Well, I am not sure my situation is "extreme" enough to ask advice about here, but I am going to ask anyway and let someone tell me if I should move this to a different forum.
So my H is a good man. He's human - he's got some great qualities and some not so great ones. Me too. I'm a codependent, or at least I used to be. I was raised by a mother who constantly needed me to be something for her and because of that I never actually figured out who I was. I still don't really know. I struggle with an eating disorder on a daily basis, going on 18 years now, which I've come to learn has something to do with lack of proper attachment in childhood and control issues.
I was married once before also - got married at 19 and divorced at 25. That XH was controlling and verbally/physically abusive, and also sort of a moocher. He would randomly quit jobs, wouldn't do chores, relied on me heavily etc. I made most of our money, did most of the work around the house (including yard work and "man" work) and parenting of our daughter, and tried not to get him mad. At the very end I had gotten so depressed and resentful that I started saying things to him in a way I never had before, and he got so violent that it ultimately led to me leaving and filing for divorce.
Flash forward to now and my current H.
When my husband and I were dating, I pretty much bent over backwards to do everything for him and be very nice all the time. I was terrified of being dumped, terrified of him finding out my flaws. I found out he had a bad habit of lying about things (some serious things but lots of white lies). Some of these lies really triggered my insecurities, and I have always felt an uneasiness about things with him but my own deep need for some kind of security won out.
So, when my current H and I got married, we were only married for 8 months before I left. I had no idea how to handle some of his lies and his hiding things from me, and I just cold turkey left and divorced him.
We wound up getting back together, and we remarried. We have been remarried for almost 2 years now, but we didn't move back into the same house until last August. I didn't want a repeat of the first time and wanted to take things slow.
So now we are living together in the same house with our kids (we each have a kid from a previous marriage and we have 2 together, the youngest born last August). I'm again finding my H very hard to live with and I'm thinking about leaving. I love my H, but the reason I'm staying right now is really because of our kids. I have found myself so resentful toward him that every little thing becomes an issue.
Example - my H leaves for work at 6:20 am and returns sometimes at 6:30 pm or 7:30 pm or 8:30 pm...he's gone basically all day (and I could be wrong, but I don't think his job requires that actually). I leave for work later than him (around 7:30 am) and get kids ready and drop off two kids at daycare, then leave work around 4:30 pm to get to the daycare in time to get the kids and pick up our older kids too. I then go home and make dinner and do laundry and chores and feed our 5 month old and basically try to keep the inmates from killing each other. My husband comes home and pretty much just sits on the couch for the rest of the evening, doesn't really do anything usually. I've told him repeatedly that since I also work full-time that we need to trade off some days on who goes to work early/who leaves later, etc, but he never takes me seriously and then I start nagging about him coming home late every day and not helping at all. I am also in a Masters program online and I do my homework after I put the kids to bed (again, the bedtime routine is done 100% by me). My 5 month old still wakes up 2-3 times per night and I am the only one who gets up with her (she is bottle fed now so it could be either of us but my husband never gets up with her).
So I get 2-3 hours of sleep a night (I am a light sleeper and it takes me a while to fall asleep). I have never needed a lot of sleep but I still really resent my H for acting like it's my "job" to do all the work around the house, get up multiple times a night, plus work full-time. I also pay the majority of the bills plus do the majority of the shopping. He won't get a shared account with me; I know he wants to protect himself in case I bolt again (although we did not share accounts last time either and I never took a dime from him in any way - I have always made more money than him and been more frugal). But it's more than that - he is spending all of his money on building a classic video game and arcade collection and doesn't want me to know how much he's putting into it. He's in debt, I don't know how much because I haven't gotten a straight story, but it's a decent amount.
So this weekend I told my H that my mom was going to give us her old refrigerator. I told him I would keep it in the garage for extra stuff since our fridge is always full. I said I didn't know how to haul it to our house. He said, why don't I go rent a trailer and go pick it up? I said ok, but it's Sunday, can you rent a trailer on Sunday? He went off for a couple of minutes then came back and said yes, he just checked and you can rent one on Sunday. So I said that sounds good but there's no place in the garage to put it - where will it go? The garage has been a major point of contention because I like things organized and want to park my car in there, but he just throws stuff in there everywhere and is a packrat. He always promises to clean and organize it but he never does (and he sternly told me not to organize it because he knows where all his stuff is right now). So he says, well I will make a place for the fridge in the garage.
