Lundy Bancroft

[exhausted2011]

Feel like I need a bloody great highlighter pen, and then throw the thing at DH.
Reading this on the tube, open mouthed. Unbelievable. About 95% is spot on.
I can't help him can I?

Hold on to this truth, It came 10 years too late for me, but it still serves well today.

You can now go and practice your withering, piteous, what have I stepped in looks.

He's not only a fucking bastard, he's a fucking freaky bastard.

I don't have a problem taking the kids - but ffs he made it out like he was doing me a favour and all i am doing is taking our daughter to a medical appointment - but then he doesn't think it is necessary for her to go

And he has a thing to go to and the kids can't go and he has no one to babysit and he asked me to keep them on the Sat of his week - so I was happy to do that but now it's all got twisted to be him doing me a fucking favour

Chuffed to have a carnivorous plant named after me!

I love your posts too, and I think you're a prime illustration of how someone who is emotionally intelligent, wise and articulate (in terms of the advice you give others) can still be drawn in by some inadequate arse telling the right sort of lies. I used to say, "if women weren't suckers for the lies men tell, the human race would die out within a generation". These days I've broadened my perceptions to accept that there are a number of lying, manipulative, self-centred women too.

I quite like peppermint Baileys, but can see it was a shock if you weren't expecting it. Am told hazelnut also exists but so far haven't managed to track one down.

I find withering sarcasm to be highly effective.

"So a medical professional thinks our daughter needs to see a specialist to make sure her ankle is OK, but you don't agree... So tell me Dr Bastard, how long ago did you take the Hippocratic Oath?"

Or condemning repetition "Ok so you say you do not feel there is a problem with DD1's ankle will not be prepared to take her. I'll tell the specialist that he's wasting your time then shall I?"

I think he's gaslighting me. Again. Like he used to do when we were togehter.

I can't stop shaking I've another thread going about some of what he's done in the last few days.

I cannot deal with this anymore

SAF, he's lying, it's that simple. You know he is, he knows he is, and who else matters? Maybe you can tell him for your own pride that you have rumbled his game, but don't expect him to admit it, ever. It's just even more proof how much better off you are without him being part of your household. The important thing is that your child will have her hospital appointment because one of her parents, at least, is responsible and puts her first.

Hardest thing I had to learn was not to bother trying to score points off XH. I can argue rings around him but I could never win because he wouldn't acknowledge reality. He'd leave me gasping with some totally off-the-wall statement about what I felt or had done, for example, something I'd apparently "always" liked or disliked which was the opposite of the truth, and I couldn't believe he really thought that. Answer was he probably knew it wasn't true, but it didn't matter. The purpose was to upset me, and my best counter was not to be upset. A few crisp phrases like "What rubbish", or "You may believe that if you want to", are worth rehearsing in front of the mirror along with a cynical raising of an eyebrow. (Can you raise one eyebrow at a time? I never could. But I can do a good line in cold fishy stares.)

Aw Annie, what lovely things to say.

Hmm, I have a feeling though that the emotional intelligence is a result of

1, not having a life for 3 years, sitting in a flat for weeks on end. Lots of thinking and analysing, watching others live. Life for me was like observational research. I didn't actually take part.

1. living somewhere that really was the living embodiment of Clinical Depression
2. Living with someone who is beyond bonkers - I'm still struggling with that, can't seem to believe for long periods of time that he really IS a monster. Doesn't help that he tells me again and again that he isn't. I do want to believe him. I don't like to believe bad of anyone.

I do think my predicament was a direct result of coming across him while weak, i was coming out of a marriage, and really ought to have insisted on not going out with him, rather than eventually agreeing. Yes, this guy pursued me. I'm not going to pontificate on why, that'll just terrify me tbh.

I really ought to have had time to find out who I was. But 32yo? single? tick tock.... you stupidly think that being alone is the worst imaginable thing. That people will thing there is something wrong with you.

10 years on, I have recently realised that actually there is nothing wrong with me at all, and if anyone thinks there is, they can move right along. Living in Egypt amongst what I personally described as 80 million nutters, taught me not to give a shit about the opinion of others, as their opinion of me counted for literally nothing. I went further, if they disapproved, I was actually more in the right!

Annie, my retorts mostly comprised of Bollocks, with the occasional Bullshit, but each to their own.

