9 replies to this topic

[oceantears]

Helllo. It is 5AM I simply cannot sleep. My husband has finally crossed a line with his behavior that I simply cannot recover from. It has been several years since I visited this site as I ended up marrying my abuser a little over a year ago. He is the one that kept trying to get me back every time I got strong and moved on with my life apart from him. At 40 years old I guess I finally got tired of fighting the forces of my sick and dysfunctional relationship. We had a 6 year courtship that was incredibly painful and cost me the valuable years of my thirties and my prime fertile years. We broke up and came back togther more times than you can imagine. He called off a wedding in 2005 and then we continued to see each other for another 3 years, on and off, before finally marrying in the fall of 2008. Yes I know I am stupid and deserve what has come to me because I married the abuser. Now I am caught up in the agony of infertility treatments and desperately trying to get pregnant through in vitro at the age of 41. Please, I cannot handle ANYONE ELSE telling me that I should not be having a child with this man. I know I should leave him but this is my LAST chance at a biological child and if I stop now I will NEVER get to be a mother. My husband is the reason I am 41 and childless as he refused to reverse his vasectomy for many years in his relationship and each time I tried to leave him for this reason, he pulled me back into the relationship KNOWING I needed and wanted to have a baby, and I allowed him to suck me back in. Whenever he finally had me back he found fault in me and told me it was my fault he did not want to marry me or have a family with me. I guess I got sick in the relationship, lost myself and started to believe the things he told me. When I was ready to move back to New York and begin my life over he came back again and practically pleaded with me to give it another chance and marry him. At this point I was 40 years old and we knew we needed fertility treatment. My business was failing due to my emotional problems (believe it or not I am a Psychologist and I have helped so many other people despite my own sickness). By the time we married in the fall of 2008 I was down to only a small handful of patients and my personal debts had piled up sky high. I was a financial disaster. My husband had financial problems of his own but he has a very wealthy mother who over the years continuously bailed him ut of debt. Before we married he committed to pay for one round of fertility treatments but then after we married he pulled back and said he no longer had the money due to the cost of our low budget wedding. He was angry with me for spending too much of his money on the small intimate wedding we had with about 40 guests- most of whom fell on his side of the family. I rented a beach house and used his family caterer who gave us a deep discount,I wore the gown I already had saved from the first broken engagement, I paid for the flowers myself and hired the cheapest DJ I could find, and got my wedding cake at the supermarket which I also paid for. We rented a house for the weekend so my small group of family and friends from out of town could have a place to sleep since they had lost a lot of money several years earlier when my husband called off the wedding the first time. Now, over a year into our marriage, he still berates me for spending too much money on the wedding and throwing us into debt. He accuses me of failing to contribute financially to the marriage and he accuses me of being lazy, a liar and failing to follow through on tasks and projects like marketing my psychology practice in order to increase my patient base and earn more money. We married in November 2008 and the agreement was to start fertility treatments immediately after the wedding due to my advanced age and his long term vasectomy which resulted in poor sperm quality reducing our chances of a natural conception to less than 2%. However my husband decided to settle with all of his credit card debts right at that time which of course destroyed his credit score right at the time when we needed to qualify for the fertility finance program to assist us with the cost of in vitro (by the way he does not want the child but agreed to follow through with ONE ROUND of fertility since he contributed to my curent biological predicament). My husband has a son in college and never desired more children which is why I kept trying to end the relationship for so many years in addition to his mean and cruel personality. So he blew his credit score right after we got married and therefore we were turned down for the finance program and could not begin the fertility. He tried to pressure me to sell my car which is completely paid off now and the only non-debt thing of any value that I own. I followed through on getting estimates and was told I could only get about 5 or 6 thousand for my 7 year-old Mazda. This would not even cover HALF of the fertility treatment as in vitro costs about $18,000. I could not afford to buy a new car and I had no credit to get a lease or finance agreement without a substantial down payment which would eat up all of the money from my car sale anyway. My parents pleaded with me not to sell my car especially given my husband's access to his family money and his substantial monthly paycheck. When I refused to sell my car my husband became angered and hostile and withdrew his love and affection from me. This was only several weeks into our marriage. He blamed the financial problems on the cost of our wedding and my failure to contribute finacially. He told me that I was selfish and immature as I toom it on myself to plan a wedding we could not afford and failed to consult with him on all wedding expenditures. Next, my husband