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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Support for those in emotionally abusive relationships 3

1001 replies

ItsMeAndMyPuppyNow · 24/07/2011 09:09

New thread - will copy our library of links in the following posts

OP posts:
bejeezus · 24/08/2011 21:11

helpmemn I sent you a PM, but also;

have you read Lundy Bancroft - 'why does he do that'? it would really help you get some clarity

I think;
-you said that you feel that your confidence/ self-esteem hasnt been affected.

-the confusion that you are experiencing (which we all have) is a symptom of loss of confidence.

  • you are affected more profoundly than you think

regarding 'permission to leave'- i read on here somewhere, that you dont need any more reason to leave than 'I am not happy' and I think people in healthy relationships with normal self-esteem live by that. I think that we doubt ourselves so much and value our own happiness so little is also a symptom of being in an abusive relationship

notsorted · 24/08/2011 21:25

Urggh can I canvas opinion? Ex has said forthrightly that he wants nothing more to do with DCs, can't cope with the pain and is feeling suicidal. His MH issues are long-standing and am wondering if depression led to abuse and once in that cycle he found it a useful way to cope. On the one hand, total cutoff is better as I can definitively cut him from our thoughts and lives. On the other, why do I feel guilty? I know that threats of suicide can be seen as abusive, but then again he isn't asking me to rescue him. I am clear that DCs cannot carry the load of his MH issues and given other stuff in all events I would remain rightly concerned about him having unsupervised access - emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts, not good. I do feel that this is closure of a sort. To be embraced, though, I'm not sure. He can't do that to them, and it remains all about him and his feelings and leaves the awful fear of what if there is no Dad at all? This one is either the hardest or easiest thing to detach from.

bejeezus · 24/08/2011 22:13

NS I dont know what to say I'm afraid..I hope somebody will be along soon with some strengthening words..Brew

it seems though, that it is not something you have a say in. You dont have to make a decision. Maybe you need to batten down the hatches, take good care of the DCs and wait for this particular storm to settle? Things will be much calmer on the other side, I imagine, without his invovement.

that is one of my greatest fears -'what if there is no dad at all?' - dont know what to say to make it better - no dad is better than a toxic dad. But its hard to believe at times like this, when you are vulnerable and scared and knocked sideways

notsorted · 24/08/2011 23:11

Thanks BJ,
All I can think of is the past and how it was never safe for DC2. He made nothing safe. The walking out on us in hospital, when he was two weeks old, the kettle slammed down in the kitchen, the shouting that startled DS. The laughing and ignoring when I cried. The hands round my throat when I was holding DS. If I ever said a word wrong, he would walk. It's all coming back again and again. My DS has never had safety and stability as far as his dad is concerned and because of that I don't know if I have the strength to be everything for him. I tucked him up in bed tonight and thought you'll never have a father. And I'm blamed for not saying it's ok of course you can have contact and no one in his RL believes me. He is so kind and caring, they have never heard him get cross. To push me on the bed and shout at me or call me a c* with DS lying there too. And now I feel guilty because ex is feeling suicidal because he can't have contact. I feel so angry and sad about why I don't seem to find the strength. I can say things and offer advice to others but it's not so easy when it's your own life.
Sorry I just want to write it so that it's real. Like helpme it doesn't sound quite as awful as others' experience but it was the constant fear of being left alone with the DCs and having no one to help and the fear of every saying anything. Then in the good times, I'd think it's ok to try to say can you do a bit more, can we talk. And being kicked down mentally every time I was feeling ok and being told I was doing too much or trying to be happy mummy for having DD's friends round for tea and giving her a normal life. He sucked the life out of me so that I was hopeless and then he could walk and blame me for not coping and for crying. It's funny but no one in his RL expects him to cope properly with his life, but somehow I'm asked to believe that the one thing he can cope with is DCs. It doesn't make any sense to me anymore. I don't think it ever did but I have to make it make sense for the DCs.

HerHissyness · 25/08/2011 00:19

NS - I know this guy has MH issues apparently, or he uses that as an excuse to behave abominably to his family, I'll leave that to you to decide...

Anyway, him threatening to leave the DC, to kill himself are very, very common threats by abusive men that are sensing they are losing control.

Accept his offer to leave you all alone, heck it'll do you all good FGS, grab his leaving with everything you can and don't let it go.

You can always negotiate contact afterwards, when he has given up the idea that you are going to cave-in to his ever increasingly mad tactics....

