My Husband Yelled About Our Divorce In Front of The Kids

How to traumatize your children forever.

I don’t want to say “I hate my life” because, in the grand scheme, my life is pretty cushy. I have a full-time job currently allowing me to work from home. While my kids are high-needs, they’re a piece of cake compared to other kids with their conditions (Autism and ADHD). I’m not homeless and I can afford food on the table. I have a solid group of friends.

I live with my Soon To Be Ex-Husband and for the most part, things are about as okay as you can expect. I’m a part of various divorce support groups and some of those stories make me grateful for my situation.

Except on days like today.

Today, I hate my life.

I still live with Joseph. I can’t move out until I can buy a place. I can’t buy a place until I get my payout. I can’t get my payout until Joseph refinances the loan under his name. He can’t refinance until the Marital Settlement Agreement (MSA) is signed. We can’t sign the MSA until the mediator lawyer creates the final draft. She can’t create the final draft until we have our MSA review.

Our review is next week.

Nothing can happen in my life until next week.

Living with a Soon To Be Ex during a social distancing pandemic is about as fun as ripping your teeth out with rusty pliers..

Today is the last day of my kids’ school. It was virtual. Both of them had cutesy “Memory of Grade __” digital assignments.

This afternoon, despite school being over, I looked at my son’s assignment. He wrote stupid goofy comments all over it and pasted dumb farm animal pictures. I told him to redo it because this is also for the teacher’s memories and poor homegirl had to virtually homeschool little assholes who couldn’t keep their pieholes closed on Zoom sessions. (I didn’t explain the importance of the assignment in that way.)

My son redid it, I looked it up online, and it was still absurd. For example, in spots where he was asked “what did he like best about Math class,” he wrote “lerning”…yes, purposely misspelling “learning”. I told him nicely to redo it with his best effort.

An hour later, Joseph comes in and tells me how our son is hiding in the pantry crying because he thinks I’m mad at him over his assignment.

“Oh please,” I tell Joseph. “I didn’t yell, I just told him twice to redo it.”

Joseph begins to berate me and I get defensive.

“You don’t need to get defensive!” he raises his voice.

“You’re telling me he’s upset and I’m telling you what I actually said,” I reply, sitting at my desk while he’s in the doorway.

“I don’t care, I’m just telling you!” he says angrily. This leads to more bickering for another minute until he yells, “It doesn’t fucking matter because we’re getting a divorce anyway!”

Did I mention that my kids don’t know yet about the divorce? We haven’t said anything since it’ll be months before I can move out; there’s no sense in telling them now there’ll be divorce, make them think this is what divorce life is like, and then break the news all over again when it’s time to move out. Plus, I didn’t want their already-ruined school year to be made worse; they both struggled academically.

I hiss on the stairs as he walks down, “What is wrong with you? Why would you say that so they can hear?”

Joseph continues yelling. “They already know!” he spews. They absolutely do not know. My kids are 10 and 7, they’re nosey about everything and ultra-paranoid. If they knew, they’d be all over us asking constantly what will happen with their lives. Heck, if he thought they knew, then he should have told me so we could have a solid conversation with them.

“They do not know,” I hiss some more while he stomps into the kitchen, with my son in the pantry with his laptop and the door closed. “We only get one shot to not ruin it!”

Joseph storms out of the kitchen into the office. “It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter!” he yells and slams the door.

What. The. Fuck.

Fortunately, my daughter was in her bedroom with the door closed and, assumingly, didn’t hear anything. My son thankfully had the pantry door closed and didn’t clue in to what was happening.

I open the pantry door while swallowing my rage. “Hey, why are you being silly in here? Let’s work on that assignment upstairs.”

As we walk to my room, my son asks me why we were arguing. “Oh, just small things.” I brush it aside.

I formulate a raging text to Joseph. Telling him that it does matter how they find out. How this impacts the rest of their lives. How this is a trauma and it needs to be handled delicately. How their view of safety hinges on us presenting it in a calm, united manner, and not from him yelling angrily. How they’ll need therapy for years if they find out from him making it a hostile incident.

Thankfully, I don’t send it. I retype it few more times, telling him that he can be as pissed as he wants at me but he is not to bring the children into it. Still, I don’t send it.

I calm myself down by bitching to a friend over instant messenger. Their reply: “Fuck, he is such a child.”

My son is still in my room on his laptop, playing games. I go into the bathroom, close the door, and silently sob on the bathroom floor as I did for most of our marriage.

I’m angry that the mental welfare of our children hinges on me. Every study on the planet says that divorce isn’t what hurts children as much as seeing their parents behave with animosity towards each other. All they need to know is their world is safe.

So I have to put up with his shitty behavior to not make it escalate. I have to temper his rage instead of feeling my own or reacting. I’m the guardian of our kids’ emotions despite that he thinks all of this is my fault (gee, is it any wonder why I would want to divorce someone so immature and erratic).

Because he gets to keep our house as a result of his inheritance, while I barely get anything, he has reduced how much he’s offered to give me as a token gesture down to $50k (in Southern California, that’s not even closing costs on a house). I need the money though. So until the papers are signed, I can’t tell him “Hey, stop being an immature fucker and stop having tantrums that will impact the kids.”

Joseph has all the power: he has more money and he’s the one who becomes unhinged so that I have to mitigate his actions to protect the children.

Part of me wants to say, “Fuck it. He can look like an asshole to them. I don’t care.”

But I do care. Because I care about my kids. I care about their mental well-being if they think their dad is a dick. I care about them finding out about the divorce outside of a calm, safe space. I care that it is mental abuse for them to feel unsafe and terrified for their little world without the emotional comfort of both parents to protect them.

So as much as I’d love to walk into his office right now and tell him, “You can not do that ever again because the damage is irreparable”, I can’t. Because it will cause him to go berserk and possibly tell them.

This helpless and angry feeling I have right now is what I felt for most of my marriage. I’m quiet as a mouse as I type, tears down my face, the fires of Mordor burning with rage inside me. Every part of my body wants to start screaming at the top of my lungs. I want to throw things. My hands shake as I type this.

I hate Joseph. I genuinely fucking hate him. It’s not the mature thing to say but since I’ll never say it out loud, I’m saying it here: I hate him.

There is no way out for me. Rent is more expensive than my mortgage and since I’m still on the hook for the home loan, I can’t afford both. I can’t buy anything without my name off the existing loan.

And so I shall go back into the bathroom, close the door, curl up on the floor, and silently scream into the bathmat because that is the only thing I can do when all his chess pieces have my king in checkmate.