would you consider this to be DV?

[popalot]

I'm 1.5 years down the line from splitting with ex and have used mumsnet a bit for coming to terms with things eg. lone parenting and relocating etc etc

But in my life although I have come on so far and actually feel very stable and happy I still have a lot of anger and resentment about what happened between me and the father of my child.

Today I was talking to my mum n sis about what happened and for the first time I called it domestic violence. But they obviously didn't feel this was the case, that he was just not a nice bloke and a bit of a drinker.

But I feel it's important for my healing to identify what happened to me and understand it. So what is your opinion?

Some rough details;
He started off loving and could often be loving.
Problems began by him not bringing wages home and spending it on booze/curries instead of helping with rent. Meant I had to return to work very quickly after brith against my wishes.
He would put me down on a daily basis saying for example I didn't stand up straight, had no rhythm, couldn't cook. Was less than complimentary about my abilities in the sack but didn't seem to want to bother to satisfy me if you know what I mean (bit embarassing to reveal but actually one of the things that hurts me the most).
If I asked him if he had been paid he would brush me off, if I pressed it he would call me a fing c**t often infront of my dd, then disappear for days on a drinking binge.
He kicked me in the legs, grabbed my arm, held me down by my throat on the kitchen floor, threw beer cans at me, threw a table at me once for leaving some hair in the sink etc
Would often urinate in various places in the house at night and deny it was him the next morn and refuse to clean it up and laugh at me when I got upset
Call me a silly bch if I cried, which i did increasingly because I felt I couldn't cope with all the strain of it all
Told me I had given myself a bruise grip mark on my arm - the last time I confronted him about him giving me bruises
Finally he said he was going to murder me and my girl in our beds if i didn't shut up when he wantd to go back to the pub to see 'his friends' (he told me no-one liked me) at 1.30am when I asked him where he was going. The next morning the locks were changed.

Do you consider this DV or am I over-reacting? I seem to be stuck in my process of recovery over this. Is this 'normal' relationship stuff?

Help me get myself straight. For the last 1.5 plus year I have been going over this stuff every day, often many times a day. I sleep at night now so the insomnia has stopped. But it's like a broken record and I just want someone to say 'this is what happenend to you' and then 'this is how to get over it'

My DH would never kick or grab me or throw anything at me. Yes, it's violence. Surely your family wouldn't deny it being violence if someone attacked you in the street in such a way? So because it goes on in your home at the hands of someone who is supposed to care for you, how can it not be violence? And yes, the term we use for when it happens at home is domestic violence so that's what it is.

Well done on being strong and building a new life with your DD and taking her away from such a vile example of a man. I hope you can get your head round this and move on.

I would consider this to be DV, yes. Horrifically so, in fact. I don't know how you get over what happened to you, but I am honestly shocked that your mother and sister were so casually dismissive of what you have been through. You sound, from a complete layman's point of view, as if you may be suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Have you been to talk to your GP at all? I think counselling at the very least, might be beneficial to you. Whatever you do, don't feel obliged to play this down. What your ex did to you was appalling, and in no way normal or acceptable. Believe in yourself. You had the strength to get out of the situation and you have the strength to move on and enjoy life again. Don't feel obliged to do it alone though - go to your GP and ask for help.

You might also be able to get help from Women's Aid to work through it.

Popalot that's shocking, you poor love. It IS domestic violence and something no one should have to live through. I'm equally as shocked your family think it's acceptable - do they know the details you've written above.

I think you should feel bloody proud of yourself for not being dragged down by it, so many people get totally trapped and never escape.

I'd definitely look at counselling, this is your ex's problem and you need to be clear in your mind that you're not responsible for his actions but a victim of these.

He left bruises, he kicked you, he held you down by the throat - those = DV.
You have experienced DV and emotional abuse as well. Did you have bruises on your throat after, did you have trouble talking, swallowing? If so, he effectively throttled you - even worse.

Your mother and sister have a very bad attitude to this, belittling your experience is not remotely helpful but might go some way to explain why you got into this sort of relationship - if it's considered "normal" in family circles, then it would not necessarily have seemed immediately strange to you either.

Agree that you probably need help to come to terms with your experiences - but I think that initially you need some validation that your experiences were as bad as you think they were! So don't ask your mum and sister again for that, speak to WA, perhaps see your GP about some counselling and I hope that you can resolve the issues so that you can get some sleep.

So sorry you had to go through that.

