I always find it fascinating how women will say their husband is a wonderful father, great husband, loving, etc., and then let loose with the little "faults" they have such as financial and emotional abandonment.

This woman has four children. She just won't acknowledge it. She needs to cut hubby loose while she can still salvage her life financially and before the children have it ingrained in them that a mother/wife is supposed to carry the entire burden of family while father/husband remains perpetually Peter Pan.

I have been in this situation, and he is NOT going to change. He has no incentive to. And I doubt seriously that this behavior just began six years ago. She's just not ready to see that he's always been this way. The difference is, when there are children and a mortgage, this behavior is no longer cute.

Bottom line, she is getting NOTHING from him. Not love, attention, money or even promises to change. He's ALREADY a deadbeat dad, and she needs to at the very least sever her financial obligations with him by getting a legal separation.

Kick him to the curb, babe.

I'm also a musician at heart with a wife and 2 small children. There is this side of me that really wants to just devote myself to the music and see where it leads me. Problem is, I respect and love my wife and kids too much. It's been a painful realization that I'll probably always be a very motivated amatuer musician. On the other hand, I'm providing a stable home for my children and have a have a full partner in sharing life's burden which I find tremendously satisfying.

I think Cary has a point that he may want you to sever the ties so he does not have to. Statistically speaking, most men who get a divorce do it when the children are still small. Maybe it's because the reality of the daily grind of taking care of kids is more than they can take. I can empathize with the husband in this case, but I cannot condone his selfish behavior. I don't think he is a good male role model for the kids, either (understanding, of course, that we are only getting one side of the story). Good luck!

At least, it sure sounds like he's a narcissist. Look up narcissistic personality disorder on the web and see if anything sounds familiar. Unfortunately, the odds are that 'kick him to the curb' (as another writer here suggested) is sound advice. Good luck.

He may be talented, but he is NOT wonderful. When a man (or woman)marries and has a child, it stops being all about him (or her). He is a parent, and needs to behave like one.

Having been married to a man like this I can tell you he is never going to change because HE DOESN'T WANT TO. This situation really works for him!! And Cary is right in saying that he may be manipulating you to kick him out so that he is off the hook. (My ex-husband tried this, and when it didn't happen he left anyway, and went around saying that I HAD kicked him out.)

He played the same hostage game for all of our marriage, and I allowed myself to be part of it. I did everything I could to make it work, until my daughters reached puberty and I realized that I didn't want them to have a marriage like mine (and, that I'd learned mine from watching my parents; who stayed together because my mother, like me, thought she had to). It's not a marriage if there is only one adult in it.

When he finally did leave, instead of being devastated and unable to cope as I'd always thought I'd be, I felt the lifting of a huge burden. Yes, it was now all up to me --but hadn't it been all along? At least now I had someone I knew I could rely on; ME. And I was relieved of the burden of his care, and the bigger burden of always struggling to construct the fiction of a functional family. It is the last which was more exhausting than anything else, because it was an impossible task. Admitting that allowed me to stop blaming myself.

Financially, it's never as bad as you imagine. Trust me on this.

I have nothing to add to the prior letters, except an emphatic "Amen." This man is not wonderful or loving; he is selfish and childlike. I know how frightening it is to contemplate taking on the burdens of your life without a partner, but I have no doubt that you will find that you hav been without a partner for quite some time and those burdens are so much more managable when they are not coupled with the stress, frustration, disappointment and resentment that comes with being in your present situation. I spent years terrified of the prospect of being without my husband. There are no words to described the joy and relief that I now feel at having reclaimed my life. Feel free to mourn the life you thought you were supposed to have with this mean. Mourn the death of the dream. Those are worth shedding tears for. He is not.

Wits' End must absolutlely act right now.

She has children to protect and care for and staying married to a neglectful, emotionally-absent liar who does not keep his promises, does not work to change and does nothing to provide for his family is damaging them. The longer she allows her sham of a marriage to continue, the worse her children will suffer.

There is no marriage. She has no husband. And it is nothing short of cruel to make her children (and even her parents!) suffer for it. All of her children have witnessed their parents' dysfunctional marriage for as long as they can remember. When is enough enough?

She made a terrible mistake in marrying this man. Maybe it wasn't a mistake at the time, but it became one later. WE, either swallow your pride or wake up or whatever, but get your children away from him.

And if he wants to blame you for it later, so what? You should be crowing it from the rooftops! Do you honestly think your friends and family won't be relieved that you finally came to your senses?

Frankly, except for tying yourself to a loser, you sound like an amazing person. Find a lawyer behind your husband's back and learn how to protect yourself and your children through and after the upcoming divorce. Keep yourself in therapy and find out why you were attracted to a charming parasite and learn how not to be ever again.

It can be done, and it will be a lot easier than being a slave to a jerk. We all make mistakes and sometimes the hardest thing about mistakes is admitting them to yourself. Once you admit this one, and the sooner the better, the sooner you'll have a chance to find someone worthy of you and your children.