Is this violence? Help me define this behaviour

[OkeyDokeySpud]

OK, I know how stupid and pathetic I sound, but what is this?:

DH occasionally (maybe 4 times a year???) bangs me, subtly, when he is cross. He maybe moves his elbow out when he walks past me, banging me, or pokes, pushes, or bangs me whilst reaching past me for something. This morning in the throws of a 'discussion', he reached to take ds from me in the dark and pushed his hand in to my face and then a moment later elbowed me in the face.

It's always done very subtly, even though he has done it in front of the dc, they would not notice. It's done in such a way that he could deny having done it, and he often does, although he does normally admit to it afterwards.

It never actually hurts, but it feels violating, and is very upsetting.

I have described it as violence, which he disagrees with, and tbh that does seem somewhat melodramatic, but passive aggressive doesn't seem to be a strong enough definition.

I suspect he may a mild borderline personality disorder, and I have looked this up on the internet and often follow threads on here about those types of things.

The relationship is a bit of a disaster, and we are going to see a counsellor next week. My agenda is to see if there's any way we can effectvely parent our children together without damaging them, for a little longer.

Does anyone have any experience of this type of behavious. I would like to know what it is, what it should be called. It is deliberately hard to define, and not being able to articulate exactly what it is makes me feel powerless.

Forgot to say, although it's probably obvious, he does this when he is angry.

look at this site

It is abuse.

OK your boundaries say you don't like it.

Your boundaries tell you it feels like a violation.

Your boundaries tell you that this behaviour is upsetting.

TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS. Your boundaries are in the right place and are strong. Your instincts are telling you he is crossing your boundaries. Yes it is abuse.

He disagrees. But he cannot disagree with what you feel. He cannot tell you that what you feel is not correct!!!! He should AND MUST respect what you tell him you feel. If he doesn't he is abusing you.

You can both call it what you like but it is most definately abusive.

Yes, it's abuse. It's also abusive 'grooming' - many abusive men do this sort of thing and slowly but steadily increase the level of pain and fear they cause. Because the idea is to get you used to the idea that it's OK for him to hurt you when you are disobedient or disrespectful, that it's your fault.
COunselling won't help, by the way. Couple counselling is no good at all with abusive men, because couple counselling is about getting both partners to understand that they are at fault and the problem is a shared problem. In an abuse situation, the problem is that one person is abusive, and the solution (which is sadly almost always unavailable) is for the abuser to stop the abuse.
Contact Women's Aid for help and support, they will know what to do and will be there for you all the way.

Also Okey,

You do not sound stupid or pathetic!! Right?

It is brilliant that you have picked up on this dodgy behaviour and that you know it's not right - even though it's hard to define.

This is not okay. I am a man and I would feel extremely concerned about myself if I did this even once.

I think there's a latent threat, and always the danger that he might take it a step further. It is extremely controlling behaviour with a symbolism that is worrying. Yep, I'd say it's abusive behaviour.

It's deliberate. It hurts you emotionally. It's physical. It's abuse. It's violence. It's wrong.

Okey , yes, this is abuse , and i agree with Sgb about the grooming too. It is designed to get you accustomed to being hurt , to show you that hes capable of hurting you. It will escalate im sorry to say.

The fact he does is subtly and in ways that " could " have been accidental show that he is cunning and absoluteley IS aware of what hes doing. I also presume he doesnt do this to others , ie , his boss , just to you , in private ?

Its unlikeley that hes only abusive in this way , on the occasions you describe . Hes probably got emotional abuse down to a fine art too , minimizing your feelings , refusing to listen to you , telling you that he didnt say or do something you KNOW you saw or heard him do , telling you your overly sensitive, cant take a joke ect . It starts slowly and it can be hard to spot , its not about you , nor are you pathetic or stupid. Is he verbally abusive too, calling you names and yelling at you ? Does he harass you for sex and feel you should do everything in the house ?

If your co worker / neighbour / freind ect elbowed you in the face it would be a big deal , this is a big deal. As Sgb says counselling wont work for abusers. If youve followed other threads you might be familiar with some of the book recomendations , i have several and will happily post some of them to you if you like.

I would contact womens aid and tell them what youve told us.

