My husband is 43 and I'm 45. He's been financially undependable for our entire 7 1/2 year marriage, and generally irresponsible. I'm an editor, writer, and teacher/educator with some television production experience. He's a gardener and has done plant sales also. One example of his irresponsibility is his refusal to work fulltime when his all-time favorite job (most money for easiest work, according to him) was ready to hire him back for the 2008 season.
We have a wonderful 5-year-old daughter; after her arrival, combined with new challenges in my career, his irresponsibility and lack of support grew intolerable. Once when she was an infant, I arrived home from Walgreens' tornado shelter to find that he had taken her outside to watch the storm!
Then I was laid off this past February, and I agreed to support him in one of his sideline businesses. (He's had several disasterous ones, but this new one actually sounded like a pretty good idea.) I worked for him (free) for several months, thinking that we were growing closer: I was supporting him in his dream of us working side-by-side on something of our own while he was stepping up to support our family financially. Then in June some conflicts arose with a couple of his family members who are involved with his new business. I fully expected his support and instead received a barrage of irrational and cruel words. I knew something was terribly wrong with the way I was being treated.
Two days after I returned from visiting my family this summer, he told me that he'd gotten his own place and was planning to leave, saying that he'd been unhappy for over a year and deserves to find happiness. Two days later we discussed whether or not he had any plan for how to tell our daughter about this; he did not, and he agreed that we would talk with our marriage counselor before any big changes. Also, I told him that I thought we needed to try to work on our marriage. We were at the counselor's office two nights after that, mainly just building bridges to communication. The following night, when I heard our daughter crying and went downstairs to see why, I found that he had told her about his plans to move out--unplanned, and without me present. She and I had plans to visit friends the following weekend, and I told him to be gone by the time we got back.
So August 15 he finally left. I recently found out that the reason why he did not call our daughter back on August 16 (the phone had disconnected while she was saying goodnight) was that the phone reception at his new girlfriend's house is not good: the morning of August 17 he'd texted me that phone reception at the house was not good, and two weekends ago he told me that reception at HIS house is fine; it's his girlfriend's house that gets poor reception. BTW, I found out about the girlfriend when our daughter got out of his car on Labor Day talking about her son and I asked my husband if he was seeing this woman. It turns out that at this point he'd already taken my daughter on two playdates with this woman and her son. A couple of weeks later he texted me a question about whether or not I thought she was ready to see him "holding hands, etc." in public with the girlfriend.
Okay, yeah, I'm venting, maybe too much. So do you think I'm a good fit for your group?
Thanks,
Peter Pan's soon-to-be-ex |
