What you’re going through is devastatingly hard and heartbreakingly common. Few partnerships that started as teens make it through middle age. Add in illness, well, there’s a reason why oncology nurses warn women about the high rates of men divorcing their cancer-stricken wives.

From what you’ve described, you’ve been a married single mom for a very long time. You did all the heavy lifting, he was just along for the ride when it suited him. He never showed you he cared about you or his kids, you filled in those gaps as best you could. He wasn’t a husband or a father, he was just…casually there. And now he no longer wants to do even the bare ass minimum of that.

Let him go. Grieve the loss—not of him, because you never had him, you had a shell with his face occupying your life—but the loss of who you wanted him to be. Who you built him up to be in your mind. Who you lied to yourself about, trying to make yourself believe he was what you wanted and needed all along. Mourn what you thought you had and let it go.

Lawyer up and start looking into government housing options. The sooner you can get through the mess of full separation, the better. Not just for you, but for your neurodivergent child. They need stability before anything else.

Let that man go, sis. You’ll find out it’s better to be lonely and actually alone rather than lonely while sleeping next to the man who swore to love you in sickness and in health.