Jut been away for the weekend away from family. Strange but worth it for the welcome I received from kids on return. As usual narcissistic dp was full of what great things he did with dcs. He had made a bit of an effort in the kitchen and had been good to dcs. But again last night it was the waking up and nudging that I couldn't handle and he got huffy about it, then when I complained this morning he got huffy again, so I finally told him about EA (not using those terms) but told him it's not rocket science, but this is why we are together. I could handle it when I was younger but I am not so strong any more. Greeted with silence (as usual). I told him if he won't listen to me he must go to see counsellor or the relationship will fall apart.
He went to work, I did school run, now I'm off to work and we'll see how it progresses. Big changes in family at the moment, new schools, new jobs.
I did some research here to get the male perspective on all this (as usual thinking of the other side) and to my great relief the consensus seems to be that yes, our issues are hangups of days gone by and there's no excuse and no reason for men to use power and control in relationships, which in turn forces women to be defensive and manipulative in order to survive.
^It is quite common to see a woman leave one abusive relationship, only to become part of a new abusive relationship. What is not as commonly seen, but is there if you look for it, is how frequently these women come from homes where their fathers were abusive to their mothers. I have come to think that these women are trying to redeem their fathers, by showing that if their mothers had only loved him a little harder, everything would have turned out better. In other words, that this woman (as a child) would have gotten the love she deserved (but did not get) from her father, if only her mama had not made her poppa so angry (or whatever). Laid out coldly in print, this does not look like a good life plan, but it does account for some facts that crop up too often to be coincidences.
Now I know, this is weird and Freudian (neo-Freudian, actually), but can you do better? Women as a group are not stupid, or masochistic. They can obviously detect the signs of the Bad Boy, but they don't see them as danger signs. No theory of this kind can be scientifically proved, but mine covers the facts, and has pretty good predictive power. I ask because, if we knew, I think we could break the chain, and that is worth doing.
Whether and why boys from abusive households tend to seek out women like their mothers, I leave to you.^
Taken from 'Hey Tom' on Flylady - (down to earth non-expert advice on 'homemaking' US style). I'm glad I found it here, because it shows that this view is not just a view from relationship specialists, (Bundy and Engel), it is the view of the average Joe of America.