My Husband Wouldn’t Leave the House

Our marriage had sunk but he wouldn’t move out

“If you leave me,” says my husband. “I’ll make sure there’s no money and you’ll work for the rest of your life.”

I stood in our kitchen surprised by his words but believing they were anger. The type of ugly words we say to one another when a relationship is dying. But they were anything but.

It was emotional foreshadowing.

A warning but I didn’t recognize it.

I thought we were two people surrendering. Isn’t that what divorce is? Most would never choose it. It’s the unfortunate result of exhausting all of your options.

“Why won’t he leave?” asks my friend.

“He refuses,” I say.

“That’s not normal,” she says. “If you need to separate you need to separate and figure out a solution.”

She couldn’t have been more right. There’s nothing normal about a man who defiantly won’t work on his marriage and won’t move out. You can’t have it both ways.

But my husband was showing his true colors.

I always say I was more controlled in divorce than in my marriage.

The escalation was indescribable, almost bizarre.

And no, I wasn’t being unreasonable. He didn’t need to fear losing the house or me being fair in divorce. Honestly, I wasn’t capable of that. I just needed my children to be in a home absent of upset. And my husband was drinking and causing unpredictability, pain, and chaos.

My children begged me to leave him.

Kids are smart.

The change in their father frightened and upset them.

In the early days of this new version of my husband, I told him he had to address whatever was bothering him or move out. I knew he didn’t have a problem with alcohol. I realized something was bothering him and it was coming out when he drank.

Interestingly and pathologically, he chose to leave three times.

Because he was still in control.

He knew I didn’t want our marriage to end.

But the moment he realized I was done and a true long-term separation and divorce were imminent, he dug his heels. At first, I just moved into another bedroom. And I pleaded and pleaded and waited and waited.

But he said it was ‘HIS house.’

Finally, I sent an email to my husband and a family member.

I was desperate for reality. Someone who would tell him to do the right thing and give us all a chance to start over. At this point, I was apprehensive about divorce but determined to establish separation. I didn’t involve an attorney though I had met with one.

Truthfully, my heart was still leading me.

I should have gone through with the divorce immediately.

It’s just soul-crushing to disband a family.

For months we went back and forth. My husband emailing he couldn’t afford to move out. Another family member told me to include them in the email. Now there were four of us. Myself, my husband, and two of his family. But now we had a rationale person on the thread.

When my husband said he couldn’t afford it she called his bluff.

We had just sold an investment property and let go of an employee.

There was plenty of money.

After the better part of two years, he moved out. My children and I miss him but are happy for the peace. I am becoming more independent despite still doing some things with him as a family.

In the eleventh month, he calls me.

“If you don’t let me move back in,” he says. “I’m not sending him to college.”

I’m smart enough to realize it’s a month before he’s out for a full year. I know he might be legally maneuvering but a part of me wants to believe he doesn’t want to be away from us.

And I don’t want our oldest son to suffer because of our marital problems.

It’s one of my greatest mistakes.

I shouldn’t have given into his threat.

Just saying that word now — threat — angers me that I let anyone, let alone a man who was the father of my children do that to me. And to one of our children. Using him as collateral and bait to ensnare me again.

I knew immediately I had made a mistake.

He had proven difficult to free me from.

My friend was right, it’s not normal when someone won’t let you go.

A year later I walked into a lawyer’s office. I drove home and told my husband I was done. This time he refused to send our oldest son back to college for his second year. But I didn’t budge.

And then he refused to move out, again.

For three months it claimed he had no money. There wasn’t any way he could support himself in another place. He stopped paying the mortgage, our health insurance, and other bills. He withheld grocery and school supply money. You name it he did it.

When he finally moved out the ‘poor’ man was able to pay all of the bills.

Even his own.

But he would continue to taunt and traumatize me with financial abuse. He would stay behind in the mortgage so I would receive foreclosure notices, intermittently discontinue our health insurance, cut off the electricity, withhold money and so much more.

He would remind me it was ‘HIS house.’

I was just living in it.

It took five years to escape him. No child should endure an elongated divorce because their father doesn’t want to pay child support or give their stay-at-home mom a chance to start over or receive any savings or retirement from a decades-long marriage.

I later found out the two tax years we had separated he lowered the business income to under $2,000 per year. He was going to make sure I received no alimony or child support.

Hence, why he was initially agreeable to paying child support.

He knew it would never happen.

He refused to hire a lawyer.

He said he couldn’t afford it. Gee that excuse came up a LOT. And then he wouldn’t get back to my lawyer or whatever other passive-aggressive techniques he decided to use.

Finally, when our youngest son was graduating high school he was ready.

“Dad was never going to divorce you until I graduated,” says my son.

He had just returned from seeing his father.

I’m not sure what was said. I never asked for the exact words. It didn’t matter. My son now knew what I had already known. This was about control and money. Letting me receive child support and/or remain in his house was not an option.

I should have hired a lawyer and left when I first attempted a long separation. But the heart combined with a relationship that has turned unhealthy can lead you to poor choices.

Regardless, there’s nothing normal about a person who won’t leave you.

It’s extreme behavior.

Marriages end, it’s unfortunate, but it happens.

You shouldn’t be held a prisoner to money and control.