Does he do it at work when angry? Or with friends and family? Does he use this behaviour with your children?

Yep abusive I'm afraid, It's easy to accidentaly hurt someone, but you knoe if it is done on purpose.

OK, many people can maybe once hurt or swipe at another person when angry and really not mean to do it - if you wave your arms about a lot when cross you can occaisonally poke someone in the face, or you might bump someone when storming out of a room BUT an otherwise nice person who does this will be immediately apologetic. Not minimizing it or saying you are over-reacting. The evident control he has over this behaviour is the most worrying thing - he is deliberately breaching your boundaries, intimidating you and treating you like an object.

My Dh is more of an emotional abuser - he's quite proud of the fact that he's never hit me and thinks that makes him a good partner!!!

Yup. You are right. And it will get worse.

Would you do this to him? Thought so.

He is using his temper, not losing it.

And the kicker is that you have told him how you feel about it, how you define it, and he has tried to silence you by discounting/contradicting your perceptions (gaslighting).

Do not go to any counseling with this man, even to try to learn to effectively parent together. He will only learn how to get right under your skin and hurt the children more than he knows already. There is nothing positive for you or your children to be gained by any kind of 'we' or 'us' thinking or communicating here.

You would be better off trying to document his abuse for the purpose of keeping him and the children as much apart as possible in the future.

yes, this is physical abuse

he is grooming you to accept more and more so that you no longer know what your boundaries are

I hope you accept that very, very soon and take steps to end this damaging relationship before he destroys your sense of what is right and wrong completely

This is abuse no two ways about it and you're being groomed by him too. This always escalates and you are probably being controlled and manipulated by him in other ways as well. Your children are seeing this all and probably wonder what the heck is going on.

He would not behave like this to his fellow coworkers or boss, infact no-one outside the home. You, and by turn your children, are bearing the brunt of his abuse. Abuse is about power and control.

Couples counselling is of NO benefit at all in these situations due to the ongoing violence he metes out towards you. It is never recommended in abuse situations and no counsellor worth their salt would actually counsel you together. If you did, against all the advice given here, choose to go along with him (and I would stress again that if you have counselling you attend alone) he will dominate the sessions, manipulate the counsellor, make it all out to be your fault and make him the "victim".

Do contact Womens Aid, they will certainly help you here. Longer term as well you may well want to do one of their Freedom programmes they run. It takes a long time to recover from such abusive men.

Okey,

A question for you:-

What are you getting out of this relationship now?.

i really hope you decide to get out of this relationship, im sorry to say. my X used to'accidentally' bump into me, dead arm that kind of thing, eventually he 'accidentally' tripped me up as went downstairs in front of him, luckily i got my footing back in time, and no i didnt leave him, it took me 3 years to get out and it was not before he had progressed to full on punching me. sorry to be harsh but i really dont want you and your kid/s to go through it. take care x

My DC do this kind of thing to one another when they want to hurt the other without getting told off by me or DH as they claim it was an accident.

He's no different - he is being abusive by subterfuge.

The fact that you have told him how you feel and he has been dismissive of it is worrying. If I told DH that I was uncomfortable with a certain type of behaviour and he continued to do it then it is a clear lack of respect

I wonder why it matters to you what to call these incidents? Is it to help you get a handle on what's going on, to help you look up support, or (as I suspect) that you want something to call it that he won't be able to turn back on you? The word "violence" sounds extreme, so if you call it domestic violence (even though, technically, it is), he'd be able to laugh at you and call you melodramatic, as indeed he did. You want a fireproof word to use to him, right?

I suggest that the label doesn't matter. He can call it what he likes, justify it how he can, but the bottom line is that such behaviour is unacceptable. I don't see him stopping whatever you say, to be honest, but if he were to change his behaviour he would have to stop nit-picking over what to call it and start understanding that he should not be doing it.

Bad enough if it's just you, but suppose in a few years he starts to handle the DCs a bit too roughly...

My ex 'groomed' me in similar ways but never actually hit/shoved etc. He would rant and rave, tower over me, follow me. If I said 'stop it, you're frightening me', he would say 'don't be stupid, I'm not frightening you'.

This was still one of the most undermining and intimidating things he did (and he did much worse). Being dismissed in such an absolute way is awful.

