Thanks guys, it is a relief to have a safe forum to discuss this stuff in. The timeline is, stuff like this has been a normal part of our existence, not every day, but often, since the kids were pretty small, like schoolage. Before they were schoolage we had these very same disagreements about spanking and yelling. The boys started wrestling in first grade and there's a lot of roughhousing like that which seems to have started around that point too, not when they were little babies. Wrestlers cannot be squeamish about their crotches and personal space; an opponent would take advantage. Any of you guys wrestle? My H did from early childhood through college, and it earned him an Ivy League education and was a large part of his identity as a man and as a dad, until the kids moved on to other sports and interests.
The things I took issue with I said something and we would have disagreements, and the disagreements turned to friction, resentment, a feeling like the other wasn't listening, a feeling like our opinion didn't matter, and so on and so on until we get here. My H completely withdrew from me and then left me. And one of, say, the top three problems in our relationship was this stuff. I didn't respect his ideas and he didn't respect mine, and we didn't agree about the kids. I might have mentioned before, that even being left, I felt some relief because this problem that I felt he was somewhat abusive was going to go away since we couldn't work it out.
You may not be regular readers of mine, but my sensitivities over how he speaks to our S12 have also been called abusive and been highly offensive to some readers on this board.
What do you do when things seem sometimes bad but not always bad, when you have some disagreements but not only? At what point do you decide what you're looking at is clearly abusive and you need to pack up the kids and leave, get a divorce when all your life you've believed marriage is forever and communication enables smart people to work out their differences? Well, I have had that decision made for me.
Honestly, when we talked about our differences in marriage counseling, the four or so times H showed up, the issues were not about him being abusive they were about ME being abusive. Not listening, not being respectful, acting lazy and forgetful, being passive aggressive. I've read here how emasculating it is to be denied sex by your wife, and I've been at fault of that because I could not stand the way he approached me - if I could throw up at will there are some times I would have done so, and it was just harmless fun, I was soooooo overreacting it seems. I was a bad wife, it seems. I took our marriage for granted, didn't speak his love language, didn't try hard enough. So in all that, there are these little pieces of the puzzle that when examined up close look like he was verbally and possibly physically abusive or at the very least inappropriate.
I can't redo the past, and it's all being changed in the present by the divorce, so all that I can do is work on this stuff going forward, with my IC's counsel, to build up my boys and try to undo what's been done.
A thought that occurs to me is that my H was probably treated by his dad or others exactly the way he's treating the boys, so he thinks it is completely normal and that it's me that is overreacting. And my family was so restrictive that we weren't allowed to burp or fart or actually even use those words, so there's a lot that I've just figured must have been normal for other types of families.
Adinva 51, S20, S18 M24 total 6/15/11-12/1/12 From IDLY to H moving out 9/15/15-3/7/17 From negotiating SA to final D at age 50 5/8/17-now: New relationship with an old friend __ Happiness is a warm puppy.