So he goes outside in the garage for a little while and then comes back in and says, "There's a guy selling some arcade machines a couple of hours from here, so I was thinking that if I rent a trailer, maybe I'll go take a look at his machines just in case he has something, and then I'll get the fridge." I was like, ok, and he left around 10 in the morning. He made no contact throughout the day so around 4 I finally texted him and asked if he was still 2 hours away. He didn't respond, so this made me think he probably was still in the other state 2 hours away. I figured by the time he got back it would be dark and I didn't want to keep my mom waiting, so I just told him to cancel the plan to get the fridge. He finally responded after it was dark and I said it's too late now.
Well, I figured out the truth from my stepson, who went with him. He had already bought an arcade machine from this person 2 hours away and had just been trying to figure out a way to get it home (presumably without me knowing what he'd done) when I mentioned needing to get my mom's fridge. So he totally lied from front to back about everything. He never told me about the arcade (probably spent at least $1500 on it but I am not sure). He made up a complete fib as soon as I mentioned the fridge. I don't think he ever intended to get the fridge at all. He didn't make any space in the garage for anything, so now there's barely even room to walk in there with this gigantic arcade sitting right in the middle of the garage. It's a driving game so not only does it have the big upright cabinet but it also has a seat in front of it.
I've told him that we need to get a house with more space, like with a basement, and he can use the entire basement as an arcade, but our tiny house with 6 people living in it just can't fit stuff like that right now. But he's in so much debt right now that even if he wanted to he couldn't save any money, and I paid all the bills and all my medical care for pregnancy/delivery last year...I am just now catching up. We can't afford to move. He's filling up our house with stuff - video games and video game consoles everywhere, and he doesn't clean up after himself. Clothes on the floor, games scattered about, he leaves his dirty dishes for me to pick up and clean, etc.
I feel so much resentment toward my H that I have trouble talking to him nicely or being nice because frankly, by the time he shows up in the evening I've had 2-3 hours of craziness going on that I just can't stand him. I am so jealous that he feels entitled to stay at work and have peaceful adult time while I'm at home barely keeping it together. But the moment I say anything to him, because I'm so upset and resentful and it comes out disrespectful, he stonewalls and distances for days or even weeks and stays out even later/does even less to pay any attention at all to what's going on with me or the kids. Last week he left and stayed the night at his old house (which he still owns and won't sell, I'm sure because he thinks I'm going to leave him), which really freaked me out and made me grovel and cry and ask if he was leaving for good.
I've got problems. I know I do. I have no clue how to set or enforce boundaries without getting upset and anxious. I tend to just put up with stuff until I decide I'm done and then I'm done done. I'm under a lot of physical and emotional stress trying to raise 4 kids basically by myself, stay present at work, get schoolwork done, and pretty much never have a moment of quiet/alone time. I do struggle every single day - every single meal - with my eating disorder. I work very hard to hide this from everyone and my H is the only person I know who knows about it, but I hide it from him pretty well also and he doesn't ask. In the past I struggled with depression and I still really have no clue who I am or who I might be if I could choose. I feel pretty hopeless right now, like I'm in a cage. I love my kids and I will continue to be present for them, but I hate looking at a future with my H the way he is now, completely self-focused and inattentive, and I can't really GAL because I have no one to hand my kids off to for "me" time. At the same time, I don't want to be demanding or disrespectful or anything like that because I want to be free of that. I want to be "clean" and have standards and lines I don't cross, like not yelling. I just don't know how to do that.
I know my H has many good qualities that you can really see when he's feeling good about life and me, and I know he is probably scared of pissing me off (I have lost it a couple of times since we moved in together again - lost it over "little" things from his perspective - and by lost it I mean yelled at him). He lies to me in part because he's scared of me, I know (fwiw though his family says he has always lied about things). And I know I'm probably to blame for his distancing and becoming selfish too, because I disrespected him by yelling.
All the same, I don't know what to do. I want to leave. I'm to the point now where I can't stand to see his junk laying everywhere and I know I can't do anything about it. I can't expect anything from him - it's all on me to keep it all together. I feel completely unheard and taken advantage of.
I'd rather be single and keep it all together and not have to live in someone else's mess and deal with someone else's expectations. I'd rather have no expectations of anyone because I'm the only one there. At the same time, I do love my H and when he's emotionally present, he's a real joy to be around and I know I've hurt him a lot by leaving before and in my words. I'd really like to have better insight to understand why I feel what I feel and also how to behave around him especially so I can help him feel comfortable and open and loving.
I'm just sort of at my wits end trying to figure out how to fix myself and not be a terrible partner but also not be unhappy myself most of the time.
