Not sure what to do, but it's driving me insane

[californiamomof3]

Ok this maybe a long post… If you get thru it, I really have to thank you in advance. If you have any input I would be eternally grateful.

I am 46 years old, my husband (who I am currently separated from), is 55, and we have 3 kids aged 22, 16 and 7. Have been married 19 years but we have been living apart for the past 6 months (I filed for divorce when I moved out, not because I wanted to, I had no access to our money and wanted to just move out temporarily. In order to get to our "joint" funds I had to file, since he kept all our money in his name. That alone is a problem but not the biggest one).

Our oldest child is actually mine from a short previous marriage but raised by my husband. Our 16 year old girl has been diagnosed BPD, Bipolar and GAD. She had two hospitalizations just previous to my moving out and filing. Our other two kids have no issues. Husband's family history is a mom who has suffered lifelong bipolar and depression, many hospitalizations and suicide attempts; his dad lifetime depression but no treatment/meds. One nephew at least who suffered many years of severe depression. Husband claims to have no such issues but in the last 7 or 8 years he has demonstrated major mood swings, withdrawing from marriage, erratic behavior, depression, and anger management problems. We lived in chaos for the past few years as he would get so mad at me during our fights that he would move out of our bedroom, take his wedding ring off, and one time moved out for a month only to return out of the blue after that time with no willingness to address the chaos of moving out that month. He would routinely blow up at me so badly that he would slam doors, one time breaking down a door that I was in, thereby scarring two of our kids. No actual violence aside from pinning me down one time and then letting go quickly.

But, I digress. I have been dealing with our 16 year old's issues for so long, that I became her caretaker. Husband is a high profile executive and travels a lot, makes a lot of money. He was rarely home and had a very high work ethic. About 2 years ago, he "hit the wall" and quit his job for a year. For that year he couldn't seem to sit still and worried incessantly about finding the next job, even thought we had plenty of money for him to not work 5 or even 10 years, if ever at all again. Once he found another job (he has NEVER been happy with any of his jobs by the way, always finds flaws with his boss and/or others soon after taking the new jobs), he jumped back into it full speed and constantly complained he was doing it to keep up with the "lifestyle" I had come to expect. But, he was the one with the high flying taste, not so much me. He had bought a $250K boat, another boat, a Ferrari and other toys… all paid for in cash, but of course, it's a money-suck to pay the insurance on these things. My only indulgence was the occasional trip with our family and/or just me and our kids if he was busy traveling.

Our 16 year old had to change schools multiple times and my husband never gave input on how to deal with her. But he accused me of making "unilateral" decisions. When I asked for him to help he told me he was too busy with work, supporting us, and that he would look into things "later". He didn't like our daughter's psychiatrist, her therapist nor any of her tutors or schools. All were a fail according to him but then he wouldn't ever sit down and talk it thru with me. I would ask for feedback and when he didn't give any, I was forced to make the decisions… again, always with him accusing me of acting alone. It was maddening.

The final straw was when I told him I felt the sports car I was driving was no longer safe for our kids. He began using our family sedan as his commute car, and he had a truck that he used for towing his boat. This left me with a very nice and expensive sports car… yet not appropriate for chauffeuring kids. I told him I wanted an SUV for a long time, a Range Rover because they are so safe. He slowly had provided input on that, essentially giving me the go-ahead to pursue it. I found one and bought it. That was the FIRST time I had ever made a purchase on my own in our whole marriage, and he freaked. I thought he would be thrilled I had done all the leg work, and negotiated a great deal, but he flipped out on me and screamed and yelled in front of our kids and for the umpteenth time he threatened divorce. The next day, he called my dad to tell him he was divorcing me (they had previously been close!). He told everyone he was divorcing me.

I had no choice, in my mind. I went to an attorney and filed the next day. All accounts in his name only, he never would let me onto our accounts because he worried I would "spend up" all of our money (meanwhile my credit score was much higher than his). By this time, I was a bit afraid of him. So much chaos and my kids were suffering (especially the 16 year old, who was suffering from her problems and then our marriage problems on top of that).

After I moved out, immediately came the emails from him. Why can't I just "change" for him, why can't we reconsider this, etc etc. It usually was about me "changing" although he could not/ would not put any specifics on this. He wanted me to no longer make "unilateral" decisions and spend less money. I had already had him cancel our country club membership (without talking to me about it), and other things he eliminated that seemed unnecessary. He also set up a PO Box and began receiving all of his mail there and changed the password on our joint cell phone bill on a weekly basis. This was baffling to me. Each time I got the new password I was sure he was having an affair, why else go to that effort, but none of the numbers were out of the ordinary. So it didn't add up to that. It was just more bizarre behavior.

We went for marriage counseling and he portrayed himself to be very "together" and organized. The therapist was a bit confused, because what I told her, she didn't see. So it was ineffective. I urged him to go to a psychiatrist and he went to our daughter's doctor (yes the one he said he didn't like), only to tell me the doctor said he is "too high functioning" for meds (whatever that means).

