Moving over to being undecided

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Up until now, I have spent most of my time on the staying board. I felt like I was committed to staying even though everything inside me screamed at me to leave. As I have worked through the staying lessons, I am becoming more and more doubtful about whether or not I can do this. I am doing better at setting boundaries but as I am accepting the full reality of the situation I don't know that I can move forward without being resentful. I acknowledge that there are a lot of things in our relationship that I am having a very difficult time getting past.

My husband is a sex addict and is stuck at step 4. Last year, I took a week long break from him and the kids because I had hit critical mass. Up until that point, I was taking care of everyone and everything. I was cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids, mowing the grass, fixing stuff around the house, paying bills, and anything and everything else that needed done. The kids hated him and wouldn't let me leave the house at all. I have since gotten another part time job outside of the house and his relationship with the kids has improved. Last year, I was ready to call it quits. He said that he would start SAA and that I needed to give him a year before we made any kind of decisions. So, I have given him a year and I don't feel like he has made any kinds of real progress. There is a lot to the story that you can find in my other posts. The story is long and convoluted and involves infidelity on both sides. I don't trust him and he doesn't trust me.

He went away for a couple of days and while he was gone he decided that it was probably best if we parted ways and tried to find a way to make things as easy as possible on our 4 kids. Last night, we had a conversation about what it would take for us to split. I got very technical and started mentioning that we need to work on getting separate accounts and which bills would be paid out of each account. I was being very practical. Heck, he even had to send a message to one of his friends right away. I think he actually told his friend (who is female) before he told me. He sent her a message while we were emailing back and forth while I was at work. I felt very relieved and posted about it on the staying board. I wanted to think on it before posting on the leaving board because I had a gut feeling that it wouldn't take long for him to back pedal and change his mind.

Last night, it was all about how we are incompatible. I have too high of a sex drive for him even though he is a sex addict. I am too weird, he is too straight laced. We have been in denial for years and being back in his home town gave him a bunch of perspective. We both deserve better, blah, blah, blah. And now, it is today and he is being all lovey dovey and saying how he hopes we can bounce back from this, blah, blah, blah.

I have taken a step back several times and have tried to assess my role in the relationship. I am the caretaker. I don't feel like his wife. I feel like his mother, his therapist, and his play toy. But I do NOT feel like a life partner.

Anyway, now I am at a point of being completely undecided. I am mad at myself because I have been wishy washy in my own mind about whether or not to stay or go. I will decide that it is time to go only to have him make a big effort to do things differently for a while. After a while, he slips right back into the same patterns. If it weren't for the kids, I would have been gone a long time ago.

[vortex of confusion]

Up until now, I have spent most of my time on the staying board. I felt like I was committed to staying even though everything inside me screamed at me to leave. As I have worked through the staying lessons, I am becoming more and more doubtful about whether or not I can do this. I am doing better at setting boundaries but as I am accepting the full reality of the situation I don't know that I can move forward without being resentful. I acknowledge that there are a lot of things in our relationship that I am having a very difficult time getting past.

My husband is a sex addict and is stuck at step 4. Last year, I took a week long break from him and the kids because I had hit critical mass. Up until that point, I was taking care of everyone and everything. I was cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids, mowing the grass, fixing stuff around the house, paying bills, and anything and everything else that needed done. The kids hated him and wouldn't let me leave the house at all. I have since gotten another part time job outside of the house and his relationship with the kids has improved. Last year, I was ready to call it quits. He said that he would start SAA and that I needed to give him a year before we made any kind of decisions. So, I have given him a year and I don't feel like he has made any kinds of real progress. There is a lot to the story that you can find in my other posts. The story is long and convoluted and involves infidelity on both sides. I don't trust him and he doesn't trust me.

He went away for a couple of days and while he was gone he decided that it was probably best if we parted ways and tried to find a way to make things as easy as possible on our 4 kids. Last night, we had a conversation about what it would take for us to split. I got very technical and started mentioning that we need to work on getting separate accounts and which bills would be paid out of each account. I was being very practical. Heck, he even had to send a message to one of his friends right away. I think he actually told his friend (who is female) before he told me. He sent her a message while we were emailing back and forth while I was at work. I felt very relieved and posted about it on the staying board. I wanted to think on it before posting on the leaving board because I had a gut feeling that it wouldn't take long for him to back pedal and change his mind.

