...landed on my belly, which caused some problems with the pregnancy. I was put on moderated bedrest for 2 months...was told 6 times that I'd miscarry...and H could only harp on me for not cooking 3 meals a day for him and keeping up on the laundry. I was now most definitely NOT the woman he'd married...who he married was someone who would, no matter what, wait on him hand and foot and pay him constant attention. We moved July '07 and H didn't even get the job we moved for. Friend, aka "new roomie" was still willing to let us stay with him...he had the space after all, and H kept on trying to find a new job...all the while, we're now living entirely off of roomie...Aug '07 rolls around, and things happened to me physically that put me in the clear with the pregnancy, but by this point, I was showing quite a bit, and though I tried to find at least a part-time job, no one seemed to want to hire me. H found a job in Sept '07, and it seemed very promising...insurance kicked in fairly quick, and we found a good OB....D was born in Feb '08 by an unplanned C-section. H was in love with his little girl...and still to this day says he only has her best interest at heart. In march '08, he quit his really great job because he said the hours interferred with time with the baby, and he again, stayed unemployed for 2 months. In that time, some new friends had moved into town, and H was ecstatic! New people for him to show off the world too! Even though he had no job, he'd find ways to get money (mostly by selling our things - without me knowing), or convince roomie or new friends to pay, and take them out all over the place. One afternoon, I'd taken a nap while D was napping, and when I woke up, he was just gone. Called him, and he said he was in *other nearby city that'd 90 miles away* and that he'd woken me up to tell me and that I had grunted in response...why was I again "overreacting"? Then there was the music festival they all spent 4 days at...and the dinners out, and bowling, and movies, and sight-seeing...all the while, roomie and new friends would ask if I'd like to come along, and H would speak up for me and say I shouldn't or couldn't go because of D.

So April '08 rolled around and I found out my grandmother's cancer had come out of remission and was spreading fast and she'd opted to go home and recieve hospice care and live out her days at home. I'd spent 15 months prior to our marriage working as her full-time caretaker, and was devastated by the news. H knew this and told me I should get up to Indiana to see her. My family helped pay for a plane ticket for D and I to travel up there, and we left May 2, 2008. On some level, this was like a mini-separation for H and I.

Things hadn't been gong all that well. I'd been diagnosed as suffering from depression while pregnant and was put on anti-depressents. I'd also found out while pregnant that I was in stage 3 of pre-cervical cancer and there wasn't anything that could be done about it at the time due to the pregnancy. After D was born, I was put on stronger anti-depressants, and my OB thought I was suffering from post-partum depression. I had gotten a break at my 6 week post-partum check up by finding out my stage 3 pre-cancer had dropped down to a stage 1...a very good sign indeed, and we really had no idea how it came about.

Up in Indiana with my family, I went to visit my grandma every day. At first she was still very alert and coherent, and over a 5 week period, I watched her slip further and further downhill to the point she went into a coma, and passed away a few days after. This came as a huge loss to me...somehow, i felt it was my fault and I didn't know why...I knew it wasn't my fault in any way shape or form, but still felt guilty.

While I had been up there, H did find a new job...working from home, and took so much of the money he was earning and spending it on frivilous stuff again. He and I are both gamers, and he'd been buying new parts for his PC to enhance his gameplay and whatnot...all the while, telling me he had no money to put in the bank for me to access for diapers, etc for D. Originally, D and I were supposed to go home on June 4, and we'd stopped by to visit grandma on our way to the airport, and that was the day she'd slipped into a coma. I knew she wouldn't last much longer, and that if I went home, there was no way i could come back up in a few days for a funeral...talked to H, and he understood and even agreed that I cancel my flight and reschedule. Three days later, she passed away, and I will be forever grateful that I was able to attend her funeral.

Now, because I'd booked the flight home for fairly cheap, I had that credit with the airline, and was planning on applying it to a new flight home...was my intention to make it back for Father's Day, seeing as a new daddy only gets one of those, but the credit amount I had wasn't enough to get me back in time, and H told me we had no money to foot the balance, so get what I could with whatever credit I had....I ended up coming home 2 days after Father's Day.