Can you please if you won't mind read my other thread?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/1179384-What-would-you-think-of-this/AllOnOnePage#24538725

Sorry for the shameless hijack

Nature has a hell of a lot to answer for. If there really is such an entity as Mother Nature, I believe we'd find her well documented on the Stately Homes thread. Look what she drives us to!

Patriarchal societies: where the drones have taken over the hive. Nuff said.

"Annie, my retorts mostly comprised of Bollocks, with the occasional Bullshit, but each to their own."

I was deliberately sticking to the polite ones, but I must admit in practice I may have used more, er, direct phrases on occasion.

Hello wonderful ladies

Here is another book that I think is good to read after the Bancroft book

www.amazon.com/Stalking-Soul-Marie-France-Hirigoyen/dp/188558699X

It's a little heavy going, but part of that is because it is packed with truths in every sentence, and so each one takes time to think about.

I am having to deal with my exH at the moment over a tax issue, and it's like being catapulted back into the way I felt for twenty odd years. Now I have been free for four years, the contrast is huge, and I am trying very hard not to let it get to me.

My psychotherapy is teaching me that the feelings I am getting now hark back to being abused as a child and being powerless to change anything then. but now I have power as an adult, so I CAN feel different when I have to deal with the abusers.

Easily said though! I have just called ex now and he hasn't answered, so I have to try to keep the power until I can call him again later. I can feel my chest getting tighter and my head spinning though.

Icy. Calling them is such an effort, and then you realise you have to work it all up again? argh!

all round

Thanks Missy. I am going to go out to a garden centre for an hour or two and then try again later. Treat myself to a little plant for my new garden.

Even though I now recognise the gaslighting and all the other crap that was so confusing, it's still difficult dealing with him.

Keep the power!!

huugs of course being >

Getting - that's how I feel.

He ends up with my brain in knots and I don't know how to fight it

Sorry all of you are having to deal with all of this shit. If any of you are having difficulty getting a copy of the book or don't want one in the house yet, Here's a flavour of some of the early chapters

Well you can't, not really. As I always say

'You can't out-psycho a psycho'

All you can do is escape, and sort your own head out.

Their neurones are wired up in the wrong directions, and they don't have the self-awareness to sort them out.

I now accept that I just can't get any sense at all out of my exH. Normally it doesn't matter as I have no contact. Unfortunately this tax thing has reared its head, and I have no option but to talk to him. I am trying to get things sorted my end and present him with a ready-made solution that even he can't bollux up, but it's very hard.

With a normal person it would take two minutes to sort out, but his default setting is to 1) lie 2) deny 3) get aggressive 4) block and stonewall. But he is so stupid he can't/won't see that he is the main problem.

Off to buy a tree now! Keep the power! xx

You know the bit in that book that made me open my eyes.

The bit where he describes the family getting ready to go out, the husband does nothing, manipulates, the woman gets uptight and it ends up with them going out, she's in bits and is portrayed as unreasonable.

That happened to me over and over and over again

SAF, really?.... FFS!

There is that scenario on the going out thing... or the other one which is that he knows you have to get DC ready first, then yourself.

So he gets ready in double quick time and is out the door as you are practically hopping in one shoe down the hall after him and your DC.

Grrr.

I never, ever again have to put up with that shit... thank GOD! and neither SAF, do you! hooray!!!!

Afternoon ladies; been at work all morning and we're busy so only just sat down.

I used to practice a sort of disasscocaition technique. I knew that the way H was had nothing to do with me; he would behave the same with any other woman. His sense of the world was completely skewed from the norm, he was paranoid and believed his way was the only way and you should never make mistakes. So, I began to ignore his rantings and continue to pursue my own method of doing things. He would then pick more arguments, amazingly stupid stuff like how I failed to stack the washing up correctly etc etc. I viewed it like a game thinking lets see how ridiculous his attempts to rattle me get then award him points in head on a scale of 1 - 10. Inwardly it made me laugh and kept my strength and sanity intact.

I also always maintained my career; despite early attempts to get me to consider giving up work his greed for money soon got the better of him and he realised that me having some of my own money enabled him to keep more of his own.

See I used to have to live by his rules.

Rules about stacking the dishwasher, filling the kettle, the heating on/off/temp, the "correct" way to put logs on the fire, the right way to drive, the proper way to hang out washing - he never did any of these things but he would tell me how to do them right.

Empty the dishwasher, for example, because I hadn't stacked it in the xh approved manner and then leave everything on the side for me to fill it properly.

If I put it on without passing inspection first he would open it to check.

And yes I know that sounds like i'm a nutjob