My therapist implied she'd have to involve social services if I allow my husband to move in with us.

[RedStripeIassie]

Long back story..... dh became an ex late last year after I had enough of him drinking and smoking pot and skunk all the time and generally being neglectful of my dd and myself. I said that if he could turn his life around I'd consider getting back together after 6 months plus. I moved back home and found a place to rent starting in March. I became seriously ill and in hospital it was touch and go on a couple of occasions. Dh was by my side the whole time and we starting rekindling things during all the madness.
He doesn't drink anymore and just smokes a couple of light spliffs a night. He is the man I remember falling in love with and the relationship he has with dd is growing by the day.

As well as my physical health my mental health has been pretty shaky and I've started seeinga really good therapist. This is a first for me. My understanding was that's everything was totally confidential unless it was a life or death situation or child abuse or another serious crime.
Because of this I have been so open and honest about the past thinking that is the best way. Some of what I've told her has clearly worried her and she has said a few times how lucky I was to not attract SS involvement. She did a risk assessment today and when I mentioned I had been thinking about letting dh move in with us in the new place she basically said that if I did it would be a safe guarding issue as he is still 'using' and she would have to report, otherwise it would look like she was colluding.

So WWYD?? I'm really getting a lot from therapy and she's a really good professional whose highly recommended. I'm lucky as she's doing me a big discount because I'm skint too. But what's the point in having therapy if you start having to lie to your therapist? It would be a waste of my money and both our time. I feel dh has made some really true and meaningful changes and I've been looking forward to us being together again after almost 4 months. Dd also wants to live with both of us and has really developed a great relationship with him after not really liking him before. He still needs to work on stuff but I disagree that he's a safeguarding issue. The worry is making me reconsider letting him move in though.

I'm sure that when he gets wind he can't move in because (in his mind) 'she is overreacting and has a personal gripe over weed' he'll be very against me going.

He already asks me what I talked about as soon as we see each other after a session. I would have thought that you don't ask people about what they say in therapy. A bit like you don't ask people if they mumsnet in RL

I will tell her everything that's happened in time. She's obviously a bit worried because she said she contacted her 'supervision person?' to discuss safeguarding with them! That makes me a bit on edge that she's already involving someone else without telling me first.

It's normal for a therapist to discuss a case with a supervisor and good practice for her to talk over whether there are safeguarding issues she needs to raise with others.

She won't talk about you with anyone OTHER than her supervisor unless she concludes that there is significant risk of harm to someone else if she doesn't - and she has been open with you so far if that's a possibility.

I know it's unnerving, but she is being honest with you and following good practice. She is looking out for both you and your DD as best she can.

She won't have "involved" her supervisor in your case, Red, she'll have been asking their guidance on how to handle a situation (you will still be anonymous, they're discussing your situation rather than "you" iyswim). And she sounds like a great therapist determined to get it right for you. She has been honest with you about discussing the safeguarding aspect with her supervisor, that's also great, and should mean you trust her more not less - she is honest with you. You might not be used to it, but try to see it as a plus not a minus.

Don't discuss anything about your therapy with your husband. Just say "I can't discuss anything about my sessions because it's private".

Good luck Red. I hope you can find the courage to tell your family - perhaps your sister if she's helping to pay for the therapy? You can write it down in a letter or email if that's easier to do.

It's not mind reading. Abusive men are all the same. They say the same things and do the same things and react the same way.

My dd started a relationship last October that I knew was abusive within a fortnight and on the strength of a couple of phone calls and texts. I have never met him, and she was head over heels in love, but I still knew.

I've never seen an abusive relationship and until late last year I'd never been in one. For years we were happy and equal. That's why it's so crushing. My therapist says she can see how much I love my daughter and how much I love my husband and that it must be difficult. It's not like I'd been putting up with a shitty abusive relationship for years.

No surprises that he wants to know what you are saying in therapy. Same as no surprises he guarded you in hospital. He needs you to keep the abuse secret from everyone. He knows they will help you.

If you do nothing else red tell everyone as much as possible.

Practice saying the words out loud in front of a mirror. Practice how you will end those conversations / have lots of small conversations. Assuming you want to start getting it out in the open without having huge interventions and interrogations by friends and family from the start.

Use other people and euphemisms at first. For example, you can't talk to him about money but your sister and dad could get the car money and your half of the deposit off him. You could frame it as a misunderstanding about the car and deposit , say your fragile MH is making it difficult for you to discuss it with him, especially as he was very tight with money when you were living in London.

"Tight" is a massive euphemism. We all know it is financial abuse. But people understand tight and will pursue him to pay his share without it having to become a massive thing (unless he makes it a massive thing).

Sorry about your daughter. Is she out of it now?

Good to know the supervisor thing is standard!

It's not mind reading. Abusive men are all the same. They say the same things and do the same things and react the same way

This is true. Once you have worked with a few women or families with DA you see that whatever the flavour of the abuse it all follows a script. Convincing women that their relationship is boringly predictable rather than a star crossed love story is the first hurdle (wouldn't put it like that in real life of course )
It is though. Red we can predict what your DH is going to say and do before he does it. Because abuse is a psychological profile that covers many symptoms but they all follow the same pattern.

I guarantee that he was selfish and manipulative before you had dd but you were used to wrapping your wants around his and placating him so you didn't notice. Also when it's just 2 people, one of whom is focused on pleasing the other, there is no light shining on the controlling and abusive side of him. When your baby came along and the focus was pulled from him he started to up the ante to get it back where he wanted it.
There is a reason that abusive behaviour often starts in pregnancy.

