dh reveals his true feelings about my abuse

[pintoguinness]

I've always said that my childhood was no tougher than anyone else's. My mother is a depressive who took out her temper on us and played emotional games with us. She married the man she had an affair with (but to this day denies it). He was a control freak who would, with my mother, put me down in public and make jokes at my expense. I was a very skinny teenager, not blessed with pretty looks, had zero confidence and spent most of my life in a make believe world to blot out their cruelty.

I did have a relationship of a sorts with my mother. My stepfather most of the time would ignore my very presence, not looking or talking to me until the day I left home, which is what he wanted.

There have been relationship issues with my mum since then culminating in no contact now for a year or so. She has been told she is welcome to contact the kids, call them or arrange to meet them but she has never taken an interest in them. She didn't ask to see them at Christmas, I suggested that my dh take them to see her.

Now my stepfather has cancer and last night my dh suggested I send a card and if I didn't then he would. An argument started in which he said that my behaviour towards my mother is hysterical, that I over exaggerate things that have happened and misinterpret situations. That I am full of hatred towards her and that has blinded me. He also said that their cruelty was just their sense of humour and that I should let go.

He's never been particularly supportive. Being on the outside he's never seen the behaviour for himself so only has my word for it and that of my sister and brother. I have given her lots of chances due to his reasoning but she has thrown it all back in my face and never once does she make the first move. Deciding to stop contacting her was the hardest decision I've ever had to make and I thought he understood and was on my side. Now I'm left hurting over his comments and wonder where I should go from here?

Pinto, it does seem like your DH is an emotional coward who doesn't like confrontation and will do anything to avoid it, including denying there is anything wrong when there certainly is.

When someone is abused and then told "you are over reacting" or "you are exagerating" it is an extension of abuse, as it denies that your feelings are real.

Would he insist on seeing his children being bullied before he agreed they were being bullied? This is hypothetical but it would worry me that he won't accept the account of his wife of something that happened. He really sounds like he doesn't want to deal with it and wants to run away from it.

You need to talk to someone who will help, have you seen a counsellor?

I don't like the sound of your H, either. I think he is getting something out of your distress, whether that's his image of himself as an incredibly reasonable person and a 'better' person than you, or whether he likes stirring the pot and seeing what happens.
Of course, a kinder explanation might be that in his own family he was, if not abused, trained to make the best of everything and give people chance after chance, or brought up by victim-blamers.

Yes, I would question what your dh's experience actually was in his own family, how he was trained because it sounds like he desires the approval of his elders. Is that how he was raised? Because your portrait of his dad seems to suggest scary bloke you don't upset otherwise there'll be trouble, and perhaps his mum was an appeaser who taught him that you make the best of the way you're treated and the patriarch can never be in the wrong so it must be your own actions and feelings that are in the wrong etc. etc. But no-one likes to think they're still a scared child inside so he's just rationalised it all to himself and your experience too. In fact it might be he needs to belittle it because you've been dealing with your issues with your parents and he hasn't.

I know it's all speculation, but both dh and I didn't have the best parents, mostly nothing obvious but emotionally damaging enough. When we got together I made him have more contact with his parents. I didn't know how deeply they had affected him or were responsible for his emotional state. But I know because of my own family training your own feelings didn't matter, you just needed to make sure they felt good and right etc. etc. Thankfully we've both had counselling. I don't feel guilty as such for forcing more contact because I didn't know what I was doing, what was going on in my head, but I also do because it hurt dh more and he is so lovely.

But anyway, good for you for the no contact thing, it is a very hard and very brave thing to do and you are a strong woman for doing it.

But of course he just could be a complete tosser, only you know.

I haven't read the whole thread, but I do think that's really shitty of your H. My DP has no contact with his Dad. I have never met his Dad, but the fact that all four of his children want nothing to do with him tell me an awful lot. I would never ever dream of criticising DP's choice not to see his dad. DP says he is protecting me and the kids from having FIL in our lives, and frankly I'm happy to let him do that. He knows the man, I don't.

Your H should support you in this. I don't think anyone makes the choice to cut contact with a parent lightly!

I am disgusted with your DH, tbh. I can't bear people who do this "oh they've always been all right to/with me so you must be over-reacting" - BOLLOCKS!!

He's your husband, ffs - he's supposed to stand by you, not belittle your past experience purely on the grounds that it isn't his experience - if you were raped in the street, he'd presumably say it was your fault too because you must have invited it, or something - or that you had made too much of a silly happening, no?

How dare he. No really, how dare he make so light of what must have been a horrible time for you; and how dare he decide what is right or wrong for you to do in relation to your mother and her husband.

Still very disgusted with his whole attitude and very sorry for you that you have no support in your relationship. Ugh.

