Amen. Reading about five year plus situations makes me feel pretty grateful that X was in such a hurry to start his new life that he settled property and finances early on to get his hands on $$$.
If there is one thing I’d advise everyone who comes here in the future, it’d be to settle that stuff ASAP while/if you work on the relationship in the background. Easier said than done, I know. But you have the best chance of success getting them to agree to a favourable settlement during that short window while they are feeling guilty or high on affair fumes.
My two cents!
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I'm curious, how was his reaction then when he knew you were pregnant? Was he happy back then?
Our son was planned. We got married May 2016, started trying January 2017. As far as I know, we were both happy. We were newlyweds! He still had an anger problem and some unpleasant characteristics, but I didn’t know anything about emotional abuse or narcissism at the time. I fell pregnant May 2017. Things were already going downhill, or more accurately, he was becoming more abusive as I no longer poured all of my energy into keeping him satisfied.
I’ve rehashed some of this before, but the gist is that he had no patience for the toll that pregnancy took, no appreciation for the effort and aftermath of giving birth, and no respect for the role of motherhood. And seemed to get no enjoyment from the baby’s presence.
The highlights:
- The day before my positive pregnancy test he yelled at me saying I’d ruined the experience for him. I was literally in the middle of excitedly explaining how my elevated BBT meant we might be successful this cycle. This made my cry, which made him angry with me.
- He started spending long hours at work. This was around the time he hired OW (who was only 18 at the time— to this day I still feel disgusted at how predatory he acted as a married 27-year old man with a baby on the way. He totally exploited his position of power as her boss).
- He applied for a leadership program that would start the same week S2 was born. I don’t think that was a coincidence. This required him to spend a day a week at the company head office an hour away and attend a conference a few states away while S2 was a newborn.
- This is fairly stupid, but one time while heavily pregnant, I called him at home to say I’d had a bad day at work and just wanted to eat my leftover cheese fries when I got back. He got off the phone and ATE MY CHEESE FRIES. Then when I got home, he tried to convince me that I’d promised he could eat them (?) and I had no right to be upset (??) and in fact, now he was angry with me for being a b!!tch (???).
- The morning after S2’s birth, he didn’t come back to the hospital when expected. I’d asked him to pick up breakfast as I was starving. He was incommunicado for a couple of hours and late with my breakfast. He then went out to eat with MIL who grilled him over the decision not to circumcise the baby. He threw me under the bus saying (untruthfully) that he had no say.
- After we’d been home a few days, I was sitting in the baby’s room rocking him to sleep. I was exhausted and shell-shocked and trying to cope with a fairly significant birth injury (S2 had a nuchal hand presentation) so I was crying. He came in and handed me a chore list, saying “that’s your half, and I’m not cleaning the cat litter anymore”.
He left 15 months later and things just got worse over that period of time. He became less engaged, more resentful, more avoidant, more neglectful of the baby.
I had a rare night out to see Book of Mormon with a friend just after the baby turned one. S2 was sick so I’d left instructions to give him Panadol and not let him cry in his bed. I got home at midnight to every light in the house blazing, a sick screaming baby in the cot, and X sleeping with a pillow over his head to muffle the noise.
I’m so glad he’s gone.
Last edited by job; 02/10/2104:22 PM. Reason: edited language