God, I don't know how I missed the drunken murder threat - did you report him to the police?
And you say the locks were changed the next day - presumably by you, yes? So you locked him out. What happened then?

Thank's for quick responses. I've been sat here for ages before I decided to post. I have considered counselling but kept thinking for some reason it wasn't serious enough. Also scoured the womensaid site and read the stories of survivors but didn't consider it serious enough again, their stories sound so much worse.
To be fair my family don't know the full story as I haven't told them everything in one go. They know bits.
I think I will actually go and seek some counselling. Just feel so angry about it all really. I can clearly see the signs looking back of what was coming but I can not for the life of me understand why I even now make excuses for what he did. I still think it was my fault somehow. And silly things annoy me like when I gave birth to our dd, with no pain relief in a foreign country the first thing he said to me was 'I need a shit'. Like he stole loads of precious moments off me and all I have to concentrate on are his weird mix of insults and just how little he cared about me.

It's not normal, it's domestic violence, and I threw my ex out on his ear for less.

well there is more to the story. We lived under my mum's house in a self contained flat. He made the threat very calmly and was fairly sober too and something inside me just clicked into place that finally he had said something so clearly wrong. And he threatened my dd directly.
So he came back in the small hours and slept in my dd's bed as I had her in ours.
I woke him up before I was going to work and told him it was unacceptable and that I was moving out. He called me a f**ing idiot and stormed out there and then. He was in his clothes from the night before.
I then spoke to my mum. Who told me that she didn't know how to tell me but he had been 'showing her his willy' for the last 6 months. I said how often she said a lot. I said 3 times? She said more like 100 times. He would just walk up to her part of the house and engage in conversation whilst i was at work and have his nob hanging out of his trousers.
So she sent my dad out straight away to get new locks.
Ex obviously had gone on a drinking binge and didn't call me for a few days but when he did I told him he wasn't allowed back and told him I knew about what he had done to my mum
God it all sounds like a weird load of shit but that's what happened in the first few days of the split. It was hell, that's what I remember. I couldn't eat or sleep for months. Was like a zombie. Felt sick 24/7

get councilling

you have been fairly seriously abused.

ANd actually, so has your mum, although she may not realise it.

I'm a bit concerned about his access to your daughter - walking around flashing his penis at people who don't want to see it is not a good sign.

popalot - you feeling that it was somehow your fault is part of the conditioning that this man put you through. If for no other reason, you need counselling to get rid of that conditioning or you run the risk of picking another man with the same problems - they have a nose for it.

Tell your family the real stuff - why are you protecting them? If they still shrug and say "sounds normal", then they are not worth worrying about. But you need to find someone who will listen and understand - just because your experience may not be as bad as the worst experiences on the WA website, that doesn't mean anything - YOU suffered DV and EA as well. YOU have every right to access their services, even though it was a while ago.

I worry about my dd too, altho he never sexually abused me. If anything he would punish me by not touching me for ages and when he did basically telling me I was rubbish.
He does not have access every day. he lives in another country that we moved away from last year. We visit because my parents still ive out there and he sees her then but only in the company of his parents. he can't be arsed.
Actually am worried about his new gf as she is 7 months preg and very petite and has had a nrevous breakdown in the past. Do I/when do I warn her about we he did to me. Or do I just leave it, is he likely ot do this again?
Re. my family I don't think they can cope with it all. They have been very supportive otherwise - my sis gave me a place to live when I moved back to the uk albeith homeless and my mum lent me my first coupla months rent to get me on my feet. I just can't open up the full details. Would be a wreck and would probably just embarass myself
I will go and speak to WA. They would have to listen I guess. Feel very nervosu about it tho

You poor thing.
You're definitely still feeling that it's your fault this happened to you, aren't you. It's not, you know.

Re. the new GF - if I were you, I'd want to tell her but it would be in the full knowledge that she is likely to completely disbelieve you to start with. However, when it starts to happen to her, she will have evidence that it isn't just her, and that perhaps you were telling the truth after all and you might be able to save her a little earlier than you saved yourself. Of course, if she asks your ex about it, he will lie and call you all sorts of heinous names, but you won't be there to notice.

Do his parents know any of this? Are you on good terms with them, would they listen to you at all? It might be an idea to mention to them that he hurt you several times and could they look out for the new girlfriend because you're worried for her safety.

Will he do it again? You betcha. He's picked an emotionally and physically vulnerable girl - of course that will have been deliberate, she'll be that much easier to control and subjugate.

