He's looking at me with such hatred today. I wish he'd leave.

Ditto what Kel just said.. You need a safe place.    
See my list of phone apps to give him the silent treatment right back..ignore his mean stare and texting..  I would not give him the time of day..give him crickets...nothing ... no reply..no conversation.. nothing.
Its really sad, but at this point, there is really nothing you have to say to him; there are no words you can say to repair what he is doing.   Its not you.


 

Yes - you have more power than you think. At the very least, you need to understand what cards you hold, so that when the time comes, you can choose to use them.

I hope he DOES get a job that keeps him away for days at a time!  That'll give you some space to detach and not have to be on edge all the time.  It'll also make it easier for the kids to not miss him as much.  All good things.  Not to mention child support and potential alimony.

Don't utter a WORD to him about divorce - just start getting your ducks in a row.  If he asks you straight out about a divorce, just do what he does - sidestep and deflect - "Why are you even ASKING me that?", "Oh, you mean you're afraid that I'll leave now that you never treat me well anymore?", or "or just "ummmm, what?"  Put HIM back on the defensive.

You have every right to want and attempt to get out of a trap that is crushing you to death.  You don't need to feel bad about it.

Kel

Last night some things started making sense to me.  Some "a-ha! Moments if you will".

When we met, I had two little girls from a previous marriage.  I recall that he was very much stuck on the fact that they were adorable and I would make cute kids. The fact that he played barbies with them drew me in, perhaps it should have been a warning.  He wanted to know immediately if I would have more children.
Our courtship was fast and furious. He wooed me, was compassionate, tender, caring and seemingly everything I was looking for.  I only had met his family (whom I later found out were mostly all kind of horrible) once and they seemed a little too excited that I was taking their 37 year old bachelor off their hands. 
He proposed at 3 months and I became pregnant that night.  We were married a month later.  Little did I know, I had become his beard and the host and caretaker to his offspring.  I thought we were building a life together based on love and trust.  I do think he loved me but not how I assumed he did.  I still think he loves me but like a sister or cousin. 
After we married I started finding out things he kept from me.  A history of having gotten "happy ending" massages, his sexual history supposedly including 50+ women including a stripper, letting his best friends wife give him oral sex (just learned that one recently), a DUI, the fact that he chewed tobacco,  oh and I didn't know that he had a history of changing jobs and moving a lot.  This was not the stable, reliable man I thought I married.

So our life together is based on lies. On me being his cover, which is why I believe he doesn't want to divorce me... so his homophobic family won't know and the outside world will see him as a family man with the devoted wife.  I provided him with children. No one has been the wiser.  Except me.  But like he said... he has secrets he will take to the grave. 

I'm hurt and angry, but mostly at what he did to my self esteem and the way he has controlled me.

I know that one of my biggest challenges was trying to get to the point of deciding upon divorcing - because before I'd made up my mind, I was still doing the things that showed caring toward my ex - cooking, cleaning, getting him a drink when I got up, etc.  It seemed impossible to decide against something that I was actively fostering.  I had to create distance within the relationship in order to get some perspective.  That was difficult to do without telling my dh why.  I started going out with girlfriends or having things to do nearly every night during the time when I would usually be interacting with my husband.  We had 3 young kids, so I would feed us all dinner, then clean up.  When the youngest was in bed (around 8:00), I would run out.  It gave me time to think and to begin the emotional separation.  (At that time, my mother-in-law also lived with us, as did an adult family friend.  So there were plenty of people to watch the kids).  If I wouldn't have been able to do that essential step of separating, I'm not sure I'd be divorced today.

It's a gift to you - in some ways - that you have this separation going on.  If he was love bombing you, it'd be much harder.  They make you out to be a monster then - they are doing everything you ever wanted, and you're STILL not happy.  They just want to BE with you and you won't even tolerate them lying next to you in the dark.

Try to look at any and all space as a way to get used to not being with him.  My ex was going to school in the evenings when we were biding our time between the announcement that I wanted to divorce and when he actually moved out (2 YEARS!).  Then he would go out with his colleagues after school - for food, or to sit and chat, etc.  He was living a single lifestyle while I was at home raising the kids, shopping, cleaning, working.  It was difficult to not be resentful - but every time I got angry inside of him shirking his responsibility, I would think that this was a GOOD thing - it got both the kids and I used to him not being there - to us running this thing alone.  It was its own form of detachment, and it worked.

Kel