Are you safe, do you feel safe?  This is a serious question. You mention that he is abusing you.  If you aren't safe then can you move in with your family or friends now? My worry would be a potential for escalation of abuse. The financial situation, a house, is secondary to your safety. I hope you are safe. 

Hi OneDay,

I wanted to add the website of the National Domestic Violence Hotline. You can chat online or call them. They are a font of knowledge for people going through partner domestic violence.

https://www.thehotline.org/

I called them quite a few times before and after I forced my late GIDXH to leave my home. They were fantastic.

This is may be triggering to some. As some know, my GIDXH threatened to do away with me if I left. He was violent throughout the marriage. He was emotionally and verbally abusive as well. He cyberstalked me after the divorce and did so until a few days before he died.

I am not sure of the breadth and depth of your GIDH's abuse of you. I gathered it was not what I went through. But I could be mistaken.

I would strongly urge you to contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline for help. Also, file a police report if he is breaking the law. They won't do anything as the crime has passed but it will start of trail proving his domestic abuse.

We are lucky to be living in No. California where police take these instances very seriously. I am grateful to an officer from my local police department who helped me when I finally called 911. I am also grateful to someone at the Sheriff"s office for helping me, and a counselor at superior court who told me about a class for people run by attorneys and paralegals to help people seeking permanent restraining orders.

Also, community property laws are not set in stone. There are mitigating circumstances such as these in which a superior court judge factors which spouse is awarded a percentage greater than 50%.

Call friends and family for a place to stay if it's unbearable or dangerous. These actions to keep you out of harm's way do not negate the financial award which you and your children will need if it comes to divorce.

Good luck and please let us know how it goes.








 

Thank you so much for caring, everyone. It helps so much. If it wasn’t for the kids, I would have been long gone quite a while ago. If I wasn’t terrified of him convincing them all that he’s the good one and I’m the bad one, it would also be easier.
I don’t know how to leave with five kids and my daughter’s cats (she has extreme anxiety and at times severe depression and absolutely can’t make it without them.) At this point; there’s nothing that would make the kids leave with me, they are all hooked on all the electronics he has them addicted to. If I leave, even to work, he immediately works on them to resent me being gone. It was ok for him to work, even out of town four days a week every week, but when I work he gets them to think I’m abandoning them. Very, very, very subtly.

Right now, I am physically safe. Right now, you’ve never met a sweeter, more gentle man than my GIDH. At least that’s what he’s hoping to portray. Right now, he’s taking full advantage of the fact that we’re all stuck home.

The biggest harm that is happening to me right now is that I have to keep remembering all of the abuse he’s done to me and retraumatizing myself since he is gaslighting me so bad. I have to remember why I feel confused, why I need to get away. He’s being so nice, and acting out his version of thoughtful (that doesn’t include valentine’s or Mother’s Day gifts, or any consideration of me as a human with needs and feelings of course.) But every day I see him portraying his happy-family-man persona and it messes with my brain because this is the same person who has abused me so badly himself plus gotten other people to abuse me for his pleasure. He’s the one who has destroyed me down to nothing so I’ve had to rebuild myself to be able to have something left to offer my very needy children... and now he’s being the fun one with them, literally Disney dad, and I can’t/won’t compete.

If I tell him I need a divorce, that might change. One trick he’s used in the past is to threaten to kill himself (by either driving several hours away to go off the cliff where we first decided to get married, or by threatening to jump out of the car into traffic when I’m driving, or banging his head on the tile floor, or begging me to get a gun for him to shoot himself while drunk.)

A different tactic he’s used in the past when he was angry with me was to threaten to punch me or anyone who helped me in the face. Or to start destroying my stuff again or punching holes in the wall. Or abuse himself like the one time he told me he punched his crotch instead of punching me.

So he’s never laid a finger on me yet. He has guns, all rifles, but his own dad spent time in prison for shooting a friend so I half think he wouldn’t shoot anyone but half of me is afraid it makes him more likely to.

He’s extremely smart and calculated. He basically did a 15 year long-con on me to work me up to what he actually wanted, slowly but surely abusing and manipulating me along a path he’d planned. All of his outbursts were always for specific purposes to control me and as you can see were kind of ridiculous. None of his suicide threats were even realistic. Who threatens to jump out of a car on the freeway just because our marriage counseling session didn’t go well for him?!? 🤦‍♀️ His main goal of the last six months has been to be a “great dad.” He wants the kids to like and choose him, the same way he and his siblings prefer their dad over their mom. He has decided that if the kids have good memories of him he wins. So I think that is the thread I’m clinging to... he won’t do anything physically violent to me because he wants the kids to think he’s the good one. He wants to use them for attention because he has no friends, he doesn’t like having to work at being a friend to anyone. I think it’s exhausting for him to pretend.



Reading all that... it all boils down to a fight for the kids. None of them are ok; they all have a lot of needs, behind in school or speech or crippling anxiety etc. Plus at times I have up to three other nieces or nephews at my house too because of their various home life issues. Plus extreme fire danger season...there were three fires within 10 miles of my house yesterday. I have to stop thinking this is a no-win scenario, but dammit it feels like one.
I know the kids need to see me get free, it will be important and maybe life-saving for them in their futures. My mom just laid down and died, and that example for me as a young girl keeps influencing me way too much; so I know my kids need to see me fight for my life so they have THAT in their subconscious instead.

Thank you Rob, I appreciate your clear thinking and good advice. 

One thing I keep thinking about is how your ex would be cruel to you but like a light switch would then be nice to the kids. I’m so scared of being like that. Of course I’m not being cruel to my GIDH, but I’m being way colder than I ever was. Friends that met me when I was still trying to make the marriage work have told me they were shocked at how sweet and obedient and considerate of him I was... so I’ve now cooled it down to a kind of roommate situation, but I’m trying to be polite and sort of friendly but not too friendly.
As much as he’s made me suffer, I don’t want to be cruel, and I especially don’t want to ruin the possibility of any sort of amicableness through the divorce.
So I’m trying to find the balance of not being cruel but not being too friendly, but it constantly feels like I’m being so mean by having boundaries. Are there any specifics that your ex did that was just terrible and something I should avoid? Or am I pretty safe from doing that since I’m still being polite, just trying to not have to sit next to him on the couch or do anything longer than a quick hug and peck when I see him (we have separate rooms.) Both of us try to do the dishes and try to back each other up on the rare occasion we have to change rules for the kids or whatever... he’s basically copying some of my supportive behavior I’ve always had towards him.