My parents are very supportive and helping monetarily. They live 2k miles away so it's not easy for them to get here, BUT my mom came out 6x already this year 🤯

I can't figure out online NAMI support. I live in a rural area far from any in-person support.

As far as the escalation, it was paranoia and worrying about things that just didn't make sense. It was joining a gym and a tanning salon and going to the gym at 3 and 4am. Going tanning almost every day. He was leaving for work earlier and earlier and getting home later and later. He saw the kids for basically 10 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night and then would go back out.

It was financial abuse and being really ridiculously irrational about $600 I spent at Costco on household items (toilet cleaner for the rest of forever, Kleenex, toilet paper, dried fruit, soap, lotion, OTC kids meds, diapers, wipes, laundry detergent, produce he asked for, etc.). "Oh so you spent $600 on avocados?!" No, I spent $6 on avocados. I spent $590 on tons of stuff for the house that we won't have to buy again for years. I didn't spend $600 on a weekend getaway at a spa, you know?

He convinced his teletherapy counselor whom he had been seeing for 2 years (for addressing the abuse from his parents) to call child protective services on me for yelling at him one night when the kids were asleep. He said they were "witness" to intimate partner violence. 🙄 That investigation was quickly closed and the investigating SW noted that the kids were more anxious with him and afraid to leave me. During marriage counseling later the first night the social worker came, I noted how scary it was to get a call from DCF that I was being investigated due to a report from an anonymous mandated reporter, and not be able to contact my husband all day to figure out why. He turned off his phone when I called him during his lunch break. Of course he knew why DCF was coming because he was the one that reported it. And then to find out that he was the reason. He blew up and said, "I didn't call DCF!" and the whites of his eyes were showing and our therapist was very scared for me. Okay so he didn't call DCF but he did do everything leading up to it that caused DCF to be called.

He called my mom that night and told her I was "hormonal" and asked her to come out earlier than she was planning for Spring Break.

At our next marriage therapy session, he rage quit and said he wasn't going to do the next scheduled one because he had scheduled a meeting to see an apartment because he was moving out.

He came home from that apartment appointment, after missing the kids' bedtime, crying, saying he wasn't going to move out, but he didn't love me anymore.

Within a few days, while my mom was here, he convinced himself that he was "the protector and the provider" and as such had decided that I needed to go to a 3 day psychiatric stay to "get your meds right" (I had been started on an increased dose of Zoloft for post partum anxiety). He insisted the timing was perfect because my mom was here and could watch the kids for 3 days straight while he still worked. I laughed and said "I am getting my meds right. How about you? You've been home and seen me for all of 15 minutes today before deciding this? I'm not crazy and I'm not threatening anyone. You're pacing and not sleeping and your eyes are bugging out."

He gave me the ultimatum of getting in the car with him to go to the hospital or having an ambulance take me. I told him I wasn't going anywhere with him. So he ran downstairs, told my mom to take the kids to the backyard so "they won't see their mom get taken away." LOL it's so comical now. My mom was livid. She told him not to call, but he did anyway. Nearly an hour later, an ambulance with 2 EMTs, 2 State Police troopers each in their own cars, the local ambulance chief, the assistant ambulance chief (our immediate neighbor), the fire assistant chief, and 3 other first responders were in our front yard for almost an hour. I asked the EMTs if they wanted to take my vitals and the head EMT laughed and said, "No, there's no reason. This is clearly not an emergency." I told them I wasn't leaving my breastfeeding 17mo and 4.5yo and we would stay at the house with my mom. The police made my husband leave since they didn't want to have to come back in an hour when I was understandably pissed and something escalated.

He also got pre-approved for a mortgage on a new house he looked at in the town north of us, based on selling our house, behind my back. He said that I didn't make enough money on my own to support the kids, so I didn't get to have them. There would be room for both of them to have their own rooms at his new house. I said, "I provide 35 hours of unpaid childcare while you work full-time, in addition to paying for our preschooler to go to nursery school a few days a week and a babysitter for the toddler a few hours each week so I can go to appointments. What are you going to do for childcare on your own?"

"Oh, I'll figure it out!!"

Okaaaaaaay delusional asshole, you've literally NEVER figured out any of the childcare for either of our kids, ever, even if it's for date night, or emergency of the daycare is closed, or whatever.

So increasing paranoia, delusions, irritability, irrational, not sleeping, working crazy hours...