"I've never seen an abusive relationship and until late last year I'd never been in one. For years we were happy and equal. That's why it's so crushing. My therapist says she can see how much I love my daughter and how much I love my husband and that it must be difficult. It's not like I'd been putting up with a shitty abusive relationship for years"

I am as sure as it is possible to be that he has not changed. You just fitted in to his control without noticing. It's the circumstances that have changed.

Why do you tell yourself these lies that make it harder on yourself?

He had been withholding money for a long time before the end of last year. That was financial abuse. Pretty severe too.

For ages before that he had got moods on when you went out without him, even just to family. That's also a sign of there being abuse long-standing.

Didn't his old boss used to worry about you and check if you were OK when you had to call to make excuses for DH / check on DH or something?

There was loads and loads more you mentioned on previous threads. You are not doing yourself any favours by selectively forgetting the past.

Remember you thought that horrific day out in the park was lovely until we gave a collective gasp at the vileness of it at you. Maybe you need to have a good hard look at the past imagining one of us were looking back at it with you.

It might make it easier to understand how it ramped up over the years until here you are with your mind and life shredded by him.

Red, you've a lot of posts here describing what has happened in some detail. If you want to be really clear with your family and therapist without talking, you have the option to copy and paste your own words, print them out and let them read it. It might make it less stressful while getting the truth out.

But I do think you probably need your family to know, and I know that you recognise that that will be the burn all bridges nuclear option, there won't be any going back. You will need their emotional and practical support though, especially while you're unwell. I'm sure they'll be there.

You know, you said your husband was going on about the therapist being prejudiced about weed and how your family don't see it as a big deal so basically everyone in your life thinks it's OK. I suspect that if you told your parents that weed smoking meant that your child wasn't in a warm, heated home and that your husband actually didn't want your child to have a coat because it would divert money from weed, they'd see it differently. Sometimes it's not the action but the ripples that go from it that make the real problem.

Just like drinking. Having a drink is fine. When you're roaring at your wife and childgetting on a bus as you settle into the gutter with a tramp to share a bottle of vodka, then there's a problem.

Him asking what you talk about in therapy set off such alarm bells in my head my ears are still ringing. Rabbit is spot on, he's trying to police what you disclose to others about his behaviour and I agree that's what he was doing when you were in hospital too.

That highlights something for me, he knows he's abusive, it's not some temporary loss of control or moment of madness, he knows he's abusive and yet still won't get therapy. Let me ask you something Red, if your roles were reversed, if you had behaved towards him the way he did towards you on the 'bad night' would you be making excuses and avoiding getting therapy or would you be doing everything you possibly could to make sure you never behaved that way again? I know the answer to that as well as you do and you need to have a really good think about why his response to what happened is so very different to how you would react if you'd hurt and terrified him.

Some aspects of his behaviour may have changed but he's still attempting to control you, right down to your interactions with qualified professionals who are trying to help you. That should worry you Red, it certainly worries me

Red, you've mentioned before that he claims not to actually remember what he did on the bad night. Do you believe that? I don't. Of course he's very, very interested in knowing what you're telling the therapist.

Your therapist has got your back. People, including your dh, will treat you differently as long as you keep going to see them and building up your esteem. Use her to help talk through decision making. You really don't need to tell him what you discuss. I would tellb him white lies if he presses you. Practice it with your therapist.

He really didn't seem abusive at all before we had dd. Then for a long time he just seems selfish and unable to grow up.

He asks about therapy but doesn't demand I tell him everything. I wouldn't anyway! He actually seems really ok with the therapy because he's worried about how crazy I am and the self harming.

He definitely doesn't remember that night or other times he's said stuff or smashed stuff up in that state. He can't even skin up when he's that fucked. I watch him try and use it as benchmark for him going beyond . If he was like that in the past I'd just wait it out till he passed out.

Haha, I don't miss that!! Bad times.

It was when he started shoving me about sober that I really stopped excusing him. Never again and I mean that.

He says he's worried about how crazy - as in distressed - you are because then he doesn't have to talk about how crazy - as in dangerous - he is. Sorry but how can you think his concern for your wellbeing is sincere? It's very very convenient for him to feel sorry for poor ill overstressed Red when it takes the focus totally off how it was his behaviour that broke you. He won't even have a conversation with you about his responsibilities, will he?

Never again and I mean that

Never again means that he doesn't get a chance to do it.

What you mean is that when he does it again, you'll dump him.

But then what? He might not shove you next time. He may well squeeze your throat, or push you down the stairs.

Or he'll be sorry again and use less drugs, and you'll accept him again until he shoves you again. And again. And again.

Never should mean that you don't give him the opportunity to do it. At all.

What about never again on the money side too.

That caused you so so much stress before.

I understand that right now, you don't mind him paying no child maintenance and not paying you your half of the deposit and not paying towards the car because he is between jobs.

At what point do you expect him to have given you your half of the deposit back and to start paying child maintenance? Is failure to support his own child and stealing your half of the deposit a deal breaker for you at some point? Obviously he will always have excellent excuses, so where's your cut off point to say now this is abusive again? A week after his first pay?

With violence it's clear cut that it's wrong so it's easy to be firm. With other shitty stuff I sort of feel like I must have got it wrong. He obviously doesn't feel guilty or that it's wrong for me to be paying for everything at the moment so part of me feels that he must be right and I'm just whinging about nothing. I raised the idea of child maintanience a few times and he always said it would happen when he got a job but not before then. It's really confusing.

The deposit I'll get back when the will money from his Dad comes through. It's getting ridiculous now it's taken so long.

He must have an income or savings if he's buying drugs. Why not stop and spending that on his own child?

And you won't see that money from his father. As you won't have the non-violent, no drug taking, job-holding husband that you wish for in him.