Support for those in abusive relationships - thread 6

[ItsMeAndMyPuppyNow]

Welcome!

This is the latest instalment in a series of threads for those who are in abusive relationships, those who have left abusive relationships, and those gearing to leave.

Come vent, share, give and receive support.

The first question you may be asking yourself as a new visitor to this thread is:

Am I being abused?
Verbal Abuse A wonderfully non-hysterical summary. If you're unsure, read the whole page and see if you're on it
Emotional abuse from the same site as above
Emotional abuse a more heartfelt description
Signs of Abuse & Control Useful check list
Financial abuse Are you a free ride for a cocklodger, or supposed to act grateful for every penny you get for running the home
Women's Aid: "What is Domestic Violence?" This is also, broadly, the Police definition
20 signs you're with a controlling and/or abusive partner Exactly what it says on the tin

Books
"Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft - The eye-opener. Read this if you read nothing else
"The Verbally Abusive Relationship" by Patricia Evans ? He wants power OVER you and gets angry when you prove not to be the dream woman who lives only in his head
"The Verbally Abusive Man, Can He Change?" by Patricia Evans - Answer: Perhaps - ONLY IF he recognises HIS issues, and if you can be arsed to work through it. She gives explicit guidelines
"Men who hate women and the women who love them" by Susan Forward. The author is a psychotherapist who realised her own marriage was abusive, so she's invested in helping you understand yourself just as much as helping you understand your abusive partner
"The Emotionally Abusive Relationship: How to Stop Being Abused and How to Stop Abusing" by Beverley Engels - The principle is sound, if your partner isn't basically an arse, or disordered
"Codependent No More : How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself" by Melody Beattie - If you a rescuer, you're a co-dependent. It's a form of addiction! This book will help you
But whatever you do, don't blame yourself for being Co-dependent!

Websites
So, you're in love with a narcissist - Snarky, witty, angry, but also highly intelligent: very good for catharsis
Dr Irene's verbal abuse site - motherly advice to readers' write-ins from a caring psychotherapist; can be a pain to navigate but very validating stuff
Out of the fog - and now for the science bit! Clinical, dispassionate, and very informative website on the various forms of personality disorders and how they impact on family and intimate relationships
Get your angries out ? You may not realise it yet, but you ARE angry. Find out in what unhealthy ways your anger is expressing itself. It has probably led you to staying in an unhealthy relationship
Melanie Tonia Evans is a woman who turned her recovery from abuse into a business. A little bit "woo" and product placement-tastic, but does contain a lot of useful articles
Love fraud - another site by one woman burned by an abusive marriage
You are not crazy - one woman's experience. She actually has recordings of her and her abusive partner having an argument, so you can hear what verbal abuse sounds like. A pain to navigate, but well worth it
Baggage reclaim - Part advice column, part blog on the many forms of shitty relationships.

'I agree that this is not how it's supposed to be. I'm so sorry, please, please give me another chance. You're wrong that this isn't working. Whatever you think is wrong, we can work on it to try and make it better.'
So you were listening to my FWH this morning, were you, MadameOvary? :)
You know what the problem with that statement is - apart from it having been emitted from FWH arse - is that there is NO 'WE' in this; I have none absolutely NOTHING to put us where we are now.
Sorry to shout, wise women. Obviously, it is myself I am shouting at. I must have engaged without realizing it

There is nothing in that statement that would give me hope, no owning of behaviour, no admission of responsibility and yes, "we" ends up meaning "you".
My TF would "apologise" like that, it was all BS. I learned gradually that his words meant absolutely nothing.
They will basically say anything to shut you up, and when you try to remind them of their promise they will either admit they didn't mean it or deny they said it or twist it in some way to turn it into an argument . All designed to deter you from doing it again.

indeed but better than or [resigned] or[toolbox means I can fix it/him]

IWBF, yes I am rather black and white, I know. To me it really IS that clear.

