I started seeing a psychologist in May. I had contacted a lawyer first, but then chickened out when they called me back for a consult, and went hunting for a therapist next. It was a pretty scary/new experience for me, but now, 9 months later, I believe it to be the best decision I have made. She's helping me try to heal a bunch of old wounds, plus helping me make sense of my current life.

Been married for 15 years, and hubby has shown he's not the hands-on dad to our son that I thought he'd be, but beyond that, he's started getting sneaky. I don't believe he would ever have an affair, no, but he's been getting sneaky with purchases the past few years, purchasing things after we talked about it and it was (I thought) agreed that we can't afford it. We live paycheck-to-paycheck, we have debt, we have no savings. The last straw was last spring when he tried to take out an 18K loan behind my back, not realizing that the bank would need to contact me prior. Unfortunately for them, they didn't contact me until two days before the loan closing, after they had done a lot of work setting this up, and then finding out from me that I would NOT be signing any papers for a loan, and also finding out through me that he lied about our list of assets. He took assets and property belonging to my family and used them as his own to get this loan. And the idiots that they are, they didn't look into those assets to see that they were not ours. Anyway, the list goes on, but trying to make a long story short here.

I no longer want to be married to this man. I need to financially separate myself from him to protect myself. If he's going to make decisions as if he's a single man, perhaps he needs to become one.

Actually going through with this will be difficult, and I don't know what kind of time frame I'm looking at. We have a 12 year old son. The house is in my family's name, so we're safe there, we do not own property together.

I need to make plans to find myself a different job, with benefits, and save up some money somehow, so I can become more self sufficient. I don't think hubby would see this coming, honestly. We have been sleeping in separate rooms (on separate floors of the house) for a couple of years now. There's very little arguing, but there is also no relationship anymore. No trust, no connection.

I'm just reaching out here, to see if there's anyone else who's been in this situation and given themselves time to try to prepare. I'm scared. And quite depressed, due to the path my life has taken.