Hi, I'm new here. I have known something was off with my husband for years. Everyone thinks he is this great, easygoing guy but behind closed doors it's a different story. At first, no one believed me. There are now a few, funnily enough the people who have been really close to us and part of our inner circle, that have lost all respect for him for how he treats me and the kids. I'll go to them when something happens to ask if I'm being unreasonable. It makes me feel less crazy.
For now, I'm stuck with him. After we were married, he harassed me to quit every job I ever had and I have no income. I'm a stay at home mother of three children, one of which has severe disabilities.
He makes a lot of money but it's always seemed like we have a lot less than we should. His credit card is often run up to almost $2k a month. He claims it's just groceries and necessities but... that's a lot. I have no idea what he spends it on.
I can't leave though he's threatening divorce again. I've been in limbo for the last month and a half where sometimes he's really affectionate as long as I'm being happy and praising him. When I bring up our issues and try to work on them or explain how I feel, suddenly all the happy memories we have were never happy memories. He says I just thought they were because he was pretending and he's so angry at me about it. Other times he was really happy during those times. It's confusing.
To stay with him, I have to pretty much give up every single thing that makes me happy and just focus on keeping the house clean, meals cooked, and being a better wife to him. My gardening, which he said for years made him happy because it made me happy, was actually just something he always hated and somehow that's my fault for making him upset. I have always gardened, since before we met, so this is new information for me.
This isn't a lot of information and it rambles on. I'm pretty scattered at the moment. Things have been crazy lately and I have been overwhelmed so I'm sorry if a lot of this doesn't make sense.
I don't think he actually wants divorce. He's not really making any progress towards it. It seems more like a threat looming over my head whenever I try to do something that he doesn't like or if I try to fight back.
The problem is that I will end up with three kids mostly alone with barely any money if this does happen and he knows it. His eldest daughter, our disabled 10 year old, said she will never forgive him if he divorces me. That, if he does, she never wants to see him again. He just told her that's fine, she can never see him again and he'd respect her wishes.
I'm stressed and I can't afford to live without him. I was supposed to do job training in a couple years, after our youngest starts school, so that I can make good money. My husband hates his job now that they canceled remote work and many of his coworkers have left. It means that he can't just play video games or watch YouTube most of the day(I know this isn't the norm, he has been really lucky with this job for most of his working years). This job training was the solution so that he could quit and find a fully remote job or possibly be a stay at home dad for a while.
I can't afford to get divorced. The kids and I will be thrown into poverty. My eldest will be abandoned and I can't afford the therapies she needs on my own.
How do I manage him, give him what he needs so that he feels happy, while I work on an escape plan that doesn't leave us destitute? How do I curb the damage he's doing to the kids until we can get on our feet?
I'm already working on stepping back, grey rocking, starting old hobbies back up(in secret), and reaching out to old friends that I've lost contact with. I am documenting messed up situations between him and the kids to try and get full or majority custody of them. He definitely likes praise and will be really nice to me if I praise him constantly for any little thing he does. What else do I do? Any advice would be incredibly helpful.