Now that I am out, I see it as though it really IS clear that NO-ONE has the right to make ANYONE suffer, for any reason just to get off on the power. My rights are to be treated as an equal, to be treated with respect. To be given the space that, if I am in the wrong, to be able to back away with grace and dignity intact as I allow HIM to do. Thing is, it ISN'T normally me (or us) that are in the wrong really, it's their perceived wrongness, their manufactured sense of outrage at our misdeeds, when no-one else has to put up with this shit.

If you are not with me, you are against me...

Keep your friends CLOSE... FUCK your enemies, let them sort themselves out

I state that I AM worth more than this, because I am. If you (TF/DM/DF/Dsis) can't see that, then you need to FF off and I'll find someone that does.

Distance yourselves and ask what you would say if this were just a mate that was doing this to you, would you talk to them anymore?

the answer is already no, isn't it?

Well factor in that your DC are being taught to treat YOU and their future partners in the same way, are losing their own self esteem and potential freedom from being abused by the second, then you will see that every day counts.

Life is too short to be putting up with these sick evil bastards. They cry and wail? let em? they have had all the warnings, all the pleading all the begging.

Enough is enough.

Put the children and ourselves first, amputate these poisonous and useless appendages.

eh? we can work on it...

Don't get me wrong, I know for the most part such apologies are not worth taking very seriously. I am just applying conversation analysis and reading with a strong bias towards (unrealistic?) hope.

'We can work on it' means that YOU will end up doing whatever it takes to EAT SHIT and put up with whatever he deems you deserving of.

I've been there, remember? 3 ffing years of begging him NOT to be mean. I didn't even ask reach for the moon or anything crazy like asking him sto be nice.... I got FF all. Only MORE nastiness, cos my pleading with him was telling him directly what abuse of me worked best.

There is only one solution.... I took it.

I got out...

yyy for most people hissy Are we not talking hypothetically here?

I am not trying to offer false hope - far from it. I wish NCL had even offered one single apology, even if it was one I felt was insincere.

One reason why he is ex (Though Still in the Bloody House grrr)

Hi, may I join in? Really resonated with something Houdini says...mine is bleating about going to counselling, but has ignored many years of me saying, "All these things you do/say are coffin-nails in our relationship. When you reach a full set, I'm gone. It's up to you". I wonder why the hell they have to call your bluff?! There is no point, for me, going to counselling. If you need a stranger to tell you that you are being/have been an Arse, without being able to work it out for yourself AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, I frankly do not want to be with you anymore.

pinkpussycat I can understand that my post might sound a bit and but really, once I learned that words were just noise with TF's it all became a lot clearer. Words are nothing. Actions are all.

parsley - counselling = more noise. Usually they emerge with more eloquent ways to abuse you and an even greater distance from any sense of responsibility.
Why are so many of them keen on counselling? Why because they get to talk about themselves for an hour! Sod-all to do with wanting to change.

That's interesting Madame. Someone else said they can use it to find out other vulnerabilities to torture you with, and I do have reason to believe this is true also. Funny that about the counselling and talking about themselves. After I threw him out, he went to counselling by himself. Seems to have been an awful lot of stuff about how horrid his mummy is, not so much about what a crap husband he is...

My entire point madame o but how is one supposed to decide which actions without discussion.

I say again NCL has had such discussions, specifically agreeing that the housework should be equally divided. Twice. Followed by No Change in his Behaviour Whatsoever.

Agree re the counselling. NCL thought counselling would be good - for me to sort out my issues as everything is all my fault. Reading on here I thank my lucky stars that he turned down my suggestion of couples counselling - with Relate. That was way back when, early last year. BMN (before Mumsnet)

Why does counselling have this effect though? Must work for some of the peoples, some of the time. Pretty sure my case isn't one of them...what would the predictor for success be, a demonstrated commitment to preserving the relationship, which mine hasn't shown btw.