spoke with his wealthy mother and convinced her- yet again- to help bail him out of debt by co-signing a substantial bank loan. This happened sometime around January or February of 2009. He said he planned to use the loan to pay off his own credit card debts and to use the rest of the money to help pay for the in vitro and his son's college. However he still did not want to begin the in vitro even after he got the loan. He said I was not acting right and not reassuring him with my actions and behaviors that I am a true partner who is there with him in the "foxhole". He said I was behaving like a selfish child and "not showing up" to the relationship in the way a wife should. He said all I cared about was finally being married and having a wedding and having a baby. Each time he did something nice for me, like moving us into a new rental home in a nice neighborhood that I love to help give us a fresh start together instead of continuing to live in his condo with so many bad memories and all my personal belongings stashed away in a storage unit, he later tried to make me feel guilty by saying he does everything to make me happy while I contribute nothing in return. He said the fact that I do his laundry, prepare his meals and tell him I love him does not make me a good partner as these things are not so important. He said I failed to follow through on promises I made to him before the marriage like working really hard to build my Psychology practice to help him financially. Meanhwhile, he knows I am drowing in my own student loan and IRS debt and I hane no rich mother to bail me out and needed to hire a tax attorney to assist me with the IRS debt. He does not pay any of my bills only his own, and I would NEVER ask him for a dime towards my personal debts. However is angry that I am not in a position to contribute to the household expenses or the cost of fertility. His mother co-signed the loan in the winter of 2009 and my husband received a lump sum of money that he used to clear his own debts and help with his son's first year of college. He never told me how much money he actually received as he keeps finances a secret from me, we have completely separate accounts and I pay with my own money for all the foodshopping, household items and my personal debts. He said he put aside $16,000 of the lump sum loan to pay for fertility treatments but he still did not want to commit to starting the in vitro due to his continued concerns about my behavior (THIS IS AN OLD STRATEGY OF HIS). In an effort to save my very new marriage I agreed to wait 6 months before starting in vitro and proceed with the fertility treatment the following summer to give my husband more time to adjust to the idea. I thought I was being a mature and considerate wife by agreeing to wait a while and focus instead on the marriage. However he became more cold and distant and witholding after that and barely looked at me, never showed affection and acted like he could not stand to spend time with me. He is a pharmacist and he makes a nice salary. He kept picking up extra shifts at work and he was barely home. I was alone MOST nights and weekends as he continued to pick up extra hours. When he was home, which was rare, he kept throwing out comments to suggest that if only I would expand my practice and see more patients, he would not have to work so hard and he would not be all alone with the finances. He expressed resentment at the fact that he was working long hours at a job he hates while I was home taking it easy, barely marketing my private practice and leaving him alone with all the financial responsibilities. He said I was behaving like a "rich soccer mom" or a little girl who did whatever she wanted to do and expected her husband to take care of everything. At this point I went back into therapy as I developed depression, anxiety and a nervous twitch in my eye. I could barely focus on my work but I did not want to take antidepressant medication as I was trying to get pregnant each month the natural way by using ovulation predictor kits and having timed intercourse. Each time I approached my husband to initiate intimacy when i was ovulating he accused me of being selfishly focused on nothing but getting pregnant and he became sarcastic and critical and resentful of my efforts to conceive. We were told that we had less than a 2% chance to conceive naturally due to my husband's poor sperm quality and lifestyle choices (he is a heavy smoker a drinks vodka every night which can damage sperm quality and we already had a sperm analysis showing his sperm was compromised due to his age (he is 52), his lifestyle and his vasectomy which he DID finally reverse but he still insisted on using condoms until we got married. I was devastated when he refused to pay for the in vitro as promised claiming we had too many other expenses and debts, and then when I agreed to postpone the fertility treatments, he became resentful and angry when I tried to approach him during my ovulation period. He accused me of only caring about getting pregnant and failing to love him or make his needs important. As the months went by and we approached the six month mark indicating it was time to start the in vitro as we had planned to postpone the treatments for six months, he again backed away from me and grew increasingly hostile and distant. He claimed that he was unhappy in the marriage due to my irresponsible, chidish and selfish ways of conducting myself in the marriage. He accused me of making everything about me and being too focused on my own selfish needs like having a baby. This was now the summer of 2009. Despite his continued complaints about our financial situation, he agreed to send his son to a very expensive private university instead of the state school where the tuition would have been so