Support for those in emotionally abusive relationships 4

[MadameOvary]

Hello everyone - end of last thread kind of took us by surprise!
Will copy in links etc

Hi. won't give you all the backstory now but bellsring rang a bell for me. I have kept trying, and kept trying and kept trying. For decades.

I have now consulted a solicitor and am working on 5 unreasonable things I hate about you (or reasons to be cheerful, as I have named the file).

I think we have both been emotionally abusive, but never mind. I have to know what I am like without him.

I did try one last time yesterday. He seems to think we should be able to resolve things without talking ???

Anyway, I was sitting downstairs sobbing my heart out after he had gone to bed. I think it would have been audible. I so wanted him to come and put a comforting arm around me. Maybe it was some kind of EA game I was playing but....

Nobody came. I packed my bag and went to a Premier Lodge for the night. As soon as I was in the car a strange calm came over me, and I knew I was making the right decision. Am back now, still calm.

Forgive me fellow fighters, for I have sinned. i have been indulging in email arguing with my twat. I should have put him in the junk mail filter but I could't resist.
Give me the strength to resist further temptation and I ask for your forgiveness ( and I enjoyed it ) < slaps wrist again>.

bb, you can't let that twat off the hook totally, he needs a bit of a email pasting now and again. OK so you are feeding him, you are getting riled, but you are also practising standing up to ! an alien concept to many of us.

So you said your piece, you hit him hard, and now you are back on an even keel.

I STILL want to call up my X and batter him verbally about the pain I am going through, the suffering he caused etc etc.

Group was hard today. The whole initial relationship introduction was discussed. The building you up, the making you feel worshipped and adored, only to - on average 6m later - kick the pedestal from under you, blame you for the kicking and have you spend the next few years, decades even trying to find that wonderful man again. If only you could do this better, that better, dress this way, speak that way...

6m. 6 fucking months. If I had have had the confidence in myself to tell him to go fuck himself at 6m, none of these last 10 years would have happened. I am back to feeling monumentally idiotic again.

it will pass, no doubt.

off to pick up DS from French Class, via the tissues to repair makeup and mascara..

Oh dear, weather getting us down. I've been crying yesterday and today. I feel such an utter failure for not being able to make it work, for not 'managing' him better. And now I'm not managing on my own. I know he will not contact DS until he has a wobble with OW and here am I supposed to not say anything nasty and be ready to give DS over when he asks with a smile, because he hopes that by running away I will either crumble or forget what happened. I want my DS to have a father, not a twat of an excuse for a father.

took my twat 4 days from the "I do"..........

gettingsorted feel for you. You are managing on your own...just feeling awful...I would guess it takes practice and love for yourself to keep climbing this hill...don't let him take that away. You are a strong woman but even the strongest just want to throw in the towel sometimes. Be good to yourself.

Welcome Whattodo and midnightservice
A few wobbles today I see.
That's ok. Without them we couldn't see how far we've come.
I am in Pollyanna mode today as you can see

Hi midnight - you say you think you have been EA too. I personally think it's very important to see that we do pick up these behaviours too - nobody can remain untainted when it's thrown at you ever day for years. Try as you might it's only human nature to use what they throw at you and attack them back with it sometimes.

One of my problems is that I have always been a bit self-righteous about what's good behaviour and bad. This mean that I spent years feeling angry about how the hell he dared treat me. That manifests itself then in turn by shouting back, or being snappy. Technically that's EA. But as long as you remember why you ended up there.

Sometimes I say to him 'I was never like that before I met you'. Try and think about how you were before EA.

I feel lately that I just want to run away and abandon everything i have ever known. I am not coping at the moment. I'm sick all the time and I never get any empathy or help from him. I just get verbally abused constantly. I burst into tears yesterday in front of the DCs. I couldn't stop myself. I just opened a flood gate and all he had just gotten at me over something really petty. A missing remote control and he was like jekyll and hyde. He came in and shouted at me for being over dramatic and crying and then after shouting about how he would just walk out (I wish) he came in and started talking gently at me but at the same time telling me I was over-emotional.
I really feel like I'm going mad. Really.I don't know where my head is anymore.

