Withdrawal, The Worst Stage Yet?

[Rita]

Hi, Job. Thank you so much for posting. I agree that I need to step back but I think that my posting that letter without explanation may have made it unclear so I wanted to ask you for one clarification about your advice. I am really sorry this is so long, I don't know how to make it shorter. I really apologize, but I am trying to understand how to do what you are advising me to do.

My husband did not want to meet with an advisor. He wanted to meet alone with me, and I was scared to do that. He has been saying that as soon as he has money, he will get an advisor to "finally" figure out what I am doing wrong with our business that it makes him no money for himself. Sometimes he presents this as part of a divorce and sometimes it's just for himself to "feel the fabric of what he owns" with me. Our business covers our mortgage but not our massive debts (some of which are from MLC and some from our other biz that I had to sell when MLC destroyed that too ). He makes very little money and gives me none, so I have to pay everything myself for me and the kids and all family debts/expenses. I put all my income into our joint account, which pays anything of mortgage and debts not covered by business income. When I met him, he had a lot of debt and I helped him get out of it. We shared all accounts, all everything until bomb drop. When MLC began, he gave me these same speeches about my being controlling, etc, so I gave him all my credit cards, etc., not understanding what was happening. He took money daily from our business and he spent tens of thousands of dollars on my cards. Over time I cut off his access to my cards and tried to pick up the pieces of everything else and he stopped trying to be part of either of our businesses, even after I had cancer.

My H has rewritten that time period post BD too, and now says it was all my fault for pushing him out of business, family, fathering, etc.

Now I have been sharing with him the income and expense totals but without access to accounts/cards. That is why I am so scared of having to show him everything again and have him start trying to answer client e-mails with his crazy addled mind, or take money out of the accounts for himself, etc.

And then I am just scared of being alone with him. Even If I am home when he is, and I allow a casual conversation to start, without fail, every single day, even if we started out just talking about literature or what kind of grains he likes to cook, or some other stupid topic like shampoo (all things he never talked about before), it always ends with him suddenly reading some part of the conversation as evidence of his fury at me and he starts telling me that he won't go on like this, with no money, and that something has to change, meaning, to liquidate our house and the business in our house. We sometimes rent out our apartment and leave town so we can make money, and he keeps demanding I do this and give him money and when I ask where I would go with the kids, he says we can go to a motel. He can't obviously see all I have done to hold the family and house together or how hard I work to make enough to barely scrape by. He just says it's my fault for refusing to sell the house and that I am creating this problem.

I want to take a huge step back, that is what I am asking about here, how to do that. Because we live together, and because we own this house that is a business (a guesthouse with rentals below and us above),there is no escape from his constant demands for discussion, for money, for selling the house, etc. It is sort of monster stage again.

A month ago he was demanding a divorce, then suddenly he announced he wanted to be a husband and father "while still living here" and was great for two weeks, then he went back to not helping and disappearing and demanding I sell the house again and telling me how he could never return to the marriage. Then the next day he'll be hurt and offended that I went to see friends and he "wasn't invited." My son is refusing to go to school and often won't leave the house for days, but my H is of course unable to face that and just ignores it. I am on the brink of foreclosure, and I am working five part-time jobs with no help at all even cleaning the house or walking the dog. But when I suggest he go to our rental upstate or otherwise suggest time apart, he flips out and gets worse even while saying he is going to leave when he gets his money.

I am not saying this to vent but simply asking how I take a giant step back. I want to but I don't understand how. Because we own the house and biz together, I don't know how to refuse to answer. I go dark on everything else but how do I go dark on that?

This weekend I am out of town with my best friend and our daughters (a little scared the whole time that I left my son with H) and being away is just so wonderful, all the problems of my M seem so far away -- and so absurd! -- but I know I have to go back home tomorrow and I don't know what I will have to face when I get there.

I do notice that something in me must still be trying to fix things, but I just don't understand how to do the giant step back under these circumstances. The only thing you said that I thought, OK, I can do that, was to leave the ball in his court about Friday bills. He said he wouldn't speak to me anymore so maybe he won't, and the next I hear from him will be a lawyer. Or it could be that I come home and he chats with me and is coldly friendly until turning the conversation back toward money and selling our house. I can stay in my room and avoid him, but then he'll just send e-mails.