- Nick, you didn´t take out the trash.
- You dont have proof I didn´t take out the trash.
- The trash bin is full and it is right here.
- How do you know if I just took it out and brought right back in?
Imagine living with this faggot...
It is exceptionally annoying and exhausting. She's married to a self-absorbed knob who makes no distinction between arguing about truly life-critical things and taking out the trash. No concept of choosing your battles. Everything then is either a battle, or she just gives in and eventually either stops protesting and turns into a shell, or gets some gumption and hits the road.
Kayla's best bet would be to get a plan together,
stack any possible coin (0% chance she has access to anything but at least find copies of statements, jesus), work with CPS to get the kids with her (if they're actually back home...), hire a lawyer, just ask for state minimum child support, split custody, and an equitable division of assets, and never speak to Nick directly until it's all done. And she'll get pennies on every dollar she should, because he will be an absolute dick even if she only goes for the basics/MN's preferred outcome (which I described). But she would be best off going tgat route/absolute decision, absolutely no contact* with him, a month at Hazelden, then follow-on intensive outpatient therapy/ treatment, and getting a fucking job. Then learn how to live like a human and give your children a mom who had some self-respect and quality, and can therefore offer it to them.
*ZERO. She's not strong enough to handle it. Plus the only thing worse than living with a perpetually pointlessly argumentative knob like Nick is dealing with a woman knob/narc scorned when divorcing/co-parenting with one. He will alternate being a raging ogre, cruel, and intensely petty, punctuated by moments of faux cooperativeness, usually after squeezing another drop of blood - big or small doesn't matter; it's the perceived win that matters to him. The positive/calm will last exactly until he gets butthurt about some new thing, some new way her perceives he's being taken advantage of, or wants to do things as different way for his own personal benefit. She would need her lawyer or family to do her talking, exclusively.
She won't, of course. That's scary, hard, and requires some short-term pain and firm decisionmaking, and she shows 0 ability to tolerate either one. She's spent a decade or two numbing out of scary things, and she's aware she's the bottom of the domestic totem pole, which she seems willing to endure in a smiling haze as she is humiliated in front of her own eyes.
Not one of them will choose well - not Kayla, not Nick, not April.
Kayla, see above.
Nick has what he wants, so no change needed in his view. Just these meddling
cops, family, internet, church, peers, friends, acquaintances, judges, lawyers, prudes, Scandinavians kids getting in the way again. Everyone is stupid; no one understands. And it's none of their business, but if they knew what he knew, etc. ...No adjustment happening.
April - no change. She's found another self-absorbed jerk who will both make her feel worshipped and will keep her in her place, who will parade her around like a prize horse. Except her new
owner paramour is up a notch class-wise, possibly super-rich. She doesn't even have to appear in a bikini on some dumb stream, just under the desk.
There's also the ego boost of being someone he's willing to risk everything for [not as much as she thinks, but tbh he's done himself a lot of damage being with her, in many ways...but it's going to be ugly when he tires of her]. And the effortless ascension to the alpha female role, not only displacing Wife Number One both publicly and privately, but having that woman still sticking around in her secondary role.
She probably occasionally panics, and for now Nick is still enamored so will say he's got this, stop worrying, want another bump? Soon enough either she'll get uppity or lose her looks or eat two Doritos, or maybe ask if someone should feed the kids, or he'll just get tired of her whining (how dare she doubt him?) and get snappy, at which point her choice will be to tuck tail and take getting whatever self she has further destroyed, bc I don't think she'll leave willingly. That's why it works for him - she's controllable just like Kayla; and it works for her because, like Kayla, she likes being controlled.
"You have children!"
