Why did you stay in your controlling relationship?

1. I thought he might kill us all
2. Money

I stayed over 30 years and brought two children up who have suffered as a result. Sometimes I still think he might do something, even though we are both in our 60s now, and of course I have no money and am struggling to find somewhere permanent to live. I have told some people about 1. and they still think I should have made more effort and stayed ... because 2 - how can I complain that things are difficult when I chose this new life.

I thought he was just overprotective and I was poor at communicating. We worked together and if i wanted to do anything by myself he would insist we had important deadlines and I was leaving him to do everything. By the time I realised it was bullshit he had given up on the gaslighting and just moved on to physical threats. To be honest he was FABULOUS at the gaslighting. Looking back I think he deserved some kind of medal for how inventive his gaslighting tactics were.

Sorry I’m new here and I’m late to this thread so hope someone is still here to see my comment. I’ve been with my partner 15 years we have 2 children. We’ve been through a lot! Anyway I am unsure what to call this as anytime I wish to go out without him I’m “ugly, a slag, fat etc” I get told he won’t have our children I best find someone to look after them, I get told if we have plans in the future to cancel them, that he will come and embarrass me and bring me home infront of my friends (which he has done before!) I have missed out on so many occasions and I’m at the end of my tether with it all. Do I stay?! Do I go?! When we are good it’s great when he’s getting his own way. My children are both teenagers now and they hear this from him it’s breaking my heart I feel so stuck in a rut and it’s not fair on them. Please no negativity as I’m finding this hard to even post.

Sadly I share a lot of the reasons others give.

I had no money.
I feared his reaction & the consequences.
I considered myself too old to start again.
I didn't want to have failed at marriage (as silly as it sounds).
I considered a lot of his behaviour mental health related, & as such, felt it was my duty to help, especially as he put up with my physical disabilities.

A big one was he was my carer, I faced either a nursing home on mid 30s or limited social care for the rest of my life. This terrified me.

I had nowhere to go. I had a lot of pets and wouldn't have been able to take them with me. When I did eventually tell him I wanted out he threatened to release them all if I left the house.

I didn't realise. I sort of knew things weren't right but he had MH issues so I couldn't/didn't see what else was going on. When he had an affair it knocked me for six but in hindsight it was the best thing he ever did for me because then we divorced. Looking back there were all of the red flags but I just didn't see it.

I didn't realise I was being controlled until my GP told me. I knew I was in an unhappy relationship but I felt that it was at least 50% my fault, if not more. I was scared about the financial side of things. Nearly 2 years post separation, my financial future looks bleak.

I was manipulated into believing I was in the wrong, I’d lose my child, I’d never meet anyone as good as him, it was all my fault.
Ive now been out almost two years and it’s tough being a single parent and holding that anger towards the abuser but im in a much much better position mentally, physically, emotionally than I was or ever would have been had I stayed.

I'm so so sorry. Did you get your child back at all? X

I tried but he would say he would kill himself; eventually I no longer cared. I did leave, he tried to do this again, I saved him and left.

My mother killed herself, so he knew it would keep me in line.

I never spoke to him ever again alone after that. Vile man. The divorce was awful

Powerful posts.

That Ted Talk is really good too.

I had to run away to another country - where I had friends.

I'm sure I would be dead if I hadn't done that.

SAHM who wanted to retrain but whilst his career was going up he wouldn’t permit the same for me.
I usually say it was quite gradual but in retrospect, it got controlling fairly early on.
Still feel like I have to walk on eggshells since divorcing years ago - a divorce I initiated but he didn’t allow me to divorce him, he had to divorce me. Until I left the house, I was scared and pretty much said anything submissively to keep the peace because of the children.

Because as is always the way, it was a very gradual process. He subtly but systemically isolated me from my family, ridiculed any friends I had. Always minimised his behaviour or made it sound like he was joking and it was me being too sensitive. Would gaslight the shit out of me so I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. Had 3 three children with him; the third surprise pregnancy, told me if I terminated he’d leave me with 2 young children. Thwarted any attempts I made to find a job so essentially trapped financially. But would swerve between controlling and nice (“we don’t need anyone else”). Became sexually coercive, told me it was his entitlement. So confused and gaslit was I, I recorded conversations which ultimately proved crucial in gaining a (rare) conviction of CCB.

This.

This little 20 min ted talk explains it far more articulately than I could

It was shown on the numerous course I was put on by the domestic violence team

*him

The abusive relationship is like a Venus fly trap, I never ever thought I'd be the victim of domestic violence but they entrap you, strip you of every bit of self assurance, make you think your mad.

Because I deeply loved his, typical abusive relationship I was love bomber, swept off my feet and then little by little he stripped me down, it ended in him becoming so incredibly jealous that one night he said I looked at some man when we were out and he tried to kill me. Literally.

So that was the final straw, what followed was him attempting his life x 6 (he knew when I would get the call I would drop everything) that stopped working, so then he started threatening my life, police stepped in to protect me, then he threatened revenge porn, then reported me to social services, the harrassment was intense. He then threatened my children's lives and I thought no more.

He spent 6 months in prison and is now out but with a lot of protection around me.

I always knew leaving would be hard, but I never knew how hard.

Snap

I stayed for my children. I didn't want them to come from a broken home. But as I lost weight I gained some confidence about myself and realised that I would be happier, and my children would be happier 'coming from a broken home'. That was over 6 years ago and I've not looked back. Like others, I didn't realise how controlling he was until I got out. He still controls me now by using my children as a weapon (see the post called 'my ex husbands demands' that I posted recently).

The women I did my Freedom Programme with said the same thing. The emotional abuse is constant. The thing is you don't really realise how bad it is until you are out and look back. You don't realise you're getting sucked in and then you get told you're wrong/being dramatic/nagging etc etc and believe it. It's always your fault and never them - except it is them.

I think a lot of men are so manipulative, they portray their controlling behaviour as care for you, looking after you and loving you so much that they're scared to lose you. It's really very insidious and makes you feel that you're the bad one for questioning his motives!

I had horrible insecurities from my childhood and felt like i couldn't go back to an abusive family, even though he was my abuser too. I was scared of him. I was scared of where I would be if I wasn't with him. I thought he'd try to take my children even though he was the abusive one with a long criminal record, he made me feel crazy and said a crazy person wouldn't be allowed to keep the children.
He used every controlling tactic he could muster including his own health which left me scared of where he'd be if I left him. But I couldn't see it all, not at first anyway, I just didn't really know what proper love should look like.

I completely get that. Weird as it sounds I preferred the physical to the mental because once he'd punched me or whatever it was at least over, until the next time anyway. Whereas with the mental it could go on for so long that you feel like you must be going crazy. It's so hard to explain if you haven't experienced it. Glad you escaped too

So sorry @Anonym00se

Because (like so many) he only started being controlling during my pregnancy. As it was a very difficult pregnancy (twins, one with growth issues, multiple instances of blessing) a lot of what I now realise was pure controlling seemed like him just trying to protect me. At the time I felt a bit smothered, but thought it was just care.

I realised it was control when our girls were 4 weeks old, but in that exact moment I had nowhere else easy to go, nor the strength to try and find somewhere.

We were over by the time the girls were 7 months. He made a move that was meant to be controlling (joined the military so he could move me away from everyone and have me very isolated), but actually gave me space to escape.

I still didn't realise just how controlling he was until afterwards. Little things hit later that were "shit that was control too" moments.