Monica, I have tried various forms but everything hormonal has intolerable side effects, including in the view of my consultants seriously worsening episodes of depression. I have been well for about five years now and cannot with small children return to how unwell I was. I either have to trust this person I married, or get a surgical sterilisation, and the latter is my only option. No one has three failures.
It wasn't arranged, I am not from a culture where that is practised. I am however from a family (very extended, friends as well) where the belief is that you tolerate whatever crap your spouse chucks at you including violence, alcoholism, gambling addiction, the whole range. I have been told "you don't have any real problems". The family support angle isn't something I could rely on.
I am very socially isolated as he has a long term pattern of insisting on spending time with any friends I make via work, hobbies, anything really and then offending them to the extent they won't be around him any more. To be honest I have made no effort to make another friend circle since the babies started arriving because it hurts to lose people over and over. He has also driven off his only friend of his own by being sexually inappropriate to his now-wife who appears to have urged an end to their contact.
It's been about a year and a half since my last consultation re divorce. When I still practised I was a family law specialist and i fear that this experience of assisting other people through some godawful divorces into very difficult post-divorce lives is frightening me. Frankly although I implicitly trust the professional judgement of the various people I have consulted, they all have extremely downbeat views of the likely outcome re custody/finances which has also flattened me a bit. If it was just me thinking this could be rough, I could put that down to pessimism but having it reinforced by others is difficult. The problem is they have all agreed with my assessment of the situation (I may be foolish, but I'm not stupid) and my courage has sort of failed me.
The suggestion I should return to individual therapy is a good one. h always objected to this before as he is quite paranoid I "could be talking about him" and this could in some way affect his career. But I will invent a plausible cover story.
I had a pretty dysfunctional childhood and therapists have spoken to me before about being comditioned to accept ill treatment. I think I need to re examine this problem, and probably soon.
I don't ever want to be a bad mum. It is the one thing I couldn't bear to fail at. I am scared I am failing.