I have recently left my emotionally abusive husband, with amazing support from Women’s Aid.
One thing that really bothers me is that we went to couples counselling for about 6 months last year and many of STBXH were mentioned by me (silent treatment for weeks which only ended when I apologised enough, sulking, stonewalling, needing his way, never apologising, telling me I am not a good mum because of my PND years ago amongst other things…) but counsellor never suggested he was abusive.
In fact, STBXH spent a lot of the sessions talking about how I abused him, without specifics, except a couple of time I shouted at him after being ignored for days, which I fully accepted I shouldn’t have done. The counsellor would often talk about my behaviour which STBXH “thought was abusive” and a lot of time was spent on my “anger issues” and how I needed to change, which just made me feel more guilty about everything and afraid to raise any issue (as he would just say I was trying to argue and he didn’t want to argue with me).
I now know you shouldn’t do counselling with an abuser, but I didn’t realise then that I was in an abusive relationship.
I’ve also learnt a lot about emotional abuse now and feel like the signs were definitely there.
AIBU to feel let down?