My husband is/was a great man. Hard worker, good provider, was kind and thoughtful until I got pregnant 4 almost 5 years ago. My pregnancy was complicated and stressful, he blamed me for it. I had a blood clot in my leg, he told me it was my fault for being lazy. I hemorrhaged and got really sick postpartum and he’d scream at me for the mess I’d make in the night while caring for our baby. He started being really mean to my dog. He stepped out of our marriage and started spending money at massage parlors. We’ve had many fights about it all. He’s improved some and stopped doing everything that he was doing but the anger and rage remains. He has bruised me multiple times from grabbing me or pinning me down & he verbally abuses me in the meanest ways possible. It keeps escalating and I don’t know what to do. He feels like I don’t show him love often enough. The reality is he never got and std test after I asked him to and I don’t feel safe being intimate with him.
Today we were at a store and I was helping our toddler potty in his portable potty in the car. I’m getting hot, I’m hungry, toddler isn’t cooperative, and I go to grab the shirt id brought to change our toddler into as it was getting hot and they had a sweatshirt on. I look up and he’s using the shirt to clean my car dash and console. I reacted negatively but I felt that was warranted, I didn’t yell or put him down just said,” babe that’s the shirt I brought for him?!” I get back up front and I can see he’s pissed at me. I ask what’s wrong because I genuinely didn’t see how he could be upset about that. Well sure enough that’s what he’s mad about. The fight escalated he yelled at me in the car the whole way home, once home he threw a couple things, at one point when I told him he was making something simple into a huge thing for no reason he grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me out of the house which made our toddler cry. I eventually left and took our toddler to the park to get away. While we were gone he packed a bag and left, blocked my phone, haven’t heard anything from him since.
I do not know what to do. I don’t feel our toddler is safe in his care. I’m not confident I could win sole custody though. I’m a stay at home mom, he makes good money and is a veteran, I have nothing that shows I should be the one to have custody. I’ve begged him to try therapy and he won’t. He blames me for everything and says if I would change he would too, but even when I feel like things are getting better I slip up and make him angry and we’re back in the same spot. I’m just really lost and confused as to what happened to the Man I married.
Maybe it is my fault? I did have crippling postpartum ocd and anxiety that really affected him but again he didn’t support me at all, he yelled at me for it.