I can’t take it anymore.
Burner acct but We are at a complete stalemate. The beginning of our marriage he had issues after issue with my oldest daughter. She was 9 when we get married. His issues really started after she turned 11. He would literally look for things to be annoyed about and get after her about. When we got together I got pregnant very quickly and it was not on purpose obviously. He had a 3 month old daughter he had split custody with as they split while she was pregnant(not married).
My husband broke his back exactly 30 days after we got married and has NOT been the same since. He’s totally healed/recovered to the fullest possible extent and worked a very laborious job for several years after he recovered. He is now in sales and not much labor to his job. I know at this point the pain changed his personality. He’s so negative.
We used to go to marriage therapy because of our differences in parenting my oldest daughter. The conclusion of the therapy is that I need to stop enabling my daughter to be disrespectful and stop using the fact that she was abused as a young child by my exhusband- (he was physically abusive to me and she witnessed it) and I can’t keep using it as a crutch for her her whole life. So I began to parent her differently. Things between us got better and my daughter is almost 16 now and she’s thriving. No issues. She and him have a significantly better relationship now.
Fast forward to now his daughter is 7. This is now where our conflict in the marriage is centered around. She’s “daddy’s perfect girl”. She literally cannot do wrong. If she does- the other kids must then prove it happened. Because if she says they are lying to my husband they are really lying. I interact with her as little as possible because if I have to discipline she has a HUGE tantrum. She has tantrums if she’s disciplined by either of us but if I tell her no she goes right to her dad. She tells the other kids she can do whatever she wants because she’s his number one. She gets angry and hurts the other kids and he enables all her behavior saying she has a rough home life with her mom. I said when I was enabling my oldest- I was told that was wrong. Why is it okay for you to do it now ? And he said it’s totally different. It’s not but ok.
I have her while both of her parents work in the summer and it’s to the point where if she does something wrong he wants me to call him instead of address her. So I did yesterday. She said that what I told him was a lie and he sided with her again. He said that because I’m constantly “protecting” the other 3 kids they are ganging up on her but they aren’t. They just try to play with her and she tries to get them in trouble or hurts them.
I do feel like I have to protect them from her. No one is safe when she’s over because she can say anything about anyone and he runs to aid her. It’s frustrating. I’m overwhelmed. I’m exhausted. I try to talk to my husband and he says I am the problem. I don’t understand how I am always the problem but he’s never to blame. He genuinely thinks he does nothing wrong. He stonewalled me all day yesterday because I won’t apologize for going to him with an issue the other kids came to me about. He said I was lying and she did nothing wrong. I can’t do it anymore. He said our marriage isn’t worth it anymore. He’s going to choose his daughter. I said you’re choosing her over the whole family though. I am scared if we separate it will be worse for my other kids that are with him. I’m just over it all. I can’t take it anymore but I feel like I can’t go anywhere because I know the kids alone stand no chance of her word against them if no one is there to defend them.
Edit to add- he’s not denying there are actual issues with her. He’s just not addressing them unless he sees it. I told him this will affect her in school and he is hoping that it does because he thinks it will give him a leg up in court against her mother. That is why he refuses to put her into therapy or anything else. He wants a dramatic incident at school to happen and then he “plans to take action” for her behalf. It SUCKS.