Just learning about emotional abuse and not sure if DP is an abuser

[madonnawhore]

Hello,

This is my first post here, so be gentle! I've been lurking for a few months and have been impressed with how wise, supportive and knowledgeable you all are. Reading some of the threads on here has certainly been an education for me and it's raised a lot of questions in my head about my relationship. The 'What Would You Do' thread in particular really set off a few alarm bells but I would appreciate an outsider's point of view on my situation as I'm really not sure if I'm being oversensitive.

I'll try and make sense(!) and make this as short as poss. Basically DP and I have been together for 8 years, no kids as yet. For most of those 8 years we have been in some kind of state of crisis - breaking up, getting back together, etc. He can be very controlling, and is quite intolerant of other people's weaknesses or annoying idiosyncrasies, especially mine. He's very rational and logical so arguing with him is difficult and I always find myself getting muddled. Eventually it gets twisted round so that I end up apologising even if I was the one who was originally upset with him.

I have a pretty important, well paid job, two university degrees, certainly not the sort of person you'd call a doormat, but sometimes I do feel controlled by him and like I have to compromise myself to keep the peace.

We've been through a particularly horrible time just recently and our relationship was dangling on a thread. We've both had some very frank discussions about what we'd like the other to work on changing in order for us to move forward and I think we're moving into a better place. I told him I think he can be cruel and controlling and emotionally distant and he told me that I handle criticism really badly and overreact to things too easily. I think he has a point, I've caught myself disproportionately overreacting to situations a couple of times recently and although I haven't managed to stop myself in time, I do now have an insight into how my behaviour affects him and our relationship.

The thing is, writing it down now, I can see that he's still essentially putting the blame on me. Saying I can't handle criticism and that I overreact is a handy way of shirking his own responsibility isn't it? I know he isn't perfect, but I definitely have things I need to sort out too (shit childhood with addict mother, etc) that mean I can be difficult to live with.

I suppose I'm asking whether I'm in a difficult relationship because we're both quite flawed and sometimes difficult personalities, or is he an emotional abuser and am I just in denial about it? I've read all the links that have been posted about emotional abuse by other mnetters in relevant threads and although a couple of things ring true about him, most of it definitely doesn't.

Am I reading things into my situation that aren't there? Would appreciate some different perspectives.

Thanks for making it to the end of my essay!

[mumblechum]

Welcome to mumsnet, MH.

I have never really understood the need of some posters to put labels on behaviour, ie what difference does it make to your situation if someone says yes, he's an emotional abuser/NPD/toxic or whatever label you ask about.

If you're not happy with him and don't think he is prepared to change his behaviour, end the relationship. It really doesn't matter whether you or anyone else categorises him as EA or whatever.

I do hope you get some help, maybe through counselling.

[madonnawhore]

Thank you. This is what I'm slowly coming to realise - that regardless of whether he's 'an abuser' or not, I guess I don't really like the person he is sometimes. Maybe it's as simple as that? I don't know.

Lately I've found myself analysing everything he says as if he were being emotionally abusive. Quite often when he talks about his friends or people he works with, he will always mention how he is better than them at something, or superior to them in some way. Obviously this is because he is screamingly insecure, but it's also really unattractive. He did it tonight and when I pulled him up on it he looked genuinely upset and hurt. Then I just felt sorry that I'd so brutally highlighted his insecurity and perhaps made him feel a bit silly. But a grown man shouldn't be doing that should he?

I was on the phone to him the other day and referred to a company that we were talking about by its acronym. He didn't understand what the acronym stood for at first and got huffy with me for using it. Once I explained what it meant, I used it again later in the conversation, knowing that he now knew what I was talking about, and he actually said "Stop saying that! I hate acronyms. Call it by its proper name". That really annoyed me because he was basically mandating what I could say.

I think he gets like that because he has an inferiority complex about things he doesn't understand right away, but is his turning it around on me and having a go at me a sign of his emotional abuse, or should I be being more sympathetic because he's obviously insecure? I'm not exactly stable myself (quite recent bereavement) so my judgement's all over the place.

[AnyFucker]

I dunno what he is

And I could not care less

He sounds fucking awful though...and not a good candidate as a life-partner

Unless you like the drama, being on tenterhooks, never feeling secure...in which case, go for your life !

[mumblechum]

Succinctly put as ever AF! (agree btw)

[AnyFucker]

weeelllll, I don't like him either, OP

and I've never even met him

I've met quite a few fuckwits like him, though

Never once did I want to spend much time in their company....nor give them the opportunity to make me feel like shit

[madonnawhore]

Just reading my last post back I sound like a right Miss Know-it-all. It's not like that.