Last night, it was all about how we are incompatible. I have too high of a sex drive for him even though he is a sex addict. I am too weird, he is too straight laced. We have been in denial for years and being back in his home town gave him a bunch of perspective. We both deserve better, blah, blah, blah. And now, it is today and he is being all lovey dovey and saying how he hopes we can bounce back from this, blah, blah, blah.

I have taken a step back several times and have tried to assess my role in the relationship. I am the caretaker. I don't feel like his wife. I feel like his mother, his therapist, and his play toy. But I do NOT feel like a life partner.

Anyway, now I am at a point of being completely undecided. I am mad at myself because I have been wishy washy in my own mind about whether or not to stay or go. I will decide that it is time to go only to have him make a big effort to do things differently for a while. After a while, he slips right back into the same patterns. If it weren't for the kids, I would have been gone a long time ago.

[sweetheart]

Hello vortex, I spent a long time on undecided. It was here i made comprehensive real life plans to leave. I had never actually thought about what it would mean to really really leave my husband. I was burnt out and I was terrified, we have a s6, and he has remained largely unaffected by his fathers chaos. I on the other hand had nothing left to give, I was all cared out.

I'm back on staying now, and our lives are different, I'm different, it's really hard to quantify or define how I'm different, but I have actively stepped out of the care taking role. Our relationship is far from perfect, but my dBPDh is definitely trying to do things differently, that does not mean however that the reality that is BPD ever leaves our daily lives.

I have read your posts, and they are self-aware and insightful, but it is clear that it is you who are doing all the work within your relationship, and that can be soul destroying. Stepping out of a care taking role is vital to gaining perspective on whether or not to stay.

What would your life look like without him, can you start from there and see where it takes you... .?

[vortex of confusion]

I have done a lot of soul searching on this. I feel like my life without him would be much better because I would be able to focus more on myself and the kids. When he was gone for a couple of days at a reunion, the house was so peaceful. The kids got along a lot better. When it was time for him to come home, the kids asked, "Why does dad have to come home so soon?"

When I am not around him, I feel much more confident and much more happy. I know that I would miss him because there are some good things about our relationship. We are in the same profession and can talk shop. However, I don't like being in the same profession as him because he has had to resign from a job from looking at porn at work. I know that I had nothing to do with it but I am so afraid of him doing stuff like that again and making it more difficult for me in our profession.

Financially, I worry because there is no way we could afford two households. He couldn't pay for his own place and give me money to support the kids. Right now, that seems to be the biggest sticking point for me.

In all honesty, I really want to be able to go out and hang out with friends and even go out on a date with a man. He and I have only gone on two dates in the last six months. One was back in January and I had to make all of the plans and babysitting arrangements. And the other time was on our 16th anniversary. He was supposed to make the plans and arrange babysitting. The kids, my mom, and I made the babysitting arrangements and he didn't put any real effort into planning much of anything. The following week, he was gung ho to make plans to meet with a woman that he met online. He didn't understand why that would bother me. If I try to bring it up, it is now ancient history and he hasn't done anything like that since.

And I would have privacy. When he was gone, the kids did not cling to me nearly as much. I was able to take uninterrupted showers. The kids let me sit on the porch and chill without coming out every few minutes. I was able to take all 4 kids out by myself without any problems at all. When we go out as a family or even try to get the kids ready for me to take them out, it seems that there is anxiety and a lot of problems. His anxiety leaches off onto the kids. The kids want him around on one hand but on the other hand he drives them nuts because he acts more like a sibling than a dad.

Before I found these boards, I spent a lot of time undecided. At one point, I made arrangements for the girls and I to move and that seemed to shake him up and he improved quite a bit so I decided to stay and was committed to staying. Now, I am not so sure. Last year when he started his SAA program, he said to give it a year. All of the literature says to give it a year. I have given it a year and during that year there have been all sorts of ups and downs and craziness. When he comes home from a trip and is all serious and we have this great talk about how much better it would be if we parted ways, I feel relieved. Now, he acts like none of that conversation happened. He is messaging me like crazy and acts like we are just your average run of the mill couple. I don't know how I can spend the rest of my life with this crap.

