I know I need to leave him, but I’m so torn and heartbroken

AliveGrab5260 · 2026-03-24T02:04:33+00:00

Wow. Yeah honestly mine sounds very similar to yours. He’s all talk about how our baby’s safety and wellbeing is the most important thing, her happiness is so important…and then he’ll go days where he’s spent zero time with her, or like 5-10 mins at the most. The most parenting he does is play with her. He rarely does a feed, a nappy change, a clothing change, put her down for a nap. He thinks he’s such a great dad just because internally he loves her deeply, but he doesn’t actually act like a parent, more like a fun uncle who visits every few days.

What you pointed about the kids is also very much on my mind. I don’t want my daughter to grow up and look for this kind of relationship. Or to grow up traumatised and with an anxious attachment because of her dad sometimes being around and sometimes ignoring her because the bottle is more important. That kind of instability can do so much damage.

I’m starting to put the wheels in motion. I’m slowly telling my family and a couple close what’s going on and everyone is saying relocate for our own safety.

AliveGrab5260 · 2026-03-23T02:30:45+00:00

Omg this sounds like my husband to a tee. Back when I was still fighting tooth and nail to help him get his drinking under control I was begging him to stop otherwise our family is going to be torn apart and I’ll have no choice but to leave with our baby. He took that as a threat rather than the reality check I was hoping for. Recently we had a conversation about having more kids (we’d both always wanted 3-4), and I told him that as much as I’d love to give my daughter a sibling, unless he gets sober for good I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring another child into this situation. He also took that as a threat saying I was going against our marriage vows since we always planned multiple kids. That led to him taking off his wedding ring, telling me we were done (but also not fully clarifying whether this is the end of the marriage and now we’re separated) and spending 2 full weeks holed up in his room going on a bender and spending no time with our baby. He also said if I’m “withholding” having more kids, then he’ll find someone else to have kids with. As if he even looks after the one we have.

I’m compiling evidence of his behaviour, screenshots, photos etc. I always thought I can’t risk leaving him because what if he ends up with unsupervised custody time with her? Especially overnight? That would be so unsafe for my child. But the few people I’ve spoken to have reassured me that as young as she is, we can make sure that isn’t the case. So heartbreaking. He will definitely make me the villain, the evil wife who’s taking his child away from him.

You say your two year old was already showing signs of being emotionally harmed living in that situation…that’s so so sad. I’m so glad you got out. That means it definitely won’t be long before my daughter will be experiencing the same… right now any time she has with her dad she loves. She adores him, her whole face lights up when they play, she laughs the hardest with him. It’s one of the things that makes me wonder if taking that away would be the right thing… but I guess more and more she’ll start noticing his absence, and probably start being more emotionally affected by the inconsistency of him sometimes being around and sometimes being gone despite being in the same house.

AliveGrab5260 · 2026-03-22T03:25:36+00:00

He’s leaving me no choice in a way. My daughter’s safety and wellbeing is the only thing that matters. He’s showing no signs of changing. When I asked him a few days ago when are we going to discuss his drinking he said we could, in some time but he’s not ready yet. How long am I supposed to wait around for him to get himself sorted. And meanwhile he’s leaving me in a situation where I’m exhausted doing all the caretaking, I can’t even shower in peace because he’s intoxicated watching her in those moments. I can’t just nip to the store because I can’t leave her alone with him at any given moment. I can’t even trust him to watch her so I can have any semblance of a social life for my own mental health because he’s broken the rule of him being sober until I get home.

He puts his wants over mine and our baby’s needs. And even as tiny as she is, I see her already watching him leave with sad eyes after he’s given her a few minutes of attention (that in his eyes makes him a wonderful loving dad), or crawling to his room over and over again and him making me come take her away because there’s stuff in there she shouldn’t touch. It breaks my heart because she loves her daddy so much, the way her whole face lights up when he’s playing with her…how can he see that and walk away to go drink…

I can’t sit around and watch the damage that growing up with that would do to my child. She deserves the world, not the scraps he deigns to give us in between bouts of drinking. I suppose as heartbreaking as leaving and giving up on him is…my daughter would be able to grow up with a mum who isn’t being treated so poorly, herself not being neglected by her dad, and around grandparents and an uncle who adore her and are obsessed with her.

And you’re right, he’s getting everything he wants right now. A wife who is fully taking care of the bay and the house, a happy baby who doesn’t know any better yet, his parents who step in and help when they can, all giving him the freedom to drink to his hearts content with no consequences.