Fast forward to about 3 months ago. I began to really regret the divorce, maybe I was being too hasty. It was so nasty too. He was in court all the time fighting me on this and that. He was never happy with the custody arrangement. He didn't seem to mind paying me support as if I had the kids 100% of the time but he wanted it on paper that he had 50/50, not the 85/15 he was given (this after the court mediator met with us both and seemed to determine I should have the kids most of the time). Finally, he told me he didn't want 50-50, but he did want 3 weekends in a row per month, with me only having one. How is that remotely fair? I was doing all the driving during the week and had very little time with our kids... school to swim practice, homework, you get the picture. Only to give them up on Friday for him to have all the fun? No thanks. He freaked when he didn't get his way, but apparently his lawyer told me that me offering the 50-50 deal was not going to get him anywhere in court. Still, he yelled at me on the phone when I couldn't get the agreement signed fast enough. I was in the airport waiting for a plane to take our daughter to Paris for her 16th bday and I was in the lounge crying my eyes out because he was yelling at me to get this signed, really out of control anger. Never apologized even to this day. He never does.

Based on how nasty the court stuff was going, the same with finances he is fighting me and stalling giving me the bulk of our money, I really thought maybe I should make an effort to reconcile in a way that could encourage us to try counseling again. Or rather, with the hope of him getting some help this time. So I began making efforts. Asking him to coffee, or to talk on the phone. He told me I had done "so much to hurt" him that he had a "wall put up" and was not sure he had feelings for me anymore. I was heart broken. But I continued to every so often put it out there: I told him I was not dating (which was true) and that I really wanted to see if we could work things out. Sometimes he would draw me in, only to later cancel our meetings, or create a fight so we ended up not going thru with our planned meetings. Really it was going nowhere. My kids even told me to give up, and move on. I still hated to do that, because my kids were schlepping back and forth and it was terrible. They really have no true home because they spend a week here, a week there, it's just terrible for them. And he is not a very emotionally involved person, when they are with him he often sits in his home office while the kids fend for themselves.

Two weeks ago, I found out he was on match dating site. His profile was bizarre. His bio didn't even resemble him, and it was full of lies. Saying he loved travel (he hates it and he is often too cheap to pay for anything but a cut-rate flight to see family in FL), and he claimed he races his Ferrari on a track (lie), and that he "works hard and plays hard"… he works hard but for play, that's kinda limited to listening to sitting in his office watching TV. I was really shocked that he was making such an effort to date, after only a month before raging on me that I had gone to Hawaii with friends (completely platonic!) and accused me of having a boyfriend; meanwhile he was already on match for 5 weeks at least. Even after THAT I still had hope, and told him things were not right with him and could we meet. I wanted him to get help. He also has memory lapses (he forgets he made plans with his 16 year old often, and he forgets that she has appointments he was going to attend, etc). I just don't know what to make of it. But for the 19 yrs and 3 kids, I really didn't want to give up so easily.

When I told him I knew he was on match, he said "i never meet anyone, i make no apology for that". Well, ok then, why not have told me and not gotten mad I was in Hawaii a few weeks before? Soon after, he reminded me I am no longer his priority and he said some other thing that hit at my self esteem really bad. I had to be reminded by friends that I'm attractive and it didn't hurt that several men had asked me out recently (I am not on any dating sites either).

Finally, it really got to me. This weekend he took our girls camping and I was home alone. I decided to meet friends for dinner both last night and tonight. We had just had another argument the day before about something trivial and he blocked me from calling him - ridiculous since I'm his only means of communicating about our kids! And that is all I ever have done by calling him, so he screwed himself. Anyway, He found out thru my daughter I went out both nights, and somehow believes I had gone out on dates both nights. He sent me an email last night saying "I am glad you are moving on, I hear you are dating now". I didn't respond. Today I get a friendly email and at the end it says "too bad we couldn't have worked things out but we just went in different directions. We miss you this weekend". Which kills me because every time I made it clear I WANTED to work things out, he was the one who created some chaos or argument and it didn't happen.

I was in a pretty good place until I received that email tonight saying we had moved in different directions, that is really NOT the case. I highly suspect he has BPD or some other disorder, I am not sure it's BPD because his symptoms are not completely like our daughters but then not all exhibit the same.

On a final note, I had to see my daughters psychiatrist yesterday to refill her meds. He asked me the status of our divorce and I told him the last I heard, my husband was looking into mediators but is dragging his feet on that. I told the doctor that I really don't know what to make of it all… I married a family guy, one who was very much the one who wanted to get married and quickly too. We only dated 6 months when he proposed and we got married 3 months after that because he pushed so hard. The doctor said "well it's a personality thing". Now keep in mind, husband saw him as a patient 3 times, so there is a confidentiality thing here. But he is a long time provider to my daughter and a really nice guy. I said "you mean a disorder?" He said well we don't; have to put a label on it. I got the feeling he would have said more but couldn't.

I am really at a loss, I had mentally had a good day of "moving on" - though I don't want to date yet, I also didn't want to dispel to him that I had gone out on a date. It seemed to bother him because he was asking my daughter where she thinks I was, etc. I am very very confused. I don't want to pass up on any chance he could still be my husband - mainly because it is the diffence between our kids living in two homes, or one.

I am sorry this is so long and I hope I didn't leave out anything. Also, a few years ago when he did knock down that door, he promised to go to anger management counseling. He told me to "set it up" for him, and I asked him to please take the step. He never did.

[Lucky Jim]

Hey CAmomof3,  I'm sorry to learn about all your stress.  What would you like to see happen?  I'm unclear after reading your post.  Do you want to get back together with your H?  Do you want to get divorced?  You state that your D has BPD.  Do you suspect that your H also suffers from the disorder?  Fill us in a little more, when you can.

LuckyJim