I(32F) am considering divorce from husband (34M) and would like someone outside perspectives. Married for 4 years together for 7 years. I’m worried about the safety of my son. Just tonight, I was cooking and my husband was watching baby. He came over to talk to me(while holding baby). As we were talking I got some hot oil in my eye. I was going to go rinse it out and asked him to to the baby to another room, away from the kitchen(both to avoid oil on baby and inhalation of smoke). He got offended by it and said I was being mean. As I was coming upstairs to rinse out my eye I brought him a bottle to feed baby. He said I could feed him and to take the bottle away. I said baby was hungry (I was about to feed him before getting hot oil in my eye) and that he should feed him rather than wait 15 minutes for me to rinse my eye. I left the bottle there and he eventually fed baby.
Later we all sat down for dinner. Our child has an upseat. I put the tray down and was feeding baby. The tray became a bit crooked and my husband pushed it down. Baby started screaming. I could tell immediately he got pinched (I always put that tray down more slowly since baby’s legs are chunky and right underneath it) but my husband kept wondering out loud what was wrong. He picked up baby and soothed him. Later after giving baby a bath, I noticed a bruise on his leg and called my husband to show him. I told him accidents happen and just to be more careful. However. I feel like he is not careful with baby and this represents a pattern. We have also had arguments over the past year during which I’ve felt incredibly disrespected and unsupported. I am only including a list of some things that made me worry for baby’s safety, so this list doesn’t include responses that made me feel disrespected:
-I left baby with my husband and mom to go to work. I come home and there is a bruise on his cheek(this is when he was 2 or 3 months old). My husband is quick to blame my mom and I believed it because my mom can be a bit clumsy, but he was caring for baby most of thr time I was gone and didn’t hand baby off to my mom until I got home.
-Regarding cooking, he brings baby near the stove while I am cooking to talk to me. I’ve told him multiple times to stand further away or go to another room. He moves when I ask him but it feels like he has poor judgment here.
Baby is almost 6 months old and sitting but not super stable. He lets baby just fall over on the playmat instead of supporting him and preventing him from hitting his head. I know accidental falls happen but he doesn’t seem to think its important to sit in a position to try to prevent them.
-Once when it was his turn to care for baby he turned to baby and said you’re exhausting. And when I told him not to say that and that I would take baby back if he didnt want to care for him, he said “mommy’s mean.”
After giving baby a bath, baby started crying.My husband was caring for baby at the time. As soon as I took baby, he banged his own head against the wall. I tried to check on him and he said to go away and leave him alone.
I think he’s addicted to a video game because he seems unable to stop when starting it sometimes and it feels like it impairs his ability to care for our son(he checks out)
-He sleeps through baby crying often. I get up. Once I got up to get baby and he eventually woke up and got mad at me and blamed me for waking baby up. But, baby was screaming and I was downstairs. I heard him on the baby monitor and came up. Husband was sleeping in same room baby was screaming in.
Tonight I went back to our room to talk to him and ask what’s going on because he seemed irritated and I was upset that he had bruised baby. I was calm during the conversation. He said I was ridiculous and told me to leave or that he would. I said he could leave and go stay with his parents. Then he changed his mind and said he was staying and that I needed to leave. He then locked me out of our room.
Overall husband does really well sometimes but other times when he is irritable or sleepy or playing his game seems to create situations that feel risky. He seems to be irritable a lot these days. Also at base level when he seems like he’s feeling good I worry he doesn’t exercise enough caution. I don’t think divorce would fix anything if I wasn’t able to get full custody, in fact it would make it worse if we had shared custody because husband only spends about an hour a day with baby and it’s almost always when I’m there too, so I would worry about the unsupervised time.
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I could not get past your husband lounging around acting casual and arguing with you WHILE YOU HAD HOT OIL IN YOUR EYE!!!! You deserve better.
Leave.
With th way he’s acting now do you really think it’s gonna get better? Or are you actually going to wait till something horrible happens for you to make the right move.
This is a pattern and I would not want a man like that around my kid. Don’t try to ket the so-called good he does outweigh the horrible situations he puts you and your kid through.
Good luck.
You both sound tired and irritated which is pretty common with parents with a baby
I think jumping to divorce is wild, but it does sound like you’re both starting to resent each other over small petty things
Regardless, you both have a baby, you need to help each other out, I wouldn’t suggest couples counseling as you’re both going to probably try and convince the therapist on who’s right or wrong, but perhaps parental counseling to learn better tools to understand each others expectations, I think waiting it out for 3-5 years would make raising the baby a little easier, at that point if you hate your husband then by all means just divorce
If you have a safe place to take you and your kid I would highly recommend it. I would also take your kid to the doctor to get locked over. Listen to your gut. If there isn’t anything going on and if he wants to be with you and be a father, he will. Even if you took some time and space for yourself, someone who loves and respects both of you would understand.
Honestly, your best course of action is to talk to a divorce lawyer, to find out your rights and baby’s rights in this situation. If you can sign an affidavit sweating that you have legitimate concerns about your husband’s ability to care for your baby when you’re not present, you could possibly get full custody. But you can’t know for sure until you talk to a local divorce attorney. The initial consultation is free, so you should at least be able to get enough information to make an informed decision on what you should do next.
Remember if you divorce now, your ex will get unsupervised visitation with his son.
Document everything he does that’s a danger to you and the baby so that you can use that as evidence for a case of supervised visitation at most. Your baby could be more seriously injured so to your husband’s lack of care and you could’ve gotten actually blinded by the oil especially with how long it took you to even be able to wash it out because of him being incapable of surviving 2 seconds as a parent
A few things here:
I think you are right to be weary but recommend waiting until at least a year postpartum or so to make any further decisions. In home separation may be helpful for you at this time and seeking support from therapists or relationship support groups.
A husband like this almost never improves. They’re set in their ways, and over time they are very likely to become increasingly frustrated and demonstrate ever worse behavior.
I would listen to whatever you’re intuition is telling you.