Don’t want to stay, can’t imagine leaving
My husband and I have been close to divorce twice now in the last year. Both times decided to keep trying because I felt it was better than blowing up our kid’s lives. We have 4 between ages 7 and 16. Been married 17 years, since I was 19, almost half my lifetime. Each time we have a blow up it’s harder to repair, and every time repair is only possible once I decide to take the blame for our problems and gaslight myself into believing my issues aren’t that big of a deal.
Our main issues are parenting differences and money. Last week one of our teenagers got suspended, we’ve had a lot of challenges with her this year, due mainly to the influence of a couple girls she’s latched onto and allowed to influence her. She’s a good kid, smart and talented, who is struggling. He sees a bad kid who needs to be punished with chores, and he resents her for how much we spend on her dance classes. I feel resentment from him towards all of us, he thinks we spend too much money and don’t help out enough with chores.
There’s a lot built up after 17 years, and I have come to realize that we do not see things the same way when it comes to parenting, life, priorities, anything. To the point I have no romantic love for him anymore.
My daughter asked both of us separately if we were going to get divorced because our fight last week was bigger than any we’ve had and the kids witnessed it. My husband exploded because I felt he was mistreating our daughter so I tried to step in. Her older sister also thought he was mistreating her and spoke up. It was traumatic for all of us. But he hasn’t apologized or admitted that he did anything wrong when we talked the next morning, he just went off on me about how much we spend on dance and how he’s driving a shitty car and we just do everything we want and walk all over him. Now he’s pissy because I’m still mad and not just moving on like nothing happened. I told her I don’t know if we’ll get divorced and she said she’s fine with it if we do, she just wants us to be happy.
I don’t want to be with him, but I fear the money and parenting issues will only get worse if we get divorced. We will lose the house. It will even harder for me to give my kids the opportunities and experiences I want them to have, especially because my husband doesn’t care about them having that. I feel so stuck, like there’s no solution that allows anyone to be happy or have peace.