If you divorced with kids under 5, what was your experience like? Should I wait until my child is older?
So my husband (35m) and I (31F) have been together for 13 years and married for just over 5 years. We have a 4yo soon to be 5yo son. My life is absolutely miserable.
I hate myself so much because of the choices I’ve made, I have lost myself completely. I do everything financially in my household and when it comes to my son, I am the primary care giver and my son and I have the most amazing relationship. My husband is extremely emotionally and mentally abusive to me (not to our son). I think I just need to vent a little and also get some advice. So here’s my story.
My husband has always had a bit of a drug and alcohol problem, not to the point where he drinks daily or takes drugs daily but when he does(probably every 2 weeks or so), he becomes extremely abusive. He threatens me, screams in my face, breaks things, picks on my family, picks on everything, degrades me. He doesn’t feel ashamed to embarrass me infront of anyone, he will scream at me infront of my son. He forces me to sleep with him in that state and even if I am sobbing he doesn’t care, he sometimes holds me down and then when his boner goes down he blames me for crying. I don’t fight back, I don’t even bring it up the next day because I am terrified. When he is sober he is moody as hell and ever ready to fight. I just keep quiet and go about my duties. I cook, clean, pay for everything and work a full time job. He doesn’t contribute a single cent towards our son or our home. He doesn’t even help with anything in the home. I am so sick of it. I grew up in a household of drug addicts and alcoholics. I do not want that for my son. Further to that he disrespects me so badly. I have told him I will leave him if he does drugs again, he still does it. He has no regard at all. Now the simple thing would be to leave, which I know I should do. The problem is that I genuinely do love my in-laws, they are amazing and I would hate to lose them. They are also unaware of what I go through with him. The second issue is my son, although he is a terrible husband and father, he is still very caring towards our son. My son loves him so so so much, he does play with him and stuff like that, he isn’t a bad father in that sense, but he is a bad father with regard to the things I see, my son is obviously too little to see these things, for example if I am out for the day, he will not think of giving our son food, instead just have him eat junk the entire day, he won’t give him a bath or help with his homework or anything, even when we take our son out for the day, he will never contribute towards the outing, he will never pay for supper etc. Further to that, he will scream at me and disrespect me infront of our son, he will break things and stuff infront of him, and he will bad mouth me to him. My son never disrespects me in turn, but it’s only a matter of time before it starts happening.
Now my fear is that if I leave, my son will not understand why we are not at home and why we are not with dad. To him he’s a great dad because that’s all he understands, what if my husband manipulates him later on into hating me because he won’t remember or know of the bad stuff his dad has done to me. My question is, ladies who have experienced this or something similar, should I wait until my son is a bit older and can understand before I leave, or should I leave now and deal with the consequences? A part of me strongly feels like I should just wait until he’s a bit older. But another part of me is losing my mind. I am so depressed, so angry and so sad all the time. I do give my best to my child but I hate myself for putting him in this position with the choices I made by being with his father. I have so much to vent about and I have absolutely no one I can speak to. I don’t have any friends, I don’t have a good relationship with my family, I don’t have anyone. I don’t have any type of support system. That’s another thing, if I leave I’m going to be putting my son into a completely different lifestyle, he’s used to what we have now, and I don’t want to take that away from him before he can understand.
Sorry for the long post. I just need someone to talk to. I am losing my mind.
TLDR: I am being emotionally, financially and mentally abused, but want to wait until my son is older to leave so that he does not get manipulated into believing that I broke up our family.