I think it's tactics.... I could be wrong, but that's what it feels like to me.

he's playing his Crazy Card.

DiamondDoris · 25/08/2011 01:25

I'm trying to figure out if my soon to be ex-h is a narcissist, passive aggressive or aspergers or a mix - I need to know what he is, I need to understand the life I've lead with him all these years. Do others feel this need to know?

He seems to have traits of all the above. Sometimes I really hate him and scream all the time, not so much now. He did make me crazy.

thisishowifeel · 25/08/2011 09:22

My conversation with the chap at Respect was the best I have had. They work with abusive men.

All of it is bullshit you know girls....MH issues, difficult childhood...suicide blar blar. Ok they are grown ups, who CHOOSE to behave this way. They can also CHOOSE to stop behaving this way and do the work necessary to change their appalling relational patterns.

Nothing to do with us! We're fine.

EVERYTHING they do and say has one goal, that is to manipulate us into being back in their control.

It's funny, that one sentence has changed my perspective, radically. You will know when you are being manipulated, you will feel it in your tummy.

My h is now on a waiting list for a perpetrators programme. I get my own support worker, and we are having a MARAC in a couple of weeks time. I find myself strangely detached....well just in THIS moment amyway, like watching a film. I don't know what the end of the story is.

I know though, that abusive behaviours weave themselves into the fabric of daily life.....the children are manipulated and therefore IN the abusive pattern, and therrefore abused. If the programme eases that, at least, then that is good.

There is a certain amount of glee, that he will be MADE to see what he has done to me. And as Lundy Bancroft says....spend the rest of his life apologising.

notsorted · 25/08/2011 10:20

Dear Thisis
fabulous news. I hope the support worker is really helpful and that the film has at least a satisfying ending. You are right about abusive behaviours weaving themselves into everything. It's like a spider's web with you as the fly but you untangled yourself.
Keep us updated.

And now for my own moan. Suicidal ex has decided no contact with DCs as he can't face mediation refuses to do any programmes and pain is too much for him to bear. I think he is hoping that he can block family life from his mind so doesn't have to deal with any of the abuse it threw up.
I hate him for that. Even if, somewhere down the line, he does want contact then the fear of him will remain. He never made our home life safe or happy for more than a couple of weeks at a time.
People in his real life think fact that he loves DCs is enough. It doesn't matter that that love is toxic, bound up in his own needs not theirs. If it happens it will be on his terms. I am determined though that the facts of what happened remain and are known. I feel stifled by the minimising from his side of the family on the one hand and from my side they all say better off that he has no contact at all.

ItsMeAndMyPuppyNow · 25/08/2011 10:34

notsorted who cares what other people think? Good on you for being determined to let the facts be known.

Your ex is being pathetic. Withdrawing from his DCs' lives because he can't face up to his responsibilities is contemptible. The suicide threats are so common (I got those too). It's pure emotional blackmail and should be given the scorn it deserves, coming as it does from a person who would stoop to that rather than face up to and admit his own responsibility for his own actions in harming someone else.

OP posts:
ItsMeAndMyPuppyNow · 25/08/2011 10:35

thisishowifeel how satisfying that must be.

OP posts:
ItsMeAndMyPuppyNow · 25/08/2011 10:37

Do others feel this need to know?

Yes, I understandyour urge and felt the same at one time. Frenzied research to try to understand and make sense of it was one of the first things I did after leaving, for months.

Now I just don't care: all I need to know is that he's out of my life. It's a wonderful peaceful feeling, and I can rejoin the real world. But I believe the frenzied research was a necessary step in getting there.

OP posts:
notsorted · 25/08/2011 11:35

That reading, reading, reading thing is so familiar. It's funny how I read stuff when I was trying to work out how to solve things within the relationship and now read totally different things now.
That human need to make sense is so powerful and to give a narrative to your life.
Ex's pathetic stuff has brought me now round to remembering all the horrible stuff rather than the magical thinking of what if and the nostalgia. Am in a bad way again but crying in a different way. It's the realisation that he just didn't want to be there unless it was on his terms as an individual not as a father and certainly not as part of an equal relationship. He saw any compromise as nagging or giving in. So few happy times really

ItsMeAndMyPuppyNow · 25/08/2011 11:45

((notsorted))

You're right, and you understand so much. No, he didn't want to be part of an equal relationship, one with another person who had feelings to be respected. Anything that wasn't him "winning" was him "losing" in his view, so compromise was out of the question.