much cheaper. I did not say a word about this as I knew it was none of my business and should be left between my husband and his ex wife. I did not interfere or say anything about his decision to send his son to a very expensive private universoty. He then proceeded to give me mixed messages about whether or not he ahd the money to pay for the in vitro, sometimes saying he did and other times saying he did not have the money. When he finally agreed to company me to a fertility consultation in July of 2009, he was angry and argumentative and sarcastic and condesending towards me even as I sat shaking on the table with my feet in the stirrups in my paper robe as the doctor conducted an ultrasound. My husband remained resistant about paying for the in vitro and by this time I was approaching my forty first birthday. The test results came back very discouraging indicating that I will most likely NEVER have a biolgical child due to my ovarian decline and poor egg quality. In other words, with all the waiting and procrastinating and putting off having a baby year after year, my final window of fertility had passed. I did some heavy research and found a fertility clinic out in Denver, Colorado that is known for having success with older women like me and women with declined ovarian functioning. There are few options available to women like me but I was not ready to give up on my dream of a biological child so soon after we finally started the fertility process. My local clinic refused to treat me and told me to adopt or consider donor eggs. So we flew out to Denver to see the specialist but my husband was very resistant about the cost of the flight and two night hotel stay. However he did accompany me and we participated in a full day diagnostic work-up where many tests were performed. My husband kept leaving the clinic and stepping outside for a cigarette break which truly blew my mind. The doctor in Denver recommended I have major surgery to remove fibroids and polyps in my uterus before carrying a pregnancy. Had I been younger this might have been no big deal but at my age time is precious and the surgery would delay any treatments for another 3 months at lease. I was really upset by this news and scared about the surgery. My husband remained distant and cold around the issue and told me I was acting weak when I cried the morning of the surgery because I was so frightened. I finally had the surgery in December and it required an abdominal incision like a C-section and a 6 week recovery period. The surgery went well but since then I have been developing ovarian cysts that have further delayed fertility treatments. Now I must go for yet another ultrasound after the weekend to see if the cysts have dissolved and I am feeling scared and nervous about the results of my next ultrasound and nothing ever seems to go right for me on this journey to trying to become a mother. My husband remains angry and resentful of having to spend the money and he continues to berate me for not being a stronger partner and following through with financial contributions. I know he has the money to pay for the in vitro but he keeps going back and forth with sometimes saying he has the money and other times saying he doesn't. HE claims I am not behaving as an equal partner, I am a selfish child who places the full burden of the finances on his shoulders, I do not show him love or concerns for his own needs and hopes and dreams. He says he feels like he doesn't count and he is a father trying to appease and satisfy a selfish UNGRATEFUL daughter. He hates his job in pharmacy and he has a side business as a "RELATIONSHIP COACH" where he helps couples to manage relationship challenges. How IRONIC is this??? He often says that if only I would work harder at my practice and make more money he could back off from working pharmacy and puruse his true passion full time as a relationship coach. So here is the final straw that pushed me over edge. About 8 months ago he stated working with a very young unmarried couple- the woman is 24 and the man is 30. Over the last few months he has been mentioning this case a lot more frequency and the woman's name- MAGGIE- kept coming up in conversation. Through my ongoing questions I learned that my husband had agreed to stop charging this woman for his coaching services and has instead entered into a bartering relationship with her where he agreed to coach her FOR FREE in exchange for her time in designing him a new professional website. She no longer comes with her boyfriend for relationship coaching. She no longer pays for my husband's services. Now she comes alone, talks with my husband for free, and they have taken to meeting in coffee shops and restaurants ALONE together where the 24 year old single woman is apparently showing my husband website ideas on her laptop computer. It seems the relationship went from being professinal to being a friendship and this felt very wrong to me. I was never invited to these meetings despite the fact that my husband accuses me of not showing enough interest in his work or supporting his professional dreams. He somehow forgot that I spent years of my life helping him to create his coaching business and lending my support, creative ideas and professional expertise. Now he was meeting with this former coaching client on a regular basis in a coffee shop near our home to discuss ideas for his website. Further, she still comes to our home office for "business coaching", supposedly, but now she comes ALONE without her boyfriend and my husband is supposedly coacing her on how to start her graphic design business which is an area he knows NOTHING about as he is a relationship coach not a graphic design expert. One morning I decided to check things out for myself and popped into the coffee shop where he was meeting