Family reported my husband to Adult Social Services

[LucyLoo1972]

Its a long story but eight years ago I suffered an absolutely devastating psychotic breakdown after I submitted my PhD. Before this time I had what a thought was an amazing and near perfect marriage. I love my husband very very much. Over the time I have been unwell things have been very difficult. We had never really had a row before my breakdown (at the time I thought this was good but now I see it was a sign of lack of honesty and communication). Since being unwell I have seen a lot of things that were putting a serious strain on me which have come out in therapy. My doctors have been fairly certain though that at root the extreme and total breakdown is rooted in childhood trauma. My father, mother and sister were all abusive especially my father.

I have spoken to my sister about some of the issues that are difficult in my marriage as my husband has not responded well to my illness. I am a totally changed person and having never said a word about anything before, after the breakdown it was like a volcano of rage and anger and frustration coming out for my husbands neglect of me and my needs.

I spoke to my sister about the difficulties which have included my husband's hoarding, verbal abuse (in response though to my anger which has been out of control at times of which I am not proud), him not transferring money into my account on time sometimes so I don't have access to money, him not wanting to eat in the same room as me or be with me, him not engaging with my therapy and my abusive family with whom we have had little interaction on a regular basis are frustrated that he refuses to answer phonically.

Yesterday Adult Social Services phones me to say my father and my sister had made a report of concern for my wellbeing and safety at home. This morning I had to go to a meeting and explain the concerns to them.

AIBU in feeling this is an overreach by the state? I was there for two hours explaining everything to them and my husband os devastated as for eight years he has tried to care for me when I have been seriously unwell and devastated and angry that my whole life has been taken from me and Im not really getting better. Im especially angry that the report came from my original abuser.my life is in utter and complete ruins.

Honestly it sounds like you’re fixating on the small things to avoid large ones.

To be explosive with rage 8 years on over your DH saying he didn’t want to pay £600 for someone to type up notes is excessive. Particularly as it sounds like you could have paid for this yourself. Ditto - clearing a space (bit the big issue is that the house is in a state where a space needed to be cleared due to the hoarding).

The same with being upset the your family have called social services, rather than the abuse you have suffered from them,

@LucyLoo1972 You are spending a lot of money on therapy.

Why not spend the money and try and live the life you actually want instead? Like you said: A proper car, beautiful home (with the design elements that are important for you), some weekends away, meals out and a new radio!

No amount of therapy is going to fix the fact that you are living a life that doesn't fullfill you in the ways your soul needs to be fullfilled.

I've been through a similar 20 yr relationship where my needs, wants and interests were deemed 'vain' or a waste, resulting in a life that felt fake and was void of joy fullfillment. Your breakdown is telling you tou need to change your life. To make it what resonates with YOU

It's not easy, but being now on the other side of divorce, it is wonderful. It's like someone has put the colour back on a b&w tv.

I think I did answer their questions truthfully - as best as I could.

there are two issues going on here - one is behaviours before the breakdown and there is then the after. they are like night and day.

but I do agree with the death by 1000 cuts theory.

when I was very sick and believing I was condemned for hell I kept saying it was because I had bought an expensive duvet cover set to celebrate getting a prestigious fellowship at the library of congress. and I later worked out that it wasn't God making me feel guilty but my husband I am a christian and I believe God gives us good gifts to enjoy not to be stuck in the bank while I'm giving a lecture at the library of congress wearing crappy clothes and I don't have a desk top computer. I was producing world class research. and the irony of course now is I've had lost earnings for eight years and fee there is nothing to live for because my mind feels it was wilped out by psychosis.

Spot on. I’d absolutely love to hear your husband’s take on things. You sound equally abusive. I suspect more than a little exaggeration on your part to your family.

I’m also interested in why you’re confiding in your alleged familial abusers…

Have you considered that your mental health might vastly improve if you’re not living with such a nightmare of a man honestly wake up have a look at your situation. This is totally not normal. You sound enmeshed and codependent and you’re directing your frustration completely in the wrong direction.
Stop confiding in your abusive family

this is utterly toxic

would you think it is a sea of red flags before the breakdown? I know now we were codependent but we matched sos so well in so many ways before this breakdown.

I'm so confused about this post.

My father, mother and sister were all abusive especially my father.

Yesterday Adult Social Services phones me to say my father and my sister had made a report of concern for my wellbeing and safety at home.

my abusive family with whom we have had little interaction with

I don't get it? So your family were / are abusing you? But now they're raising concerns for your wellbeing?

after the breakdown it was like a volcano of rage and anger and frustration coming out for my husbands neglect of me and my needs.

I spoke to my sister about the difficulties which have included my husband's hoarding, verbal abuse (in response though to my anger which has been out of control at times of which I am not proud)

He shouts and swears at me when Ive been angry and full of rage

I never get angry about something he does, like loading the dishes wrong or something like that

Sorry @LucyLoo1972 but with the greatest of respect and kindness, you really need to remove yourself from this marriage and get some serious, intense therapy.

I can't make out who is abusive here and who isn't, or whether it's just a hugely toxic situation all round. But you need to be on your own for a while and work on yourself. Away from everyone else.

yes for sure I am abusive to him. I do not deny that. I have ptsd from childhood they think and then from the horror of the psychosis experience and losing os much.my rage is kind of like a yelling into the void at how id managed to defy all the odds to build a beautiful life for it all to disappear in a matter of days.

im totally open with the social services at my behaviour. but it is utterly night and time form what I was like before. and I hate it. I never ever ever raised my voice or even voiced frustrations. when I was not living in good circumstances on a daily basis. we didn't have a hosepipe because we could just fill up empty bottles to water the garden.

I spoke to my sister and I should not have trusted her. but you know how sad - people can usually trust their sister.