It's his baggage. And it's a damn shame.

Seeing things for what they are is a bittersweet experience, isn't it?

OP posts:
MadameOvary · 25/08/2011 12:01

notsorted - your post made me so angry on your behalf, I too have had the "cant cope/suicidal" nonsense. It is bollocks. Just another way to abdicate responsibility Angry

It also pushes buttons for me because I had to listen to my own brother decide to abandon his children because it was "too painful" to see them after the breakup from their mother. How effing selfish can you get????

I really want to sit down and say "Awwww, poor baby, this must be so hard for you, not being able to cope with the fact that you are an abusive prick who's decimated the family unit. Never mind eh. Just sit back and relax now, your ex can pick up the pieces, she'll cope. Just you sod off to another country and dont think about them ever again. No really, off you go, we'll be fine"

And to all of you, sitting there with the knot of nerves in your gut, and all your ways of "managing" the situation and thinking "Oh, he has his good points, he's not as bad as that" I say "YES HE IS" "It IS oppression, it IS ABUSE and it is NOT acceptable!"

Please dont anyone think your situation isn't bad enough to warrant some support, or that you are a fraud in some way. These are authentic, valid feelings, even if your OH would have you believe otherwise Angry

notsorted · 25/08/2011 12:09

Mmm, very bittersweet but me and the DCs are off to see family for a break a very long way away.
I don't care anymore if he happens upon this thread and recognises himself. I remember my uncle noticing how he didn't help carry stuff down rocky path to the beach when we were there once with DC1. And then it made me remember him never helping me up 10 steep steps to front door with heavy buggy and me post-caesarean. In fact, he so rarely helped. He treated DS like a cat who'd he take to bed for a cuddle when he was reading but otherwise wouldn't muck in very much. Or he'd snatch him off me because he wanted some time with DS as a baby.
Am now wondering what to say to DS. I've told him daddy isn't very well and can't see us at the moment and he has stopped talking about him so much except in a nostalgic way. When I was talking to MiL recently about ex it was like we were talking about someone who was dead. In a way I want that final seeing him and walking away moment. Search for closure is killing me.
I hope this is my final bout of grief. Sorry to ramble. Think I might try keeping a journal, but so used to writing on the computer.

notsorted · 25/08/2011 12:16

Dear MO, thanks for that.
Out of curiosity and because of need to manage expectations did your brother get back in touch with his DCs?
I feel so responsible for DCs. They will be kept hanging on a thread. Or once you ignore all the suicide/pain crap do they finally grow up and get on with it?
Think it's all mind games or power play. You do it my way ie just contact as I choose or I walk. Think he is so used to cutting himself off from real life that he thinks he can cope with the pain. Will wear it like a badge of honour. He once threatened to cut him arm with a bread knife if I called police again after he'd done created havoc, ruined the hallway and then disappeared.

ItsMeAndMyPuppyNow · 25/08/2011 12:17

Writing is good. I keep a journal on my bedside table, but do the vast majority of my writing on MN. You can always copy-paste the posts you want to keep and have them printed and bound later, if you want! But I don't think the keeping of the writing is the point, rather the writing itself. So why not do it on a computer?

The closure will come from within you. There is nothing that man could do for you in your relationship; even less he will do in your split. It would be so much nicer if abusers could give us closure, but if they could give us anything we truly needed on an emotional level then they wouldn't be abusers, now would they?

OP posts:
notsorted · 25/08/2011 12:42

Totally agree. Am hoping staring out to sea for a few days will bring me some peace and am taking some knitting away. This has been a horrible summer, like the one last year and the one when DS was born and I spent waiting and waiting to go to court re his battery. I got through those, I will get through this. I will be among people who love and care for the DCs and me, who believe what happened. A better place is only a few hours away.
I probably won't get on the computer again for a while, so I hope this coming week brings everyone some good things. X

ItsMeAndMyPuppyNow · 25/08/2011 12:54

Sounds wonderful notsorted. I'm back from just such a break myself and I think it did me more good in the space of 10 days than the previous 6 months of therapy, medication and introspection.

Here's to loved ones who make us feel secure and validated.

OP posts:
HerHissyness · 25/08/2011 17:52

You know what? even if X crawled over hot coals to do 5 years in a perp programme, I'd never, ever ever, EVER have him back.

He IS dead to me. The day he dies I shall dance a jig.

The thought of being with him while he spends the rest of his life apologising to me fills me with horror. What about the rest of MY life? spend it with HIM? Oh GOD strike me down as I live and breathe!