Dittany - I'm only really like this in situations with him, which is what's worrying. Like I said, I'm not thinking very clearly at the moment because of a bereavement and I would hate to chuck away my relationship because I'm force-fitting an emotional abuse label onto it when in fact it just needs both of us to work at it iyswim.

Some alarm bells are ringing though and and so far everyone who's posted has made a very good point - if I'm not getting anything out of it then that's probably enough of a reason in itself to leave. It's just that as with all these things, it's complicated, I love him, we've been through so much together, blah blah blah...

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

[complimentary]

Maddonawhore. If you are unhappy with him, why do you stay? you have no children. Or do you think that you as you say have a difficult personality as well, and would find it difficult to meet someone else? I have been in similiar relationships (for a very short time) and I'm glad I'm out of them. I want an easy life!

[AnyFucker]

fgs, don't have children with this insecure nob with a whole deep-fat frier of chips on his shoulder

if you are hearing alarm bells now I can predict it will get a 100 times worse once he has you tied down with babies

[madonnawhore]

complimentary - I genuinely don't know the answer, actually! Please understand that a month ago I probably would have said, "Oh it's because he's my best friend, I can't imagine being with anyone else, I like the fact that he's the only man I haven't been able to boss around, he's very generous, helps people and is kind..."

But now, I'm slowly slowly coming to the realisation that most of those things aren't true. He's not my best friend, he says mean things to me sometimes and my best friend doesn't do that. He is kind and generous to other people - he spent some time in a third world country raising money for a charity and worked with children out there, but he holds that experience over me like he's got a better world view than I do because he's seen how people live in poverty and I'm really selfish and have never known hardship, etc.

The thing is, I can be quite selfish and introspective sometimes so I don't know whether he's justified in saying that and someone like me who likes her comfort zones would rightly be irritating to someone who puts themselves out to help others, or whether he's just trying to make me feel bad?

Maybe it's as simple as incompatibility?

[Katisha]

I would second the suggestion that you get the Patricia Evans book. Really.

You sound very much like someone I know who put up with such a relationship for 13 years, walking of eggshells, rationalising his behaviour by telling herself it was her who was in the wrong, choosing to think about the "good time" (ie when things were going the way he wanted) and basically being afraid of being on her own, so putting up with it all.

And maybe read this thread on MN - you will need quite a while!

This is actually part 2

[mumblechum]

Why bother with all the analysis though? If it isn't right no amount of reading books and self analysis is going to make it right.

[Katisha]

Having read your last post I am getting more convinced that you may have a classic narcissist on your hands - being a pillar of the community, helping others, wanting to be admired and thought of as marvellous, but showing their true colours to the person they are with...Yup.
The one I knew was a pillar of the church, couldnt do enough to help people, but couldnt do enough to make sure he had total control on his relationship to the point of insanity.
Basically if he is a narcissist he will be living in his own reality, which won't every be compatible with yours. Or anyone else's.

[madonnawhore]

Thanks Katisha, and yes, Dittany, it is!

This thread has made me a bit sad but thank you for your honesty (AF especially hehe). Some definite food for thought here.

I don't know why I can't just leave - seeing it all written down it seems pretty straightforward. I'm 30 now and I guess I was hoping that I'd be able to start a family soon, but it's becoming more and more obvious that he's not the right person to do it with. I just wanted the security and to 'do things properly', you know, get married, have babies, like my friends are starting to do. Their relationships are all so genuinely happy and I didn't want to admit I was the one in the shitty relationship that was wasting my time

If I'm honest, I'm scared if I leave I won't meet anyone else in time to have children and I'll end up a barren, mad cat lady. I know it's ridiculous. How did I end up with such low self esteem ??

[BertieBotts]

Mumblechum, have you ever been in an abusive relationship?

When I was with my XP I was unhappy, but I couldn't explain his behaviour at all. I just could not put my finger on what was wrong - it didn't make sense. I wondered some days whether it was wrong, or whether I was just being paranoid. I posted about him a few times, on mumsnet and a couple of other sites, and every time I heard a negative response I found it difficult to hear. How could this man, who I loved, and who was so vulnerable, be capable of cruelty, of abuse? These are harsh words to attach to someone you are in love with, and it can be difficult to accept that you are in danger, when you are forced to live like that every day. All these tiny things that don't add up, that on their own could be nothing, but all together paint this picture, someone who nobody could understand - hey, nobody would believe it, unless they had lived with that person or known them intimately. You literally don't know what's real any more, you can't tell black from white, because they are constantly making you question yourself.

When I eventually found the NPD thread - it was absolutely astonishing. These ladies had "met" my P, my inexplicable, unbelievable, unexplainable P, and they were describing him to me across the page. You can't understand how isolating it is to live with someone like this, because they make you doubt everything, to meet someone else who knows what you mean is amazing. To "meet" several people who have experienced exactly the same treatment - and the similarities ARE startling - at the hands of someone else, it blows you away.