He called me a selfish B**** for keeping him from his daughter on Father's Day. This is really when things escalated between us. I found out that in the video game he was playing, he'd really "connected" with this girl he met. At first, he'd just talk about her generally, but then confessed to me how deeply he cared for her. I started to obsess and snoop and pry....I was logging into his account and reading things they were saying...started taking screenshots of their convos, printing out copies of emails, and even tape recording their phone conversations at night. He was staying up all night talking to her on the phone...getting really irritated with me if I didn't go to bed early...because of course, I was holding him up from talking to her. It got to a point one night that I had woken up to use the restroom in the middle of the night and I heard his voice downstairs...I tried to be as quiet as I could because D slept in the same room as us...and because of her as well as trying to keep an ear out for me, he'd keep the baby monitor on to listen for us. I did manage to quietly get to the door though, and heard him tell her how much he loved her. She lived in upstate NY, so I know they weren't having a PA, but I was still crushed over their EA. When I confronted him about it, of course he was angry as all heck, and denied it all. I had proof though...proof that he had told her how he was going to "send me away to live with my parents and then fly her down in time for his birthday (which was in Aug), because she'd be the best b-day gift he could get".

On top of all this, the government had issued most everyone economic stimulus checks at this point, but we'd not recieved ours yet. I was concerned about it, and H kept reassuring me that it must have gotten lost in the mail or something. I later found out that it had come while I was up in Indiana, and he'd forged my signature on it, cashed it, and then spent it on a video card for his pc.

Also, we had a truck we were still making payments on...low enough that we stayed current on it, and it was in really good shape. While I was in Indiana, he had an anime convention he volunteers to work at every year that he insisted he "had to go to", but he'd just started his new job and had no gas in the truck to make it to this convention, which was back in the city we'd moved from a year prior....He decided it would be a good idea to just trade the truck in for a new car...mainly because it would come with a full tank of gas so he could get to this convention. When he called me from the dealership, he let me talk to the salesman he had spoken to so I could hear all the details...he had very little, if any credit at this time, and needed my credit to be approved for the car...after hearing the guy out, I knew we were being taken for, and I told H it wasn't a good idea...just keep the truck. he said ok, and a day later, I recieved a Fed-EX package from the dealership with all the necessary paperwork to buy this car. I called the dealership to question about it, and they said that H had bought the car, and all they needed was my signatures on the marked places and to have me send it all back. Told them I did't want this purchase, and was told it was too late...H had already taken the car home, and our truck he'd traded in actually got bought earlier that same day, so it was gone! I was furious. Again, H said I overreacted to the situation.

So after finding out about H's EA with this OW, I told him I was going to leave. This was late July '08. I had a girlfriend back near our old city that I talked to, and made plans to have her and her H drive down to me, get D and I and let us move in with them for a bit. As the day came closer to me leaving, H got a wake-up he needed and realized what he'd be missing. He and I sat down and had a very very very long talk about what we needed to do if we were to make this work, and that me leaving wasn't really what either of us wanted. I called my girlfriend and thanked her for the offer, but that H and I were gong to work on things. She was actually quite hurt by this, and it's taken until about a month ago for her to even start talking to me again.

Well, for about a week, things seemed to be on the up and up. Then, one night, H and I had gone to bed at the same time, and a couple of hours later, I woke up to find he was not in bed any longer. Heard him talking downstairs again, and found out he was still talking to OW. I went straight downstairs and we had probably our most hostile argument ever. Caused OW to freak out because I was approaching him while he was on the phone with her. She quickly hung up, and I again, was accused of overreacting.

Moving on...H apologized for not ending A like he said he would. He let me sit and listen on speakerphone as he broke it off with her. He even transferred his characters in the video game to a different server so he'd have no contact with her that way....Changed the characters' names and everything. At that point, we really did start to work on things freshly and differently. Since he worked at home, he tried to help out more with D because he realized she was now 6 months old and he'd hardly done much with her or for her. He and I also started spending more one on one time together...Prior, we'd spent a lot of time with roomie and new friends, and little time as just the two of us...I think I got him to understand why I felt so strongly about us getting alone time.