with this woman at 7:30am on a weekday morning to discuss the website. I found him having coffee with a beautiful young blond woman. I tried to conduct myself with class and dignity, I was friendly and polite, and I noticed the young woman blushing bright red when my husband introduced us. I told her she was very generous to give so much of her time to designing my husband's website and her cheeks turned bright red. She said "well it is well desrved as he does excellent work" and I saw her gazing at him with admiration and idealization in her eyes. From a personal standpoint, I felt jealous and insecure of this developing friendship between my husband and a beautiful woman 30 years younger than him. As a psychologist, the relationship raised red flags as well. It appears to me that my husband has violated ethical and moral boundaries by deviating from the original professional boundaries of the coaching relationship- which involved couples coaching in a professional office setting with a contracted fee agreement where the woman paid for my husband's services- to a barter arrangement based on friendship and equality where they are meeting in social environments like restaruants and coffee shops and no dollars are being exchanged. My husband justified this by saying the woman could no longer afford to pay him, and they are doing each other a mutual service as she is designing his website while he is helping her to create a portfolio and start her own graphic design company. For a while I bought into his story and swallowed my pain when he got up early to meet this woman for coffee. He seemed so excited about the idea of having a new website and I had not seen my husband happy in a long time so I tried to deal with my concerns on my own. (BY the way my husband already has a nice website but he wants to upgrade it and make it fancier and more impressive). Eventually, last week, I broke down and confessed to my husband that I felt uncomfortable and unsafe with his continued relationship with this very young beautiful single woman and former coaching client who seems to idealize and worship him like a big brother or father figure. I am eleven years younger than my husband and his relationship with this woman feels a little too close to the way our own romance started out. We began as friends and he was the older man I could rely on and look up to like a big brother or father figure. Our relationship evolved slowly over time until one day I realized I was falling in love with him. I shared my pain with my husband and explained this feeling and he insisted nothing is going on and it is strictly business. I asked him how much longer the relationship would continue and he replied it would continue for a long time- possibly even a year or longer- as the woman works a full time job already and she is designing the website in her limited free time. When I explained how deeply I was hurt by his continued meetings with this woman he grew defensive, told me it was my own issue, I was being paranoid and selfish for not supporting his professional dreams, and insisted the relationship was strictly business and would continue for as long as necessary. This conversation took place only last week. Then, less than a week after we had this conversation and I confessed my insecurities and fears, he announced to me that he was meeting with Maggie and her friend Michelle for lunch at a nice upsacale restaurant in our home neighborhood. When I asked why he was having lunch with this woman Maggie and her friend, he expplained that it was because the friend was coming on board to assist with the website and he was taking them both out for a nice lunch to express his appreciation to Maggie's friend for joining the project. As I continued to press the issue, he admitted that he was not even sure if the friend was planning to join them and it could just be him and Maggie. (In the end the friend of course did NOT show and my husband had lunch alone with Maggie.)What a surprise, huh???? I asked him why he did not invite me to join on the lunch date especially knowing how uncomfrtable I was feeling and he replied that he did not invite me due to my jealousy and the fact that he did not trust in my ability to behave appropriately and not make a scene due to my insecurities. I begged him not to go on the lunch date but he insisted he was going. I told him it was so hurtful to me that i felt I needed to leave the house if he truly planned to take this woman out for a nice lunch. I explained to him again that I felt our marriage was vulnerable, we are at a very difficult place in our marriage, I crave his love and emotional support and I am not comfortable with him spending more and more time with this woman. He refused to cancel his lunch date and did not encourage me to join him in having lunch with this woman. I was so outraged I could not calm myself down. I left my home at 10:30AM and did not return until 10:30pm and my husband did not call me all day to apologize or try to see if I was even okay. He allowed me to leave our home at 10:30am in such a state of emotional pain and he proceeded to take Maggie out for lunch- ALONE. I drove in circles in my car for hours in a silent rage trying to calm down and make sense of how he could do something so hurtful. I even drove to the restaurant where they were supposed to be having lunch and his car was not there. Later when I asked him about it he told me the place was too crowded so they decided to go to a different restaurant instead. All this was going on while I was driving around town crying and aching inside knowing he was having lunch with this young beautiful woman despite the fact that I asked him to please not go. This happened only two days ago and since then, my husband has denied any wrongdoing and defended his behavior