Can we have a thread about little moments that made you understand the 'why does he do that '? moment.

[OhioOhioOhio]

I'm having a difficult weekend. My abusive and controlling stbxh is working hard to get under my skin. I'm less affected than in years before. But I am still not able to shake the confusion. Why years after our separation he still feels entitled to put me down and speak to me like I'm a piece of shit.

What does he get out of it?

And when will it end?

And I've posted on aibu on purpose. I'm hoping there are some survivors out there who can shed some light on my head space. And in hoping they don't use the relationships board anymore.

Yes. I don't usually have to see him. But I cannot emphasise this enough. He wants to rip me to pieces.

I do total grey rock.

Google parallel parenting, OP. There are some really good articles on this online.

My cousin divorced her ex, and in her darker moments in the first year, she said at times that it was no better than they were together. But she kept every single text/email from him; recorded what the DC said he had said about her; and eventually had enough evidence to go to the Police. They now do handovers via a family friend. And they have a rigid court order so he can't keep making the rules up as he goes along. He eventually slipped up and showed his true colours.

You are going to have to deal with this clown for the rest in your life because you share children..... so you need to find an effective way of not letting his shit into your heart and mind. Easier said than done, but there has to be a way

He does what he does because that's him. You're only concern is you (and any children).

^^
This I think. It's their real personality.

I agree that they are like toddlers. You have to show them you won t respond and they won t get their way.

For me I gave up on why he did it, I was lucky with my abusive bastard ex that we didn’t have children but he continued to contact me after I’d decided enough was enough.

Went from the whiny “what did I do wrong” - inner eye roll every time I heard/read it to any and all types of abusive language and threatening behaviour to try and get me “back in line”.

That’s what I think it is really, it’s about that sense of ownership and entitlement to your person when you’re together, then when you end it, YOU take back control of your life and display how you can get along just fine without them - better than fine in fact - and their delusions crack, the over inflated ego gets a puncture and the only way they can think to patch that up is by continuing their abusive behaviour and escalating it out of desperation to prove something. To whom or what it is they’re trying to prove I don’t know.

All I know is the moment I removed myself from wondering why I found I felt a lot better, it’s his shitstorm to sort out (meaning his lack of self worth that drives him to control and manipulate others) not mine.

So I’d say continue as you are with the Grey Rock technique and don’t allow this man any more of your headspace than he deserves

This is all so helpful. Off to Google parallel parenting.

Yes, I understand.

Essentially this part I didn't think the book's explanation was very good. The bit about the man who inherits a piece of land only to find that everyone else believes it is public and he is the only one who believes it is his and it makes him angry?

I found feminism/patriarchy explained it much better. Essentially men like this are sexism personified. To them men are people and women are an entirely different class. They do not expect to relate to a female partner (or ex partner or acquaintance) in the same way that they do to a fellow man.

The teddy bear analogy is very good. And as for why he can't just throw the teddy bear away and get a new one - well that wouldn't work, would it? That teddy bear knows all his secrets. It can't just be left lying around, anybody might find it. So he has to destroy it. That's what he's trying to do now. This is why grey rock works very well because if he gets the sense that his attempt to hurt/destroy is working, then he'll continue. Whereas if he doesn't think it's doing anything, he'll probably stop seeing you as a threat eventually.

I found this website that I heard of through mumsnet extremely illuminating when I left my XP almost 10 years ago now.

I don't know whether my XP or your ex have NPD but what I found is that the information is true for many controlling people. And it helped me to process a lot.

www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/howto.html

Omg. So. What would me being destroyed look like? To him obviously.

That's a real light bulb moment pp. He has to destroy the teddy. The teddy knows its secrets. So, what is his plan for the teddy?

I think, mostly, he is likely to just be concerned at the moment that you do not harm his "good reputation" etc or make his life difficult so he's attempting to keep control over you in order to keep you quiet. I think you'd know if he was unhinged enough to actually try to hurt you etc. They do move on after a while - most controlling men recognise that doing anything seriously bad to you would immediately reflect badly on them and they won't risk tainting that "reasonable man, good father" etc image they have in front of other people.

He may try to harm your reputation (paint you as "crazy" or unreasonable e.g. lying about how you conduct access arrangements) in order to reduce the value of anything you say about him to other people, which is damage control in his mind. He may also try to intimidate you against doing things like changing access arrangements, asking for maintenance etc simply because he doesn't like the idea of you being in control of anything (and remember to him, anything other than his dictatorship = you having an unreasonable amount of control).

He did try to hurt me a while back but I called the police.

