Support for those in emotionally abusive relationships 3

[ItsMeAndMyPuppyNow]

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

I find if I start to grieve about the relationship I get angry with myself, what was there to grieve? there was nothing there, what was real to actually grieve?

My incarceration? my constant interrogation?, humiliation?

When I think of how scared I was of him, how I felt sick with fear if there was the slightest hint i'd done something wrong. The lurch of the stomach when he opened the door/got up in the morning, or turned to discipline DS.

What an idiot I was, how on EARTH did it get to that? Who on EARTH does this guy think he is?

Spoke to him yesterday, he's still talking shite, but no nasty jibes or anything, so all very uneventful.

thisis, you've posted about some of this before haven't you?, your DM and sister ganged up against you in cahoots with him didn't they? I am so sorry. Be strong, you will get through this.

Don't think about him leaving you totally alone.... it'll be more like he has vacated the position where a GOOD man could be!

We'll get there chick, have faith!

"what was there to grieve?"

"My incarceration? my constant interrogation?, humiliation?"

Yes, all of those and more imo anyway.

Sorry everyone, for popping up out of nowhere (as usual then )

I've just posted on a thread that made me recall my own journey away from EA.

The last couple of weeks I've been feeling more 'real' and less like my feet are made of clay as it were. Starting to really engage with people and life in general again after nine months away from my own personal hell.

AND I didn't endure half of what everyone on this thread has gone through/is still going through.

Just think that, if I'm still reading and reasoning and explaining to myself and coming back to life then it's only natural really that you amazing people are doing so now/still doing so having gotten out.

Much love to you all ! (sound like Terry Tibbs off phone jacker now, oh dear :))

Abuse is YOUR personal hell... tailored to fit YOU, so it's as bad for one as it is the other.

Never forget that Bibi, your story, for me, is just as traumatic to hear than anyone elses on here. To know that someone else is being made to suffer for the sake of someone elses ego or whatever TF it is, inexcusable.

Congratulations on the feeling better, that's helpful, I see areas of light myself too..

((hugs))

See what amazing people we really are? Take hissy's response - in the midst of all of your own pain and turmoil you (all btw) STILL have a spare word of kindness and encouragement to give another!!

Compare that to most of the creatures we have been/are living with!!!!!

I've learnt so much from this thread alone, the tactics, the manipulations are a daily eye opener, thank you all so much for sharing!

Here's towards heading for happiness, whether that be alone with our children/pets whatever, alone or with a partner who truly deserves us!

Sorry, just coming out of lurking to say DAMN THESE CONTROLLING MEN!!!!!!!! They are such arseholes.

That's all I'd like to say for now.

Thank you and good night.

well said fumble!

Who actually said that first? I LOVE LOVE LOVE that phrase.

Dunno, but it's great isn't it... perhaps start a thread in Chat and ask?

Just logging in to say, I'm still here. All quiet on the western front. 2days till we go on holidays. Hoping it stays as it is until thats over at least for DC sake x

oh and AMEN to that fumblebuck

Hi, I haven't read this entire thread yet, just a few bits and I will go back and read it all before I dive in. I wanted to know if any of this sounded familiar to any on her.

Money - do your EA have an obsession with money, keep you financially short ie doling out housekeeping etc, are they only happy when they have plenty of money and feel that because they are generous with you then you should be "grateful" and basically let them do what they want, no matter how abusive or hurtful. However by the same token when he had lots of money he could be quite generous, no more than he wanted to though and expected everything his own way because of it.

Cooking for them - My ex always had a small critique to make of anything I ever cooked for him. I mean every single time the food was too salty, not enough salt, too dry, too much sauce, meat too tough, not cooked long enough, not browned enough and so on?

If you ever came up with an idea did he always try to change it in some way? I would come up with quite a simple idea, picnic in park etc, it always had to be changed to something he wanted to do, usually this would cost a lot more money and involved me driving a great distance and him getting to have a drink or having to see people I didn't really want to, in laws etc.

I notice on here that a lot of them are mean to your dc as well. Mine never is. He speaks to them as though they are made of gold, with much patience and spending time with them (this is all brilliant btw and I am grateful for it) but to me he would treat me and talk to me like I was absolutely nothing, often in front of the dc, he would often be speaking gently to them and then I would speak and he would reply in a disinterested, piss taking or aggressive tone, then straight back to being lovely with dc. So it really showed up that it was just me that he seemed to hate. That is something that kept me there for a very long time as I thought it must be me as it was only me that he was awful to.