and his relationship with this woman. He tells me I am a VERY SICK woman and I have not changed at all since 2005 when he cancelled the first wedding. I tried to warn him that his professional behavior was inappropriate and unethical as the relationship started as a clear professional situation with boundaries, in an office setting with a young couple where money was pad in exchnage for relationship coaching services, and it has since evolved into a bartering situation where socialization is taking place in social settings with increased frequency. My husband is no longer providing a professional service to a young couple but acting as a father figure and friend to a young woman who needs him as much as he needs her. This shift in dynamics is highly unprofessional and can be incredibly confusing for a young client who has already shared her life history, sexual history, and deep childhood wounds and highly intimate details of her life with a much older man in the context of a therapeutic relationship. I asked my husband if he still considers her to be a coaching client and he could not give a clear answer to my question. He kept trying to avoid the question by saying, "it is a business relationship". I continued to press him with the same question, "Is Maggie a coaching client?" He grew more and more defensive and finally replied that they are both "each other's clients." I believe my husband could even be charged with professional and ethical misconduct but he refuses to accept responsibility for his own behavior which is a long pattern with him. When I again expressed my feelings and concerns tonight over dinner at a local pizza restaurant, and tried to help him undertand that he has lost persective in this relationship, blurred important boundaries and violated ethical and moral codes, he became enraged, threw his pizza across the bar, left me in the restaurant and drove home without me. My husband does NOT have a bad temper and his blowup further convinces me that I hit a deep nerve and touched on the truth. He refuses to end the relationship and accuses me of being a sick and delusional woman. Further, he is now threatening NOT to pay for my fertility again and saying there will be NO BABY due to my sick behavior. I know everyone here in the catbox will tell me to NOT have a baby in this marriage but you MUST try to undertsand what the doctors are telling me. If I don't have this baby now I will never have a biological child and there is no further time to wait. I cannot afford to leave my husband and in the state where I live emotional abuse is not grounds for divorce only physical abuse or adultery. I cannot prove he is sexually involved with this woman and I do not believe he is sleeping with her at this time. However I feel his relationship with her has grown far too important to him and is filling some deep need inside of his ego which places our marriage at even further risk. I believe his meetings with her are unnessary and filling an emotional need for him to see her rather any constructive efforts to complete this website in a timely and professional manner. My husband claims it will take many months or even a year of continued meetings to get the website looking the way he wants. I am NO EXPERT on website design and construction but I have done some research and learned that when a true professional is on the job, a website can be done in a matter of hours or at the most, a few weeks. In rare cases it can take a few months but this is only with highly complicated and sophisticated websites. I think my husband has a need to feel worshipped and idealized and this woman, he tells me, believes deeply in his work and his professional visions and dreams. Even more hurtful, he accuses me of NOT supporting his dreams and acting like a spoiled child by suggesting he end this relationship. I believe he is doing this young woman a favor in helping her to start her business and acting as her mentor and this is filling a deep need for him and inflating his ego. This woman is just staring out in her career, she is young and inexperienced and my husband could have eaily hired a true professional to complete the job in a week or less. Instead he is dragging this thing out over weeks and months with frequent meetings in restaurants and coffee shops. I am sickened and tormented by his behavior, he refuses to own how badly he has hurt me, and instead he has turned against me and labeled me as sick, selfish and paranoid. I know I should leave him but I don't feel I can do that until I at least allow him to pay for my one and only chance to try and have a child through in vitro. At this time I am not interested in being alone and using donor sperm or adopting as I want a chance to try to conceive with my own eggs before it is really too late and I am not financially equipped to support a child on my own as a single parent right now. Further I do not have the money to pay for the in vitro alone and there is nobody in my family to help me. They all believe he owes me this as he wasted many of my precious years procrastinating and now he must honor his promise as we are man and wife. Unfortunately I have no more time to waste in trying to get pregnant. Please help. I am in a jelous rage due to my husband's ongoing relationship with this woman and I don't know what to do. I cannot sleep and I am in such deep pain. It is now 6:30AM and I have been up since 4:30AM and had to take a xanax to calm down. PLESE HELP. I am seeing a therapist and trying to stay centered, but my husband's pursuit of a relationship with this woman (who he admitted to me is no longer a client in the conventional sense of the word rather a "business associate" in addition to my fertility struggles and anxiety about my next ultrsound on Monday, is really more than I can handle.

