Had a visit from my lovely step mother today (absolutely adore her and value her opinion so much!) and half way through our conversation about mine and DP’s relationship, she said ‘I’m just really worried you’ll end up like I did. The things I went through with my ex left lasting scars that still hurt to this day, 20 years later and still affect me’. It was hard for me to hear, but I know she’s one of the only people who really ‘gets’ what I’m going through at the moment/have been through the last few years.
Her situation; her ex cheated, had multiple affairs, drug abuse, constant lies, emotional abuse, manipulation etc spanning many years before she finally realised enough was enough and sent him packing, but her self confidence, self esteem, general mental well being were in tatters by that point and she still struggles to this day. She sees the similarities and the route I’m heading down and this was the first real time that she’s expressed true concern for my mental state as opposed to just offering general advice/being my shoulder to lean on when I need a rant.
My situation; will try and cram as much info in as possible to try and get some well rounded and helpful responses so I apologise if this is really long and boring, but would be thankful for anyone who reads this and has some input -
DP and I have been together several years and have two DC’s together.
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When we first started dating, I told him that due to my ex putting porn before sex in our relationship (he would turn me down for sex, wait until I’d fallen asleep, then watch porn in bed next to me - did this countless times), I’d become quite upset over boyfriends using porn, but understood it was something men do, so asked him to not watch it whilst I was in the house/not let it affect the intimacy in our relationship. I know some people might deem this as unreasonable, but seeing as we’d not been together long, I figured it best to throw my cards on the table early on and gauge how he felt about it, rather than me blindsiding him with it a few years down the line. DP (who was then just a boyfriend of a couple months) said he barely used porn anyway, and had absolutely zero issues with not looking at any porn content/images after hearing how I felt about it and was deeply sympathetic towards me and what I’d been through with my ex. Fast forward to a few months after the birth of our first dc and a couple years of being together, and I discovered he had an entirely separate Instagram account which I knew nothing about, that he was using purely to follow almost 300 women, no men, just women. Some your typical bikini models, others women that post content with links to sites where you can ‘see more’, others just really hot women wearing next to nothing whilst bending over... you get the picture. Now, while that wasn’t so much of a ‘break-up-able’ offence, it really got to me. Not just because it was few months post c section and I could barely recognise my new, flabby, hacked to pieces body, but because he himself had told me he had no problems stopping looking at things like that and wasn’t ‘that kind of guy’. So for him to have created a secret account behind my back purely to follow hot, basically naked women and look at those images god knows when, it struck a nerve and broke my trust. The account was deleted, he apologised, said he just got carried away and promised he wouldn’t do anything like it again. So that was the first time I felt a bit ‘deceived’ I guess you could say and it did leave me feeling on edge for a while, but I moved past it and eventually forgot all about it.
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DP is a big one for going out, and never coming home when he says he will and will always be way more drunk than planned. Again, not a huge issue if you’re aware of what the night will be like before he heads out the door, but time and time again, I’m told ‘I’ll be home by 11 latest, won’t even be that drunk as I’ve not got much money anyway and my phone will be on loud if you need me’, off he goes, will ignore the couple of messages I send him whilst he’s out (just asking how his night is, or where he is if he’s late), won’t answer his phone, and will eventually stroll in at whatever hour he decides upon, usually been 2am and 4am, absolutely wrecked (there have been times he’s been so drunk he’s come home and started massive arguments with me in the small hours of the morning, calling me names, or vomiting kebab all over our front room). Now, I’d expect this kind of behaviour from a young lad that didn’t have DC’s, but a man approaching 40 with two children ignoring his other half and coming home wasted after hours of zero contact isn’t on. He doesn’t go out ridiculously often, so I do understand the need to let his hair down, but it’s not difficult to message the mother of your children who’s exhausted at home with small babies, and let her know your plans have changed and you’ll be back later than you originally said - rather than avoiding all contact which you know makes her worry. He doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong when he behaves this way, and that I basically need to be more ‘chill’ about it all.
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Shortly after the birth of DC2 (I think it was about 3 months post birth and I was suffering with PND for the second time), DP cheated on me with a woman he used to work with. They’d been messaging each other for a few weeks - ensuring they only messaged whilst he was at work so I didn’t notice/suspect anything when he was at home - then kissed on a night out that they’d gone on with work mates. The day after they’d kissed, she’d contacted him asking if he’d like to do something one on one with her, and he was excited for their next ‘drunken hang out’. So instead of him waking up the following morning racked with guilt that he’d just cheated on his depressed partner and potentially broken up the family home and deciding to tell her it shouldn’t happen again/doesn’t want to see her anymore, he was happy to proceed with seeing her again and who knows what would’ve happened next, had I not discovered all these messages and got to the bottom of what had happened on their staff night out. This situation naturally broke my heart, my trust, my self esteem, my confidence, just everything. I was a mess for what felt like an eternity afterwards and it’s only now, almost 18 months down the line that I’m not feeling completely miserable about it all day in day out. I still have good days and bad days, but I’ve mostly learnt to cope with it, or more likely that I’ve just buried it in a box deep inside me that I try not to re-open.