Then towards the end of August, he started acting funny again and quit his job, again! I again, started being sneaky even though I knew it would only hurt me more in the long run...Found out he'd started another EA with a different woman...this time, someone local...So here I am, thinking, OMG! first the two different mini, sort-lived EAs back in old city, now two fairly serious EAs in new city, and on top of that, all the personal ads he was posting and responding to while I was in Indiana with D...found out about those, and sadly, most happened on Mother's Day....Happy first Mother's Day to me! And to think, he got a new $100 grill and accessories for Father's Day (that he bought for himself btw).

So at this point, he was still telling me how he wanted to work on things with me, and all I could really tell him was, "well, then, H, stop telling me what you want to do, and show me. Actions speak louder than words".

In Oct, he found a new job in a different career field, and quit after 6 days because he didn't like it, and after that, he all about gave up on looking for a job and life in general. All he wanted to do was sit at ths pc and play his videogame. He stopped showering, got mad at me because I didn't want to be intimate with him, he'd go for days before changing into clean clothes, and started staying up all night, sleeping during the day, and getting mad at me because during the day, he was trying to sleep peacefully, and I kept interrupting by bringing D in for naps. He would get mad because I didn't cook appropriate meals for him at the proper times (mornings to him were dinner time for the rest of us, so he wanted breakfast food as I served dinner to roomie and I, and so on).

By mid-Dec, he started to come around...he realized that the way life was going for us at the time was no way to live....Roomie was on the verge of kicking him out. Said he'd never be able to live with himself if he kicked out a mother and her youngbaby, so I was welcome to stay, but H needed to go. H wrote an email to his family asking for help and/or advice. They had a sit down meeting together to talk about things, and in the end, his dad and step-mom offered to let us come back to old city and live with them...with certain stipulations of course. I was hesitant. I liked them very much, but wasn't to sure about living with them. They are very particular about so much in life, I wasn't sure that they'd be tolerant enough living with an 11 month old, even if it was their granddaughter. So New Year's Day, we loaded what little of our stuff we needed, and moved to the in-laws.

Part of the agreement was that both H and I get jobs, and D goes to daycare. H and I needed to get a job, any job, pay didn't matter, distance didn't matter, they'd help any way they could. H wasn't taking to being there very well and spent most nights lying awake in bed or reading news online...I was spending my days looking for work....Due to our financial strain over the years, I'd been unable to be making payments on a few fines I had in regards to my license, so it became suspended, and then revoked, so H had to drive me anywhere I needed to go...Every morning, I'd get up, get D and I dressed, and wait for H to wake up hoping he'd get up soon to drive me about filling out job apps. Every day, father-in-law came home at lunch to find H in bed, me sitting in the living room playing with D, and neither one of us with jobs yet. H and his dad would fight, and H would leave the house in a huff...father-in-law would be fine, but also leave to go back to work. H would be gone the rest of the day, "looking for jobs". He'd also started posting personal ads again...said it was to prove his point....that I can't trust him at all, otherwise I wouldn't snoop around so much.

One day, he came home, and asked if we could talk. Once D went down for her nap, we sat down, and he told me he's trying to re-enlist in the Army, and if he was successful, I'd probably need to move up to Indiana to live with my parents for awhile. Told me he'd already talked to his parents about it, and they'd pay for me to get up there, now we just have to decide how soon I'd need to go.

Another fight about him making all these decisions for me...lol....this time, it went rather civilly. We decided it'd be better if I stayed, and the next night I overheard him having a talk with his dad...well, more like a very heated lecture. About how he wasn't doing what it takes to provide for his family, sleeping all day, and he's here in their house, living off them like a mooch while his wife sits on her lazy a** all day not doing anything either.

It was at this point that I decided what I had to do, and had been putting off for half a year....


THANK YOU to any and all that have read this far. Like I said at the beginning, I can be long winded. More about my sitch in the next post.....is a much shorter post, I promise!!!