A very different end

I was with my ex-husband for 16 years, and for a lot of that time I was very unhappy. Because though I didn't realise it, I was being controlled. I wanted a home and a family. I felt he had to eventually come round to my way of thinking, but he never did. I cried on the way to work, I was frustrated. I felt trapped, but had a dogged sense of duty to this relationship. I looked with envy at couples outside. I thought the fundamentals were good. Even though I was impotent in every meaningful decision in our lives, and I was in the hands of an irrational dictator.

Maybe the actual truth was that I wanted a family for most of those 16 years, and it was the sunk cost type of decision making strategy. I had hung in there thus far, if I left now, at 37 I felt I would never meet someone else and be able to have kids.

So I got my kid. He, having lost control of me, and the family situation, had a breakdown, and we split up.

I was so relieved.

Whilst I know I do not want to be here in this relationship, it is different. A generaliszed discomfort and mistrust, profound uncertainty about the future, and a sensation of being a square peg in a round hole. I can keep on sanding myself away. I'm not distraught, but I am afraid of the consequences of "just leaving" in that I have no idea if he will react violently.

But perhaps once again there is an ulterior motive. What I am just as afraid of is that to get out of this, I have to lose my home. The thing I craved for so long.