Anyway these are just the smaller things I struggled with when I was with him, he is my ex now thank goodness but we are still very much involved because of the dc's and I do struggle with it. I find it easier when I read and inform myself about him so I do a lot of that to cope, probably almost obsessively.

So any thoughts please? You all sound amazing on here by the way and I am amazed at how much everyone seems to "get" EA on this thread.

akaemmafrost - welcome to the thread. All the statements about your ex can be summed up, broadly, in one word - CONTROL.
Financial abuse - controlling the money to maximise his power over you - is VERY common. My ex was also generous when he had money, but like you it was an ego trip.
Criticising your cooking is a great opportunity for an abuser to undermine you and keep you in your place. I'm guessing you're a pretty good cookor he wouldn't feel threatened by you? Not that it matters, the fact that these people will take any excuse to belittle us.
You often hear "I'm confused, he's awful to me but he's such a good Dad". No he isn't. A good father will not abuse the mother of his children, always be mindful of the examplehe is setting to his children, and understand the importance of respect and give and take.

There are many reasons why abusers appear to treat their children well, none of them commendable. It could be that he favours those who show him unconditional love, or knows that they are more malleable, or most likely, see them as extensions of himself.

And why we all "get" EA? This is because all the traits are so similar - your research will prove fruitful in this respect. I'm glad to hear that reading about it makes it easier (and that he is your Ex) . You will see that he is a "type" and this will hopefully simplify how you deal with him.

Fumble...I knew it didn't make a whole lot of sense...I was adding bits, as they came to me, then was too tired to organise it all properly. Hence the tapas description.

It was my first h who ganged up with my "mother" (there's NOTHING "D" about her). They did the whole, Thisis is mad, routine for about five years in court in repeated attepmts to have ds removed from me. The stupid thing is, he still has joint custody, always did have! Fucking moron. £20 000 worth of moron. Totally manipulated by "mommie dearest". He was far too bone idle and thick to do that all by himself, and he had a new woman.

She, "mother", it turns out was the driving force behind all of that hell, which ended with me taking a massive overdose. And my first psyche asessment, which said I was fine, but under massive pressure from the people around me.

I only discovered the truth when they tried to suck this h into the same thing. I discovered a lot of emails from my "mother" to h, telling him to leave me, get the best lawyer who wouldn't be sucked in by my evilness blar blar. That I "must be stopped" etc. She even rang to complain when MHS said there was nothing wrong with my mental health!

She always maintained that she wasn't in touch with h1, but she was and still is, and lies blatantly....she is diagnosed BPD, so no surprises there, still it was one of the worst days, amongst many, of my life.

She heard that h and I separated again, and was in touch with him immediately.

He swears that he has said to her that he wants nothing whatever to do with any of them. Let's hope that that is the truth. There is of course, no way of knowing.

It is my precious dd's 7th birthday today. He came first thing, 7am, to open presents. Again......"What a great dad" NO! A great dad does not physically assault a girls mother right in front of her, verbally and emotionally abuse her mother, and get the kids to join in.....but it's "only a bit of fun" Fun? Which is the "fun bit" then?

Absolutely MadameOvary. Totally agree. To begin with, in the run up to leaving and after I left I felt a lot of guilt about taking the kids away from their father "because he was a good dad". NO HE WASN'T. He loved him in his OWN way, yes, tick... but I had to do ALL the childcare. I had to keep them quiet. They had to behave and be quiet and be clean and develop on schedule or it was ALL MY FAULT and I instantly felt like a failure as a mother. That was some bloody twisted fukcngi dynamic!!! Now, I feel nothing but relief that I took them away from that environment. They see their father now (about 6 or 7 times a year) and when he sees them, he has to manage/endure their behaviour. Although I'd say they do nothing more than shriek a little, jump about a bit more than he'd approve of!

They are exposed to that still, yes, but I think it's better that they see their father every two months so that they don't build him up into some mysterious figure. They don't seem to have the 'hole' that having no father CAN sometimes leave. They are fine, honestly, they are MORE than fine.

Please don't feel that you're doinng a bad thing taking children away from a toxic environment. I think my son may be the first in a long line of men in his fathers family who will not abuse his wife/partner. I'm as confident as I can be of that. And my daughter SAW that her mother can manage alone,and would prefer to be alone than treated like an incompetent employee. I am SO SO SO glad that my children understand this, and that they will grow up knowing that any relationship or 'partnership' has to be absolutely consensual if you like. One person can not bully or pressure another person into staying with them out of guilt, fear, obligation, duty, shame, resignation.......

hello all. yes, aka Emma, all that sounds scarily familiar.

