Rad-

I just want to add a brief thought for you. Well, I completely know how you feel! I just turned 30 last week, and my husband and I got engaged when I was 19 (he was 25) and we got married when I was 21.

So much of your story sounds like mine, except we do not have children, of course unless you count the four legged ones!

My husband has played that Best if kept off the board on and off for what seems like forever. He would be a real jerk sometimes, and would sit there feeling sorry for himself, and I would just take it. Not only would I "take" it, I made it oh so easy for him to keep doing.

I can not even count all of the times he has threatened to divorce me. I used to completely freak out when he would do that, you know - -cry hystericaly, beg him to stay, hide the car keys and his wallet, all so he would not leave.

It sounds so childish when I think about it now, but we had just moved from my home in California, to a small town in Oregon. He had a job transfer and we mover 30 days after our wedding. I was so young and I had never even had a serious boyfriend prior to my husband. Not only that, but I had never really lived on my own before we got married and mover 10 hours away from all of my friends and family. I was terrified!

He would start with the whole seperation and divorce talk on a regular basis. My emotions were all of=ver the place. It was as if I had to wait for him to get home in order to find out how my day was going to go. If he was in a great mood, then so was I, but if he had a rough day, and was grouchy, then I had to walk on egg shells with the hope that I may slide by unnoticed.

Finally, after so many years of going through the drama, (he even got out of our car one day while I was driving and we were stopped at a red light. I freaked out and was crying and screaming and begging him to get back in. I even tried to keep the doors locked on my side so he could not open the door, but it was too late he had already gotten out. So what did I do then? I followed him down the street and when he went through a path, I parked the car, jumped out and ran after him. Yes, I was indeed a freak of nature. But at that time all I cared about was keeping him and not being abandoned.

The reason I am telling you this is not because I am saying that you should run after him crying all while telling him that he should stay with you if anything, because of your daughter. Nor am I telling you that you will get over it and that you should just move on. Because I do not completely believe in that either.

It is so easy to tell our close friends what we see, and how better off they would be if they left their husband/wife, but the bottom line is no matter what your friends and family say, you are the one that has to deal with the pain of a break up. Even when I knew I looked like a moron in front of my friends, and when i would call them balling about the things he was doing to me, I still had to be the one that felt all of the pain and sorrow, and no matter how right everyone else may be, you need to think smart for yourself.

You probably do not need anyone else telling you that he is a jerk and no one should treat someone that they love this way, because you have probably known this for some time now. The difference now is how you decide to react to your husband right here and right now.

You may think that all of the drama that my husband put me through all of those years, that I we would be divorced by now. Well looking back I absolutely thought the same thing. No way could I have anticipated that we were still together after 8 years of marriage and 10 years together.

However, had he continued to put me through all of that Best if kept off the board, and had I continued to allowing him to dictate my happiness, I think that I would have eventually just given up, or at the very least I think my body would have just given up. There is only so much one person can handle with out everything eding in utter exhaustion and sickness.

So instead of allowing this to continue, I let him know I was NOT going to take this anymore. Gone were the times I chased after him when he threatened to "leave" me. Nope, not having any of it. Instead the nexttime he said would say that he wanted to leave, I would not really have any kind of reaction, except that of cooperation. Yes, you heard it, I would just agree with him and tell him that I think he is right. I told him that I have been thinking abuot this for a long time now, and I decided that maybe he was right, maybe we should not be together. Then instead of crying and trying to hide his keys and wallet, I would bring up the suitcase, hand him his wallet and call him a cab.

I swear to Gad that was exactly what happened. Because just like you, we only have one car. He always thought that if he left that he would take the car. NOPE. I told him that he had my blessing and that if he wants to go, the he should go ahead and do so. But either grease up your thumb or prepare to a cab take you wherever you want to go. But be sure that if you do leave, you take a lot, because you will not be getting back in this house until the court makes me let you in.

I will never forget his face when I did this. He looked like a deer in headlights. He was so blind sided by my response.

He did get into the cab and left, and when he did that I still broke down crying and freaking out while I called my mom, but the key is that HE did not see me break down, yet one more time.

I really thought that we were over, and that I had lost him forever. I was heartbroken. But this is not how my story ends. No more than 1 hour later did he come back home like a little dog, tail between his legs, head down, bright red from wherever he just walked from. He looked up and he had tears rolling down his face and he grabbed me and hugged me for the longest time. He apologized profusely, and told me that he loved me over and over. He said that he was being the jerk and that he knew this, but with the stress of moving away from our family and friends and being in a town with absloutely no one that we knew, and working at a new job that he realized he did not like, he went spiraled into this dark place, and because of this, he would take stuff out on me.

The rest of this story is way too long to finish (I have already written a novel) but I just want to get to my point here. Once I told him that I did not want him anymore, as well as his sudden realization that if he leaves, well, he really leaves. That means he has to find somewhere to live, alone, and I would not allow him to take our only car, because HE was the one choosing to leave, so he would have to find a different mode of transportation. Plus, I would keep our dog and cat, 2 animals that he adored, and so on and so on.

When he reassured me that he loved me and would never want to be without me, I told him that I would no longer allow anyone to treat me like a piece of Best if kept off the board, because I know, as well as he knows that I can always find someone that would treat me like a princess. He said that he knew this and he would never let me go, he never really wanted to go all of those times he messed with my emotions. Apparently he never really thought I would be strong enough to tell him to take a hike.

Lastly, I told him that if he does stay here, that he can never ever threaten me with divorce ever again. If he says it, then he better be prepared to do it, because his luck had just run out.

That was the end of that. Except of course there was a lot more to it than that, but the bottom line is that he never really wanted to leave me, but he always thought he could release stress by nitpicking at me. But it apparently worked, because from that day on, we had a much more open line of communication. I no longer had to wait until I saw his mood, to know whether or not i was going to have a good day. Instead we both were allowed to be in bad moods but when this happens, we are not allowed to shoot the other person down. Instead, the person that is in a good mood must attempt to convery the other one over. This can be done by having our own inside jokes that always makes us laugh when we say it, or if he is being a jerk, I will do some sort of lame dance to make him laugh, and he does the same.

While I can not say our marriage has been perfect since then, I can say that it has been a lot better!

Rad - I hope that things work out for you and your husband. Try to keep in mind thatno one should treat someone that they supposedly love, the way you are being treated right now! If you know in your heart of heart that there is no way to work through this, then maybe you should initiate a seperation. That may kick him into gear. But if you really want to be with him for the rest of your life, then I suggest you try to see a marriage counselor. If you think that you can not afford it, then you can always go to someone in your church or a social service agency in your town. Many times places like that offer free counseling.

Whatever happens, just remember that you will always get support from any of us at DB. It seems like so many of us have been in similar situations, so we can really empathize.

Good Luck!