My own hell

I honestly feel like I am trapped in hell! I am so unhappy with my life, my married life, that is, but I feel so helpless. It has been a horrible few days. Thursday, I realized my husband has been hiding money. He canceled his direct deposit a few months back, and claimed it was because they were charging him too much money to use it. I told him that was ridiculous, and that I needed the direct deposit because of the way the bills are scheduled online. I asked him to have it restarted, and he said he would. Weeks went by and it still wasn't there.

When we went on vacation the end of August, he gave my 400 dollars a few days before we were to leave and told me he got it from doing a project for his old boss. I thought it sounded a little odd, but didn't think too much about it. I guess I should mention, my husband has a compulsive spending problem. He makes a good living, but he spends way too much money. He buys expensive watches (a lot of them), traded in cars every couple months ending up with more and more negative equity that was being rolled into each new car he got. He was always buying new clothes or shoes, justifying the purchases beacuse they were on sale. I warned him for a long time about his spending. I begged and pleaded with him to stop. He had about 15 different credit cards, and at one point, he ended up with 60,000 in credit card debt, and 40,000 in car loans. (I forgot to mention, two cars he bought out right without even discussing it with me first, one the night before our wedding and another a few days before my birthday. Both were Mustangs and both ended up being sold a few months after he bought them for less than what he paid for them.)

Anyway, he ended up having to file bankruptsy late last year. He blamed me. He says that he was always able to buy whatever he wanted before he was with me, and never had trouble with debt. I point out to him over and over again that he was single, living in a small home with an 800 dollar mortgage as opposed to a 2400 dollar mortgage and didn't have 3 children to support. He doesn't get it and still thinks it is all my fault. Mind you, I am one of the least materialistic people you can ever meet. I don't have much of value, wear a 30 dollar watch and only have 3 pair of shoes!

So, on Thursday, when I discovered four hundred dollars in his wallet, I knew something was going on. His direct deposit, two months later, has still not been restarted. He kept blaming the company, but now I know he was purposely holding it back. I am not sure what he was doing with whatever extra money he was getting, actually, I don't know that I want to know. What I do know is we struggle every month to pay all our bills and buy everything else we need, and he is with holding money from us. What a hell of a good guy he is.

So we have really been fighting the last few days. Today, he is adament about wanting a divorce. I don't want to be married to him, but I cannot leave my kids with him and feel safe for any length of time. Some may feel that is an excuse, but honestly, he is dangerous. He is selfish, careless and doesn't think ahead. His mother, who is ALWAYS around and would definitely be there 24/7 when he had the kids, is even more dangerous. I caught her feeding peanut butter, off her dirty fingers, to my 8 month old. I have asked her so many times not to do or give something to the kids, and she does it behind my back anyway. I have caught her stealing from my home, lying to our faces and putting my children in danger...and I am supposed to feel ok with my kids (all 3 and under) in her care?

My husband takes medicine for high cholesterol and antidepressant. There have been about 25 occassions that I have either picked a pill he dropped up off the floor or have caught my 3 year old carrying one around. That scares the hell out of me. What if one of the kids swallowed one? How can I risk their well being just because I am miserable in my marriage? I just feel I need to wait until they are a little older before I can safely leave them in his care. Even if it is only every other weekend and a day or two a week.

I hurt inside. I so badly long for the right person, for the right relationship. I want to be happy again, I want to feel like I am enjoying my life. Right now, I feel like a shell of a person going through the motions. Of course I have my kids, and I love them more than you could ever know, but there is something missing. I guess it isn't even the relationship part that is missing. I would be happier living alone, without the fighting, the name calling, the lying, the anger. The kids would be happier, I would be happier and could finally start to enjoy things again.

For the entire 5 years we have been together, sex has been a huge issue. He has major issues and promises to get help, but doesn't. I know we have 3 children, close in age, and most people would assume we have a healthy, active sexual life. In all honesty, I think we have had sex less than 30 times TOTAL in our entire relationship. He makes up excuses why he doesn't want to have sex. We fight too much, I gained too much weight, I am pregnant, he has a headache, too much stress in his life, etc. He says he will fix the problem, and doesn't. Then, on top of being turned down time after time, he masterbates in his socks and leaves them lying on the floor for me to pick up and wash. This has been going on for FIVE long years. He has gotten smarter over the years, he hides them now. But I still find them, shoved behind the clothes in a drawer, tucked into the bottom of the trash can, in the back of the closet, etc. And what I don't find, the dog sometimes does. It is sickening, and hurtful and has done a lot of damage to my heart and soul, not to mention my ego.

I am an intimate person. I like to be close, not just sexually, and I have been deprived of that for so long. I hate him for what he has done to me. And I hate myself sometimes for letting him. I know I cannot act like a victim when I choose to stay here under these conditions. I just don't know what else to do. If I felt just a little bit comfortable with him taking the kids, the younger two are my main concern as they are only 17 months and 5 months, it wouldn't be an issue. I would have moved on by now. My plan, after getting pregnant with my second child, was to have the baby and then leave him. My pregnancy was horrible, especially the beginning when I literally suffered a nervous breakdown because of his cheating, his lies and the death of a family member that I had never dealt with. He is not involved in my pregnancies and he is not supportive of a pregnant persons needs either. We fought pretty much the entire 9 months, and then my beautiful little girl was born.

We hadn't had sex since the time I conceived the baby, so about 5 weeks after she was born, I was feeling pretty frustrated sexually. For some reason, he didn't shoot me down when I asked, and that's all it took. I was pregnant again. That pretty much put a damper on my plans to leave him. And so we suffered through another 9 months, and when my second daughter was just barely 11 months old, our third child was born. She is now 5 months old.

I have a headache thinking about all of this. I hate it, I hate it so much. I hate that I am not able to work because daycare would cost pretty much what I would make. Without being able to go out and work, I cannot save any money to get a plan together to leave. I don't know where I would go with 3 kids or how I would handle it all on my own. It is scary. And how would I work then? There is so much to think about. Most days, I wish he would just leave me. He says he doesn't want to be married, so why doesn't he just get up and go?

I am going to stop thinking about this now. I will pick up where I left off with Sean next time. He is MUCH more peasurable to think about! Should have stuck with him!