So of course you want more, you need to learn more, to start to convince yourself that it IS real, that it IS him that has the problem, and that it's not going to go away. And hence the need for a name for the "condition" or whatever. It also allowed me to separate the actions from the person who I'd loved, and that made it easier for me to separate the emotion from it when I made my final decision.

You're right, it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference whether I "diagnosed" him with NPD, or blue moon cheese eating disease, or just wrote him off as an arse, but it helped me AT THE TIME. I certainly don't go round telling everyone now "Oh my ex had NPD, I learned all about it from an internet forum" - who would sound mad then? I don't care whether I was right or not about him having NPD, (I suspect I was right, but really, it doesn't matter) it really doesn't make the slightest bit of difference to me now, but it helped me leave at the time. It's not just so simple as to say "Well surely you can see this is not normal/right/etc?" - because you can't, not when you are there.

[mathanxiety]

Here's a LINK that you may or may not have seen.

Although it is really academic in the long term whether he has a personality disorder or not, and what matters when it's all boiled down is how this relationship contributes to your life or destroys it, identifying a problem of this kind can save you a huge amount of time and handwringing as you decide how to proceed.

If someone has many of the features of a personality disorder, chances are they will not be willing to recognise their own problems, acknowledge the effect their words and attitude have on you (hence the accusations of over-reacting, etc), or be willing to do the huge amount of hard work in therapy that is necessary to make someone else's life more bearable. Most people with Cluster B personality disorders simply do not care enough about other people's happiness in the first place to make that commitment.

Living with someone like this stresses you out, so forgive yourself for what you might be tempted to see as a disproportionate response to him, or what he is strongly suggesting to you is an off-kilter response to him -- button-pushing even after you have suffered a bereavement is not the act of a loving DH. Someone with a pd, on the other hand, will not tolerate attention being diverted from them even by something like a bereavement, and even making you angry with him is preferable to having you focus your attention elsewhere, on your grief, for instance.

[Katisha]

Listen you your feelings and get out now. It would be a HUGE mistake to have children with this man. And you know it.
30 is NOTHING. Of course it is not too late for you. And you don't have to redeem the last 8 years by staying in the relationship - what sort of good will that do in the long run.

See it as turning 30 has given you the wisdom to see things as they are and to lift yourself out of a draining relationship.
Get out now and onwards and upwards.

(I didnt have children till I was 39 if that is any comfort, and certainly hadn't met DH when I was 30...That was years away.)

[madonnawhore]

Thank you Bertie. That was really helpful and made a lot of sense.

[madonnawhore]

Oops x posts. Katisha and mathanxiety, thank you for your kind words - that makes me feel a lot better.

[mathanxiety]

Yes, no children with this man. Cut your losses, swallow your pride and out yourself to your friends -- if you feel that 'admitting' something about your relationship is what frankness would entail, then you must leave. If there's anything there that makes you cringe to mention to people who like you and care about you, then you know it's not good for you.

30 is the new 20 .

[madonnawhore]

When you grow up in a family where one parent is an addict, and therefore an expert in denial, you learn how to become an expert in denial yourself and I am certainly guilty of preferring to bury my head in the sand for the sake of appearances. But I think now that I am 30 and marriage and babies are a less of an abstract goal and more of a real ambition in the next couple of years, I can't ignore the fact any longer that my current circumstances aren't right for that to happen.

Sorry for the rambling, it just helps me to get it written down so I can see in in black and white after I've slept on it. Like I said, I'm very good at denial but I can't afford to be any longer.

[Katisha]

You are on the right path. It might be difficult to finally leave him, and he may try various tricks to make you stay.

Just be strong and be your own woman now. Enjoy life a bit! Don't weigh yourself down with his crap and issues. You are only 30 FGS! You don't have to do marriage and babies for ages. Find out who you really are and enjoy life as a strong single woman.

[blossomx]

I know this might seem dramatic, but based on what your 1st post, madonnawhore, i cant help but think of my situation and what i i got out of, a few months ago now. (luckily)!i cannot go in to detail but, when i was 8 months pregnant my relationship was on the rocks, and i found something out about my partner that was quite frightening... police were involved, and still are. And i had to move away from him quick smart, this was extremely difficult what being pregnant with his baby and looking forward to being a family ...things changed very suddenly for me. It wasn't until i spoke to a counseller that she thought that i had been a victim of domestic violence. I always thought of a man hitting a woman when i heard that term, but domestic violence is totally underestimated.( he was never physically violent towards me) Looking back now, he was extremely controllling, and everything was based around him all the time. And it wasnt really much of a relationship at all!

Things take a long time to sink in sometimes, and its not till you are out the situation you actually realise what is going on! www.womansaid.org.uk is a website with lots of info on, i found it quite useful...!