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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to think I've been in a slightly abusive relationship but not realised it?

91 replies

CarlosCarlos · 10/02/2019 15:48

Been with DP for 3 years. We just had a baby together (3.5 months ago). He was lovely initially and is nice enough most of the time now.

Things I've realised aren't quite right:

  • his ex cheated on him and he still refers to her as a slut and a whore 4 years later
  • if I do something slightly wrong he gets angry and talks to me like I am a child
  • he wants me to pay for 50% of everything whilst unpaid on maternity leave
  • he bitches about me to his friends (his drunk friend slipped up and told me this)
  • he is tight with money and will not spend on me (not even for my birthday)
  • when DS was 2 weeks old, I was 15 minutes late back from somewhere and he had DS. It was somewhere I HAD to be. He said if I didn't get home NOW he was giving DS formula and there was nothing I could do about it.
  • he gets angry easily. I am treading on eggshells all the time and am scared to confront him about most things.
  • he has never helped at night with DS (not once)
  • I was talking today about how it's hard to get back in to exercise after having a baby and he said 'yeah it's easy to get lazy'
  • he's pointed out how my thighs have got bigger

My friend thinks this is abuse. I'm not so sure. Maybe he's just not nice.

Sorry to start so many different threads. I am in a weird place and desperate for advice. I'm considering moving 3 hours drive away from him but I feel extremely guilty taking his tiny son so far away.

I feel so confused. Naive. Like I'm making such poor life decisions. Is the above really abuse?

OP posts:
TheWernethWife · 11/02/2019 17:16

So he was going to give the baby formula as you were 15 mins late. Unless you had bottles and formula in the house already, was the twat going to drag himself and the baby to the shop/store to purchase them. You are living with a fuckwit love, do yourself a favour and stop listening to him.

CarlosCarlos · 11/02/2019 17:25

We had formula in the house because DS had formula when we took him home. He was poorly when he was first born and I had to wean him off bottles when we got home. I found breast feeding incredibly difficult. We had formula in the house as back up. Thankfully never needed!

OP posts:
TheWernethWife · 11/02/2019 17:43

OK, I understand that. He is still a bloody fuckwit though and you are definitely being abused.

Hope his DD can be got away from him, do you really want that for your tiny baby.

TheWernethWife · 11/02/2019 18:21

He may try to control you by threatening to apply for custody for the baby, that's all it will be, a threat. These men seem to speak from the same script, its well known to mumsnetters.

Wholovesorangesoda · 11/02/2019 18:28

FWIW, my dd's dad was very similar. He was generally nice until I got pregnant, then found more and more ways to be, for want of a better word, horrible! If I went out to see family he wouldn't speak to me for the rest of the day, if I left DD with him and he was bored of watching her he would call and demand I got home. He would say how fat I was since I had a baby. Also, which was really pathetic, he would give me a huge lovebite the night before or while I was getting ready if I went out for a night with friends. As if he was marking his territory or something. It was vile, but I just thought maybe it was my fault. Classic, hey. I left him just after DD turned 1 and it was the best thing I could have done. If I could turn the clock back, I would do it sooner!
I think you would be much happier if you ended things, personally. Perhaps get a plan together, squirrel some money away if you need to, or preferably just get out sooner rather than later! I hope you get things worked out, it's a horrible way to live

ToPlanZ · 11/02/2019 18:45

OP you may well feel guilty now, but imagine how much worse you'll feel in years to come when he starts abusing your child knowing that you could have left. Don't feel like a failure, he deliberately misinterpreted himself it doesn't make you a bad person for not seeing it. If you're a nice, generally good person then you anticipate that others will be the same. No fault lies with you, none. Be kind to yourself and find a better life because that is what you deserve.

BertieBotts · 11/02/2019 21:47

If you can't mentally sit with the term abusive, would you at least agree that he is controlling?

My ex was very similar to this, it is horrible.

No a court would not make you do overnight contact. It is about what is best for the baby, not what is convenient for the dad. I do absolutely understand the fear of him having him alone but a few things to bear in mind here. First off he might not even have him alone. My ex could never bear to look after DS1 on his own so he'd take him to his mother's house or show him off to his latest girlfriend (Hmm) - not ideal but at least meant he wouldn't do anything awful because he didn't want them to think he was a bad father, he wanted them to think he was a poor victim of the system.

But lastly, I do understand the idea that if you're there you might be able to stop him from doing anything awful whereas if you're not there he might do what he likes. In reality you do not have this power. By leaving you are reducing your son's time in an abusive household from 100% to say 20% or whatever contact he has (probably more likely 5% or 10%.) Unfortunately your presence in the household does not have a protective effect. The presence of abusive or controlling behaviours in a household makes it not a safe household. By leaving even if he has unsupervised contact you are showing your son how to live in a safe, calm, non abusive environment.

