Does it get better? Life after an abusive relationship

[Newmum1998]

The last year has been awful. I left my abusive ex and have been dragged through courts for the past year and our case is still ongoing. He destroyed my life in pretty much every way. I’ve rebuilt a lot since I left him but the courts have granted him contact and I worry sick about our child’s safety when he goes to his dad every week and it is really getting me down. My child is under 2 and can’t really talk yet so has no way of telling anyone if anything bad happens.

I won’t go in to all the details of my case or this post will be very long but unfortunately the court didn’t listen to me (EX has drug and drink problems as well ) and they didn’t even drug test him and he got away with most of the abusive towards me and our son as well as I couldn’t prove it. (Even though he already has criminal history of abusing previous girlfriend and it’s for the same stuff he did to me). On top of all of that his parents had to get CCTV at their home because of all the drug gangs showing up threatening them over EXE’s unpaid drug debts so obviously concerned something happens when my son is staying over at their house (EX lives with his parents).

On top of all of that his parents got involved in our case and they completely lied about me, they twisted everything to make me look bad and completely denied EX has a drug problem even though they are well aware he does. I understand they are his family but I am still so shocked the length they went to to bail him out so my relationship with them is completely broken too and I have no trust in them at all and worry about the influence people like that will have on my child.

My ex has already told me he wants to turn my son against me and for him to hate me when he is older and have nothing to do with me or my family only his. His parents are also very possessive over my son especially his mother who wants to play mummy and my ex has threatened to take my son from me and not bring him back numerous times.(I don’t have evidence of these threats as they were said to me in person). He also constantly threatened me with court the second he doesn’t get his own way and has done since I’ve been pregnant so I just know that once our court case is done it’s only a matter of time until he starts court proceedings again.

I guess I just feel really let down by my experience and I just can’t believe it. I’m having a hard time accepting it and just keeping going over everything in my head. My son sees his dad every week (court ordered) so I’m always worried something bad will happen. EX was never a good dad and never bothered to be involved in looking after our child so I’m surprised he has even taking it this far and is sticking to the court ordered contact every week.

I guess I was just hoping anyone who has been through a similar thing could share their positive stories and just basically tell me everything is going to be okay 😅

Are you in England? If you are do you have a child arrangement order in place which states who the child resides with and when contact with ex is?

Is it his Mum who does the caring during the contact time, usually with men like this it is. You've got to try to ignore the threats. My GC, 5 and 8 now vote with their feet. Luckily every time my DD's abusive ex got with another gf he drifted off. He still an annoyance, but further in the background and the children have worked him out.

I live in the UK I have residency and my EX has contact but if he took our child and refused to return him the police wouldn’t be able to get involved and I’d have to wait for a court date to get my son back

I don't have experience of this so don't understand the procedures. But from the sounds of it, he's trying to control you through your son. Thes best thing you can do is to keep rebuilding your life, build up your confidence, stay polite and basically rise above it.

Avoid verbal contact as much as possible so eg text or email rather than phone calls. Evidence anything dodgy where you can. Can someone else help with handovers so you're not in direct contact?

Probably the worst thing you can do is to get upset and angry about it and let your ex know he's getting through to you.

If your ex is that bad, eventually he'll end up in prison. Well done for getting away from him!

Thank you Luckily I have a non harassment order so he’s not allowed to contact me or approach me for the next year and his parents do the handovers with me but they don’t even say a word to me not even a hello they just take my son and get in their car.

im surprised he’s not been to prison yet he currently has 4 convictions (one he got just recently for being threatening towards me) and he just managed to get out of a conviction for dangerous driving as there wasn’t evidence.

Scotland is different to England.

I'm in England. I had a very similar issue with my ex. Eventually my son saw him for what he was/is.

The frustrating things about court orders are that they cannot be enforced by the police. There was more than one occasion I had to forcibly remove our son from his care because he'd beaten his current girlfriend up or he'd not returned him. Ironic really because he only bothered to see him a few times per year.

Ex has never changed. He's now on his 4th 'mother of his children' at 50. Still making the same threats to people. It's really really hard to disengage but try and take a deep breath and put one foot in front of the other.

You've got this xx