I expect that really shocked him. I was shocked I did it. But I couldn't take it anymore.

And yes the dictatorship sounds familiar. But there is another weird part.

What's the bit where, for example, if I said I liked red wine, he'd buy white wine.

What was that all about?

I have an ex who always went out of his way to make me feel bad: said my car was shit & he’d be too embarrassed to drive it (it was a Toyota Corolla & he didn’t even have a driving licence) was really rude about the uni I went to (it was a red-brick uni & the uni he went to wasn’t exactly high up the league tables) anything he could think of he’d needle me. It used to bother me because I wanted him to think I’d done well for myself, then I realised he DID think I’d done well for myself and he couldn’t. fucking. bear. it. He had to make me feel that my life was better when he was in it, when he knew full well I was doing better without him. It makes me smile now to know how that must have wound him up

The red wine / white wine can be discounting your opinion and making it clear he is the only one who can choose. It can also be a form of boundary pushing where he gets to force you to either accept what you don’t really want or go without.

That makes sense. He does it with the kids too. Is he just proving to himself he has control?

It’s about control and more, it’s about demonstrating control. Again, it’s very childish - yah boo you can’t tell me what to do.

It can also be a form of punishing. You have offended me in some imaginary way so I am going to do something that is shitty but hard to call out because he will do the martyred “ you never appreciate anything I do”.

Abusive people often see themselves as victims.

As for the WHY?

Your being un-happy and distraught gives him some balance
in life, which is usually unobtainable to him. The anguish he
revels in placing inside you compensates for his own pain.

The disturbing effect of his contact,
for you it is relatively fleeting,

• compared to own.

For You mean no harm to anybody.

Well that's my experience anyway.

Thank you for sharing

I must buy that book @jamaisjedors

Things are getting worse here

OP you sound like a strong woman. I also have 2 kids and unsure whether to leave or stay.

What made you decide you had enough?

⚘stay strong

when you end it, YOU take back control of your life and display how you can get along just fine without them - better than fine in fact - and their delusions crack, the over inflated ego gets a puncture

This was so true of my ex that it actually sent him over the edge into a prolonged psychotic episode.

He was in so much denial about the fact that I was unhappy and wanting to leave and he couldn't admit to himself that I was slipping out of his control.

He told me for years that I was crazy and would be unhappy without him.

He couldn't get over it when I was leaving, he would say, well, you need uo see a lawyer, and I had seen one. You need a personal bank account, I had set one up. You'll need to find somewhere to live, I was in it.

He had his breakdown on the day I was due to pick up my keys to my new house.

I can be flippant about it now, but at the time he flipped into paranoid delusions (focused on me) and the healthcare professionals warned me to leave and not tell him where I was.

But after having been scared of him for years, I saw the very scared, anxious and paranoid side of him which the controlling behaviour was masking.

I was still scared of him but it is easier now to see him less a big scary powerful person and more as an agitated, anxious person who feels their control over their teddy bear slipping.

To answer, why not throw the teddy bear away?

Because it's YOUR teddy bear and noone else's and you have a special connection to it that noone else can understand.

@CyclingMumKingston hi there, if you have a kindle it is free on kindle unlimited (you can trial for free for a month too).

In my situation the "verbally abusive relationship " by the same author Patricia Evans, really described my relationship and helped me to see that it was indeed abusive. And then "Controlling people" gave me a bit more insight as to the "why".

They love to argue just for the sport of it - sounds weird but my mum is into fortune telling and angels and stuff and she bought me a tarot card reading for my 19th birthday. XP came along because he barely let me out of his sight at that stage, and the card reader was extremely good, she had the measure of him immediately. She looked him in the eyes and said "YOU love an argument. You argue with people just for the sport of it." "No I don't" was (of course :o) his response. He didn't let it go for weeks - it REALLY unsettled him that someone had pointed that out. He liked to argue but he wouldn't do it to debate, he'd do it to win and he was very skilled at it. He could argue black was white. I left that relationship unable to trust my own judgement any more because he had tied me up in knots too many times. I don't think I have fully got it back, there is always that self doubt.

Interestingly she also pulled The Stork for the following January. I said "I hope that doesn't mean a baby" and she said no, it can just be a new beginning - but I did actually find out I was pregnant that January.

I don't remember anything else from that reading, and I don't really believe in tarot (but I do think a good tarot reader is very perceptive) but I won't forget those two things in a hurry.

CyclingMum it is ALWAYS better to leave. It starts getting better on the day that you do it and it just gets better and better from there.

I could not have imagined while I was there the life I have now.