Even if he ever realised what he has done, does the perpetrator programme teach them to have a life?

to teach them to allow us to have one?

to actively BE interested in OUR life? to show an interest and want to help us out when we are overwhelmed?

Does it hammer home to them that we are not sex dolls, that we have feelings? Opinions?, ideas? and that they are actually valid?

Does it remind them that they have 2 arms and can stick on a wash, or run the hoover round, or pick up their crap?

Does it teach them to be happy when their own children are happy? Does it teach them to find the same joy in watching DS opening his presents as I do? does it make sure that they never again sit there scowling while a 2yo rips open paper and squeals with delight?

These men are total write offs, the nice that we fell for is all smoke and mirrors, so does the perp programme teach them to BE the fake person that they are not, nor ever were in the first place? Hmm

I hope to have my utter cynicism and contempt for the Perp programme corrected...

HerHissyness · 25/08/2011 17:53
Grin
MadameOvary · 25/08/2011 18:56

Hissy I do love you Grin
I know you say you haven't dealt with "it" but on some level you must be getting there. I do feel (and sorry if I am wrong) that you'd rather lose than a limb than spend a second grieving for him/the relationship. (Been there) And anger is so much more galvanising.

Perp programmes dont work. X is most of the way through his second. No change except his methods were more covert.

thisishowifeel · 25/08/2011 19:00

Hissy....well yes.

They have a success rate of abut 60 ish percent, I believe.

I always thought of h as a "performing monkey" and told him so last year. Not helped by his fucking shitty parents who made him enter TV talent shows as a kid. Performing monkey, for their own vicarious reward. And eventual fucking hell for his "wife" and kids. And wonder why he doesn't now behave like a whole real person? I understand the why's.....like others have been saying, I have read so much, learned so much, not just about him, but the learning about MYSELF and my utterly disgusting family too.

But he's big now, and still a performing monkey. We all are in this business to an extent, but when you get into the wings....you're real again. Well I am! He's not. He's just that monkey. That's why his work is so important...it's his only source of identity, it's all he has. And this abuse ramped up significantly when he lost a massive contract with the BBC. There is no co incidence there.

I am also aware of his jealousy of my inate creativity...he works darned hard.. whereas I just do it. My older sister and mother had the same crucifying jealousy of me. I always knew, but was never brave enough to say out loud. The stuff that people at work that knew both my sister and I have told me recently, are eye wateringly painful admissions of that jealousy from her. Stuff that she has said. "I know you'd rather it was thisis here tonight...I know she's so much better and prettier than me" That kind of thing. Stunning revelations. My mother always believed that I'd somehow been that person on purpose to hurt them, and that I was "sadistic" and "evil".

When they came back into my life for that two year period, H bought it, hook, line and sinker....it justified his abuse of me even more didn't it? They showed him ways to get to me that he had never thought of.....yipee for me.

The thing that has dawned on me so much is that NOBODY knows him. And I've only just found out. He doesn't know him, he is SO detached from himself and reality, that it is terrifying.

I was never a sex doll....his brother sexually abusing him and that lunacy that is the catholic church put paid to that. Sex, What's that then?

He will delight in dd's present opeing tomorrow and much more likely to hoover than me.

But the rest? Yup ALL THERE. I am invisible teddy thing that is left behind and ignored until it suits.....'till those shits he works for are as horrid to him as they were to me...(But somehow I deserved it because I was "mad") and no one else understands....and they don't, it's so complex. I do understand, but he's beaten that understanding teddy out of his life....because I wanted MY phone, and I might have gone on mumsnet!

As the mother of a son, I truly hope and pray that I have done enough to allow my son to have his own feelings, and to express them, not project them onto some poor unsuspecting "teddy" A son whose father has totally rejected him, and now his step father, with whom he is very close, has done this.

Sorry that is a veritable Tapas of a rant. I don't know what will happen. I know that I have come through an enlightenment, that, besides my children, has left me completely and utterly alone in the world. My children are of course, "on loan". As all children are.

Maybe, just maybe, the universe will be on MY side for once. I have cut out my family...my "mother" even, I feel about her as you Hissy feel about your exh. I will be dancing on her grave. I can probably do anything.

bejeezus · 25/08/2011 19:09

can anyone help this lady?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/parenting/1287155-opinions-please

MadameOvary · 25/08/2011 19:11

thisis - Wow. Speechless. PM'ing you.

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