AboutAzure Expertise can answer all relationship questions involving unhealthy, addictive, or otherwise unhappy arrangements, except those involving the legalities of physical abuse..
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Question I have been with my husband for 13 years, we started dating when I was 14 and have been married almost 10 years. We have an 8 year old daughter and a 3 month old daughter.
My husband grew up in a home with constant arguing and alcohol abuse. I grew up in a home with a wonderful mother, dad that drank too much but not too unstable. He always supported my mother and our family.
I am now living in a home with a husband that blames me for everything, puts me down purely to aggravate and get a reaction from me, and is addicted to drugs.
I take care of all the bills and just moved into a wonderful home that is great for our kids. We have horrible credit from him switching jobs all the time or just not working at all. Our home is rent to own and we have been there 7 months, he has only worked 2 out of the 7 months and it is pretty guaranteed that we will not be able to purchase the home due to credit getting worse. He says that our money troubles are because I am irresponsible for the bills and that I am paying too much rent because of being a spoiled brat and insisting that we move to our current home. My entire paycheck goes towards our home and I am okay with that because this is our only option to own a home, no one else will give us a chance and I don’t want to rent forever.
He blames me for everything that happens to him. Some examples are: At least 3 days a week he wakes up yelling at me while I’m feeding our 3 month old because “I let him over-sleep” even though I have offered him an alarm clock which he will turn it off and still blame me or I will wake him up 3 or 4 times and he goes back to sleep. He will lose something such as his belt and will yell at me to get off my lazy butt and help him find it because it was probably me that put it somewhere so he couldn’t find it. These are just some of the minor things.
He puts me down and tells me that I have gotten big since having my daughter and that I should exercise and is always calling me things like “big mamma”. When in actuality I am the same weight as I was before I got pregnant. He says that I need to lighten up that he is just picking on me. He does things to me like grab my chest just to get me to react and will even grope me in front of our oldest daughter or my family. He constantly tells me that I don’t satisfy him and will not listen to me when I tell him that I just can’t be physically attracted to someone that just 10 minutes before made me cry.
He is addicted to drugs. I don’t know the extent of it because I feel that he is always lying to me about how much or which drugs he takes. I know and he admits that he is addicted to painkillers. He says he is trying to wean his way off of them. He was in a car accident in 1995, which has left him with chronic pain, but he abuses the pills that the doctor prescribes and refuses to tell the doctor about his addiction. And instead of taking the pills as prescribed he usually takes apart the capsules and takes it in other ways. I know he has done other drugs but he claims they are not problems and that I am over reacting. I found a needle and spoon in my car a few months ago and he claimed they were not his. Spoons have been disappearing from our house for at least the last couple of years but until now I guess I was too naïve to know why. I don’t know anything about drugs and feel like he takes advantage of my ignorance. He will take all of his prescribed pills before he is due for a re-fill and then he goes through withdraws which include mood swings, hot/cold flashes and no sleep. At least a couple times a month he either comes home in the middle of the night or the next morning. And at least a few days a week he doesn’t come home until 9 o’clock or later.
Through all of this I do yell and scream a lot but I’m still there and truly would like to help him. But I feel at this point I am only enabling him. I try not to have these conversations around my kids, especially the 8 year old but he always pushes the arguments and says mean and hurtful things that she is listening to. She actually last night went to my Mom upset and needing to talk and said she “doesn’t like the way daddy treats mommy” and “I’m afraid daddy is going to leave”. She even said “daddy says it’s mommy’s fault he does drugs” and “daddy asked me if I thought mommy was pretty and when I said yes daddy said ‘I must be blind’”.
I don’t want my daughters to see this anymore and I don’t know what to do. I love him and wish he would go back to the way he used to be. People always tell me that people don’t change, well he did. I don’t want to get a divorce but I’m exhausted. I just don’t know what to do anymore. Ignoring it, fighting back nothing works and none of it is healthy for our kids. I need help in a big way and don’t know what to do…
Answer time to see the realities--we both know this unhealthy arrangement, for you AND the kids, should have ended LONG ago; he's not changing, except for the worse; your choices are getting out of there in an attempt to salvage some shred of happiness, or a depressing life of quiet desperation...