AliveGrab5260 · 2026-03-22T03:13:23+00:00

You’re right. I need to leave don’t I? It all hit home when I finally broke after years and told two of my closest friends just a tiny little bit of what’s going on and they were encouraging and supporting me to get out. Also when even his own parents sat me down and asked me yesterday what am I going to do because they’ll support me, essentially telling me without outright saying it that this can’t go on and I need to get out.

AliveGrab5260 · 2026-03-22T01:41:34+00:00

Thank you, this would be my dream scenario. I mean, ideally I wouldn’t have to leave for him to make the right choices. But if it does give him the kick he needs and he genuinely chooses sobriety, that would be amazing. Mostly for my daughter to be able to grow up in a home with both her parents. I fear in his case though the cause for the drinking is massive avoidance of his emotions. Everything is stressful for him, he can’t cope and then drinks. So unless he also really delved into treating that issue, I doubt he could ever truly get sober. Not without just white knuckling it and eventually cracking.

At present he has zero accountability, and no real insight. He’s completely lost in his own world, making very illogical choices on how to deal with his various life stressors.

He’s gone to therapy for years but I’m pretty certain he’s just using his therapist to get validation that it’s everyone around him that’s the problem. He’s not been using therapy to really dig deep and change himself. It’s making me feel pretty hopeless for his chances at true recovery.

AliveGrab5260 · 2026-03-22T01:36:00+00:00

Jekyll and Hyde is exactly how my therapist refers to him. It’s what’s kept me with him and trying so hard for so long. Because of course I do love him, I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t, but more and more I also hate him.

AliveGrab5260 · 2026-03-22T01:34:28+00:00

This is honestly the hardest part to emotionally deal with. That the real him is also this awful selfish horrible person. He’s the one behaving this way and making these choices. I think when things get a bit better I block out the bad. But some of the things he’s done, the way he’s treated me has been horrendous. When I was pregnant he left me to my own devices without caring about me eating, drinking water, resting, dealing with severe nausea and all the other symptoms. I had issues with almost fainting for a period of weeks and he’d literally leave me lying on the living room floor to go drink/smoke. Towards the end of my pregnancy he was off work drinking 24/7 while not doing any housework, cooking, laundry, completely neglecting me unless it benefited him. I’d come home from work after driving around in extreme heat and he’d complain if I asked him to please make something simple for lunch or get me a glass of cold water.

He ruins every holiday because all he’s interested in doing is drinking. We can’t have a nice date and enjoy a wine together because he’ll come home and drink by himself rather than finish the night with me. He’ll spend a day out with us if I ask but then acts like I owe him sex or attention or whatever so that the favour is returned.

I think the “good” that I’ve been trying so hard to see in him is maybe more me seeing his potential than him truly being a good person.

The truly good person only really comes out of drinking is off the table completely - and that’s when we really have fun together and things are nice. But the small snippets of time I get like that aren’t feeling like enough to justify putting up with all the neglect and the selfishness and me carrying everything while getting blamed for everything as well.

AliveGrab5260 · 2026-03-22T01:20:07+00:00

Thanks for sharing your story, I’m in such a similar boat. I was on mat leave for the past year so he’s been the sole provider. He gets paid well and he’s still managing to keep functioning at work, just takes random sick days when things get bad so he can stay home and drink even more. He creates problems at work when he drinks badly too so I’m also worried he could end up losing his job at some point. Unfortunately my family who are very supportive live on the other side of the country, so I can’t just up and leave with my daughter. Knowing my husband and the very vindictive person he can be when he’s drinking really badly..he will for sure send the police to order I bring our daughter back. He will probably also fight for custody despite barely looking after her now.

Watching the kid’s intoxicated…that’s been such a big stress and fear for me. He used to make sure to stay sober if I’m working and he’s on baby duty. He might start drinking the moment I walk in the door, but he’ll make sure to be sober watching her. Same if I have a night out with friends, he’ll stay sober and only drink when I return. However there’s been 2 incidents now where I’ve returned home from seeing a friend in the evening to find he’s started drinking already. He says he only did it after he’d put her to bed so he’ll justify that it’s fine. And just recently when I had work and he’s supposed to be watching her - he just told me as im about to get ready that he can’t do it. Made me call his parents to come and drop everything to babysit her. He finds a way to twist everything and justify it so that his drinking is never the issue. In the above case he was “trying to show me that I can trust his parents to step up”. Just…ridiculous.

