I cannot stop falling apart
Looking for advice on:
-preschool is coming soon, I can't afford it
-what happens when me and my son's father live an hour from each other, with shared custody and our son starts school
-what happens when you file bankruptcy
-what happens when you pull 401k
My story.
Sorry for the long post. I am in a very bad place and have no one to talk to.
My soon to be exhusband (let's call him X), and I had been a couple for just about 10 years. He had filed for divorce a few months ago. We have a 3 year old son.
He told me recently that a few years before we were pregnant he wanted to leave me. Instead of telling me he was unhappy, he ...proposed? Then we had a baby. We were married when I was 6mo pregnant. I had no idea he was so unhappy. I knew he was depressed but he was very stressed in college at the time and it was the height of the pandemic and lockdowns, so none of us were doing "okay". If I had known he wanted to leave me, obviously I wouldn't have got off the pill.
Current times, I am living at my mom's. Me and him split the week with our son, I have him primarily. Custody papers not filed yet. MSA still going back and forth.
X keeps saying such deeply personal attacks, and I know better than to shout back or say anything hurtful, I'm not that kind of person. But I will speak the truth to him, and it's like his memory of things are completely twisted against himself, everything I say, no matter how I phrase it, is me attacking him, to the point where I'm afraid to say anything. So now, I remain quiet, and "take it"...
Full disclosure, we did have couples therapy twice, he is diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and taking meds, frequently missing dosages. I am epileptic and likely bipolar because my moods go from dangerously depressed involving self-h@rm, to staying up til 3am working on my comic book night after night and with ridiculous energy like sleep is optional. I am a bit of a nymphomaniac and he essentially has ZERO sex drive, which as you can imagine, especially after having his child and being constantly turned down, made me feel ugly, and made me feel like his personal breeding cow. Not a wife. Not a partner. Not even a friend. Just a womb to fill.
It was like a switch, as soon as I had our child, I stopped existing. I told him I was struggling with our baby, I was very depressed and feeling detached, (likely postpartum depression). I saw a therapist, still am. I started seeing financial success with my comic book series (while still working full time making good money) and things turned worse, X became more aggressive (not abusive but shouting and drinking, making a fool of himself screaming at me in our yard where the neighbors would see).
Then he told me he never wanted to have sex with me again. I told him you're done with me? He said he didn't want to breakup he just didn't want sex anymore. To be clear, though I am a nympho, I am not pushy. If he wasn't receptive I wasn't going to be pouting about it or use it against him. But time after time of rejection, it damaged me deeply. Especially with my body changes from having a baby, I felt so, used up.
This comic made me feel alive, going to comic events, making sales, making friends, people fell in love with my art and I would go in costume, people would fawn over me. I finally got some attention for myself, and more importantly, my work. Especially since I worked from home, I was alone so much, and X didn't want me to leave the house, which was difficult to begin with because we would have to pay a sitter. And I didn't want to leave our kiddo anyway, I enjoy my time with our son, but I also have places I'd like to go as a person and not be mom only. I still have interests. X said I was selfish for wanting to do anything besides be with our son. I told him maybe a couple times a month we should go out as a couple, we couldn't agree on anything so I said I would go somewhere and he could go somewhere, we could swap so we didn't have to hire a sitter. But he didn't trust me, said I would fuck other guys. I'm like wtf. I was always faithful so that was so put of left foeld. So I never got to go out to do anything because "I wasn't allowed" and it was difficult to leave anyway because our only sitter was busy a lot.
I confronted X and told him I felt really hurt that he didn't see how much success I was having with the comic, and there were art show events I wanted to go to, and I explained how empowering it was. It was as if he was jealous. He said I was neglecting him and our son to work on my stupid comic, which is ABSOLUTELY not true. I was 100% focused on our son, and as far as X goes, the only thing he ever wanted to do was zone out and watch tv, not talk, just binge netflix on the damn couch. So I would be in the same room, drawing, while he watched TV. He and I didn't like the same shows anyway. He likes big titty anime and I ...don't. And seeing him watch these shows gave me more body issues since I am very small chested, and now, covered in stretch marks, fucked up nipples from breastfeeding, and a stomach pouch from the pregnancy.
We continued couples therapy and got nowhere. We began to avoid each other because we would just bicker. I went full swing into my comic when I would get off work and after our son went to bed. Me and X cohabitated and that's about it. It was very tense. We went to a few concerts for some bands we liked, and I tried to pull him out of his shell, but he was complaining the entire time in the moshpit that people kept bumping into him. HELLO ITS A CANNIBAL CORPSE SHOW, PEOPLE ARE GONNA BUMP INTO YOU. And look out from the crowd surfers man, you might get a foot to the face. He was overwhelmed and I was supercharged. Ugh.