But just have to say thank you for listening to me and for telling me how it is, it's what I needed to hear and I am def ringing womensaid tomorrow night.
Just all a bit worried because I'm going back for a couple of weeks for easter hols and it always worries me, because i spend the month before hand stressing about it all and the month after and feel like i really should have moved on from that by now.
But actually I do have something to worry about and I'm glad I'm not overreacting or being over protective. Always worry about the sex abuse side of things even tho I can't imagine him doing it, but then I can't ever have imagined him doing what he did to my mum.
He pays fuck all maintenance and the only reason she sees him at all is because she seems to have some fantasy idea of daddy, tho she's only 4 so I don't want to ruin her innocence by slagging him off to her in any way. Or damage her by preventing her from seeing him
Am hoping he gradually loses more interest. have told my parents I don't intend to holiday there again after this summer hols which they understand but as they live there was a bit awkward.

xposted there a bit - hope you saw my previous post!

If you are going there, and you get a chance to speak to the new GF and you can bear it - I would try and warn her. Probably right at the end of the holiday so that if she does tell him, he can't do anything to you or your DD.
But if you can, go through his parents.

If your parents see him or the GF at all, ask them to keep an eye on her as well - you sound lovely, and I can see that it might play on your conscience if anything happened to her and you hadn't done anything to warn or safeguard her.

when he really started to get quite bad to live with, he would go on a drinking binge and stay at his parents house. They are actually unbelievably nice people. I did tell them once during the relationship that he was using their house to get away with treating me badly and told them he called me names. And when we split his dad outright asked me what the problem was and I told him again he was verbally abusive and drank too much. But the rest I just couldn't tell them, just felt sorry for them and was too embarrassed
I didn't want them to think I was mentally unsound. Still don't. I just know they won't believe me. They make excuses for him all the time.
Where his gf is concerned I think again you have confirmed my instincts. I will write her a FB message, but not until we have stopped going out there because frankly he would go mental and I'm afraid of what he will do to me and/dd. She can then refer back to it when she needs to when he really starts to give her shit. I really don't think I can help her before then, which I feel a bit guilty about but I have to put my dd's safety first

Yes, agreed. Your DD has to come first. If you have access to her FB page then by all means, do it that way when you have left the country again.

If you have already mentioned the drunken abuse, it would only be one step furher to mention the physical abuse too but it's harder without any physical evidence now of course. But although they make excuses, chances are they know what he's capable of - I have a bastard of a BIL who uses drink as his excuse to behave like a complete shit and he has hit his mum - but she makes all sorts of excuses for him too, says he has mental problems etc. and lets him stay with her, eating her out of house and home, driving him everywhere because he lost his licence through drink driving - it's what parents of a certain type/generation do.
It couldn't hurt to ask them to keep an eye out for the wellbeing of the new GF though, could it? That would hardly make you out to be deranged.

yep read your post thumbwitch. You're right, I do worry about the physical side of things because she is so petite. Also feel slightly spiteful towards her tbh because she most likely started their relationship before we split, and she knew me well and was actually my hairdresser!! I'm no angel where that's concerned. But actually I do worry about her, and the baby they are going to have.
I can only imagine two things. either he's got worse because he's more cocky that he got away with it before with me, or he truly loves her and would never harm a hair on her head.

He doesn't 'truly love her'. A person who behaves in the way this man behaved to you is not capable of 'truly loving' anyone. There's something wrong with him that is probably not fixable.
Unfortunately, if you had an abusive dad (abusive in the sense of treating you unkindly, not necessarily beating or sexually assaulting you) that's why you think that you are making a fuss about nothing though your XP abused you horribly, and that's also why your mum, despite having been exposed to this man's vile and really abnormal behaviour (running around with his cock out) is downplaying his crimes: she has been conditioned to think that whatever men do, women should just suck it up.

will ask his parents if he's treating his gf right and looking after her. They'll know what i mean. Financially he's a nightmare too so when she has the baby things will really kick off because then she'll have to find rent money etc.
For example; He stole my dd's savings, which I saved up - it was only 60 euro but all I could save up over weeks of saving because pay is shit over there and I was paying the rent and everything else.
So she'll be forced to go back to work early after having the baby, 'm sure I got a hernia from going back so early, it is physically and emotionally draining. And when she gets stressed or wants him to help, he gets annoyed and starts to binge drink and that's when it all gets a lot worse a lot more quickly. Her life will then become a horrible trap. Or it might not happen, she might have a rich daddy who will bail them out for a while. Who knows?