BertieBotts · 11/02/2019 21:50

Oh and it's absolutely typical that he doesn't think he is being abusive. Men like this never do - they always seem to draw the line of abuse conveniently below the way they are behaving Hmm and then if you complain they have something to draw against you "Well I never stopped you going out/I never cheated on you/I never hit you". As though you are supposed to be grateful for this very basic expectation :(

CarlosCarlos · 11/02/2019 21:55

@BertieBotts he's actually said 'you're making out like I'm hitting you or something' and I remember thinking to myself that I wish he would because it would be so much easier to leave...

OP posts:
BertieBotts · 11/02/2019 22:46

I get it, but please, don't fall into that trap. Mainly because it's horrible - you absolutely do not want him to hit you least of all in front of your son. I can also never get out of my head one post on here made years and years - probably a decade ago - where the poster always maintained that she'd leave for good if he ever hit him and then the day he did he almost killed her. It was an awful post, so frightening to read.

But also because it is never as pivotal as you imagine. What typically happens is that one day you are arguing and it seems like normal and then he will get up close to you and do something like push you out of the way, perhaps roughly, perhaps into a doorway or something, and you'll be thinking oh my god, did he really just do that? Does it count? What does that mean? And you'll still be in the thick of the argument so you won't have any brain space to process it and it will seem like such a huge overwhelming thing, that the most typical immediate response is "I wish that hadn't happened". And the argument will end and you'll be in this complete WTF headspace. But you'll go to bed, and in the morning you'll wake up and for a moment you'll forget and then suddenly it will come flooding back, and so will that feeling - I wish I could un-know it.

Then what happens is a very funny thing - because the consequences of dealing with it are so very difficult and because quite often the partner will simply go about their life acting as though it had never happened it is very very easy and incredibly tempting to simply rewrite history and decide that it didn't happen at all, you simply remembered wrongly, or interpreted the action wrongly, or it was an accident, or justifiably provoked, or it simply didn't count.

In fact, he might have already physically hurt you, and you haven't "codified" it as hitting, because of this very thing.

Then the longer you stay in this much more comfortable limbo the harder it is to look back and say no, that was serious, I should have acted - because your brain says well, why, if it was so serious, didn't you leave at the time? You can't leave now - you have lived with it all this time - that's ridiculous. And anyway things are fine now. He's doing better. Probably they will improve some more.

Don't wait for him to hit you - you will simply wait for the next time, for the worse time, for this, for that - forever. If you know that the relationship is unhealthy start making plans and researching options. It doesn't mean that you have to do them but if you need to - you will be ready.

Bloomini · 11/02/2019 22:59

What a horrible man he is. Why are you feeling worried or guilty about moving your baby son away from him when he can't even be arsed to get up in the night to look after him? Sorry this is happening to you.

yourfeetstink · 11/02/2019 23:06

Echo the others. Ltb Thanks

Nothinglefttochoose · 12/02/2019 04:56

How could you not know?? That’s not slightly abusive,it is extremely abusive! Tight with money, treading on egg shells, put downs, not happy for you to go out and have a good time. It’s all abuse.

Decormad38 · 12/02/2019 05:37

It’s fairly typical of abusers to turn it round on you so it’s not them being abusive it you being overly sensitive! You are not overly sensitive. He is abusive.

burritofan · 12/02/2019 08:59

he's actually said 'you're making out like I'm hitting you or something' and I remember thinking to myself that I wish he would because it would be so much easier to leave...

Been there. You don't have to wait for the wallop to leave. The bar for a healthy relationship is much, MUCH higher than he'd have you believe. There's so much more than "He doesn't hit me" but he wants you to be grateful that he doesn't (yet).

And as Bertie says, it often doesn't start from a punch where you can conclusively say "he hit me". It can be incremental and slow; a lack of gentleness and respect, an "accident" here or there, a "jokey" shove, a slightly too aggressive tap to get your attention, the heavy blow on your back "because you were coughing, I was being nice". Until you're used to being handled roughly and it's your normal, and your head is all over the place because in-between he'll say it's not happening, or have charming, loving days, or remind you of the times you yourself weren't perfect.

You don't need his permission to leave. You don't need ours. You don't need to get hit to leave. You can just leave, I promise. You're allowed.

memememe · 12/02/2019 16:29

op you sound like me. except im now 7 years down the line and my 7yo is begging me to live in a different house to daddy, so ive finally got the push i need to leave. however my son suffers terribly from anxiety and its all because of the way his dad treats me. i wish id gone sooner. i used to say the same about him hitting me. please leave now while your son is young enough to not be affected.

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