I wanted my husband to come to the meeting so he could give his view but he refused. he's avoidant of anything and that was a strain on me over the longterm.

Yes a sea of red flags

it sounds like you have never been a fully developed individual person in your own right everything is all externalised dependent on other people

how was your therapist helping you to build that sense of self, self-esteem? Your confidence?

to untangle yourself from codependent relationships? To process trauma bonding? To learn how to live alone as a functional adult without delusions of gods punishment?

Could you self refer for in patient CPTSD treatment at a private facility? You sound like you could do with getting some time away to think about what you want to do next

the family abuse was historic from my childhood by my family and mother who is now dead. as an adult I have seen my father once a year. he terrifies me still.

I spoke to my sister about the things tat are hard at home. she then told my father.

I don't think their motives are my welfare entirely. for the first time in my life I stood up to my father and dais I didn't want to see him. nobody does that to him. and then this report. He wants to make it clear to himself and everybody that [name redacted] was the main problem in my life because he doesn't want to believe that his abusive violence provided the conditions for me to develop paranoid delusions which took my whole life away. but the neuroscience suggests that fear in childhood is a precursor fro psychotic paranoia.

yes its toxic all round and desperately sad as the problems we had were things which were resolvable.

Yes I think that could be right Op.

Hold on a moment. You said your family were abusive, particularly your father? And you chose to share problems in your marriage with them?

It sounds to me as if you need some time on your own to sort out your own feelings.

From one perspective your husband is abusive and your family have reported him to SS out of concern and love for you.

From another he’s struggling to support his wife with her mental health problems whom he doesn’t ‘know’ after her breakdown. Your abusive family have seen another way to stick the boot into you by reporting you to SS.

The truth is doubtless somewhere in the middle.

One thing I would suggest is being careful not to give a big label to behaviour too quickly. Being late to transfer money is annoying, ungenerous, and unhelpful, but it is not necessarily financially abusive. Responding angrily to an angry person can lead to regrettable language on both sides, but I think it would have to be sustained and unprompted to be real verbal abuse.

I hope you can get through this. I’d be very careful about what you tell your family in future apart from anything else.

yes I think your right and its like my brain is totally and utterly stuck

Frugality is a red herring, unfortunately some posters have fallen for it. This is just financial abuse, just as it is just verbal abuse. This is a toxic relationship between 2 very damaged people.

He is limiting her money supply when he fancies in order to control her. In the case of her PhD transcripts - to scupper her education/career.

The extravagant declarations of love and clinging codependency are very typical of women in abusive relationships.

DF and DSis may not have done it from a good place but it’s no bad thing that this was reported nonetheless.

OP has switched abusive family for abusive partner.

I think you need to be with someone more mentally balanced than your DH. I am sure you love him and it will be hard to leave, but you can put him first or yourself first - if he's not open to moving forward himself, he will continue to hold you back.
I don't think you ABU to resent your family prompting social services to contact you given your history with them but I think it is worth exploring what help they can offer you now.
I agree with another comment that you should find a therapist who can help you set goals and move forward. Exploring the past is all very well but there's time for that once you've sorted out your current situation. You need time, space and independence in order to heal and begin to see things with more objectivity.

My DH's family made a safeguarding complaint to social services. He was in the early stages of Lewy Bodies dementia and I am now his carer. The claims were completely baseless. That I was controlling his money- he could not recall the PIN numbers and could not remember what had been spent where. That I had been verbally abusive- I had not, and that I was restricting him seeing his family (he did not wish to see them). It added enormously to an already stressed situation and social services were not helpful or sensitive. For example turning up unannounced and insisting on speaking to him alone and then me in the middle of the day (I still work as best I can). The police were also involved in this process. I felt dirty having a Police officer turn up and ask if I was abusing my husband. I undertook a DSAR to understand the nature of the complaint. I did not get all of the information, but enough to understand most of it. In frankness even though there is no evidence to support it, the complaint remains on file and it cannot be removed. I feel as if I am marked for life by this.

I'm trying to work through in therapy the old family abuse but honestly I thought I had moved past it all and then this hit me at 44. I down want to go back there because it does nothing at all

Your sister and father have a negative past with you, they may think it’s easier to blame your husband than take any responsibility for past problems. So leave them out of your life for now.
You and your husband seem to have a lot of problems and I think separation is your best option for now.
You can then interact independently with Social Services and your therapists. Your anger, past issues, anything you want to talk about will be heard by neutral people who have no agenda.
Your husband needs to engage with therapy separately but that’s his choice. He might choose not to and want to continue with his life as it is, even though you wouldn’t be in it.

Only way I can see you having a life with any chance of resolved issues. You’ll start in one place but as you move along the path with professional help you’ll see options on where and how your life progresses.

that's what my husband is so upset about. he has tried to care for me in very difficult circumstances and has a prominent job in the community. neither of us are the kind of people to ever have anything to do with the police or authorities, I never had a parking ticket until l this. and now the police have been called to our house when I was yelling out in the night. it makes me feel dirty and shamed too and I cry everyday for my husband because its is my inaction and not taking charge and tackling the things that I was finding hard.

Well I’m not sure. It sounds as though you can’t move on. Maybe going back there is exactly the exorcism you need. Would it helps to have a different therapist? Someone you could revisit that with afresh and perhaps isolated from later issues?

He transfers her a few thousand pounds at a time. Unless that’s once a year, that doesn’t sound like financial abuse.

it’s also not clear about the notes - OP said she was a high earner at the time but due to his frugal ways said he’d transcribe the notes (and didn’t). That doesn’t sound that far from someone’s DH saying they’ll put a shelf up to save money and then never does (a common complaint)

what is clear is how passive the OP has been in all of it. For example - having thousands of pounds but not just buying the radio she so wants.