Posted by Wendy B. on August 22, 2001, at 15:00:48
In reply to Re: my bags are packed, I am ready to go, posted by Greg A. on August 16, 2001, at 17:25:47
>
> Take care,
>
> Greg
> PS What the Mighty Mouse reference to?
Hi Greg and others,Susan got a new keyboard and (I think) a new mouse, and she started calling herself Mighty Mouse on another thread...
All this talk about kids and divorce is so heart-wrenching... I left my husband when my daughter was 2 and a half yrs old, so she doesn't remember much before that. At the time of the split, she didn't know what Marriage, Family, Divorce, those concepts, really meant. All of you guys with older children, they do know, and you're worried that they might find themselves with Separated or Divorced parents. It could be worse...
Most of the people here are posting that they have found themselves changing, or depressed when the other spouse has not, or alcoholics, etc. But no one is in an abusive relationship, so far, from what I'm hearing. I was, but it's been 6 yrs since I left the hub, and though it wasn't hard on my daughter at the moment of the split, it has been hard shuttling back and forth between her dad's and my houses, she complained bitterly about it when she was younger. Now that she's 9, it's kind of natural to her, every other weekend at dad's.
Of course, he will never forgive me for taking her from him (I am the custodial parent), I had to do it, he was throwing me around. You see, he suffered from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (not OCD, which is a little different). He would wipe the counters off 20 times, no kidding, when we washed up the kitchen after supper. He dried out every sink in the house with a handi-wipe till it was dry as a bone. If he ever washed his hands, for ex, he would then wipe the sink dry. After showering, he wiped the fucking shower dry. I mean it, this is all true. And he made me wipe it dry too... (I still can't believe I lived for almost 6 yrs with him and did that every day, just to appease him and his sense of what was the right way to clean things!) After every load of wash was done, he would dry out the washing machine! Obviously, you say, this guy was a clean freak... well, it didn't stop there... When vacuuming, he would start at the very back of the house, and work his way out to the front hall, so that he no one would step on the newly vac'ed carpeting, so no footprints would mar it. If I stepped on it cuz I needed to go across it to the bathroom, he would get angry with me, because I didn't care enough about the cleaning he had done... Anger and control were the issues. And then forcing the other person (*moi*) to comply with all the Cleaning Regulations... Impossible!
After the baby came, it got worse, and his symptoms got worse, his cleaning became more intense and he got angrier because he couldn't control his universe enough with the baby making messes, like stepping in her wading pool and getting grass clippings in it... it made him so upset, he emptied it and put it away... When he came home from work (and I had already been at my 40-hr a week job, bringing the baby home from daycare, fed her and put her to bed), the garage door would start to open, and my anxiety would kick up a notch from where it had been already... I loathed to my very soul the sound of that garage door... he would come in, go wash his hands, and then come to the kitchen where I had his dinner ready, and sort of do an inspection of the cupboards. He would 'adjust' piles of plates by a thirty-secondth of an inch, line up the mugs in what he perceived to be their 'order,' blue-green-yellow-red or whatever, whereas I had arranged them whichever way they'd come out of the dishwasher, red-green-yellow-blue. By the time she was two, I'd had it, and told him he was seriously ill, and needed help, and he got crazier, finally throwing me down on to the floor and kicking me, etc. after one of the many fight we had. In a few months, I found a good lawyer, and got out of there, with my child...
I no longer have the stability of a home (we had to sell it), a husband, two incomes, the yard, the next kids that we never had... I figured it was best for my daughter. I didn't want her to grow up thinking that this was the way men and women should relate to each other, didn't want this to be her model. Up to now, I've had a couple of relationships that didn't work out (another story), and I still haven't provided her with a good model. But at least I didn't stay and let her watch me be abused for longer than that... I remember her, this little two-year old girl, after watching us argue, as we did every morning before we went to work, standing there, wagging her finger at her father, saying: "Daddy! You stop shouting at Mommy!"
Enough! The pain and longing expressed in some of these posts has touched me in a way that I cannot tell you... Greg and Marie, I wish you peace. Maybe time will clear up your jumbled thoughts, and everything doesn't have to be decided *right now*. ?? I don't know... You both sound like you have done right by your children, and they are doing well... what about doing right by yourselves?
much care and love,
Wendy
poster:Wendy B.
thread:8862
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010817/msgs/10035.html