Complicated!!!!!!

I got married when I was 22 years old. We stayed married for six months then his girlfriend paid for our divorce. I'm sure your thinking that should have been it. Well it was not we messed around on and off for four years. He then asked me to have his child and I agreed. He promised he would be there and we would remarry because we should have stayed married. Well sorry to say I went through the pregnancy alone. He was so mean to me I could not believe it. The man who begged me to have his child treated me like crap. I had our son and he didn't show up for that either. Well time moved on he went his way I went mine. He didn't get involved with his son nor did he communicate with me. I ended up moving to NY. I was at that time 28. I met this really nice man oh I forgot to tell you I already had a child from a previous relationship. We were suppose to get married when I was 19 but he ended up going to jail. Fast forward again So I moved to NY with my two sons met this great single dad of 4 children. He showed me so much. He and I were more than lovers we were friends. We got married and I had my first daughter when I turned 30 He had changed though it seems like right after I said i do but I dismissed things. Once my daughter came on the scene it was clear. We literally one year had sex maybe 5 times. He would say it was because he was diabetic and he not perform. Keep in mind because I was a stay at home mom to all the kids I cooked 6 days a week. Healthy foods being a dietary major his blood sugar was under control. I felt so alone he would come home and go to sleep for hours. He never complimented me. My hair started falling out because of stress. He would talk to me so bad. I would just cry. I did everything for him and our kids. I wanted this marriage so bad I stayed up until last year at the then age of 35. I found out why I never got complimented, or why we only had sex 5 or 6 times a year, and why I seemed invisible to him. He had been having multiple affairs throughout our marriage. I was crushed to my core. I was so sad! Then out of the blue my first husband started calling me I was still living with my husband so our conversations were clean at the time. I knew I wasn't gone touch that because he treated me bad to. Me and the three kids moved down south to stay with some relatives. My husband let me leave no fight didn't really seem to care. Get down south my so called family didn't really seem to care about me or the 3 kids and wanted me to move. My ex husband had a house and had been trying to get me over there being nice etc. I didn't want to go but I had no choice. We move with him . Big mistake! One I rekindled old feelings and he is a drug user/ alcoholic. My kids never saw me argue like he and I did it was horrible. He wanted sex all the time and I did not want to. He was being mean to me again like the past. I didn't have a job but I was diligently looking. He would call me names because I did not have a job and he charged me half my income tax money . Keep in mind I had his son Who was 9 and he had not done for the whole time but I was the lazy one. I got a job with this great company now he is happy. Well Because I had come out of a marriage of no sex birth control was not used and my first ex husband was such a sex maniac we now have another son. This pregnancy was similar to before being left to take care of myself. Now he goes from a sex maniac to nothing stayed out all night the other day. I feel so trapped I have no family. Now four kids and low self esteem. He barely talks to me or interacts with the baby. He now shows no affection. I want to move on but it's hard!

Since the age of 22, you have dismissed and ignored one ruddy great Red Flag and dealbreaker and painful life lesson after another, meaning, this train wreck of a life more befitting a melodramatic soap opera plot is what you've got to show for it. Sorry to have to say, but IMO this is too big and too involved and too long-running for a mere forum. You need to visit your doctor to ask to be referred to a therapist because you have to face the fact about being clearly devoid of the mature instinct to protect yourself and your interests, including that of your children, and to take life more seriously, thus need help in turning your attitude and life around. That would be the first step towards moving on, surely? How come that didn't occur to you?

First of all, it would appear that based on your story, you are much too dependent on men for your own happiness. Start thinking of yourself and of your children's well-being more and how you can take your life back in your hands without being dependent on the men in your life. Secondly, you have been moving from one relationship to the other without having truly moved on from the problems that plagued you in the very first relationship that you ever got into. The men that you allow into your life have been constantly taking advantage of you because you are allowing them to do so. I'd recommend that you stop getting into romantic relationships in order to solve your own unmet needs. Try to simply focus on becoming emotionally as well as financially independent. I wouldn't go as far as to say that you should leave your current relationship, but you shouldn't be afraid to speak up and stick up for yourself if/when your husband becomes emotionally abusive.

Yes, yes, yes, I agree with ALL the above responses. Why dont you stop relationships all together and just focus on your children. Do you know the damage you have most probably caused to these innocent children? Mentally and emotionally? You were unable to look after your children after your first relationship broke up yet you continued to jump from one relationship to another. Sort your selfish ways out. Those children deserve better.

I doubt Judith's devoid of the self-preservation instinct by actual CHOICE, though, hence my having used the term 'devoid of' instead of 'disinterested in'. The non-stop chaos that her kids have been getting raised in is the very ongoing circumstance that produces the ingrained symptomatic behaviour such as our Judith here is demonstrating. So to get *too* judgemental is a bit like complaining that Judith isn't getting off her a*se and walking into town when the poor woman was, during childhood, paralysed and plonked in a wheelchair and the route into town features non-stop steps. And that wheelchair is called, hooked on drama. Bit like a long-term frontline vet who can't abide peacetime/situation normal because he's become subjected to recalibration according to an extreme climate. However, she's obviously managed to gain just enough maturity to see she needs intervention, hence making a start by coming onto this forum. Probably my fault (again) for not having made it clear my final two questions were investigative, not judgemental rhetoric. "Soz" everybodypeeps.