[meerkat1]

I have been thinking a lot about a life without her.

I have been thinking a lot about how to get myself a life, too. With or without her.

I think one of my biggest issues is her sabotaging everything I do.

Example, she tells me I need to see my friends more. One time I go out it is fine. The next she is all over me screaming and yelling about it. Same with most everything I do. And each one just adds to the next so there is giant pile of offenses to yell at me for. So I feel like I am handing ammunition to a serial killer whenever I try to do anything.

She complains that we don't have friends over. So we invite some friends over and one of two things happens. 1. She freaks out and is nervous and mean for the whole week or more before hand. or 2. She makes me cancel on them. Num. 2 happens quite a bit, too. Oh and I forgot, regardless of 1 or 2, she refuses to talk about when is a good time to invite them over. So then I get stuck.

Hell, yesterday, she yelled at me cause I have a job. And not the first time either. I just don't even know what to do with that.

If I go about my life, or in my case, actually get a life. How do I keep her from sabotaging everything? Often she pulls the kids into the mix to ensure sabotage, too.

[sweetheart]

Reading your post vortex reads as though you have made the decision to leave already. I know you haven't but that's how it reads.

From what I have read your husband is not demonstrating any real commitment to his recovery as a SA and at the very least as a starting point for you to continue in your marriage you deserve that.

You don't have to spend the rest of your life with this/his crap.

[vortex of confusion]

I think one of my biggest issues is her sabotaging everything I do.

I feel the same way. For me, it isn't big things that he does. It is the little bitty insidious things that he can discount as an accident or simply not thinking. He doesn't come right out and say things. And, I will admit that I have found myself sabatoging or wanting to sabatoge him. That isn't right. I have been a stay at home mom for my kids entire lives. I have had part time jobs in the evenings and weekends and jobs that have allowed me to work from home. Whenever I have tried to find ways to improve my professional career and prepare for the day when the kids are older, I get all kinds of questions that are clearly sabatoging my efforts at any sort of self improvement.

Example, she tells me I need to see my friends more. One time I go out it is fine. The next she is all over me screaming and yelling about it. Same with most everything I do. And each one just adds to the next so there is giant pile of offenses to yell at me for. So I feel like I am handing ammunition to a serial killer whenever I try to do anything.

Mine doesn't really yell or scream. For me it is comments like, "I can stay with the kids." He acts like he is doing me a huge favor when he hangs out at home with his own kids. He says that I need to go out more but his attitude is that it is a huge burden. And get this, I know that I have mentioned that my husband pushed me to do stuff with others. My husband would make it difficult for me to do things with family members but he would actually take a full day off work so I could go meet my lover at a hotel. And when I was out with my friend, he wouldn't call or text or do anything. He would largely leave me alone. If I do the same with family or friends, it is a totally different ball game and he cannot see it.

She complains that we don't have friends over. So we invite some friends over and one of two things happens. 1. She freaks out and is nervous and mean for the whole week or more before hand. or 2. She makes me cancel on them. Num. 2 happens quite a bit, too. Oh and I forgot, regardless of 1 or 2, she refuses to talk about when is a good time to invite them over. So then I get stuck.

We used to have people over all of the time. Now, we don't have anybody over hardly at all. Most people don't want to come over because they don't want to upset anyone. Him and the kids are very territorial. The first time my brother's fiance came over, he started talking down to her and had all of these stories to tell and acted a bit like a know it all. And, everyone knows that he is prone to freak out over the smallest things.

If I go about my life, or in my case, actually get a life. How do I keep her from sabotaging everything? Often she pulls the kids into the mix to ensure sabotage, too.

