I was fine until I got into a more indepth conversation with my cousin, the one person I lean on immensely, this morning on MSN. I realized I have to make some major decisions. They are very difficult decisions to make. My son's emotional well being as well as my own are both at stake. I feel lost and powerless. I don't want to end my marriage. It has so much going for it. I have been happy in the past and actually the last couple of weeks have been a little better. Okay, I'm even having a hard time explaining myself at the moment. It has a lot to do with the dynamics between my husband and my son. Genetically they have no relationship. Emotionally my son doesn't know any difference. My husband is his father. My husband has been there since before he was born. But the first two years of my son's life we lived at home with our respective families, so the first two years I raised my son as a single mother and then we finally got married and brought our family together under one roof. It has come with a lot of pain and heart ache. Our son is ADD. He is a difficult child at the best of times. Now I suspect that due to our various struggles over the years that he is also suffering from depression. My husband does not respect my son's various issues and asks more from him than our son is capable of handling at times. Frustration mounts on both sides until there's a complete breakdown. For awhile my husband will be good and then he'll go through a bad spell, where perhaps his stress levels are a little higher or whatever, and he'll get physical with our son. The other day he knocked him to the ground. And then one other night he grabbed his arm really roughly. Emotionally every time this happens it sets my son back years emotionally. And my husband won't talk about it either. And I'm left standing in the middle expected to repair wounds without any tools to do so. Our son will be in tears and if I go to him to console him, I feel like I'm alienating my husband and backing up our son who's inappropriate behaviour in the first place brought my husband to the point of losing it. On the other hand, my husband is an adult and should be able to learn to handle things differently. But he won't talk about what's setting him off or what's bothering him. I'm just supposed to deal with everything. I've had my husband in therapy sessions to discuss things. We've taken a parenting course. But I sometimes feel like my husband's participation is all lip service. He never really commits to making a change. Or helping our son find a better place, a happier place, and I'm left holding the reigns. I'm afraid if I leave my husband then our son will lose the only father he has ever known and emotionally that's more than I think he can handle. And if I stay, this behaviour has to stop. I feel caught between a rock and a hard place. And emotionally I'm barely holding my own these days without all this on top of it so I sometimes feel like I'm not as supportive as I could be towards our son because it requires too much of an emotional commitment for me. It's like a crazy ball of yarn that I'm trying to find the end to and it's buried so deep within the knots it seems impossible.... And to make matters worse, with my husband's new job, it seems like he's never around so I'm not only left holding all the reigns emotionally, but physically too. I just feel overwhelmed with the weight of my responsibilities....
Not really looking for a lot of advice. Just needed to vent. Thank you for listening.... I'm in the process of contacting some people who can help us, it's just a waiting game now. But it's hard to be patient....
slowlygoingcrazy