I don’t have all of the answers, but also had one of these in my life. The weird thing that stopped him was me getting married. It seemed he had more fear/respect/some man shit thing, for a man he didn’t know, than me on any level. I had long suspected that he was a misogynist, bordering on sociopath, but the the almost immediate ‘oh you’re married now, ok’, sort of abrupt end to his picking at me was really quite shocking.

We share a stepchild, ie he was/is a single parent and the child’s mum isn’t in the picture at all, so I had to have him in my life to maintain contact - I love and adore my SC and would put up with anything to have maintained our relationship. I was thrilled when social media took off and we started using that to communicate (me and child), but then he started muscling in on chats, would be casual and sweet and almost like people that could coparent wonderfully, then he would throw in something spiteful or creepy that would go right over the child’s head but it would leave me shuddering and anxious. He seemed to gain real and genuine pleasure from seeing me squirm, and I definitely felt he was delighted when I would try to shield his child from something he was doing or saying, there would be a knowing look, a sort of smug triumph when I would sort of mentally sacrifice myself to keep the peace. Obviously added on to this, I had no legal rights or anything so contact was only ever at his mercy, and he frequently tortured me with it.

Literally the day I got married, he was all sweetness and light, sent his best wishes, and that was that. His child is still the absolute apple of my eye and is thankfully now an adult and living far away from him. We all get together sometimes for an occasion and it couldn’t be more civilised. The thing is, I can see the insecurity in him now, from my new vantage point. He’s just absolutely pathetic, a fucking abusive waste of space who is no good to man nor beast. I have nothing but contempt for him.

To get to that stage for you, I don’t know what to suggest. I do think it kills these pathetic and insecure men to be known. You know him. You know what he is, and he will hate you for it. If he’s ever been vulnerable in your presence, if you know his weaknesses, his shortcomings, then he will be always working to chip away at you, to bring you down to his level so that you don’t feel superior.

I remember how my ex was a serial cheater, but when we broke up for the last time, he was apparently disgusted and appalled that I was dating someone about two months later. I literally went on about three dates with some guy, and was apparently some kind of whore for it.

I paid for most of my SC’s tuition fees, and one term there was a problem with the transaction, can hardly remember what, but he made a big thing about me not really wanting to pay for it deep down because I didn’t think of my SC as my own and didn’t really love them. This is from the cunt piece of shit that contributed precisely zero!

I digress.

I don’t know why any person treats another person this way. But as pp have said, they are convinced of what they consider to be their own truth, nothing will persuade them otherwise.

Oh another weird one. Ex said once to a really very good friend of mine when they were out somewhere with mutual friends, something like “oh, only me and you know the real WarOnPeace don’t we, and what she’s really like, what a nasty person she is”, my friend was gobsmacked and just said something like yes, she was too good for you, you fucking pig. He genuinely believed that a really good friend of mine would be in agreement with him. That really says something about the kind of person you’re dealing with. When their behaviour is absolutely appalling for years and years and years, you hold your head high and continue forwards as respectfully as possible, and they actually believe you’re the baddie of the situation.

He had his breakdown on the day I was due to pick up my keys to my new house.

Oh yes this. Added to what I’ve said above, my ex had a complete mental breakdown about six months after we broke up, when he dumped SC on me and disappeared for weeks on holiday, and came back to us being fine and being a happy little family. He started when he got back, with the jibes and nastiness, when SC protected me and refused to leave with him and called him evil, and saw him for what he was, he started to go nuts. Smashing things, ranting and raving. He went away and next thing we knew he’d been sectioned, as a neighbour had found him naked and crying in the street and he’d smashed his house up.

Weeks later he was telling people someone spiked his drink that day and that I’d been there! Insinuating that I had a hand in it of course.

Op this is very unscientific and just personal for me but it may help...

When l was dealing with a nasty ex stalking me, whenever he tried to contact me or turned up where l was,
l used to focus hard on my fury at him alongside fear, stress and all the other emotions, really feel them like a churning ball in my chest.
Then l used to imagine the black ball of negativity caused by him leaving me and showering all over him, really strongly imagine all the horrible feelings he evoked, flying at him like a black cloud....with a sense of that is the result of his unprovoked nastiness being mirrored back at him...I did this every time until it was all over.

The sense of ease after was tangible for me, l could sleep/work/carry on feeling pretty OK.

I am sure he noticed nothing...BUT for me l was taking back control and giving him back all the abusive behavior and feelings it had caused me, repeatedly. I became quite good at going from feeling sheer panic and upset and fearful to psycologically throwing a bomb of fury mixed with all of those feeling at him, and feeling immediately much better!