Is my kid telling me to go?
TLDR: my kid shared how much he dislikes my husband and I fighting and seems to recognize I’m not typically the one starting the arguments and other negative comments about my husband
I haven’t posted here in a while but have still lurked around. It’s been 3 years since I told my husband I wanted a divorce. Then I chickened out. Things kept happening with our house almost as if some force was trying to keep us together. And I’m just scared - scared financially and kind of scared of him. We have 2 kids. He travels for work and is gone 50-70% of the time. I can handle the day to day on my own for this reason.
After another huge blowup this weekend - which minimized my role in my kids’ extracurriculars because I mostly just take them but don’t volunteer in the activities themselves. Mind you I take them and attend all activities when I’m doing it alone, and when we are all home - I don’t see us both being home as an opportunity to skip the activities. My older son (9) broke down to me the other day about the fight and said the following things:
- when we fight it makes him not want to live in our house
- he gets quiet with me after the fights for varying reasons: 1 - he’s just used to the fights sometimes; 2 - he doesn’t want to make me more upset by asking me if I’m ok; 3 - that he worries about the “outcome for you or me from daddy” if he comforts me
- noted how my husband turns down help when offered but “the one time you don’t ask is when he wants the help and then he gets mad that you didn’t offer”
- told me “I would automatically disagree with everything he says because of how he treats you”
- at bedtime he brought it up again so I tried rephrasing the arguing as something that we (the parents) both participate in equally; he said that my husband always starts it and that I only argue back because “a person can only take getting yelled at so much until they yell back.”
So in addition to all the other reasons I’ve had for always wanting to leave, is hearing this from my child the thing that should push me?
The biggest house thing right now is our basement got some water in it last summer, not flooded, but enough to replace the floors. He decided to take the opportunity to demo the whole basement and reconfigure it (instead of just replacing the floors). All himself. He is handy, but with his work schedule we are going on 10 months of the basement being unfinished. He’s started doing more again and I feel like I’m supposed to be overly grateful of his efforts and that this is yet another thing trapping me.
If you read this far, would just love someone to weigh in. I’m sure you can see my old posts if any more context for our relationship is needed. Thanks for reading and for any thoughts.