Breakfree please abandon the idea that he has any empathy or help to offer. Anything that appears to resemble empathy or help is simply him furthering his own twattish agenda.
How you are now - I remember that so well. You can never truly relax, never get to that point where you could look at them incredulously and just laugh. Instead youare so stressed that tears are never far away and you just get attacked when you most need comfort. I got things thrown at me and told "I hope you die" and called a slag, a whore and "mental".

Then he attacks you because, having wound you up to the point of hysteria, he can then appear to assume a calming rational tone, but his words are still gaslighting and abusive.
You cannot continue like this. Where are you at with leaving plans or support to do so?
Huge empathy love, I have been there. x

At the moment I feel like the worst mother in the world. I should never have brought DD into this situation. I am so selfish to have had her. I feel as though I need to act now before it is too late - she is 2. I just haven't got the strength, and I know that I am so far off the point of actually leaving.

It has been like this for 14 years, I deserve to live a fulfilling life. My worst fear is being in an old peoples home with him, and being accused of flirting with, or flashing my breasts, at some incontinent, dribbly bloke opposite us in the residents room. I sometimes feel as thought that is my future.

Obviously that is in the context of growing old with him, and living in the OAP home. Not just visiting for some random reason. God I am confusing myself now, what a mess

Bad day bad day.. and I can't even blame him...just all too much today. Seems like there might be a lot of this about.....love you all girls and when I find my mind might just manage to write something coherently comforting to you all.

In the meantime and breathe and breathe and breathe.

oh FOTH, we are many of us suffering today by the sounds of it.. just being here, thinking kind thoughts, even if we can't express them is support.

barbie, you say you mirrored him with shouting,aggression etc? we all do that, we are worn down to such an extent, doubt our own skills in dealing with things, so we adopt their mannerisms, mirroring themselves back at them hoping that they will see we are like them, so we are no longer shouted at for being us.

we kind of discussed this at group today. As I said, i found this week hard.

Next week they have even warned us about ... it's going to be REALLY hard.

It's about the Bad Father. The one that tells the kids shit about us, makes us do things against our instinct, lying to them about him, everything and everything to cover up our guilt. That guilt of realising what we have saddled our darling children with as a father.. That one rips the very heart from me, I tell you.

Bugger, these women know what they are doing/talking about. They know it's going to hit hard, they know it's going to hurt. I barely held it together this afternoon over nothing, I'll ball next week. I'll cry even thinking about it.

I suppose the only 'comfort' I can take is from the fact that it's highly unlikely that I'll be the only one.

hissycrying with you already...can't bear the fact that I've landed my lovely children with this and they are beginning to show signs of suffering, and whatever i do they are going to suffer aren't they?
Can't give them the mindlessly wonderful childhood they deserve...only choice is a broken home together or a broken home apart...what a choice......buttons need your wisdom on coping...similar volumes!!!!!!!

Evening, welcome to the fellow newbies :)

Lots struggling today - big (((((hugs))))) to everyone today.

Barbie - its good to know another mum in a Shawshank relationship like me. Like the poor bloke on the film, we will have to crawl through alot of shit to escape too.

I just havent known any different - I know I'm going to take a long time to heal - thats when I eventually get rid of him. We are barely talking now - his pretence nothing is wrong has worn thin and I think he is getting sick of me rejecting him intimately (for over a year he hasnt kissed me, cuddled me, told me he loves me) yet he expects when showing himself like a peacock me to jump into bed. I used to do this to keep the peace but not in the last 6 months, he wore me down so much I just switched off from him and I have been detaching myself more and more.

So he is now calling me miserable beacuse I wont jump into bed and adopt an undignified position.

Wish he would meet a fellow narc and drive off into the sunset, preferably over a cliff.

