Things To Do in Ambridge When Rob's Dead. Can The Archers get Home Deliverance for Helen?

[PseudoBadger]

[ScrumpyBetty]

So do we think that Rob is deliberately setting Helen up to mess with her head, confuse her and make her believe that she is incompetent?

Things like turning off the cold tap, tampering with her shopping orders, hiding her keys....this is what I think he does.

Poor Helen.

[KingscoteStaff]

Is it easier for us to think 'He's doing it all on purpose, the scheming, evil git', rather than accept that fact that there are people in our world who behave like that naturally?

[Imbroglio]

When rob met Helen she was a determined single mother who had chosen to have a child without a man, and ran a successful shop and a successful cheese enterprise. She also had a strong family around her, and strong friends. All the things rob doesn't have, but wants.

[enochroot]

I agree pretty much with all that Gaspode except that there have been times when Rob has lied. The first one to spring to mind is wiping the video from Helen's phone at the cricket match. He did know that his behaviour was open to criticism and therefore evidence had to be destroyed. He's been tending to his public image all along because he must know that the truth has to be concealed.
That's what I mean by teflon coating, a carefully applied veneer.

[recyclingbag]

His treatment of Adam is interesting though.

Even though he is an Archer he still treats him with absolute contempt, as demonstrated by the cricket match. Charlie too.

But it's a power thing isn't it. He knew he had power of Adam because of the Charlie thing and wanted to wield it, knowing there is nothing Adam can do.

Once Ian and Adam talk to each other, that power has completely gone.

Pat would believe Adam over most people I think.

[Boomingmarvellous]

I agree that somehow knob gaslighted Hellin re the bath.

Not inconceivable that Hellin left the bath running with the mixer taps on and knob turned off the cold and let Hellin think she had forgotten to put the cold on. Then henwee rufused to get in because he is being brainwashed against doing what Hellin says, and in a rush of irritation (she has form) she grabs him and starts to put him in, forgetting to check the temp.

Better result for knob than he'd intended as he thought Hellin would check the temp before hen got in, and be mortified it was so hot.

Can't wait to hear how it happened

[Gruach]

When rob met Helen she was ...

(Even though she's not r..l) this is so unbelievably painful to read. One almost forgets now, who Helen was.

[SmallLegsOrSmallEggs]

I think the bath thing will turn out to be Hs fault caused by her general preoccupation.
The sws have form for it.
The actually rubbish driving (which was annoying).

R and U probably made a mountain out of a molehill - hence no mark on his foot.

The thing about sustained abuse is eventually it does make you confused and seemingly irrational (spaghetti head) and then it becomes possible to believe you are what your abuser says you are and it's all your fault.

You could pick pretty much any thing Rob has done recently and I could tell you why, with the information she has available H would think she is the problem.

There are only 2 things she has really spotted - 1 he could go and get a job and 2 - the thing that he did that she isn't prepared to even think about. < that I am hoping is what he actually gets done for in the end because in his head he is a loving, devoted husband and a respectable man not a sex offender.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Booming, I think you have it. That does ring true.

enochroot, yes, the gaslighting is the bit I find difficult to grasp, because it does seem to point to an overarching plan. I discussed this with my daughter this morning. She's not an Archers listener but is forced to hear a good deal about it, poor young woman, but she is interested in the abuse storyline. Her theory goes something like this, and I'd be interested to know if people who've experienced this think it's accurate.

Rob meets Helen. Initially, Helen thinks Rob is wonderful and can do no wrong. But in every relationship there comes a point where the rose-tinted spectacles come off and the couple start to disagree about things. In the case of Helen and Rob, because Rob can't stand to be wrong about anything and has to be in charge, his response to being disagreed with has been to undermine Helen at every turn so that in the end she won't even attempt to think for herself and will just submit to his will.