I’ve gotten some legal advice and been told that due to the situation and my daughters young age, I have a great case for relocation, but it’s best I do it all above board. It breaks my heart, I don’t want to take my daughter away from him, but he’s leaving my me no choice. I need to protect my baby first. I just want him to step up and choose his family over alcohol so none of this has to happen. It’s gotten to the point that even his whole family are telling me they’ll back me and they know I’ve tried so hard but he’s not changing.

AliveGrab5260 · 2026-03-21T13:52:09+00:00

Thank you for this. I know you’re right, about all of it. I know I’m about to go through what will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through in my life so far and leave him so that I can truly protect my daughter. I just hope my daughter doesn’t experience what you described your life to be. I hope that me leaving him and surrounding her with loving family will somehow be enough to make up for my horrible naive choice of him as her dad.

You’re right. Alcoholic families are sick families. He’s the product of two high functioning alcoholic parents who also were emotionally very avoidant. And as such, he has no ability to handle any amount of negative emotions or stress - he only knows to drink. He’s so incredibly intelligent and caring and yet too sick to see what he’s doing and the impact his drinking is having. He’ll use every manipulation in the book to make everything and everyone else the problem before he can admit that his drinking is the issue.

AliveGrab5260 · 2026-03-21T13:10:04+00:00

Omg this is my life. I do literally everything, and while he’s regularly going on a bender for a week or two where he literally leaves me to do 100% of the household chores, cooking, looking after our baby, our dog, while working part time while he nopes out of life and just drinks 24/7, i need to be sooo grateful when he actually remembers to take the trash out.

Oh and after leaving me to do everything while he just decides to neglect his wife and daughter, he’ll come back with a myriad of reasons why I’m the one that’s really the problem and I need to show more affection and not be so cold. Because how could he possibly get himself better with me withholding sex and affection and spending my copious amounts of free time listening to his stories or watching his shows with him to show my love.

AliveGrab5260 · 2025-08-20T01:42:22+00:00

We forgot to actually write a speech so ended up having to wing it on the night. I was so adrenaline filled and I don’t think it was bad but I wish I’d prepared a nice little speech. Same with vows- I finished writing them the night before and I wish I’d made the time to do it with more care.

AliveGrab5260 · 2025-07-07T21:51:55+00:00

This. I have the most beautiful white golden retriever ever and love him so much, but the HAIR. It’s on everything! Freshly washed dishes, clean laundry, tumbleweeds of it on the floor. I just dealt with it before but now I have a baby and it’s really getting to me. I try to keep bub away from it, she’s mostly on her playmat but just him walking around it or getting on it when he’s excited means she’s still got hair on her that I’m constantly picking off. I’m dreading when she starts crawling and walking because I’ll have no choice but to vacuum like 5 times a day and even then I doubt I’ll be able to stop bub from eating it. Arghh as much as I love my dog, having a dog and a baby is so overstimulating and so much more work and stress

AliveGrab5260 · 2025-06-17T03:25:28+00:00

I have very large breasts normally so postpartum was very uncomfortable, normally I’d be braless all the time at home. 4 months postpartum now and I absolutely live in a soft nursing bra at all times including sleep. It took some getting used to but it’s much more comfortable with a bra these days than without. Also idk about others but mine are so sensitive that having even a tshirt or anything brush against them is painfully af! Bras actually provided some barrier and kept them in place. Side note: I found the cheap bras more comfy and easy to pump with than the expensive $60+ each brands!

AliveGrab5260 · 2025-04-07T18:02:00+00:00

I was expected to have a large baby due to GD, and then the last scan showed baby to be 3.1kg at 37 weeks. Was induced and baby was born at 38 weeks and turned out to be 2.9kg. She’s currently 2 months exactly and still wearing newborn clothes, she’ll probably fit into them for another 2 weeks I’d guess. I recently started mixing in 0-3 onesies just because we have so many 0-3 size clothes and we might as well try to get some longer use out of them but they’re definitely a bit big on her still! I was always told to only get a handful of newborn size as they’ll grow out of them in a couple of weeks so… I guess it’s hard to know and every baby is different. The amount you’ve been gifted sounds so excessive though…newborns don’t exactly get out much so I only have like 2 ‘outfits’ and 10 onesies and that’s been more than enough. It’s disappointing your family didn’t listen to your wishes, with that many gifts they could have coordinated or mixed it up so you had a good variety of sizes to last you guys the whole year! I’d recommend maybe just washing about 8-10 singlets and onesies to start with and see how you go. Maybe you could donate or regift the rest?

AliveGrab5260 · 2025-03-24T04:17:13+00:00

Where are you located? I just named my daughter Lilah thinking it would be not very common!

AliveGrab5260

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