Edited by oceantears, 13 February 2010 - 08:10 AM.

[Freedom and Peace]

If you had a client that told you all of this what would your recommendation be to her?

[oceantears]

If you had a client that told you all of this what would your recommendation be to her?

I do not know as it is happening to me and not a client. I am emotionally involved and in deep pain which is not the case when I am sitting with clients. Because it is happening to ME and not a client, after a long history of being belittled and invalidated and mocked by this man, I can no longer separate myself enough to imagine what I would tell a client.

[shyloh]

Oceantears
I am so sorry you are going through this. Firstly I must tell you that I am a licensed Clinical Social worker who was in a VA/PA relationship (in the process of a painful divorce), and even though this is what we do for a living when you are in "the cycle" it can be so different than seeing it from the outside (as treating a client). It is as if YOU KNOW what is the logical thing to do but emotionally you dont. And on top of that YOU WANT A BABY, which I completeley understand. And you are right most people are going to tell you not to have a baby with this man, but who are we to say. I have to tell you that I was in some turmoil during my pregnancy (emotional and physical) and my DD will be turning 3 in 2 weeks (I am 38) and I was having panic attacks and had to go on zoloft, couldnt sleep and it wasnt easy being with this man during a pregnancy. I highly suspect your husband will be like mine was (once you get pregnant-was great first few months) and be unsupportive, cause more anxiety than you already have from being a first time pregnant woman, (mine told me I was crazy, I will never get you pregnant again, you are so high maintenace, wouldnt let me spend money on maternity clothes, bras was a toatl penny pincher when it came time to getting stuff for baby, ie I wasnt "allowed" to get a changing table because chnaging her on the ottoman was just fine, or get a foot rest for the rocker, etc tec. Anyway, what I am trying to say is, and I totally understanding you wanting to be a biologically mommy, BUT you have to be there emotionally for your child once they are there-and with this type of man, they(the va man) will consume your every bit of energy and sanity, and then you wont be present for your child (believe me I know), can you get away form him and then focus on getting pregnant, is there any way to do this. Iknow you dont want to hear you can adopt or get a sperm donor, BUT this is an option. Or could you get pregnant and then leave, so you can raise your child yourself? I know financially that may not be possible.
I know this has to be horrible for you and things he does sound so familiar to me "Now, over a year into our marriage, he still berates me for spending too much money on the wedding and throwing us into debt. He accuses me of failing to contribute financially to the marriage and he accuses me of being lazy, a",
mine did the same thing(exact same thing with wedding spending and we spent only 5 grande-very modest little dinner type wedding adn I spent to much-but his first marriage was in Hawaii!) said I havent been a wife since day one , I wouldnt have married you if I knew you were going to be such a terd(well I suffered anxiety(wonder why???) when we first met and isolated a bit)-they can say horrible things and make you believe them . You wouldnt be where you are today if you werent a moivated, intelligent person-I mean really you are a psychologist. He is playing with your head when he says he has the money or doesnt have the money-is that what a supportive partner does when you are in your most vulnerable state????? NO!!
What happened in his first marriage -just curoius? He probably said that one was " crazy " to ? And by the way-in vitro treatments and the stress of not being able to get pregnant cause people to have some emotional instability AND there are many men out there that are supportive and patient with their wives during this.
When is your next ultrasound? Can you take someone else with you- a good friend perhaps? I didnt take my X to any apointments-I did it all by myself, but a good friend who is supportive and non judgemental is who you need to be with you.
Keep writing, keep us posted.
And PS about the inappropriate relationship (becasue that is what it is), trust your gut!!! It is always alwasy right. How dare him take this relationship on when you are vulnerable-so very selfish of him. Men (especially needy VA men need their ego's stroked)
l s

[grammie]

Wow, that is a lot to take in. I'm not going to tell you what to do because it is your life and I'm certainly in no position to judge as I have been married to a VA/EA for almost 25 years. When I was pregnant with our daughter my 'christian' husband told me several times that if I didn't shape up and be a good wife then god would 'take' my baby to teach me a lesson. And I stayed with this man and raised the child with him. It blows my mind now that I think about it. So I am certainly not going to judge. And I understand the desire to have a child, I really wanted another child when my daughter was younger, I got pregnant once more but had a miscarriage. Due to certain health problems I wasn't able to get pregnant again. Now I look back and wonder why I wanted a second child with this man when he wasn't a good father to the first one. If you succeed in having a child have you thought about the future? Will you raise the child with this man? Do you think he will be a good father? Remember children learn about relationships from their parents. Would you want your daughter to grow up and marry a man like your husband (this is what happened with my daughter, now I wish I had taken her and left long ago), or would you want your son to treat his wife the way your husband treats you? From what my stepson's youngest son tells me I think my stepson is very much like his father when it comes to the family. So I think it is true that kids will follow in their parents footsteps. Are you prepared to raise this child alone if your husband leaves you for this other woman or if you decide you just can't take it anymore? I'm sorry that you feel you have wasted so much of your life - I share the same regret, I think most of the women on this board know that feeling. Especially those of use who have stayed with the abuser for a long time. I hope you keep coming here and posting and keeping us updated. It's good to have a place to vent sometimes. It helps me a lot.

