Withdrawal, The Worst Stage Yet?

[Rita]

Also i never answered Brubeck's question about the kids -- for the most part, total withdrawal from both. Much worse withdrawal from my son, who he adored and who adored him. He barely interacted with either kid for a long while, but a tiny bit more with my daughter. In the past year, he was spending a little time with her here and there. Nothing with my son and he can go days with nothing but a hair tousle and yelling at him for using his charger. My son is now a truant and is very rageful and horrible most of the time but at night needs to lie next to me to fall asleep and is obsessed with making sure I will not die. I have to spend 2-3 hours per day trying to get him to go to school (and you can imagine the effect on my work life) but I often fail, he skips school 2-3 times per week and is late the other days. I am working on getting him into a special school but have to hide this from my H, who disapproves of my mothering. My H just tunes it all out or tells me to let my son create his own destiny and stop pushing him.

But just a few months ago, we seemed to be co-parenting more and sometimes he would help me when my son was raging, he would come and put a stop to it. Not in a loving way, but helping me.

And then all that changed. I think that his current financial situation has caused a total relapse and he is back to bomb drop. I am in the same boat or worse, financially, as I am paying everything myself including our joint debt, but I found a lot of jobs and just work my ass off to keep the kids and the house afloat. My H doesn't want to work and so he wants his half of the house so he can have money. In thinking about it through the many posts I made today, I realize that the financial crunch coming to a head basically pushed him back into the tunnel, and it seems like he is starting the whole MLC cycle over.