So when she tries to carry on running the shop and making decisions he doesn't agree with, he changes the order and makes her believe that she is no longer competent to do the job she's been doing pretty well for many years. When she has a minor bump in the car, a thing that happens to just about every driver at some point, he tells her that she is no longer safe and is putting Henry at risk by continuing to drive. When she has the temerity to query his management of the family finances, he hides the cheque book so that she will think she is becoming too absent-minded and silly to cope with financial matters herself. When she says yes, I'd like to have a child with you, but not just yet, he ignores her wishes and forces her to become pregnant.

I don't think any of this is part of a dastardly plan that has been carefully thought through. He's not that bright, really, but one of the big problems is that he thinks he is. He just automatically wrongfoots Helen at every turn, without even thinking of what it's doing to her, because it helps him get what he wants, which is to have total submission from his family.

Maybe it also explains why he hasn't gone out and looked for another job. He would be a nightmare subordinate in most jobs. He liked Berrow Farm because he was in charge with minimal supervision before Charlie arrived. Wasn't there a nasty outburst of temper after things went wrong at one of the Farm Sundays? He hates it when things go wrong and someone else has to be blamed. Maybe in his mind being the largest minnow at Bridge Farm is preferable to being a tiny codling in a big corporate enterprise where people would not give him his due and treat him with the respect he believes he deserves, just for being Rob.

[SmallLegsOrSmallEggs]

Broadly yes Gaspode. He extemporises a lot and occasionally he sees an opportunity e.g. charlie Adam.situation and exploits it.
The cheque book was a win win. He had it because it would be inconvenient for H to use it then he was able to replace and pretend she was daft.

My ex's first instinct was always to protect himself regardless of the cost. He told the older kids "If you get caught [e.g. by school/employer/police/dp] deny and keep on denying" and actually thought this was good parenting because he would do it without thinking.

The other thing he did was assume everyone else was like him. He would say I bet so and so did x (because that's what he'd do) e.g. i must have left him for someone else who I'd been seeing behind his back. 6 months later in his head it is a fact. Then a year later in his head it's why he left me.

Completely made up.

[SmallLegsOrSmallEggs]

So the bath may have bedn him or it may have been H but he is exploiting it to the max as he has done with the ill fated day out.

[enochroot]

Your DD is very perceptive. I can't get mine to listen to it even though the EA and the obstetrics coincide with her professional interests.

His treatment of Helen is automatic in many respects. He couldn't live any other way because control is everything to him but I think there is an element of planning. Perhaps opportunism is a better word.

He stored up the info about Adam and Charlie in the shrubbery for a year before he saw the opportunity to use it. Every snippet of blackmail material that comes his way is grist to his mill. He never forgets a sleight and plans his revenge - he never forgave Ian for punching him. He has used the information Helen confided in him about her past in order to subjugate her.

I resist the idea that he doesn't know what he is doing. I've thought all along that he does know. Each move isn't planned but he does have a goal in view for his home life and for the business. He's not very bright but he is cunning. I'm not convinced he hasn't researched eating disorders.

[EBearhug]

Yes, CA, I'll come with you to sort it out. You talk to Pat and Tony, I'm going to talk to Tom and Kirsty. Someone else can talk to Fallon, Harrison, Emma and so on.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Yes, I think I can agree with all that too, enochroot. Thanks for the compliment about my daughter - I think so, too! She has Asperger's and it's a matter of enormous pride to me that she has worked so hard at trying to work out how other people tick and has (I think) in the process become an astute judge of character. She doesn't listen to TA but has all the details inflicted on her anyway.

SmallLegs, thanks for commenting on my novel-length posts! So glad you have got out of that relationship. It must have been like a nightmare.

[MeolsCop]

There's something uniquely repellent in Knob's obsession with 'the way Mummy's body is changing'. Yeuch.

I caught up with some recent (very good) documentaries about the brain on BBC4 the other day, and they were talking abouts experiments with people who'd been diagnosed as psychopaths.

The conclusion reached was that most of us will see a photo/film of someone in pain, and a specific part of our brains will react with sympathy and compassion. The psychopath brains didn't react at all, ie they were wired in such a way that they had no instinctive empathy; they just couldn't 'feel' the pain of others and were able to behave in ways we'd see as unacceptably cold/cruel. I could see Knob falling into that category (and that's not to excuse him btw, I'd say he clearly operates at a conscious level too).

