SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Darkness- Someone told me there will never be a perfect time for divorce. It's going to be hard and challenging. There is no perfect scenario in this.

It's either change or continue to live like you are. I can't imagine living life miserably any longer. Your kids deserve two whole parents.

Is start looking for a flexible job and see what's out there. It doesn't hurt to look. Start saving money and meet with a lawyer to see what child support would look like.

I'm going to be living a very different life and I'm scared to death about it but at least I'll have peace. I'm getting off the rollercoaster.

She also couldn’t be left with just any old regular babysitter.

You probably could find a nanny that deals with special needs that could look after her or both of your children.

Also, when my son was young, I put money in my Dependent Care FSA to use to pay for his childcare expenses. Basically, money was taken from my paycheck PRE-tax and put into the FSA. It saved me money in the long run to do that. I believe the cutoff age for kids is 13 to use it and the max you can put in it is currently 5k annually (verify that). Also, all of the money has to be used each year or you lose it. You can't carry any over.

DF are you and your husband friends? Is this issue something you and he could sit down and work through? Instead of it being the case of "who is initiating" can you two do a non-contested, mediated divorce, where you sit down and agree on an exit strategy and work with a mediator to make it happen?

If your husband is a decent guy, and wants to get out of the marriage as much as you do, maybe what you need is some teamwork.

Prissy,

She is autistic. Nonverbal but moderate-to-high functioning overall depending on the situation.

Neanderthal and Westway,

The trouble with doing everything by friendly agreement is that, while I’m 100% sure that if we didn’t have kids he’d have left a long time ago, or we would have done a mutual friendly parting of ways, he seems to not be in a hurry to go the divorce route now because of the kids. By that I mean not only is he not in a hurry, but I think he wants us both to endure this situation for the long term because of them. (Endure with no improvement or effort, I mean.)

If I were a more unselfish person, and one who was ok with walking on eggshells and keeping my mouth shut and just going along to get along, I could do that. But it’s already been over a year and a half of things going steadily downhill and I just can’t see myself doing it for over a decade and a half more until our youngest is up and out.

[This message edited by Darkness Falls at 1:14 PM, August 14th (Friday)]

lieshurt,

The nanny/caregiver route is what we’ve been doing during the pandemic while school has been closed, from a facility that does in-home care for special needs and seniors and the like. It’s been working out fine, but it costs a FORTUNE.

Darkness...

Please look disability for her again. As well as Medicaid waivers..which can cover specialized care.

Start with early intervention in your school system. Please PM if I can help

I have two kids with autism, ages 9 and 6, one of whom was non-verbal until last December when she started talking.

I hired a nanny who was trained as an aide to young children with autism. She works every other week to match my custody schedule. She is also a single mom and lined up her custody schedule to be the opposite of mine, so it works out. I guess I'm saying that neither she nor I realized that there would be this synergistic opportunity for both of us until a mutual friend who had heard us both talking about how trapped we were in our situations matched us up.

It sounds like you have good benefits where you are currently working, I would try to stay there if possible.

It sounds like you are taking on all of the burden on childcare alone, which should not be the case. if you have to go to work full time, the amount for child support should change so that both parents pay a fair portion. Hiring a babysitter for the evening may be your only option. I have had great luck using my "village" to find help after school care. One of my mom friends and I exchange babysitting and I have another friend that charges me very little to drop the kids to school in the morning.

You mentioned that your daughter has an autism diagnosis. Your state should have a bureau or dept that specializes in resources for people with disabilities. I would start there and see if she might qualify for waiver services. She may be able to get some support staff that could help cover some of the time you are at work. There are a lot of resources available, so I would strongly recommend reaching out to them even if you find other childcare. Music, recreational, and behavior therapies can all make a huge difference in development.

I read you have on preschool aged child, but are the other kids a bit older to where it won't be long until they are able to be home alone? I was stuck in my marriage too long because of the childcare issues, I'm sorry there are really no good answers here. My need to get out of my marriage was immediate, so I just do what I need to do to make it work.

Planetx,

One child is 2 and one is 4, so unfortunately we have a LONG time until latchkey status and home alone is possible.

I will get on the waiver waiting list but I have heard that in my state it’s several years long.

If I gave the impression that I take on too much of the childcare burden, that was my error. Because H makes substantially more $ than I, it is mostly his income that pays for the childcare that we need while I work part-time—primarily pays for most things, in fact (which is part of the problem in terms of thinking about how to support my own household). I have absolutely no issue with doing the brunt of the physical childcare, housekeeping, cooking, etc. And if I were married to someone with whom I could have a decent partnership, I would be very content doing so. The issue is that with the full-time schedule at my current company (which I do agree I should stay at) it’s not possible to do both, and therefore I find myself in an endless loop of “stuck” when I contemplate the future.

Of course I love my kids—I would give my life for them—but I find myself thinking it would have been so much easier to have chosen to remain childless; the marriage problem would be solved in an instant if I had kept my full time hours from pre-kids, lol. ✌🏻

[This message edited by Darkness Falls at 1:51 PM, August 17th (Monday)]

If I were a more unselfish person, and one who was ok with walking on eggshells and keeping my mouth shut and just going along to get along, I could do that. But it’s already been over a year and a half of things going steadily downhill and I just can’t see myself doing it for over a decade and a half more until our youngest is up and out.

Gently, I think this is an excuse. You need to be bold and go to him and float the idea. Don't let your fear keep you in bondage. I don't know a lot about your history, but I don't recall you ever saying he was abusive or mean. I think if you sit him down and lay it on the line and say "we can do this nicely as friends, or I'll get a lawyer and we can do it the hard way and end up hating each other's guts. Otherwise I'm not staying in this dead end marriage for another year. You are miserable and I am miserable and it is not worth it to either of us to ruin the good years of our lives sating in a loveless marriage." I think if you be direct you might be surprised at what he says. Then again, you know him best.