AIBU to still feel unsafe and want to tell someone?

[Puffinsandcoffee]

My husband has done some things to me /around me in recent years that weren't great. Nothing really terrible - not hitting or SA - but stuff that has made me definitely a bit scared of him.

It's been well over a year since he's done anything like that.

I just have two questions I thought maybe someone on here would have experience of this stuff and could answer.

One is, when did you find that you felt safe and comfortable around your husband again? Is it normal that I don't? Every time he swears or slams a door or something I get scared, and then scared he'll notice I'm scared, because he would get annoyed by that because he just wants us to move on from the stuff that happened. The world cup is stressing me out because he keeps jolting out of his chair and shouting and swearing at the TV!

The other question is, is it really vindictive that I want to tell someone in real life? I obviously won't. He'd be so hurt and really angry, because it's such an injustice to who he is in general. But there was total secrecy in my family about my dad's additions and abuses and I think because of that, having to not tell anyone about the stuff my husband has done is making me feel worse, like as if it's all happening again even though it's not.

Just to pre-empt some stuff that might come up

• I have posted about this stuff before. I spoke to Women's Aid because of replies. I don't mind my other posts being referred to but please don't "catch me out" with stuff from them. Mumsnet is the only place I can have these "conversations" and I'm not trying to be defensive or in denial or anything like that.
• I am getting therapy for cPTSD which I have from other stuff mostly childhood stuff.
• I haven't gone into detail about what he did because I don't think it's relevant but I will if it is.
• I won't be leaving him. I can't even if I wanted to but I don't want to.

I didn't put a poll as it's not really an either/ or but just - is this all normal and will pass, or am I damaging my relationship by not moving on from it?

Of course you're afraid of him when he's shown you on multiple occasions that he is violent, abusive and intimidating - your body is reacting to a known threat which you choose to stay with, its instinctively protecting you by treating him as dangerous because he's shown you so many times who he is.

Have you tried to access therapy like better help which is an app you can use or speaking again to women's aid or the freedom programme which can be done online? This level of violence in relationships is something you've normalised but isn't normal. Its not just how men are. Its not ok.

I really hope reading some of these replies makes you realise you need to get out of this abusive toxic relationship

Do your children have the option of staying somewhere else?

Only the home you’re raising them in is unsafe. They’ll also experience the same anxiety and control and fear of dad. Fear of what he’ll do to them and to their mum. This will ruin their childhood.

Its ok if you, as an adult, choose to stay with him but it’s not fair that your children have to by default.

Can they stay with relatives perhaps?

There is ALWAYS a way out. I think you do want to leave, you just feel paralysed by the fear or the unknown and what your life would look like without him.

No one wants to live treading on eggshells.

You think?

You're clearly very protective of him so I won't bother going into it. But short answer, you won't, you will not ever stop being afraid. Because your body knows what you refuse to acknowledge, he is dangerous, he is a threat to you, and one day you will stop being able to say "he's never hit me" but then it will be "he's only hit me once, but ..." Then it'll be silence. It's always "but he hasn't actually killed you has he?" Like that's some catch 22. Until the moment he kills you, he's never killed you. Doesn't mean he never will.

You essentially live with a crocodile as far as your body is concerned, every move could be the start of an attack. Just because it hasn't killed you yet doesn't mean it won't. Just because you lived with a hyena growing up and that didn't kill you, doesn't mean this croc won't. And no amount of pretending the crocodile is a lovely pet and loves you and would never hurt you will change the fact that it is a crocodile.

So you will always be afraid, because you are in danger. And your body knows it, even if you want to pretend you're not.