Pinto - I behaved in a similar fashion to your Dh about my husband's father. I thought he exaggerated everything, that noone could be that bad. I have since realised that I was completely and utterly wrong and have apologised over and over to him for it. I thought that I was 'normal' and that he wasn't. Via counselling/therapy for both of us, I realised that my 'normal' was actually very emotionally detached (we also did not celebrate birthdays and my mother was very emotionally unavailable - to me that was my 'normal'). I had no boundries and no real concept of how I should expect to be treated. Thus I dismissed my husband's hurts as I did with my own - unconciously of course.

I wonder about your husband, I was also very keen on 'forgiving' the misdeeds of others. Try to remember what your husband is saying is not a reflection of you, it says more about himself.

I think one of the worst things you can do to someone who is clearly upset is to deny their feelings. They are then put in a sitatation of being distraught as you are and painfully having to justify everything.

If your husband can't see this, or is incapable of showing emapathy then think there is more to his upbringing than meets the eye.

ExP would often say he thought my parents treated me badly blah blah but everytime he got angry he would say that my parents were right about me which cut like a knife.

You've confided your innermost feelings to this man and his actions are saying that he doesn't believe you..that's awful x

pinto you have my fullest sympathies. A friend of mine who I grew up with has a mother very similar to yours. If I hadn't witnessed her behaviour of quite a few occasions and my friend's reactions to her behaviour on MANY occasions, I'd find it hard to believe- outwardly her mother is charming, sweet and generous.. it was only on occasions when she either didn't know I was there or I could hear her over the phone if my friend was talking to her that I witnessed and heard for myself how her behaviour could be.

Do you think it would be helpful to either show your husband this thread, or write down a lot of what you've said here and what you're feeling and then show him that? If you're finding it hard to articulate then maybe that is the best way? It's obviously important to you and he needs to realise that.

My dh thinks I should accept his apology and let it go. He agreed that he was in the wrong and cannot understand why we can't just move on. But we can't just move on because he still thinks I over-exaggerate and he still thinks that my stepfather was just over-affectionate that time. I've never got on with my stepfather for reasons that are obvious and now he thinks that I have a hate vendetta against him.

Nothing I can do or say will convince him otherwise, I know that and whilst he may deny he feels that way, I can see now that he does. So where do I go from here?

His parents aren't abusers. His mother and father were never overly strict and when I said they don't celebrate birthdays, I mean they don't now, as adults amongst themselves. I'm sure they do with their own families but with mine there is always hell to pay if I miss a nephew's birthday, with his they don't expect you to bother. His dad may be emotionally unattached - a typical Northern farmer who keeps his feelings very much to himself, but he is a lovely man who, when our little girl made her communion, gave me a letter his dad had written to him when he made his communion. It was a thoughtful touch.

Dh admits that he can have difficulties with emotions. He was an experimental drug user in his teens and had a very bad breakdown because of it.

I cannot explain to him how this hurts so much or why, after he has apologise, I cannot accept it.
I can't get him to understand how badly they treated me and still would given half the chance.

My only choice are to tell him to get lost - and is it worth losing a marriage over? Or to give in, keep it all inside and never mention my family again with him. Neither choice is a good one.

pinto - my parents were not abusive either - just detached and placed no importance on feelings etc. Our feelings were regularly dismissed and we were expected to 'just get on with things'. I actually have a great, if somewhat dependent relationship with my parents. My parents are the type to provide as much as they can, both of their time and materially - it's just the emotional side that doesn't work.
Interesting that you now say he admits he has difficulties with emotions (like-wise drug use and breakdowns etc - self-medication is another word that springs to mind).

I don't think he will be able to empathise with you until he understands himself a bit better.

I don't mean to go off on a tangent here - What is important right now is that you feel emotionally vunerable and unsupported. And that is a very difficult place to be. You are right, it's not sustainable either. Keeping it all inside will put a terrible strain on you and your relationship.

pinto - are you having or have you had therapy for this? You've probably said but it's 4am here and I'm a bit too tired to read back to check.
If you are, then you need to talk this over with your therapist - and if you're not, then you probably need to get some (more).

Your DH would benefit from it as well but I doubt he would go too - probably through deepseated fear, even if he doesn't believe that himself - unless you somehow made it a condition of the marriage continuing.

He currently doesn't value your opinions or your feelings. That is very bad for your marriage and warrants intervention - if he can't see that, then you have to decide yourself whether or not you actually want to stay married to him. But you do need an outlet for your feelings about your family - you can't keep it bottled up inside, that's shockingly bad for you.

I do NOT think it is a good idea to show him this thread at all. It could backfire spectacularly - but use the information you've been given here and have a discussion with him, starting it with "I am not sure I want to stay married to you because of..." so he realises it's serious. If he brushes it off, then you have your answer - he's never going to take you seriously unless you do something - so do it (if you want to) and he might wake up to the seriousness of the situation.

