I’m 50. I have a 50 year-old male partner who is basically my 2nd husband. We have a 9 yo daughter.
My first husband left me when our son was 5 years old because he wanted to fool around with his female graduate students.
This second guy, who I’ve been with, had a great job, friends, loved his mom when we met. Fast forward 11 years, he quit his job because it was toxic, and has spent 8 years since then being depressed about lack of income, he lost most of his friends, and his mother disowned him.
I now live with a depressed, angry man-child who refuses any sort of treatment or help, but who likes to have a tantrum about the cat litter box at 7 am when I’m trying to get our daughter ready for school.
I bring in the money to pay for everything these days, and I would leave him in a split second if I wasn’t so sad about splitting up our family for my daughter. My son already comes from a broken home.
Thinking about it this week, I realize that my mother put up with my father having a decade-long midlife crisis in his 40s, and all the shit he put her through, including him moving to another country for 3 years during that period.
My sister and my best friend have been going through similar nonsense as well with their husbands.
Why are men so awful? Is this what my daughter has to look forward to??
Comments
I don’t think all men are like this. I think it is about what you are willing to tolerate in your relationship.
you are teaching your daughter that this is what she has to look forward to. I’m not blaming you. I’m saying the idea that you’re protecting her is not true. so you can stop doing that. and start protecting yourself. and she will too.
Sounds like ‘attracting shitty men runs in my family’ is the much more likely and logical conclusion than ‘all men are terrible’
We accept the love we think we deserve.
You said your dad this this to your mom. I think there’s a part of you trying to relive that experience.
No not all men are like this. Don’t accept it and don’t teach your kids to.
They aren’t, this man just needs to go seek help.
Would you want your daughter to be stuck with someone like this? Do you want to set this as the example of a situation she should stay in? If you leave now, you’ll be showing her that you both deserve better.
Since you’re not legally married, he can’t come after you for alimony or anything. Kick him to the curb.
Chiming in with everyone else to say…your daughter is less likely to put up with this and be stuck in this same situation if you show her it’s unacceptable and it’s better to be single than take care of a manchild. You are modeling relationships for her and what a marriage and partnership should look like.
I’m very sorry this is happening to you, friend. I’m going through something similar. I was too young when I met my husband, I didn’t have enough life experience to understand that his behavior was unacceptable.
I asked for a divorce on Saturday night. All of his reasons for us staying together center around his experience and what he gets out of the relationship. How did we let this happen to us? 😭
I get that it’s hard to be a single mom and coming from a “broken home” has a stigma.
But your daughter is smarter than you know. She is watching you. She is absorbing your experience. She is learning that as a woman, she should be taking care of her entire household without support or appreciation. She is learning that she should suppress her own wants and needs to keep her children near a deadbeat father. She is internalizing the knowledge that you will one day resent her for being the reason your life was less than what you wanted.
Men think they can trap us with marriage and kids. It’s not 1950. We have jobs and can leave. Who does this guy think he is not working for 8 years and acting crazy?
I think it’s great you care so much about your daughter, but your daughter is absorbing her environment right now. Without meaning to, you’re signaling to her that it’s okay to be treated this way by a man. It’s not that navigating a divorce won’t be hard for her, it’s that whatever you do she’s going to have to heal a bit because her father is not pulling his weight.
I would really recommend leaving for yourself and getting your daughter in some kind of therapy/support group for divorce.