Edited by grammie, 13 February 2010 - 12:15 PM.

[joansdaughter]

Sounds to me like the "coaching" relationship has indeed crossed the line. you deserve more then being the second fiddle. i understand the strong maternal urge you are feeling about wanting to get pregnant. but you need to ask yourself if you can afford the upkeep of a baby and yourself if you get divorced. in these types of relationships we get dependent or co dependent on these guys. it's a sad way of living. have you thought about focusing on you and building a practice so you can be self sufficient and financially independent?

you are unstable and YES you are unstable at this time in your life. please don't take offense cause i am too and most women who are still "in" are. we are too focused on relationship matters to think clearly and healthy. healthy women wouldn't be in a situation like ours(VA/EA or PA). they are able to weed out the unstable men and avoid them or if they find themselves in these situations they can leave right away at the first few signs of red flags.

to bring a child into a rocky relationship is very selfish and not a good idea. I have a son and he sees they way I am treated and allow myself to be treated. it's a sick cycle and hard to break free. a baby only escalates the matter. my ex h would bad mouth me to our son when he was a baby and toddler. instead of saying the remarks to me directly he would turn to our son and say the mean things like; "mommy is a b--t-h." that is not a healthy setting to raise a child in. do you want a baby/child to grow up in a house where the husband disrespects his wife?

please think like you are the therapist and advise yourself to wait on having a baby. you can always adopt, meet a man who has young children and be a step mom, or have a baby in a few yrs.

it's also not good to be trying to get pregnant while you are on medication. there may be side-effects that are not known. drug companies hide this from the public and from the health professionals too.

i hope you get the needed clarity. please don't take what i said too harshly. keep going to therapy and contact your local DV agency. they can give you allot of insight.

[lovingself]

Such a tough situation you are in. Try to weigh the satisfaction of fulfilling your desire for a baby against the serious threat of harm that exists to his/her well being, even before a pregnancy has been established, let alone later.

[thebewilderness]

When you ask yourself what am I going to do, what do you tell yourself.
You aren't going to make him do anything any different, so the only one you can make do something different is you.

You want a baby and you think he owes you one.
He, obviously does not.

He somehow forgot that I spent years of my life helping him to create his coaching business and lending my support, creative ideas and professional expertise.

I don't think he has forgotten it at all. I think that is what he has been telling you he wants from you every time he called you selfish.
Any time you advocate for your own needs, wants, and desires, you are not serving his needs, wants, and desires. He calls you selfish and childish because he can't very well tell you that you are not entitled to have any interests or needs that do not serve him.

Isn't that what you have been fighting over all these years?

I suspect that the reason that his relationship with the new person reminds you of your relationship with him in the beginning is that it is giving him what he wants. Admiration and adoration. Not a healthy basis for a relationship, but there it is.

So, it still comes down to a question of what do you want that you can have. What do you want to do that you can do.
What do you have to do to get what you need for yourself?

Edited by thebewilderness, 13 February 2010 - 08:28 PM.

[Freedom and Peace]

I understand you wanting a child and I understand the timing of it all. I cannot suggest a place to start for you that is why I asked if you detached just a bit and this was a client telling all of this what would you suggest. Each one of us has our own road. Some easier than others.

You need to take a hard look at what you are trying to do. You may get your desire but it may not be what you envisioned. I am trying to say this as gently as I could.

[SuzieQute]

I understand you wanting a child and I understand the timing of it all. I cannot suggest a place to start for you that is why I asked if you detached just a bit and this was a client telling all of this what would you suggest. Each one of us has our own road. Some easier than others.

You need to take a hard look at what you are trying to do. You may get your desire but it may not be what you envisioned. I am trying to say this as gently as I could.

I agree with what this person is saying about looking ahead. I married an abuser because all I wanted was the picture perfect package of kids and a succesful husband not looking ahead of the pain it would cause the two most wonderful beings I know who I wouldn't trade for the world but wish I would have thought ahead for their sakes