Oh man, I know exactly how you feel on this one too. When I am out and about, the kids will freak out and want me. He then gets to blame everything on the kids. "I wasn't going to call or bother you but she freaked out and I didn't know what to do." "I am fine with you being out but the kids just won't work with me." For the longest time, I didn't realize that it isn't the kids' fault. It is HIS fault. He is the friggin' parent. If he wasn't such a jerk and so anxious, the kids wouldn't be so anxious without me. The kids are okay with me working now but I get reports of him being a jerk while I was gone. He isn't doing anything too horrible. It is mainly his tone of voice, hiding in the computer, and acting like one of the kids. I am not worried for the kids physical safety because I know that he is more likely to go in his room and pout than anything else. If he had a better relationship with the kids and acted like a grown up, then the kids wouldn't behave the way they do when I am not around. I used to excuse it as "It's not his fault. The kids are the ones with the problem." Yeah, the kids have a problem because they have a dad that acts like a ten year old little boy rather than a man that is capable and trustworthy. When I took my week off last year, one of the girls had a huge melt down and he couldn't handle it. Our older daughter stepped in and told him to go away and let her handle it. The older one was able to talk her little sister down and help her through her crisis. If I am not around, my kids know that they have to help each other because dad is unreliable. It scares me what would happen if he took them on his own for weeks at a time if we got a divorce.

[vortex of confusion]

Reading your post vortex reads as though you have made the decision to leave already. I know you haven't but that's how it reads.

From what I have read your husband is not demonstrating any real commitment to his recovery as a SA and at the very least as a starting point for you to continue in your marriage you deserve that.

You don't have to spend the rest of your life with this/his crap.

In all honesty, I think I would love to leave. Emotionally, I feel completely done with him at times. However, I tend to be a very practical and logical person. From a practical and logical standpoint, leaving doesn't seem like the right thing to do. There are the kids to think about. There are finances to think about. There is the fact that he will likely find somebody else and I worry that the other person will be just as messed up as him and be mean to the kids. I worry about whether or not I am capable of surviving on my own with four daughters. I don't want to drastically alter my kids' lifestyles. We live pretty simply now but I am able to stay home with them for the most part. I don't want that to change.

[ziniztar]

I have taken a step back several times and have tried to assess my role in the relationship. I am the caretaker. I don't feel like his wife. I feel like his mother, his therapist, and his play toy. But I do NOT feel like a life partner.

What is your reason to play these roles? Why do you (think you) benefit from them?

I'm asking this because I feel so free these past few days. It's been going up and down as my fear of abandonment is playing up as well, but... we've separated for a while and I feel so good. As if I were single again. But, we already got back together almost 2 weeks ago. So what changed? Me! My approach to the r/s.

I now look at my week schedule thinking what I would like to do. My focus is no longer on his time schedule, it's on me. And the weird thing is; when I give him space, he actually makes an active effort to see me. When I stopped bothering to make sure we would make it as a couple, things changed.

I understand you have to take the caretaker role for your kids, that makes sense. But what if you stop doing it with him? Stop being his psychiatrist, stop being his mother, stop being his play toy. But for this to happen you have to stop being afraid to loose the r/s (and I think you're at that point now  ). What emotion is it that is driving you into these roles?

I can see why the trust issue is big, I'm facing this right now too. And I haven't processed it yet, either. To me that is a big deal breaker and I don't have any kids, so, why the hell would I stay. For now, I stay because I see signs that he is attempting (!) to change things. And I am no picnic either, I am really aware that my erratic behavior is triggering him sometimes.

I have this thing written in my diary, it says: when you focus on results you will never change. When you focus on change, you will see results.

[vortex of confusion]

What is your reason to play these roles? Why do you (think you) benefit from them?

The benefit that I have gotten from it is peace. I know that sounds weird but as long as I did those things he seemed much happier and there was a lot less conflict. Also, I played those roles because of my own desires for perfection. I used to want to be the perfect wife. I have seen all of my nieces and nephews grow up in a single parent household. I watched my brother's first marriage fail and I saw him lose all parental rights to his only daughter. My family is ripe with mental disorders and dysfunction. I was trying not to be like my family. In trying to not be like them, I went to the other extreme in an effort to keep my marriage and my family together.

I'm asking this because I feel so free these past few days. It's been going up and down as my fear of abandonment is playing up as well, but... we've separated for a while and I feel so good. As if I were single again. But, we already got back together almost 2 weeks ago. So what changed? Me! My approach to the r/s.

I don't fear being alone. I fear being able to provide for my kids and give them a stable home life.

I now look at my week schedule thinking what I would like to do. My focus is no longer on his time schedule, it's on me. And the weird thing is; when I give him space, he actually makes an active effort to see me. When I stopped bothering to make sure we would make it as a couple, things changed.