I was like you and doubted myself. It was when I spoke to the DV worker with our local police force and she was appalled that I realised how destructive it was. She was adamant that I should report this to them, including dialling 999. I just remember her saying it again and again.

I left last summer, never been happier and can (almost) sleep in my own bed without being scared. There is an intrinsic lack of respect here.

BTW, what kind of driver is he?

Being able to go back to him and try to convince him about what he's doing, with a new label, won't make any difference. It's not a question of finding the magic word to make him understand what he's doing, and stop it.

He is living in his own angry little bubble. He needs to do what he is doing. He knows no other way of being. He cannot exist in a relationship with you and by extension the children without dominating you, and making an example of you in order to dominate them. What he does is what he is. He is a dominator. He cannot accept any mutuality in intimate relationships.

There is no way of changing him. No perfect term to use that will wake him up and see what he is doing and convince him to stop.

Do you need the right word in order to feel you yourself have permission to stop the bus and get off?

Wow! Thanks for the replies. Such a lot to think about here, and my head is spinning a bit.

I really really don't want to split up with him yet. We have a whopping mortgage and are about to make improvements which will increase the value of our property massively (fingers crossed), and hopefully mean that we can stay in the area we currently love to live in. If we spilt up now, it would be impossible to afford

The abuse (and I do accept it is abuse) I describe in my op happens a few times a year. It is completely unacceptable. I do not justify it in any way, and reading your replies on here make me realise that he verbally abuses me in the same way as he hits me, i.e. subtley, makes jokes which are serious, is incredibly rude but complicated, so unless you aactually knew him as I do, you wouldn't understand what he means.

On the other hand. He doesn't constantly undermine me. He is very complementary about me when he is on good form, and he relies on me sopcially in many ways. I wonder if he was attracted to me as a force for good in his life. I really believe that he wants to be good, and some of the time manages it, but actually he doesn't know how to be. He doesn't know how not to put himself first, or to control his temper. He doesn't actually understand that he isn't good, then he has these periods of lucidity where he appreciates how bad things have got, and says he wants to kill himself. He is desperate for a loving warm relationship, and genuinely doesn't appreciate why he has forced me in to a position where that is impossible.

He earns a great salary and i under tremendoud pressure at work.

He would be absolutely devestated if we split up. He absolutely adores the children, and they adore him. I think he will struggle with them more when they are older and more emotionally challenging, and there have been times when he has been a bad parent, but not too many. (That is obviously ignoring the fact that being so bad to me is actually bad parenting!).

We are going to see the counsellor on Tuesday, and I fully expect that he (the counsellor) will say that he needs to go off and see someone independantly, as dhs behaviour is abusive. I don't think that dh can see this at all. He is holding out great hope of discussing how cold I have grown towards him, and working on ways of changing that so we can become close again. I think that him doing what he did the other morning has shocked him, mainly because, for the first time ever, it is going to be discussed with someone external.

There were specific posts I wanted to answer
a.nd. say thank you for, but ds is here to help so I have to go....................

Thank you so much. This thread has really made me think.

Okeydokeyspud. was where you are 5 years ago. (except that my H never earned a great salary) I too had all the reasons why we shouldn't separate etc etc etc.

I wish I had left him then. When I first posted here in Nov 05 I had just the same advice as you, but I thought I could fix it, that it wasn't that bad...

it was, and it got worse. My children have been damaged, I am damaged and he is still an abusive bully. But now we are separated and I am SO SO SO much happier. Yes we will be poor, yes my kids will come from a broken home, yes hes being unpleasant etc etc... but you know what, nothing could be as bad as living with him.

please dont make the mistake of thinking just a bit longer. He WONT see because he CANT see, anyone with a normal personality would NEVER behave like this. He will NOT change. Leave him now , dont listen to his excuses , dont look back

It's subtle and it's deliberate and he's admitted it. That's what makes it so sinister.

It is violent and it's premeditated and he's in control. The fact that he's able to not 'lash out' completely but do these subtle yet violent acts (acts that have you wondering whether it's acceptable or not) worries me.

He doesn't know how not to put himself first, or to control his temper.

Sorry , but yes he does , very much . After all hes only doing it to you isnt he. In private.