Is this Emotional abuse?

[Mummykins54]

I have posted before re my situation.

Decided to separate in Aug last year - I initiated it with a lawyer's letter. We have been living in the same house until things get sorted as I want to buy him out. We have two kids aged 17 and 20.

Since Aug he has refused to speak to me at all - leaves the room when I come home from work - he works from home. I have started drinking more and had a couple of total meltdowns were I have hurled abuse at him out of pure frustration - thus making me look irrational to the kids.

He has always been very controlling and I have been conditioned into the "we can't upset him" mindset.

We have been together 27 years all told and I simply cannot believe that anyone can treat someone like that. My friends think he is psychologically disturbed.

Beginning to think I should just have put up with his nonsense as I am stressed to the max.

Any opinions welcomed

Thanks

It sounds toxic. Why haven’t you both sold up and gone your separate ways?

This isn’t good for your children.

Yes that's emotional abuse. I would post in Relationships, some great advice there.

Yes it is, and this happened to me. Newly married and STBXH would go into strops where he would completely blank me. If it was a long weekend of say five days I'd go through all that time not uttering a word because I wasn't allowed to go out either, so never spoke to anyone. After some time I then began to do the same back to him, and I can tell you he wasn't happy about that. Soon I began to RELISH those times when we weren't talking, because they were the happiest times for me. Now divorcing after years of that shit.

What are you trying to talk to him about? Is it necessary stuff or are you just trying to “be friendly whilst we have to live together” or something similar?

I suppose there are two viewpoints. In the couple of months between me telling ex-P I wanted to separate and me moving out, he’d try to make me spend time in the same room as him or try to engage me in conversation, as a way of trying to control me. As far as I was concerned we were separated, living separate lives, the house sale was in hand, and I didn’t have anything to talk to him about. I’d be civil if we happened to both be in the kitchen, for example; but I wasn’t going to hang around in the same room, talk to him just because he thought I should or be told it was abusive to refuse to talk to him when he wanted it.