OP im sure you’ve lots to think about from this thread and im so glad you’ve found somewhere you can air your thoughts since it’d seemingly be far more complicated in real life. i just want to make the point that since you’ve mentioned in a few comments that you’re certain he wouldn’t hit you - anger that manifests itself physically makes you unsafe, even if not purposefully.
if he’s driving erratically it would only take seconds to find yourselves upside down in a ditch at the side of the road (or worse). if he’s kicking doors down knowing you’re stood behind them, it’d be easy for the door to bash you and hurt you etc.
im assuming that he’s larger and stronger than you (although with anger even if he’s not big the adrenaline will give him more strength than usual). unless your children are grown up boys presumably they would also be physically overpowered by him.
if you truly believe that he won’t worsen, and you aren’t just telling yourself that to make staying with him more bearable, you should consider that you and the children are still potentially in harm’s way just because of your physical disadvantage. add to this that if he’s angry enough to kick through doors etc, he’s not in control enough to make sure you don’t get hurt incidentally.
OP in my experience the fear does not go away and only starts to lessen after you leave. you don’t have to spend the rest of your life this afraid- i know you feel that you can’t leave now, but you might feel able to implement some changes to make yourself safer, and then down the line it might seem more achievable to separate yourself from him.
you deserve to be safe and you deserve to know that your fear is rational and not the fault of your nerves, or your cPTSD, or the way you were brought up. the body knows when it needs to get itself out of danger and it’s a shame that the mind makes these things so much more complicated.
i’ll be thinking of you and i hope you can find the courage to trust your instincts over your thoughts of how others will react which are keeping you from protecting yourself

Thank you all for so many replies. I know almost everyone has said I need to leave. I will try to reply to specific questions, and hopefully that will explain better why I can't and I don't want to. But the main thing is that in 20 years he's never hit me or anyone else: he is not violent, it's not his normal at all. The stuff I listed is isolated incidents.

I thought about it overnight (and up early because I woke thinking about it) and I think that yes, if I was completely honest with myself, there is an outside chance I could do something that would make him so angry he lost control and did hit me, or at least that I do imagine that possibility sometimes when he's angry. But I think this might be true of many relationships. I know it's not ok or normal and most men don't get so angry in the first place, but when I think about my brother and father, uncles, some of my cousins I think yeah, it's very very unlikely but it's possible. Male friends, there's definitely a couple I really couldn't imagine doing that under any circumstances, but with the right amount of stress and all, even the most gentle men I think there's the possibility, if they were under the kind of stress my husband has been under over the years.

It's hugely disturbing that you're happy to bring up children in this household.

They can already tell you are walking in eggshells. You are teaching them that your relationship is normal. They can tell you are scared. Do you want your children to aspire to a relationship like yours?

And witnessing one violent incident will be too many for their childhood. It's shit to say if it happened in front of them then maybe you'd consider leaving. Why risk it.

Yes, sorry, that was a bit cryptic. What I mean by that is first that (I posted about this ages ago) I self harm sometimes and also dissociate (hence the cPTSD treatment), and this can be really scary for him.There was a while were I was at risk of suicide (not because of him) for example, and have needed stitches for SH a few times.

Second, we don't live near my family but we do visit often. On some level his nervous system has probably gone onto high alert from that. He's never witnessed any violence from them, but for example has spent a fair bit of time around a man with a history of violence who has got blind drunk and really angry - that is an objectively scary experience I think, and my husband has never been in a fight or had to restrain an aggressive drunk so maybe more scary for him. And he's been in hospitals dealing with issues people in my family were going through arising from addiction. And around some horrible aftermaths of drug usage.

I have wondered honestly if he's developed PTSD as a result of living with me. I think this is a real possibility and would maybe shed a different light on his behaviour.

You’ve married your dad and have convinced yourself that it’s not the same because there’s no addiction and he’s not quite as violent.

They’ll either break the pattern and spend years in therapy or they’ll marry their dad and convince themselves that it’s not as bad because they’re not scared all of the time, only when he’s smashing a door down to get to them.

And you’ll all carry on believing that the dangerous and violent men in your lives are good dads because they’ve never directly attacked their children.

And so the circle continues.

It is not 'silly fearfullness'. Your DH's behaviour is not normal, it is scary.

Ah, no - good question. I'm only aware for certain of two men still alive in my family being actually physically violent towards women, (maybe more, but I can't think of them now). The violence is just around - between themselves, between them and police (more in the past than now), them and other groups (again, not so much with men of my own generation) - it's just part of the scenery. I really don't like it.

But violence against women, while I'm sure it happens behind closed doors as it does in all cultures, is very much opposed in principle. Men don't hit women, boys don't hit girls: that's a cultural norm for me as for most people. There is a bit of leeway, for some, when it comes to men & their wives - like, "one slap can remind her not to push it kind of thing", but again that's probably among a minority of older men and is dying out.

I don't mean that violent men are the best guides in how I should respond to my husband. I just mean that some things are black and white, absolutely, but it's not black and white that my husband has behaved abusively and therefore I have to leave because he could kill me. There is a grey area here.