That isn't as easy for me because we have four kids and cannot afford outside child care. He and I have to juggle child care and take each other's schedules into consideration to make sure that there is child care.

I understand you have to take the caretaker role for your kids, that makes sense. But what if you stop doing it with him? Stop being his psychiatrist, stop being his mother, stop being his play toy. But for this to happen you have to stop being afraid to loose the r/s (and I think you're at that point now  ). What emotion is it that is driving you into these roles?

I am trying to stop these things and feel like I have made a lot of progress in the last couple of weeks. I feel like I stopped caring about the relationship a long time ago. There are times when I sit back and look at what goes on between us and don't know whether to laugh, cry, or be angry. Sometimes, I do a little of all three. I am not afraid of losing the relationship as much as I am afraid of losing the stability and finances needed to care for my kids.

[ziniztar]

I think, that in some cases, you will get more stability for your kids when you are actually separated. It's up to you to decide whether that is the case for you. If you hear your kids speaking like this, it could mean it would be more stable for them to separate and get custody. I'm not the expert on this, have you asked others here on the boards what that struggle looks like? It could be well worth it.

On the other hand, it seems like your kids seem to be happy about you. That is good. Having 1 dysfunctional parent is difficult, but doesn't neccesarily mean they will get affected. As long as you're there they have one parent to safely attach to.

In my case, my mother died when I was 5 and I was left with an NPD father and an overly adaptive step mom that was not interested in me. Had she been like some other grown ups I met (like teachers, or my fathers secretary), I might have had a better chance.

What if you were your kids and you are your mom. What would you have wanted her to do? What kind of an example would you have wanted her to set?

[sweetheart]

Hi vortex,

It is ok to stay for the reasons you post, your children, financial security, security for them and you, but the crux is to stay for those reasons you have to be okay within what the relationship then becomes to you.

Part of my reason to stay was for our son and financial security and by choosing to step out of all those roles you list, psychiatrist, mum, care taker, not sex toy though  I have been able to prioritise my sons and my own needs. It really has made a difference to our lives, I feel happier, freer, I take how I feel about the change within my marriage to a T and post on here and it feels liveable.

I don't however look for a what might be deemed a 'normal functioning relationship,' I do not believe that is possible. The truth is I have chosen to stay with someone who has a serious mental illness and that is hard. The dynamic between me and my husband will always be unbalanced and dysfunctional, some may disagree, but for me that is what I have chosen to accept.

I have two deal breakers, violence and infidelity, they arrive me and my son gone!

[vortex of confusion]

Hi vortex,

It is ok to stay for the reasons you post, your children, financial security, security for them and you, but the crux is to stay for those reasons you have to be okay within what the relationship then becomes to you.

Part of my reason to stay was for our son and financial security and by choosing to step out of all those roles you list, psychiatrist, mum, care taker, not sex toy though  I have been able to prioritise my sons and my own needs. It really has made a difference to our lives, I feel happier, freer, I take how I feel about the change within my marriage to a T and post on here and it feels liveable.

I don't however look for a what might be deemed a 'normal functioning relationship,' I do not believe that is possible. The truth is I have chosen to stay with someone who has a serious mental illness and that is hard. The dynamic between me and my husband will always be unbalanced and dysfunctional, some may disagree, but for me that is what I have chosen to accept.

I have two deal breakers, violence and infidelity, they arrive me and my son gone!

I don't know what my deal breakers are. There has already been infidelity on both sides and there has already been violence on both sides. I am of the opinion that normal is a relative term. LOL. For me, it is more about what I can or can't tolerate in the long term. The more I think and read and accept things, the more I question whether or not I can spend the rest of my life coddling a grown man. So many of the things in the lessons on the staying board feel like coddling to me. I am having a real disconnect on how to stop the bleeding to make things better while setting boundaries and working my butt off all while he sits on the sidelines and pays lip service to it all. How is letting them off the hook because of a mental illness not care taking? The only way for our relationship to function is for me to be willing to do it all myself.

I may be good but I am not a friggin' saint. I feel like I would have to be a super human saint in order to keep things together and not let this stuff get to me.