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Stonewalling. DP is THE dictionary definition of a stonewaller and it’s become progressively worse over the years. At the start of our relationship, I presumed his difficulties surrounding being able to open up, look me in the eyes during serious conversations, not wanting to work through conflicts etc was down to him being shy or just not wanting to cause further problems. But the longer we’ve been together, the worse the stonewalling has become. He’ll point blank ignore me when I try and talk about anything that’s deemed remotely serious. He’ll stare at his phone, the tv, the floor, look anywhere other than at me, or he’ll just walk out of the room. He won’t respond, won’t say a damn thing, will just sit there in silence until I reach a point where I’m so upset that I either leave the room and entirely give up on the conversation, or I get angry, then he gets angry at me for getting angry. Discussions/conflicts/arguments always fall on me to mediate and result in me crawling back to him whereby I find MYSELF apologising to HIM even if/when it’s him that will have done something wrong.
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Apologies and Empathy. DP is a big one for thinking grumbling one small ‘sorry’ is enough to alleviate and repair any damage he may have caused. He never goes above and beyond to right his wrongs. When he cheated on me, I didn’t receive an overwhelming display of sorry’s, he wasn’t ridiculously empathetic, in fact, a few weeks after he’d cheated, we bumped in to the woman he’d kissed whilst we was out with our DC’s, and he basically expected me to be over it all entirely and became mad at me if I tried talking to him about the cheating as I was obviously still hurting and still had questions about it. He’d blame me for dragging things up and not trying to move on, claimed he didn’t want to hear or talk about it. This is the same any time he fucks up. I’m allowed a day or two to be angry or upset, but if I dare express myself after that, then he makes me feel like I’m in the wrong for still being hurt regarding his actions. It’s like he dictates how long I’m allowed to grieve, and if I don’t fall in line with what he deems as acceptable, then I’m the one in the wrong.
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DP was recently caught out having spun a massive web of lies. The lies he told damn near split us up, but when I gave him the opportunity to explain himself and give me a decent apology, he claimed he’d ‘already done enough’. By this, he meant he’d apologised meekly when he was first caught out being a massive, lying twat, and that was all I could expect to receive. When I was trying to work with him to get to the bottom of his lies, the deceit and the betrayal, DP flipped the situation and chose not to address the mammoth fuck up he’d done, but instead threw in comments about me and how I’m ‘miserable and no fun’. So of course, the conversation then became less about how awfully he’d just behaved and how bad his lying had been, and then became about me being this boring other half and I found myself apologising and claiming that I’ll try to be better.
There are a bunch of other smaller things, such as although I’m the SAHP, I do 95% of all the housework, all the cooking etc and he just treats the place like a hotel, leaving shit wherever it lands.
His family - well his mother mainly - will always, always think the sun shines out of his arse no matter what he’s done. I get that family stick together, but a few days after he’d cheated on me, I saw a message from his mum on his phone telling him to stop treating me so well! I honestly think he could murder me while I slept and his mother would still tell him that I probably deserved it and he’d done nothing wrong.
So anyway, the point of me writing all of this is that since I’ve gone through so much with DP, with regards to the cheating, the lying, the deceit, the constant making me question and doubt my own thoughts and feelings, the stonewalling etc, it’s lead me to not only have no trust in DP but I’m also now, as a result of everything, am finding myself struggling to trust my own intuition and doubting myself all the time even when I know I’m right.
I came across some things in DP’s wardrobe the other day - in a jacket to be precise - (what they were isn’t relevant) that I know for 100% fact were not in there a couple of weeks/months ago. I asked him a week ago (after his recent batch of lies, as these items were linked to his lying) if he’d seen said items and he claimed he had no idea where they were, and was adamant they must be in the loft as he hadn’t seen them since we moved three years ago.
We pay for everything on card, but on nights out, tend to draw out cash so we can keep better track of spending, so not too long ago I went through his coats and blazers in the hopes of finding some loose change for something, so had these items been in the jacket, I would’ve come across them then, but they weren’t there, so the items have obviously been placed there recently/since he lied to me the other week.
I know, absolutely know within my heart of hearts that the items have been moved to this jacket within the last few weeks, but he’s claiming he had no idea they were there, that I must’ve missed them when I was hunting for change (given the amount of items and the size of them, this is in no way possible) and he’s not seen them in almost three years. Since hearing what he had to say and how adamant he seemed, I’m now doubting myself and thinking ‘shit, what if I DID miss them? What if they were in there and I just forgot I’d even come across them?’ which is ridiculous because I know, I KNOW, they wasn’t there, and he currently doesn’t have a leg to stand on with regards to me trusting a word he says, but I feel my mind has been manipulated and twisted and doubted so much over the last few years that I can’t even trust myself and my own certainties.
I guess I just want to know if going through the things I’ve listed will actually have lasting damage on my mental health/the way I am in the future? I used to be so sure of myself, took no shit, stood my ground, was opinionated and always trusted my sixth sense/intuition and relied heavily upon it, but I feel like I’m drowning now and I’m truly scared to see that I no longer trust my own intuition and I’m panicking that that’s because of the way DP has treated/moulded me, or if it’s something I’ve inadvertently done to myself? My step mother telling me she’s worried I’m headed down a similar path to what she went down has struck a chord with me, I’m now worried that before long, I’m going to completely lose sight of ‘who’ I am, destined to a life of never knowing right from wrong, believing things I shouldn’t, doubting myself etc.
Has anyone been through any of the things I've listed and actually come out the other side 'ok'. I don't know whether the way I'm feeling is a temporary blip that will eventually pass, or if this is just the way I'm going to be from here on out, with the potential for me to gradually get worse.