springchicken i am coming round to thinking this about him. Actually my dad is lovely, wouldn't hurt a fly and very hard working. but he worked away a lot abroad and so we never had the constant father figure. Infact all 3 of me and my sisters have ended up in abusive relationships of one type or another.
My mum had a hard childhood too so her idea of abuse is that she recognises it and knows that it's wrong but is not shocked by it. And a couple of my aunties have had abusive relationships. So generally it's not unheard of in the family. Actually their experiences were all a lot worse than anything I went through. My dad is a star tho. He did want to confront my ex but my mum stopped him because she was worried he would get beat up and be unable to work.

So the abuse comes from one generation further back? Not your Dad, but someone in the generation before that, who affected your mum and some of her sisters badly, hence you and your sisters have all absorbed it as well.

Definitely time to break the cycle - get some help for yourself and make sure that your DD doesn't follow the pattern.

my mum just looks at it all in a very pragmatic way, she didn't tell me until he left because she knew I would have trouble believing her. Which sounds awful that i wouldn't believe my mum but is probably how I would have reacted. Denial all the way. Which is why I posted. And feel like a bit of a twat now because reading over my op it sounds bloody awful and is so obviously DV!!! If it was someone else's post I would be saying 'ofcourse it is'. But because life is never black and white I still feel like it was my fault in some way and that I must have provoked him or shouldn't have 'controlled' him by asking for rent. That's mental, and I know I need to reassess that.

I think that's the crux of my problem. I need to stop thinking I'm the bad guy. It's because my self confidence is low (but growing). When we first split I thought we just rowed a lot. Then gradually I started to investigate domestic violence and have lurked and posted before tentatively under a diff name. And each step I have got closer to understanding what happened and why it's taking so long to get over it all. Even now I have loads more questions like what to tell my dd when she grows up, what to do when she mentions 'daddy being mean' like she does sometimes.

But I s'pose that's what counselling is for. I shall have to go for it of that you have convinced me. Just telling my story tonight has been such a weight off my mind and although it's bloody late I feel so much stronger, and really I can't thank you all enough. But don't feel sorry for me because at the end of the day I have personal responsibility and I really should have been stronger at the start. Also I got preg very early on in the relationship and the shame of that probably made me stick it out longer than I should have done. I really didn't want to become a single mum!

But now love my freedom. Just the final hurdle to go and I'll be complete.

oh no, I don't feel sorry for you, except that you still have to see the fucker because he is your DD's dad.

You have obviously done really well to have made the break from him yourself and get yourself away, rebuild your life with your DD - I can't feel sorry for that! :)

Glad to be of help - sometimes writing stuff down really does clarify the pictures for you - but I will say again, learn to stop blaming yourself for all of this - none of it is you, ALL of it is him.

popalot, I didn't have to read very far down your list to know that you had experienced DV. Well done for staying strong and making a new and better life for yourself and DD. I can see why she has her fantasy idea about 'daddy', mine are 13 and 11 and even the 11yo can't yet see what a knob her dad is (though I bet she can remember the time two years ago when he hit her and called her a 'fucking idiot').

What really rang bells for me was your history of DV/abuse in your family. My parents have a good marriage and have been together since 1963. They argue, but they love each other enough to apologise and get over it. My dad has worked away from home since I was two, like yours, so he wasn't around for most of my childhood. In the absence of satellite phones and email we didn't hear much from him either. My mum's family also have a history of DV, her dad left when she was 6 and she remembers him holding a knife to her mum's throat. They lived in fear that he would come back and her mum took in washing and went out cleaning and did anything she could to put food on the table and clothes on their backs in the days when there was no child benefit or income support.

As for me, I have had two long term relationships, one physically abusive - not often, but one incident is too many - and one emotionally abusive. I have wondered what made me make such poor decisions and now at 43 I have finally got my life sorted out. I have a great job, my own house and two lovely well-balanced DDs and I'm trying to teach them what is a good enough relationship without saying 'your dad's an arsehole and don't put up with a man who treats you like he treated me'. Luckily I have met an amazing man who is everything a partner should be and we are very happy together.

I agree that counselling is the way forward for you and I'm glad you decided to post on here and start to put this part of your life behind you. You and your DD have the rest of your lives ahead of you and it shouldn't be blighted by the abuser you have left behind you. Good luck.