Afterwards, I had this surge of energy after that show because of how fun it was, at least for me. I wanted to give him "a good time" when we got home especially since he seemed miserable. I am "a giver." I went down on him and took my time to try to remind him how much I cared about him in a physical way since we had trouble talking, I gave him my full focus. Tried to tell him how much I cared about him through my mouth and his lap. Eventually we started to have sex, and he was purely mechanical on his end, and he couldn't "get there." We both sat at the edge of the bed. I was angry, my jaw was aching, but I didn't say anything and tried to hide this. He told me he wanted "to push me off of him and yell at me not to touch him."
After that? I started talking to other artists online who did sensual art. And before I knew it, I was sharing nudes with a male model in Italy.
Long story shortened slightly as I am getting long winded now, I know sharing nudes as a married woman is not right. I understand this. But when X told me he never wanted to have sex with me, and treated me like I was invisible or an annoyance, and already treated me like I was a cheating whore and didn't trust me, it made me stop giving a shit about what he thought about me because no matter WHAT I did i was the bad guy in the equation. He told me I was a bad mother. Did you not see me up 3x a night checking on our son because he was having nightmares? No, because you were asleep.
He didn't give two shits about the fact that I had a deal with a filmmaker to put my comic art into an actual movie either. That I made $4000 in 3 months from my side hustle, while working full time, and being a fully functional mother. But the real problem: He didn't want to leave me, didn't want to be with me, he told me I can't leave him, which was true because we had a son and a house, and despite everything I still loved him and didn't want to leave him, i wanted to work on things, to help him thru his mental issues too while I worked on mine, to remind him to take his meds, to raise our son together and heal together. I was trapped.
Then I got laid off... He found out about the nudes I sent in the most fucked up way... One night, I was legit suicidal. I told him I was "unsafe" depressed. His reaction? He sighed in an annoyed way. Didn't offer any comfort at all. I called 988 and afterwards told him I called and he flipped out on me.
The next night he told me to pack my bags, make sure I had everything for a few days, and followed me around the house without saying anyrhing while I anxiously packed my backpack. I thought he was sending me to a mental hospital or something. Instead, he had our babysitter, who had become a friend of mine at the time, come pick me up.
She drove me and herself away from my house, she continued to say nothing. I cried in the car. I asked her where we were going. She said nothing. Just smiling. We wind up at her apartment and she said X asked her to stage a kidnapping but she said he told her to make it a spontaneous "girl time" hangout. ...WTF. She gave me tons of booze, I drank more than usual because my nerves were shot from the whole experience, I didn't trust that she wasn't going to cart me away eventually, and now I didn't even have a car to leave. She and I smoked some weed which I never do but I wanted to off myself anyway so sure why tf not. After she opened up about some very intimate issues on her end with her boyfriend, I told her about the problems with X, she was well aware we had problems and did not like X, she wondered why the hell I was with him. Eventually, after she told me I should leave him or at least have some fun on the side, I said I wouldn't do that, but i told her about...the nudes. She reported everything I said to X as if they planned this all along, to drug me, and get any dirt.
He called me a cheater for sending these nudes. And this was to a single person across the world, who was a male model and I was drawing some of his pics in charcoal for commissions. He thought I was beautiful and we shared our kinky secrets as a safe place since neither of us had an understanding partner. It was not right, no, but none of this is. Personally I wouldn't call this cheating but it's definitely immoral and not what a good wife should do. And yes, I have apologized and owned up to it.
Divorce was filed. I trust no one. And I just got a Google "remember this day" and it was a pic of our son as a newborn, and I cannot, stop, crying. I am at work, crying in the bathroom.
I have lost my job. My marriage. I can only work a couple days a week because I'm with our son most of the week. I have to sell my car because I can't afford the payments since my hours are so limited and also, i cant afford a daycare or even find one with open availability anyway. I am living at my mom's at 38, she keeps a baby monitor on me while I sleep to make sure I don't have seizures over night because I had a nasty one last month, while they were out of the country and it was just me and my son. Now my only source of income is this measly part time job, welfare, and secretly making adult content on OnlyFans (just solo play, I'm not with anyone). Literally going to pull from 401k to pay for custody, divorce, the loss we will take for selling our house, and it's going to be a 30% fee to withdraw my 401k. I might have to take half of it out, I see no end in this and I cannot stop thinking about death.
I can't live because of our son and I can't die because of our son. How fucked up is this thinking, but it's sadly ...true. interesting, I never had epilepsy til I got pregnant either. It does not run in the family. I am seeing a therapist now that my welfare insurance is approved. I can't do antidepressants until I adjust to my new epilepsy meds. I am so fucking depressed. X told me yesterday that "I wouldn't care if you died, i only care if our son is there and no one is there to watch him if you're dead on the floor." How TF do you say that to someone. Especially when you know that person is already suicidal.