Originally Posted by
drainedwife 
he says its ok for his son to put s hands around my neck as long as he didnt squeeze it---than i know that his son most have learned from him.
Exactly. My father-in-law once told my teenage son (who had gone to him asking for his help because of my ex's violence) that I 'deserved' to be hit if I used a credit card without asking.
Why do i have such low self esteem that i have allowed this to continue for so long?? why have i let him treat me this way?
Have you ever heard the analogy about the frog? If you put a frog in boiling water, it will jump out immediately to save it's life. But if you put a frog in tepid water and gradually turn up the heat, the frog will just stay in it and die in the boiling water. You're the frog and your marriage is the water; he abuses you and the first time, you think he's sorry and it will be OK. And you think that same thing over and over again because you so badly want it to be true. But one day you blink and realize you have lived a lie all your life and you need to get out of the nightmare before you die there.
He is an addict; you know it. No one here needs to tell you that for you to know it. He is abusive, and it doesn't matter one little bit whether he was or wasn't abusive before the drugs.
From far too many years of personal experience with addiction and abuse, I want to caution you about something. If you go into the divorce action thinking it is yet another thing that will 'change' him into what you want him to be, I fear you are setting yourself up for a very hard fall. As some others have said above me, you can't put those kind of conditions on him. Either do it or don't, but do it or don't do it because it is what YOU want.
Stop trying to make him change into what you need. Stop using all your time and energy worrying about how this or that will affect him. Just stop thinking about him at all. Start thinking about yourself and your kids. He's a grown man and he needs to make his own choices and (most importantly) take responsibility for them. Get out of God's way and let him go.
I don't mean to be harsh. I don't want to see you go through years and years more of this like I did. Your kids are 10 & 12 I believe? My oldest is 24, my middle is 19, and my youngest is 10. I am 50. I spent 25 years being abused. I spent countless hours obsessing over a man that treated me like dirt. I spent years bartering and manipulating and doing all manner of sick things trying to make my ex be a man that he just isn't. I lost myself for a very long time.
No man is worth that-losing yourself while trying to 'help' him. You can't help him.