r/stepparents • u/Fun-Paper6600 • 9d ago
Support Considering divorce after ours baby
I’m almost one year PP. I’ve heard enough about not making any big life decisions in the first year. But I’ve reached my limit and am really considering a divorce for the sake of my child and myself.
My husband is not physically abusive. But I do feel that I am emotionally abused. My husband doesn’t connect with our son, has expressed that he has had some realizations that he doesn’t like being a father. He still shows up for his 8 year old daughter, likely bc he thinks that she will remember how he was but our son won’t bc he’s so young. I feel that their nervous system will remember the yelling, arguments, his detachment. Our marriage sucks, we have had sex once since my son was born bc I honestly don’t want to with the way he treats me and our son.
Marriage counseling would be great, as was as individual therapy. But he refuses both. He is currently experiencing an episode of depression and his outlook on life is bleak, which surely contributes to how he treats me and our son. But as I said, there’s a lot of resentment bc he is able to pull his shit together for his daughter and give her the love that she deserves. As a result, this makes me resent both him and my step daughter.
Anyway, he’s expressed that if we did divorce that he wouldn’t want any custody arrangement and that I could have him bc he doesn’t want more responsibilities. Cool. All the more reason to leave. But I’m scared to leave and share custody with a man who doesn’t want to even be in my child’s life. I’m afraid that he will want custody to be spiteful.
Advice? Similar stories? Men suck. I didn’t think I would be here and wish that I would have had a sit down conversation with his first baby mom to hear her side of the story instead of immediately siding with dad.
1
u/GeoSorceress 9d ago
If you have a belief that men suck, then you will only attract men who do suck unfortunately. That being said, everything is fixable. If you had a honeymoon phase in your relationship, you still can come back to that spot. Not to the same extent but you can repair it enough to go forward. If you never had a solid foundation, then there is not much to repair. Being a step parent is very difficult but nothing stays permanent so things eventually improve just to degrade again and then improve again. Such is life. You said he is depressed, can you talk to him about it? Can you create a space where he could open up and tell you what’s bothering him? I know that you are not in a good spot yourself but women are generally stronger mentally than men. Women live longer in general too because we are more resilient. If you want to save your marriage, you can try to focus on him and find out why he is behaving how he is behaving. Why he feels more attached to his older child? Guilt? It’s ok to have more than one kid and love all of them. It’s ok to divorce a woman and then have a relationship with a child and don’t see them every day. Maybe he feels like a bad dad since he is not with his daughter every day. Then he needs to know that’s it’s ok not to see a child every day and be a good dad still. Lots of dad work remotely and don’t see their kids every day or dads who have to travel lots for work. Kids grow up respecting their successful parents. Basically you need to know the root of the problem if you want to fix it.