I've been wanting to respond to everyone's posts and update my own thread but my daughter and I seem to be endlessly sick.
Jim, thanks for your suggestion. I'd love to do try to the overnight visits but they aren't practical at this time. When my husband comes from out-of-state he stays with his family. There are four of them crammed into a small apartment all sleeping together and the apartment isn't even remotely clean, not to mention they all stay awake until 1:00 or 2:00 AM every night and sleep late the next day. My husband has never cared for our daughter, much less any child, at night and hasn't expressed any interest in doing so. He has no tolerance when our daughter cries and leaves the house or closes the door so I can calm her down. My daughter's also never slept away from me before and I anticipate it would be a disaster to send her to my husband's family's place even if he was willing. It's an hour away so I imagine him driving her back here screaming at 3:00 AM and then not coming again for months due to the trauma. At this time I don't see it as an option but it'd be great if I could do that. I've never even seen a movie or gone out with friends in the evening in the four years since our daughter was born. She's always been with me and even sleeps in the same bed as me. I write all that just because there are some solutions that make so much sense, like this one, but I don't know how to work around these barriers to ensure it'd be a success. Maybe when my husband moves up to this city in a year (if ever) and has his own place he can try to host her. By that time she'll be five and hopefully more independent.
Arsh, thanks for your empathy. Most of the time I feel just clueless about my husband and don't know whether he deserves forgiveness, sympathy, a jail sentence, or to be completely ignored but I'm trying to be friendly and cooperative for our daughter's sake. If / when we get divorced, which is the most likely outcome, how we communicate beyond that will probably depend on the fairness of the divorce and how it addresses our needs on both sides. I also know I became an abusive terrible wife after his first affair so I want to improve myself as a person. I also know people who battle mental illness sometimes can't control their actions although no one has definitively diagnosed my husband with anything but suicide is always a concern.
The general update is that my husband calls every day but there hasn't been much new. Our daughter and I have been really sick and once on the phone I kind of lost it for five seconds and I expected my husband to get mad and hang up like he did with my illness last fall but instead he was empathetic and said "I know I'm so sorry for everything you're going through." He prescribed medication that our daughter's pediatrician didn't want to prescribe and it finally helped her, so I thanked him a lot for that.
My husband had said a few weeks ago he was arranging to come and join us on a weekend trip to a nearby city but he either forgot or made other plans because he never mentioned it again and didn't come. He said he was going to come this week, but he called a while ago and still didn't mention anything about when he might come. I didn't ask because I don't want him to think we're waiting for him.
It's kind of strange at times. I don't ask my husband anything about his life at all, so I have no idea what's happening with him. He may be in a full relationship with another woman going out every other night and making plans for the future or he may be lonely and depressed. I have no clue. He doesn't ask me much either, and I don't volunteer an information, so he doesn't know anything about me except what relates to our daughter and finances.
My friend over the weekend was encouraging me to decide how long I'll stay this way but I don't know. I'm not looking for advice necessarily but I want to say that right now I prefer to leave the future open-ended for as long as possible. I have my own career and financial goals and our daughter has her own development goals but I have no relationship goals. I guess unless there's a miracle and the right man magically appears I'll be single for a long time because I just can't imagine dating.
