Van Eeden

Your likes and FLYDAH’s comments keep this blog alive. If it wasn’t for you two, I would quit. Thank you for making this a place for me to speak truth and to share and maybe some day another autism mom will find it like one found my old blog. Because of cruel people and the woman my husband is having an affair with, I am not being public about this one and haven’t put my married name in the details so I have some kind of control over what that woman knows about me. For YouTube, I no longer share any difficulties. But I still live with the father…

And that, is the trap. If I were to divorce NOW, we’d either have to sell the house or co own it or put it in my name and I take over the mortgage or bond as we call it here. Except look at my measly R3500 personal income from someone who is a CIO of a JSE listed company. And look at the fact that I already can’t get employment because of my health. No bank would sign over the bond to me because I can’t afford it.

If we sell right now, the money we make will be eaten up by the remaining bond and won’t pay for another home. I am trapped.

And that is the theme for this post. Being a homemaker and full time mother is only safe if you are guaranteed a full time husband. When be messes up, when he financially abuses you, you are on your own. He is a narcissist. Last year I asked him to say anything, just anything affirming. I know my worth and my work. I know I did a lot to get my children to pass their exams despite him talking our son against my advice to take a subject he failed which then made him unable to get university entry, only technical college entry or entry into a higher certificate and then if passed, a degree programme.

I kept a lot to myself. I had hope he was still redeemable and I wanted to be able to celebrate that instead of sharing my horrible reality but now with the very long affair and him not being ashamed, it’s time for me to also live my own life. My own life is a life of genuineness and truth. And I am trapped financially. I don’t even know how we will survive when he is retired. Money is the only thing stopping me from divorcing. The money owed on this house, on the two older children’s fees and on medical expenses.

I want to cry. I have cried. Today I cried at the sheer injustice as I told my friend of the silent treatment and cruelty and then telling me that friends he has been in touch with, a very happily married couple, want to come visit this very week.

I don’t want them here because he obviously has acted as if he’s still my husband. When you are another person’s financial provider, furnishing their home, caring about their struggles that they inflicted on themselves by not going to work for many days and you write long essays on how to answer the case at work but you don’t even say three sentences to your wife, that other woman is your wife.

And I cannot pretend. I’m not like him. He has lived a lie all his life. There is no way you could preach the way you did but live the opposite unless you were preaching with a forked tongue. I cannot have people I used to be close to 20 whole years ago and haven’t communicated with and am surprised he talks to, thinking I am married and happy. It’s not me to be fake.

Also, I don’t want them because the husband has always praised his wife. He boasts about her accomplishments and praises her. Mine doesn’t. And because he says he has no guilt or shame, I know he never will. I do not want some happy couple in my face.

I am suffering. Emotional abuse and neglect. Financial abuse. Cruelty. Silent treatment all day but when he’s on the phone to other people then he’s the life of the party. It hurts.

I hope one day a divorcing woman finds this. I hope she knows I know the despair of wanting to get rid of the heavy rock on your back but being tied to it.

Flydah said she regrets that she ever told me to stay for the children when she caught a glimpse of the abuse. Thankfully I didn’t listen to her. Or rather, I didn’t stay because she told me to. I stayed because I believed he was going to stop lying and start being honest like he pretended to be in his sermons.

If he’d been unchristian at the time in every single way, then I’d have know he’d not remain the kind of father he should be and I’d have known the children would have lost nothing good from our being divorced.

But here we are today. And I’m thankful for this space to share my real life.