[EBearhug]

I resist the idea that he doesn't know what he is doing.

He does know what he's doing, but his motivation is to get his revenge on people who have made him look bad, and he needs Helen subjugated so she will never dare question him. He's totally tuned in to how any opportunity can be used for his own ends, and doesn't realise other people don't work that way.

[SmallLegsOrSmallEggs]

One of the weirdest things my ex ever said was "I want someone who will put me first. I put myself first and you should put me first too" (we have dc ffs!) He saw nothing unreasonable about this. I thought it was a joke (how wrong)

Very much like Rob and his "who is the most important person?"

That is it, there, main motivation that and "nemo me impune lacessit" (sp?) As Jim might say (often translated as wha daur meddle wi me but I prefer to think of it as no slight goes unpunished). Ex was a massive grudge bearer but thought everyone else should get the fuck over it already.

[redshoeblueshoe]

On listening again this morning I now think the bath thing was completely different to Ursula's version.
I think Hellin an the bath. I think Ursula said I'll bath him
The bath is fine. Ursula picks him up, then pinches him, then tells him off.
Then she tells Hellin he was scalded and its ALL HER FAULT

No red mark. If Henwee had really been scalded, surely the only think that would calm him would be cuddles from his mum.

GaspOde - you deserve to be very proud of your DD

for us everyone except Ursula

[ScrumpyBetty]

redshoesblueshoes oh God, that's really chilling. Helen is at such a low point that if Nob or Ursula tell her something is her fault, she will undoubtedly believe it. She must be in a very dark place at the moment and it's hard to see how she will ever come out, especially as she refuses to acknowledge that there is any problem and continually rebutts any queries into whether she is okay or not.

[redshoeblueshoe]

Scrumpy - I stole it from Emmerdale - a young child has bruises from her brother, and a busybody has decided it must be the childminder.

[enochroot]

Interesting about Aspergers in girls. My DD is almost 24 now and Aspergers was never mentioned while she was at school but she somehow didn't seem to fit, hid from attention in class. A couple of years ago Womans' Hour ran a feature on Aspergers manifesting itself differently in girls. We both looked at each other slack jawed while pennies dropped and she told me that many of her friends think it applies to her. There was what she called a 'coldness' in her. She has since researched it, feels a lot better about herself as a result and the depression that has dogged her seems to be in the past. She has also discovered a previously hidden talent for relationships and empathy. I realise also that it explains a lot about myself and about my own mother.

[Marilynsbigsister]

Hello cuttedup , come and join me under my lurkers rock until this unbelievable and completely inconsistent sl (in both plot and character) has stopped. Haven't listened for two weeks - life is a little emptier as have been a loyal follower for 47yrs, but couldn't cope with Patbot anymore!

[Boomingmarvellous]

Knob is not intelligent but he is clever. Intelligence has depth and breadth whereas you need to be clever to manipulate people.

I believe in knobs character because he is like my ex in that he has to be right, wouldnt take any kind of criticism ("you are either with me or against me") wouldn't take any advice from someone as inferior as me ("the man is the head of the household, his word is law and everyone else knows their place") and if he wasn't bolstered up in his self belief, he turned very very nasty.

After 10 years of being told and half believing I was a terrible wife and mother, I started all the arguments (which consisted of him raging) and so on which left my brain like porridge, I left and 7 years on have a normal relationship. So, yes, men like knob exist everywhere. They are not unusual and why he behaves like it is to have so much control he can do anything he likes and never be criticised, or like my ex, expect to be welcomed back with open arms whenever he's spent all weekend with his friends and hobbies and left me on my own with 2 bored kids.

Some parts make me quite flashbacky but I want knob to get his comeuppance and die Pretty much what I feel for the ex on a bad day

[Stickerrocks]

So now he's turning her into a Cinderella character, cleaning up for his mother. I was waiting for Rob to do his little turn for lunch.

[recyclingbag]

Ew ew eww