Hope everyones ok as they can be

Love IWBF xx

Hello All!

I'm back from a break which was lovely. Roadtrip with 4 ladies: 2 of us had escaped DV, and the other two had broken up from LTRs they entered when very young. The common thread for ALL 4 of us was that we had completely lost (or never defended) our sense of self in these relationships. It was lovely to be able to share that feeling with women who aren't abuse survivors.

Haven't properly caught up with the thread but I see we have a few new faces. Hello there!

I see we've nearly filled up this thread, so I'll start a new one and then go off to bed.

fool , having gone through this horrendous summer where things seemed to reach an all time low for me, where my relationship with my eldest was disintegrating before my eyes, I could finally see how much all 6 of them had been suffering for such a long time.
They were suffering because they had him as a father and were suffering because their mother had been ground down into an exhausted angry mess. I wasn't parenting, I was surviving, just.
I couldn't change my situation with him, just yet, but I could change my relationship with the kids.
I gathered the last vestiges of my strength and started to meet their fury and anger with calm and smiles and love. I hugged them and kissed them often. Caught them 'being good', thanked them, made them feel useful and important in my life.
I still do all this and check very carefully HOW I am asking them to do things, HOW I express disapproval. If they are trying to get my attention I give it to them and do it with a smile. Yes it's tiring BUT it's working.
Ds1 13 is much more receptive and far calmer, less angry generally and actually talks to me again now.
ds2 12 is asking for reading time in the evenings which he has NEVER asked for before, which he gets, he is also not angry anymore.
dd1 9 has opened up. She is much less angry and argumentative. She is doing better at school. She comes regularly for hugs and kisses and tells me she loves me. Tonight she asked for something of mine to sleep with.
dd2 8 is the same
dd3 5 is calmer at school, more focused and secure, her rages have stopped and she is finally sleeping through the night. She tells me all the time that she loves me, just because she does. She gets lots of tickling, raspberry blowing, hugs, chases and kisses.
ds3 4 has always been loving and secure though because I poured it all into him and shielded him from his father completely.

Just now for instance dd's 1 and 2 came back down stairs, both needing to talk about stuff. The old me would have been sooo cross. But I took them both back up, holding hands, calmly tucked them in and kissed them, listened to their worries and went back down. Time to get ds1 and 2 into bed. Both needed the extra last minute stuff. I asked ds1 if he wanted 'tucking in' he paused then said 'yeah'. I was so chuffed, he let me tuck him in and kiss him good night.

To love them in this way is working for us. Of course my kids' needs will probably be different to others' but I figure that if I can at least make them feel secure in MY love and presence then it will go some way to cushioning the shit from their dad.
Sorry that was a bit long and maybe nothing like the thoughts you were after.

HUgs to all you brave souls and welcome all newcomers xxx

NEW THREAD HERE

COME ON OVER, NEW THREAD!

...and good night!

xx

Hi Iwillbefree and midnight. Iwillbe what a brilliant analogy (Shawshank). I will keep the 'freedom' image in my mind when all the shit seems never-ending.

My biggest regret is not the wasted years (20 FFS!) but the fact that I chose such an awful father for my children. As grim as it was for me to share a house with him, how much more scary must it have been for my little children .

But whattodo, FoolontheHill, Hissy, as straight-talking AnyFucker said on 'my' thread when I started to see the light, "they have plenty of childhood left".

I can (and probably will) kick myself forever for choosing him, but I know can make a much better life for my DCs away from him. I can't possibly do any worse.

Hissy I've just done the Bad Father week on the Freedom Programme (it's a bloody good programme, isn't it?).

Love and strength to you all tonight - seems like a rough one for a lot of us.

It is lovely to see so many newcomers here, even if I wish nobody else had to go on this particular journey. I can see so well a year on from leaving how far I have travelled since the days of pain and guilt and fear.

It will get easier, you will get the courage to act, and your children will cope with change and respond to the absence of fear and aggression. All will be well!

See you on the new thread