My now ex-partner and I had been together for 13 years, we were not legally married but treated our relationship similar to marriage. We have a shared bank account, 2 elementary age children, a dog, 2 cars we shared, and a house in both of our names. My partner told me last year she was thinking of leaving me, which caught me by surprise, and when I asked why she said she didn’t know. She has a history of avoidant behavior and not being able to talk in conflict, this became more extreme over the past year as she stopped talking to me for long periods of time, avoided being in proximity with me, and when I continued to ask questions about why she wanted to leave she ignored me or complained that I was too anxious.
My partner has also been dealing with depression since both of our kids started school fall of ‘22 and she had a part time job that had been fulfilling in the past but around the same time she began to hate it. I encouraged her to make some new friends, go to therapy more, and start looking for a new job. I took on all of the household and childcare responsibilities while she worked on “finding herself.” She found a new temporary summer job working outdoors last year where she made a new male friend, I’ll call Steve, that she started spending a lot of time with. Also during the summer she told me that she lost her connection with our kids, did not miss them when they were away with her parents for a week, and didn’t want to bring them back home.
We started couples counseling last fall, but much of the time there she was unable to talk, only communicating with nods. Sometimes it seemed like she was making improvements only to fall back into not speaking to me again. In January she finally started taking medicine to deal with her depression, but then asked for a trial separation. She moved into a friend’s guest room and originally agreed for the kids to stay at home for school nights since it was just a trial and we didn’t want to disrupt the kids. Since then she has found a new interest in being a parent, I think because of her friends telling her this would look bad in court for custody. We had been very adamant that we wanted an amicable separation with 50/50 shared parenting if it came to that, so her mention of court was alarming.
Before the separation started she tried talking to the kids without me to explain the separation, something we explicitly agreed not to do. She then spent every week arguing with our couples therapist over her time with the kids. In the first week of the trial she spent the night with Steve on a “work trip” and lied to me about it and about not wearing her ring. I had told her last fall about how I felt uncomfortable with their relationship as she was talking and spending more time with this other guy than me.
On the 3rd week of what was to be an 8 week trial separation she ended things for good. When I asked her why she said because I “made her nerves feel bad” and she felt better when she was away from me. When I asked for clarification of what that meant she said she didn’t feel emotionally safe with me and when I asked why she said for a lot of little reasons I couldn’t change.
In the 2.5 weeks since this day she has not dealt with the shared parenting agreement I wrote up to give each other even 50/50 custody of the kids. This was important to me as the state we are in considers an unmarried mother the sole custodial guardian of the children even if I’m their father on their birth certificates. She’s also ignored many of my calls and texts when attempting to discuss our plans with the kids, when/how we swap them, and what things they need with them. Most of our interactions now devolve into arguments (we rarely argued before) and it feels like she’s deliberately misunderstanding me, like forgetting when the time is to swap the kids.
I had been hoping to schedule another time with a couples counselor to help us work out how to explain the separation to the kids, but she is unwilling to adjust her schedule and is delaying. Then last week she showed up at our house unannounced (during one of the available times for counseling) with Steve her new guy. They said they were there to dig up some flowers from our land so she could move them to his place. I was upset as we had agreed to notify each other when we were going to each other’s places and this wasn’t the first time she showed up without notifying me. I told them they needed to contact me first and that they had to leave. They argued with me for a while, her name is on the deed so legally she can be there, it’s just not the right thing to do. Then Steve asked me if they didn’t leave if I’d come beat him up, a weird escalation while they both held a shovel and pick ax and I was alone and unarmed. They also had parked me in the driveway so I couldn’t have left.
Eventually they left, I kept my distance and locked the doors. I felt panicked at the time and still feel unsafe in my home. When I called the counseling agency to tell them my partner couldn’t make the times they were holding available for us that week they asked about rescheduling. I told them about the incident and they recommended I hold off on counseling and get a lawyer and guardian at litem for our kids. I filed for custody last week, I don’t want our children to not have their mom but I don’t know how coparenting in this situation is possible. I had wanted to wait to tell our kids about the separation so my ex and I could do it together in a way we agreed on to minimize their trauma. I don’t know if that’s possible any more or what I should do.
I’m worried that taking legal action will alienate me from our small community as people take sides, and that people won’t believe that a man larger than his former spouse could be subject to emotional abuse and potential physical harm by a smaller woman.
Tl;dr My partner left me on bad terms with poor communication about our children. I don’t know how to tell them about the separation and I’m afraid her and her new guy might harm me. I want our kids to have their mother, but coparenting seems impossible.