I really feel for you - it's such an awful thing to be disbelieved, one of my top 3 hates in fact - and I hope you can get your DH to understand how important it is that he supports you for the continuation of your marriage.

Pinto: why not think about all your H's good points, whatever they are. Make a list, if need be. Then ask yourself if these balance the fact that, for whatever reason, he is not able to provide you with the emotional support you need. If you think that his good qualities outweight this particular issue, then it might be best to accept that you are not going to get emotional support from him and seek it elsewhere (from a counsellor or your siblings or another friend). And tell your H that the two of you will agree to disagree on the subject of yoru family but he is not to interfere or undermine your decisions.
Because when someone is not meeting a particular need of yours despite you having asked for the need to be met than that person either can't meet the need or doesn';t want to. And continuing to try and make him/her do so wears you out to no purpose.

What your mother's husband did to your nieces was abuse .

Your dh might feel he is a caring person who always tries to see the good in people but it should never be at the detriment of how YOU feel about it.

My DH accepted everything I told him about what happened in my child hood without question and he never asked for proof. He believed me because he loved me and knew I would not lie. He supports me 100%.

If he told me to move on or get over some of the things that have happened to me he would only be here because of the children. If we didn't have them he would be gone.

He walked in last night with a bunch of flowers. Thanks to all your replies on here I knew what I was going to say. He was sorry but he wasn't sure what he was sorry for. He said he knew he had hurt me but that I was overreacting. I said how dare he tell me how I ought to feel. There have been times I felt he overreacted, like when an old schoolfriend of his he hadn't contacted for 20yrs committed suicide and he went on and on and on about it. I thought that was a bit over the top but I supported him and said nothing. I told him he was emotionally detached and had no idea of what was normal and what was not. I could see that had got to him.
I told him that I couldn't just let go of the past because it was a large part of my life, it still affects my behaviour today and in trying to understand me he has to accept my past and the fact that I carry that around with me every day. What he said was unforgiveable and belittled everything that has ever happened to me.
We're still talking but thankfully he is listening a bit more and the comparison with his own children is a good one - I asked how he'd feel if his own father touched them in that way and I could see that comparison struck home.

I want to thank you all for taking the time to give me advice. I felt so alone with this and you've made me realise that there are others out there who have been through it too and come out the other end. So thank you so much.

I am quite worried about how easily he brushed off your SF abuse of your niece.

Emotional abuse is one thing, some don't even feel it exists (not me, EA by my mother for years), but what your SF did was physical/sexual abuse & he didn't see the wrong there.

Did you ask him if he would feel that it was just 'the way he is' if it were his daughter your SF abused?

"He was sorry but he wasn't sure what he was sorry for."

Sorry to nit-pick, PintofG, but
this really isn't an apology.

A real apology would follow the formula similar to this: I am sorry that my bad behavior has hurt you. Any qualifications on the bad behavior or your pain negate the whole transaction.

Throwing out an apology -being the 'bigger person and "apologizing" ' but then qualifying it with the "I don't know what I did wrong" or the one my sister gave me "I am still scratching my head trying to figure out how I have offended you" is a truck load of dismissiveness on top of the little crumb they have thrown your way.

Yet they have "apologized" and that is supposed to erase everything and if you don't accept it, then it is another opportunity for them to claim how petty and sensitive and unreasonable and (fill in the blank) whatever else they label us with for daring to call them out on their unacceptable behavior.

Very difficult one and I really feel for you but you are totally in the right and why he cannot understand is beyond me. This does not help but just wanted you to know.

pintofguinness - well done for saying all that to him! I hope he takes it on board and it modifies his attitude in the future - and if it doesn't, well, you may have to take more drastic action further down the road. I am glad he knew that he had hurt you, even if he couldn't specifically understand why - but perhaps now you have explained it clearly to him, he will have a better understanding.

Fingers crossed things get better for you now with him.

Thanks. Teach, he knew his words had hurt but couldn't see how. He had no idea of how deep the pain still runs, but he does now.
I have a very good friend who was around at the time and I emailed her to ask her honestly how, as an outsider, she viewed my SF and mother's behaviour. Her answer confirmed everything that I thought and felt, so I've copied it and sent it to him. Hopefully when he hears it from someone else, he will have some concept of how bad it was and why it still hurts today.

I've still decided not to discuss my family with him again. Perhaps I did go on about it too much. When my sister and brother phone it is the main topic of conversation - what she's done, what's happening with my SF etc and I used to relay all that to him. But now I'll stay silent and won't involve him in that part of my life. As you said, saying sorry is easy, but meaning it and understanding how much he'd hurt me, well that's not so easy and until he is fully on my side, that part of my life will be closed to him.

He will notice this and he will care. He's got to do a little more than bring me flowers this time.