Some basic info:
Me - 34 year female - 1st marriage
Him - 40 years old - 2nd marriage
One child - 16 months old
Length of Marriage: 6 years
State of Residence: Michigan
After 3 years of debating this within myself and trying to work on my marriage, I realize now that it is time to throw in the towel. I won't get into all of the details but trust me when I say that it is over. He didn't do anything WRONG really - there was no cheating or abuse. He is a great father.
OK, so no reason to take his child away from him. The child is as much his as yours, so why is there even a question about custody. You want to leave the marriage, there is no marital misconduct, you are "merely" unhappy. You disagree with your husband and no longer want to be married.
Fine, leave. Leave all the stuff, the child, pack your clothes and go.
In your own words, you say he's a great father. So don't deprive your child of a moment away from this great father.
Divorcing because you are unhappy is a very SELFISH choice. You only compound this by taking a child away from the father.
We are just not right for each other. He does have a very negative attitude for life and always seems angry.
Maybe he has a selfish wife and his anger is fueled by what's displayed in your attitude here. You are talking about breaking up a family for ONE reason, your happiness.
No one is right for one another, but people do the work to be the right person. Someone doesn't just decide I don't want to have sex anymore? So what's behind that? People don't just get angry. Anger is a secondary emotion, fueled by something else. So while I tongue in cheek suggested it was you, the reality is it may be some you, some life, some bad job, who knows? But leaving, you are not finding out.
We have not had sex in 3 months and it has been at least a year since we kissed or held hands. There is no intimacy or chemistry between us and there never will be again. I have to get out of this marriage.
Never huh? What's changed? Do you devote all of your attention to the child now, and he's now acting out. I don't know. Obviously you had sex at least once, since you have a child. What were you two doing right then that you no longer do.
What has changed?
He does not want to divorce.
Good for him. He took a vow, he's honoring the vow. I applaud him.
He wants to stay together just for our son.
Did he say just for your son, or is that your assumption? Even so, why are you unable to find the good anymore? What changed. You could take the next 16 years going back to the good. Or you can complain. If there was a good relationship between the two of you before, it can be there again.
Frankly, you keep saying he's negative, but you've not said anything good about him since the first paragraph. Are you sure HE's the negative one?
I however feel that it would be worse if I stayed because I don't want my son to grow up thinking that this is what marriage is like. I don't want him to see us fight all the time and never show affection or love towards each other.
So don't fight, love your husband. He can't fight alone.
If you don't like fighting, why even contemplate taking his son from him. That will be the mother of all battles.
So to say you don't want your son to see the two of you fighting is one of the biggest arguments AGAINST getting a divorce.
If you really mean what you say, then find a way to work WITH your husband. After all, divorce is just another big fight that solves none of the problems you have in your relationship and co-parenting with your husband.
Choosing to divorce will do NOTHING to stop the fighting. It will escalate the fighting.
He says I can leave but there is no way I will be taking my son with me.
Good for him. He took a vow, you took a vow, if you want to unilaterally break it, why should you be awarded as the primary custodian of a child? You are worried about what your child sees, so why not worry about what sort of message you are teaching with regards to keeping your word?
He will fight me for sole custody and it will be an ugly fight if it has to be (those were his words).
You are talking about taking his child, it SHOULD be an ugly fight. He's done nothing wrong and you have this sense of entitlement to the child based on nothing more than gender.
Gender equality, he is as fit a parent as you are. Since you want to unilaterally end the marriage, to me, that means you are the lesser fit parent of the two. Fighting to keep his child is the most healthy thing I've heard so far.
Should you choose to leave, I'm rooting for him to keep his child. Anyone who chooses to leave a man she says is a good parent and has done nothing wrong doesn't deserve to be the primary custodian of a child.
I plan on leaving the house and our cabin entirely to him. They were both his anyway before we got married.
How generous, you will let him keep what was his already.
I just want my name off of them. He says that there is no way the bank would refinance it so that it just has his name on it, so my name would have to remain on both mortgages until they are paid off (another 10 years or so). Is that true or just a load of crap?
Have you seen any news in the past 12 months, the mortgage market is in the dumper, Congress is looking at a 700BILLION dollar bailout for the financial institutions who made bad investments in mortgage securities. Banks and mortgage brokers have far less capital to lend, so they have stricter lending standards. Depending on what you owe, the value of the properties, etc, it may be very difficult to re-fi the properties.
But if you want to leave, leave.
I feel like he is trying to make this sound so difficult that I will give up and just stay. (He makes 125K per year and we owe 100K on the cabin and 150K on the house. I make 75K per year. Couldn't he get those refinanced in his name? They were his to begin with after all.)
Let's see, your first marriage, he's been married before, and perhaps divorced. So he probably knows how difficult divorce really is. With two mortgages, he probably knows how much is going out to pay them. You say the two of you make 200K/year, but with two mortgages, not to mention all the other costs to have two properties, you losing your job WOULD have been a major stressor for the two of you.
Sure, I understand you wanted emotional support. So he wants financial support. Why are your needs more important than his? Instead of telling us he was wrong for being concerned about the job, why not explain why you were invalidating his stated needs while you complained about what he was doing?
What I'm saying is that neither one of you are approaching this right. You are doing many of the things you complain about in his behavior. Both of you have needs and each of you is screaming, "MEET MY NEEDS!" while ignoring the needs of the other.
If you leave him, why would you behave any different with your next husband? Will you keep getting married, have a child and then abandon your husband when things are not like a Disney romance?
Marriage is about being there, being committed. It's not just a collection of warm fuzzy feelings. It's about being there even when the feelings are not so good.
That's love. If you can't offer that to him, then you have no business complaining about what he does or doesn't do, nor do you have any business taking a child away from the man, simply because you are unable to keep your word and to really love him.
If I leave the house to him, would that hurt my chances of getting custody of my son? Doesn't the child always automatically go with the mother? (I would get an apartment). Or does the child remain in the home with whichever parent stays there?
Why would a child "automatically" go with the mother? You said yourself he was a great father. You have demonstrated with your words that you may not be the candidate for mother of the year, you don't want to keep your word, and you contradict yourself saying you don't want to fight, but you want to take a child away from an innocent man.
What can I expect in a custody fight? I haven't done anything wrong in the marriage but I'm the one to leave - so will I be the one to have to prove my case as to why I should have primary custody? I don't know how any of this works.
Any advice you can give me would be helpful. Thanks.
The advice everyone is giving you is to remain in the marriage.
If you are unwilling to do that, then walk away, leave the child the assets and everything and walk away. Tell your husband the truth, you are unwilling and unable to keep your vow, so you are going to go, and not cause him even more hurt by taking his child or any marital property from him and the child
Both of those options will avoid a fight. I think both are honorable. Keeping your word is certainly honorable. If you are unwilling to do that, then walking away with nothing but your clothes and shoes would be the least damaging way you could leave.