I also wanted to add a couple of things as they occur to me:

1. always whining when I make myself a cup of tea and not him, then I make him one, then he NEVER EVER drinks it. I made his porridge (wrong) yesterday and instead of just sorting it out (I offered to make more) he just kept on and on about it.

2. when he has had something last, and I ask where it is, I get 'well I don't know!' as if I'm a lunatic for expecting him to.

3. the 'mock give' - pretending he wants to do something for me and then feigning ignorance of it - my first ever warning sign, looking back (apart from the time he shoved my hand away from his back in front of his friends when we'd been going out about two weeks!) was when he took me into a jewellery shop and said 'I want to buy you something really special', then when I was trying to choose, getting annoyed and walking out saying 'I don't know, it's you who wanted the fucking bracelet'. It's actually his denying knowledge of things that have definitely happened (I have a legendary memory though it's faded by children, of course) that drives me most insane. Is that a mild form of gaslighting?

4. the 'are you OK, [helpme]. You seem quiet. is something up?' which he's saying every 3 hours at the mo, but (this might be me being weird) it's always said in what seems to be a threatening tone. That fucks with my head as well. It's like he's daring me to say no.

He's really behaving at the mo. I mean, some stuff still comes out but it's as if someone has told him exactly how to act to undermine all my fears - it's so fucking with my head. I am going away for the weekend on my own (yippee!) and he's being so understanding about it. BUT then I got really sad about Dad last night, he said 'oh [helpme]' and hugged me, and was very sweet and understanding; and then seemed really perked up. And it just made me think of the thing up the thread (or on MyHipsHurt's thread?) about it cheering her H up to see her sad.

I'm so doubting now, though. The finances, the buying double of everything, the fact he really seems to have no idea (and quite convincingly, although I know he MUST because he told me just two weeks ago that if I wanted to separate I needed to be able to talk about it - very uncharacteristic and simultaneously made me feel absolutely elated that it might be a real possibility and think 'oh, he can't be all that bad'.

How much it would HURT him. but he's hurt me so much over the years, and just because it's death by a thousand cuts it's not any less fatal.

I totally get those of you who have affairs. My obsessions (luckily always secret and one-sided) are escalating. Current one is out-of-control (but such fun to think about). It's like I have a bubble of longing and it will always pop up somewhere. But then again I don't want to leave him just because I am having a mid-life crisis and am desperate to have sex with other people, and post-rationalise his EA behaviour to defend myself. I've never cheated on him, not even a kiss. I suspect strongly that he cheated on me in the early years but I very much doubt he'd do it now. I don't even hate him for that (god, I'd LOVE him to find someone else now, I really would), I hate him for making me think I was bonkers for bringing up the evidence.

If I do want to do it, in the most constructive possible way, how? and when? how the hell do you start that conversation? I'm thinking 'you know what you said about separating?' I don't think he'll get violent but he'll definitely mess with my mind, and tell me I'm cold and detached for being able to do it without crying (if I can). Well, I never used to be! I used to cry over missing him 9 years ago when we lived on different continents (we're both english, but I lived in US for a year).

Sorry, I don't seem to be able to post fewer than 1000 words on here! there's just so much to say.

oh, and garlicbutter if you're still out there - yes, re the mystery connection, but I think that was more me. I thought he was AMAZING, like a different species to everyone else. He was more standoffish but occasionally would say stuff like 'I wish I'd broken up with her earlier, I could have spent those years with you instead' which obviously I loved at the time . And I think we both wanted kids 'early', although I didn't really ever see myself married, certainly not big white weddinging (though a friend remembers me being upset at an engagement party earlier when he had announced to me he didn't think he was the marrying kind) we ended up getting married mainly because of his parents and legal stuff. BUT he wanted to organise it as a surprise for me and was scuppered in the end by me having to consent! He was quite controlling about that whole thing, asking me to meet him in town to do 'something' and I was like 'er, shall I wear something nice, then?' and he just wouldn't reply (it was to get the forms notarised as we got married in Oz). I must have known though as I didn't turn up to the notary's office looking all glam (but then I was 6 months pregnant so hardly Mrs Glamorous/virginal anyway!)

Aka Emma, the plan-changing thing is classic, too. Or I'll suggest something, he'll say 'god, no WAY' (subtext: idiot) and then suggest exactly the same thing two minutes' later! Again it feels like a challenge to me to raise it with him. Happened exactly today with me just asking him about some coats, me being right, and him just doing like a completely silent volte-face and if I'd raised it he would have just gone 'but that's what I SAID'. Argh!

but like I say, he is behaving at the moment