All this is teaching me that I don't care. I don't care! He's all about himself and his threats and manipulations. I just got to step to the side and let him wear himself out.
If he moves here I'll figure things out too. I can always move back there, to the US then :-)
And get a decent job. I just need to keep happy and strong.
This is what happened with the mortgage. The deal on the table was the following: i stay on the mortgage with the agreement that he pay to fix up the house and we sell it later or he buys it from me( started with one year, then 3, then 5 then yesterday he wanted7 years!). In the meantime, he cosigns any lease for a rental property that I want to move to. This would allow the children and I to secure a larger and/or cheaper apartment. Right now the landlords are not crazy about the single foreign mother with four children and an American source of income thing, to say the least.
What the lawyers saw in his response to this proposal is:
a. He didn't seem to get that this is a fair trade, putting us each at risk financially on the other. And how this arrangement would be positive for the children.
b. he apparently 'came alive' at the possibility of my having the freedom to relocate. This was the only time he'd become animated in 7 hours of mediation. They saw it as his wanting to control me and thus that is why he cancelled all possibility of settlement and decided to move to Europe.
Alas. I thought I might be free after last night.
He doesn't want me to be free. Ever.
The lawyers think he is depressed, potentially suicidal, controlling and unpredictable. His lawyer looks positively shaken and eager to lose her client. She seems like a nice gal. I don't know how she can work for him. But someone has to defend the murderer.
In divorce, they allow all sorts of horribleness to go on without consequence. It is legal to hide money from your children and your spouse. To drag out a divorce intentionally until the spouse hasn't a penny left for legal fees. To leave four vulnerable children in the hands of a lunatic addicted abusive father. As long as he's rich.
I don't care. When I care too much I become incapacitated. I have a life and children to cherish today.
Word of advice: don't marry an addict or a narcissist. Let my story be a warning to you!