After 12 years, I divorced my manchild husband – I still do all the parenting

Divorce, once rare and stigmatised, has become mainstream – 42 per cent of marriages now end this way, meaning nearly half of us who get married can expect to experience it in our lifetime. Just as every marriage is different, so is every divorce. In this column, divorcees reflect on their life-changing experience. Helped by the benefit of hindsight, they share advice and reflections. Here, Rebecca* shares how her marriage was gradually dismantled by her husband, who refused to take on the responsibilities of parenthood. My ex is a manchild, and I’m stuck with him forever. People always ask me when I divorced Michael whether or not he would be able to co-parent. I know that sounds like a strange thing to say, because why wouldn’t a grown man and father of two be able to manage? But what my friends and my family knew was that the man I married – and consequently divorced – doesn’t seem able to act his age and take responsibility. And it’s not that he is a young man. He just hasn’t grown up. Shorts Michael and I met when we were in our late 20s. I was 28 and he was 29. We got married when we were 34 and 35, and then two years later had our first child. Two years after that I had our second child. So by the time we had children, Michael was 37 and then nearly 40. Our son is now 15 years old, our daughter is 13. Back then, I really had very little idea how completely useless he would be at parenting. It’s not that he’s a terrible parent in the sense that he ignores them or is cruel. He adores his children. He likes pulling faces and playing practical jokes. Ever since they were tiny, he would clown around with them. He’d do funny things. But sometimes his ‘funny things’ were dangerous. He’d throw them up high – too high – in the swimming pool. He’d get them to climb up precarious rock faces on holiday. He quite often forgot to lock the front door and I once found our son walking down our road when he was about three. Michael had no sense of health and safety. He thought car seats were something he didn’t need to bother with. When I told him it was illegal not to have a child strapped in properly to an appropriate car seat, I found him making faces behind my back at the children. He did this quite a lot. Whenever I tried to talk to him about a serious issue, whether it was keeping the children safe, a school matter or taking any form of responsibility, he’d turn it all into a joke. He’d pull faces and waggle his ears and make the children laugh so that anything I said was completely undermined. I found it frustrating and very hurtful. It was if my care and concern was trivial, and not only that, he made me out to look like a tedious nag, especially in front of the children. I went from someone who felt pretty carefree and laid-back to being depicted as Mrs Worrybags. I started becoming incredibly resentful. I would ask Michael why he thought it was okay to disrespect me in front of the children. He’d say I was being too serious. I was worrying the children. Why was I being such a fun sponge? This situation went on for a couple of years. I made all the decisions and took all of the responsibility. I went to the parent-teacher meetings, sorted out the packed lunches, organised trips, worked out what they should wear for World Book Day. I took them to the doctors, arranged the extracurricular clubs and playdates. Meanwhile, Michael would just sit there messing around, pulling faces and contributing very little to the smooth running of the family and the house. Over the years, I realised he was only there for the fun. He didn’t want to engage with the hard side of parenting. He didn’t want to get his hands dirty. He didn’t want to put in boundaries or have to say no. Neither did he want to take responsibility for anything. If I ever even hinted that he might consider growing up and pulling his weight, he would literally just leave. He’d say he was meeting friends or he was going to buy some food or he was going to read the newspaper. In the end, by the time our son was 10, the marriage had completely broken down. I told him I didn’t want to live with him anymore, that he was nothing more than a man-child. He was very upset – he argued that he was equipped to parent – but I couldn’t take anymore. We split up five years ago, and at first, I hoped that life would be different. However, Michael is incapable of being a responsible parent. He can’t organise anything practical. He never knows where the school uniform is. He never takes them to extracurricular activities. My son, now 15, is a very good swimmer and has been picked for the county team, but that means he has to go practice – a lot. None of that ever happens when he is with Michael. Michael’s only really there for the good stuff, the fun stuff, the crazy stuff. All the boring, difficult, tricky bits – the actual parenting – are left to me. Our son now has to live with me most of the time because unlike Michael, I get up at 5:00 AM to take him to swimming practice. Do I want to do that? Of course I don’t – but I do it because he’s my child and I love him. When I talked to Michael about this – why he finds it so impossible to support our son by taking him to practice – he says it’s not about love. He thinks love is shown by being a clown and painting whiskers on yourself and farting to order. I convinced myself that once we separated and Michael had to live and look after the children by himself that he would somehow grow up. I had begun to believe that our dynamic was at the root of the problem – the more stern I became, the more he acted like a child. I thought if I took myself out of the equation, he would have the capacity to parent like an adult. I couldn’t have been more wrong. And now I’m left co-parenting with him for a few years yet, and it feels like forever. I spend my time picking up the pieces and knitting back together the fabric of our children’s lives. Now they’re older, they’re beginning to see it for what it is. They want to have serious conversations about their lives and school and their friendships and when their dad just messes around all the time, they find it incredibly frustrating. They want to be parented by an adult. They want a man they can look up to. For me, I just see years ahead shackled to this man who can’t even seem to use a washing machine. It’s a very depressing place to be.