ULPT Request: My mom is trying to leave her husband of 20ish years

Posted by hecallsme_kitten@reddit | UnethicalLifeProTips | View on Reddit | 23 comments

My mom(61, still works full time) has been with her husband(66, retired but has never had a steady job) for like 20 some odd years. Over the years she's kept her head in the sand about a lot of things. Recently, she's had a psych eval and has been in counseling because she told him she wanted marriage counseling. She was diagnosed with ADHD and is FLOURISHING (GO MOM!)

Him saying she needed help before he would do marriage counseling helped her see how horrible her marriage is.

We believe he's been cheating. He's super sneaky. He deletes all his history and texts daily. He complains and moans about their sex life. He did it with my previous husband and does it now to my current. He also uses my little brother as an emotional outlet. Everything he's unhappy about, he says to him. He lives with them but its been so bad for him hes now living on my couch.

He has basically done the whole "divide and conquer" thing to our family. Our older brother is estranged and I was as well for the longest time. But its just not working anymore for him. He basically wants him and my mom to move away and live on a boat together for the rest of their lives but my mom wants to start a family home with all of us on the property so she can see her grandkids have great grandkids. And because she doesn't want to run into the sunset with him, he's trying to make her life and unbearable as possible.

He makes vague threats that can really be taken as being blown out of proportion if you were to tell the police about it. Like yesterday, my mom brought my brothers dog to my house because her husband kept saying he was tired of being treated like everyone's dog sitter. Now, hearing that doesn't sound like a threat but it was his way of saying if you leave this dog with me, I absolutely will not take care of it because its not my responsibility. He's very careful what he says and does so it can look like my mom is psychotic.

This morning she confronted him with a list of things we have heard him say and do over the years. Like how he called a woman on speaker who specifically hates my mom in front of only me, to talk about how much he can't stand my mom and this woman told him several times that whenever he is ready to leave, she's waiting for him. He has told my little brother that he gave my mom an ultimatum that if she doesn't get counseling and medication for her "mental condition" he would leave her. He does all of this in front of only 1 person at a time so we can't have someone else there to back us up that we heard it happen. Its like psychology warfare.

Now, all that being said, my mom is going to leave him. She's disgusted with him and herself for staying so long. My thing is, how do we make his life unbearable back? We have already planned on having daily pool parties at her house with all the grandkids and with as many friends as we can invite (my mom gave us permission to be there already). We're going to do potluck and grill out as much as possible too. What else can we do? We're trying to basically make him leave as fast as possible while my mom saves money back and hires a lawyer to leave him