Husband And I Are Doing A Trial Separation. Where Should Our Toddler Go? Who Should Stay In Our Apartment?

My relationship with my husband has been slowly crashing and burning for the past year and a half, basically since our daughter was born. (You can read my post history for more context). We have decided to separate, but will work out the details with our therapist later this week.

Our daughter is 16 months old. I have her in multiple activities through different public libraries around us. She has many friends in our area, and we keep making more. I really love the community we’ve managed to build. I feel like it would be best for her to stay in our current apartment with me while my husband finds somewhere else to be. I’m a SAHM and have been since she was born, and have been a full-time student since she was 6 months old as well.

However, if we stay separated (which we probably will) I want to take her with me to my parents, as I have nowhere else to go. She sees them a couple times a week, and goes to play groups with my mom because she watches her while I’m in class.

My family is writhing 30min of our current apartment, and so are most of my friends.

My husband is doing freelance work right now, and his schedule is very erratic and unpredictable. It was this way with his old job too, as he’d take on extra work after his job was done, so would be out of the house from ~5:30am until about 9:30/10:00pm a lot of days, then work weekends. Right now he’s only doing freelance work, so he is schedule is kind of all over the place, but he’s home most mornings. He’s waiting for another job to open up in September that would be hybrid wfh/in office, but still plans to continue his freelance work.

My husband’s relationship with his family is rocky to say the least, and his mom is just shy of disowning him (bigoted reasons, but not unrelated to our marital issues), so he doesn’t really have a place to land if he needed it, and wouldn’t want to be with her if he did.

I know he wants his time with our daughter, but it feels so unfair to now have him just shy of demanding 50% time with her when I’ve been doing 95% time with her since she’s been born.

I want what’s best for her, I’m just having a hard time seeing through my fear and resentment.

Location: CT

I have been in contact with an attorney’s office, but do not have a meeting with them until later this week regarding steps to take moving forward towards divorce.