Keep forgetting others are posting as I compose mine

*my entire point - is the same as yours, that words are nothing without actions

We? There IS no WE.

There is only the abuser. The abuser causes this. THEM. Not US. THEM.

If not us it'd be some other poor bastard. WE can't fix this. Even if we tried. and we do and we do and we do and we do and we DO try.

Only HE can fix it. Fast track way? by pissing off and find a shitty rock to slither back under, or by growing a conscience and learning how to be human (Hen's teeth anyone?)

The longer he stays the more damage he is doing, the longer it will take for you to recover, the more therapy you'll pay for at £40/hour.

The longer he stays the greater the risk that the kids will pick up his behaviour, normalise it and become him by proxy and start to pick up the abuse where he left off.

He has to go. You HAVE to rip the plaster off. The world WILL go on, and infact it will go on a whole lot better without him, and in a surprisingly short time too! Trust me.

Counselling for an abuser, never. MadameO's right.

However we HAVE to process the feelings we have had, the evil done to us, it's the only way to get ourselves back. You need to go to counselling to recover, once they have gone though, not counselling while the ffer is in situ, to help us cope with being abused. NO!

The indicator aiui parsley (hi, btw) is that neither partner should be considered abusive by the other partner. Couples counselling ain't no good otherwise.

I keep going back to Lundy - whom I found thanks to you lovely women I really mean it when I say that you saved my life.
The reason counselling doesn't work with these men is that it is not their behaviour that needs to be modified; they are not evil monsters; they do not enjoy behaving like shits.
It is their very being that needs to change - everything they have ever believed about life: that it all revolves round them.
Just how likely is that to happen?

Plus there is a possibility that the abuser will pull the wool over the counsellor's eyes, so that the abusee feels even more abused, during the very counselling they were pinning their hopes on. Or the abuser will learn more ways to put their partner down - by using the very language of conselling against them.

Yes, to that Pink

That is quite a scary thought though, re the counselling.I remember on the one Relate session we had (not v impressed btw, but I'm sure it varies, and depends on who you get) they said they had to do an assessment and there was a question mark over whether they would proceed if dv had been present. I don't think they mentioned other abuse, but was in no state to process everything at the time.
Just very sad that the thing you think will help you, or help you move on if not stay together, can be more damaging.

Pink, on the plus side, I have heard of cases where the counsellor has seen through the bullsh*t that the abuser was spouting, though I remember one (from MN I think) where the conclusion from the counsellor was that things were not going to change, as in male partner (in this case) was in big denial about behaviour, but at least it did not invalidate the experience of the other party.

I've heard of it happening, parsley (may be same thread) and I also recall a particular thread where the OP gave a moving description of counselling eroding her self-esteem even further, as abuser continued his merry way.

Nobody few people seems to understand abuse! It's like depression - you have to have been there to understand (I generalise here). And like you can be depressed without knowing it, you can be abused without knowing it.

I always knew something was wrong. I just didn't know it was called abuse until I came on here when things deteriorated unbelievably after infidelity.
I first went to the infidelity threads, but they just did not seem to fit. Luckily Unfortunately, FWH behaviour deteriorated to such an extent as to leave me in no doubt what thread I should be on.

And I first went to the mh threads. I thought it was down to my iffy mh, although I also thought it was him, but in reaction to me iyswim. Much of the mh was a reaction to him.

Yes - part of abuse is making us feel that we are to blame for how others treat us; we conclude that something must be wrong with us.

After my husband threatened to kill me, I booked an appointment with a counsellor, and in all seriousness asked him what was wrong with me: I literally asked him "Why does it upset me when he shouts, swears, and threatens me?"

He boggled a bit and said: "Because it's abuse."

Hard for me to believe now that I was that woman.

There are so many threads on MN every day, where women are saying : "please fix me, I'm upset by shitty behaviour"

Our society is so very sick.

Happy Women's Day...