@Puffinsandcoffee I am so sorry for everything you have been through in your life. You deserve better. But also your children deserve better and you have the power to do that for them if you get them away from this abusive man and your abusive family.
No, I don’t think you can get over this fear, because the danger is real, for both you and your children.

I do disagree a bit here. There absolutely is an excuse for violence when all other routes to justice have been exhausted, which has been the case at times for my community. Not for violence against women, but violence in itself isn't always morally wrong.

Though I'm not saying what my community is/ saying you've guessed right, you're right about the general gist here. I do recognise that my childhood has given me a different threshold of tolerance and that another woman would have maybe left him. But maybe not - isn't it possible he just couldn't take the stress and lost it, and that any woman, actually in the relationship, who knows him to be kind and generous and all, would know that in my case leaving really isn't necessary.

Also I probably haven't made it clear enough that I have told him it's really scary for me, that I'm sometimes scared when he's angry now, and he's accepted that. He has said sorry for this stuff. He knows it's bad and that it's done harm. Surely taking accountability like that is a really positive sign.

I’m sorry to say this, op, but you’ve been completely brainwashed. I’m not sure what anyone can say to help you or snap you out of that.

None of this is extreme violence, and no I haven't and wouldn't call the police. I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd call the police on my husband. He just wouldn't do the things that would make me even consider it.

A woman in my family who was attacked by her BF (strangulation), I did think maybe should have told the police just to get it recorded what he did, but even then, since I think nothing would have happened and police showing up would have just made her more vulnerable in the aftermath of that, I'm not sure. I suggested it anyway, sort of to "give her permission", but it didn't land well particularly and I'm not surprised it didn't.

References to the police are actually making me feel quite stressed. This is enemy territory for my lot.

No he didn't. He read a book about anger though, and does stuff like sports and meditation when he has time, which really helps. I don't think either him or me would see him as a "perpetrator".

Yes, all the times bad stuff has happened has been during extremely stressful periods of his/ our life. My mental health has been an absolutely horrendous stress for him at times, and our life hasn't been easy for a long time for various reasons. He's under a lot of stress at the moment which is why I think I'm feeling a bit more fearful than normal, but he hasn't done anything bad at all in this period of stress.

I just mean, it's never happened and no one can be certain of what they'd do in a situation they've never been in. I know for certain it would be the right thing to do. I don't know for certain that I'd do it. I truly hope so, of course.

This thread is starting to read like an excuse manual for toxic male violence. I’m out.

Good luck, op.

I also just want to be really clear again that my husband is a white British man. His behaviour isn't a reflection on my community at all. Whatever community people reading think I'm from, they're not responsible for his behaviour.

Also it may be hard for people to believe or accept, but my community is governed by very clear principles and my people show huge amounts of integrity and courage in living up to high moral standards. I'm not brainwashed at all. I do have a very clear idea of my own values and morals, and my husband himself agrees that this is something he wants for our children as well and something they get from me and my community.

So not domestic abuse then that's better news but extreme anger issues if he waa smashing a door down. Reading a book on this is a start for him. I think the way you are feeling is normal in relation to the severity of the incident you could have PTSD. Its bad enough is a stranger tries to smash their way in through a door but when the person doing this lives in the same home as you and is actually your parner the fear is worse.

@Puffinsandcoffee it sounds as if your childhood was very traumatic so you have a skewed idea of what is acceptable behaviour. You’ve already said your current situation is a vast improvement on your childhood - miles away from it actually - therefore to you, it’s perfectly tolerable. However for people in normal, healthy, loving, SAFE relationships, your situation sounds like a nightmare that they would escape from at the earliest opportunity.

In answer to your questions in your OP, no, it's not normal to be scared of the person you are in a relationship with. No, it won't get better.
You say you won't leave but can I tell you why I think you should:
You have the opportunity to have a better a much life. One free from fear. One where you can be relaxed and enjoy life. One where you can fully be you.
Leaving him opens up all these opportunities to you.

No one deserves to walk on eggshells, be on hyper alert and feel scared in their relationship. Please tell someone in real life, you can leave and life can be so much better, happier and healthier

Oh OP - this is a case of Stockholm syndrome. There is no way out or a peaceful / happy ending without leaving.

Tell us why you feel you cannot leave.