Is it possible to 'manage' a controlling husband?

[NotANaturalGeordie]

A little history - DH was emotionally neglected by his mother and regularly beaten/humiliated by his (now dead) step-father. We have had no contact with his mother for about 5 years. We have been together 15 yrs, married for 10 and have two DD, ages 7 and 2.

DH has control issues. For example, I pre plan dinners for budget reasons, and when I swapped the meals around for convenience sake he lost his temper, we had a huge row and he wouldn't let it drop until I was in tears. This sort of thing didn't use to happen but DD1 is now at the age he was when his mother married his step-dad. He will deliberately pick a fight and brow beat me until I cry, then he can 'forgive' me. He usually apologises and accepts responsibility for the arguments at a later point, maybe an hour or two later.

I love him, he loves me. I am not considering leaving him, but I would like advice on coping with his behaviour. I do not want to cry any more but neither can I go on like this. He refuses point blank to consider counselling.

Any advice? Any one living with someone like this and how do you manage?

NANG, I don't think anybody here expects you to leave him.

I hope that you will reflect on this thread and come to the conclusion that you cannot manage his behaviour, the responsibilty is his

and if, as a consequence of his behaviour, your marriage does break down, you accept that he had many chances to attempt to save it but he simply didn't want it enough

There is a big difference between having a bad day and coming home and making the person you love cry to make yourself feel better.

good luck, NANG, and do keep posting x

PS You are all correct, I am not ready to walk away because this relationship has not reached rock bottom.

Yes we have these horrible arguments (which are entirely his fault of course, I am only telling you about extreme examples) maybe once or twice a week. That means that at least 5 days a week we laugh, we love, we enjoy life. I do not walk on eggshells around him, I look forward to him walking in the door, I roll my eyes when he tells that joke again.

I want to try to heal us before I walk out on what has been the biggest joy of my life - my marriage.

I think you're wise to set the time limit :) (I actually want a high-five emoticon!)

I read your post as basically a question about your argument pattern. When you take real steps to change this, something will alter. It can't not! Given that he seems intent on pushing you real distress, I share everyone's concern that his motive is to break you - which makes him an abuser. But ... but ... it might simply be a bad pattern, and those can be changed.

I wish you luck :) Keep posting!

And finally, yes Hooker you are absolutely right.

But there is so much more to him than that, and it is worth at least trying to save.

(I think! lol)

"unfortunately we all take our emotions out on each other despite our best intentions". This is not true, my DP and I do not do this. Your DH's behaviour is not normal.

He may love you but he loves his 'privacy' more, you say he worships his DDs but apparently not enough to change behaviour which is extremely damaging to them. You crying makes him feel better - that is absolutely not love.

Incidentally how do your DDs react when the two of you are arguing? Does he do this with them yet?

If you can save it then ABSOLUTELY go for it. Women's Aid will help you do that too, with eyes wide open, which by the sound of it, yours are.

I really do wish you the very best of luck and I hope you get the outcome you want for you and your DDs xx

Much as garlicbutter suggests, you can change how you react. Try taking a step back and observe the interaction and you'll start to see the pattern of the 'dance'.

I did this. Initially, I could only manage to not react to the first statement but gradually I got better and better until I could watch as he went through a repertoire of tactics designed to rattle my cage. Often he would get through, I'd react and we'd be off again. Of course, I gave myself a hard time for 'letting him get to me'. I got 'better' - I'd walk away or refuse to discuss something while tempers were so heated. Then I'd be accused of only discussing things on my terms. After he shouted in my face a couple of times and chased me up the stairs when I walked away, I recognised that the situation was escalating and that I had to do something. But by then I was beginning to recognise that the change in my behaviour was what was causing him to escalate his. However but then I was clear that my behaviour was straight and not manipulative.

We separated not long after he chased me up the stairs. I finally realised that he didn't want to be with me, that actions do speak louder than words (having been brought up on 'do as I say not as I do'). He can still push my buttons but I detatch more each time he does. It's not all his fault - my childhood prepared me for a lifetime of accommodating others. Unfortunately, my ex presents a fantastic face to the world and my journey was prolonged by a number of professional therapists who failed to recognise the dynamic and fed his delusions and mine! I am now gradually beginning to unpick it all with the help of a fantastic and very experienced (and expensive!) therapist.

My advice would be to recognise that you are unhappy with the status quo and set a deadline. If you are really keen to make a go of things, you need to sit down together and work out how you want things to be and how you are going to get there. But the deadline is really important otherwise this will drift. In 6 months time you'll be saying 'well, it's only once a week' much as you were saying 'it's only once a month' not so long ago. In these situations it's all to easy to normalise what is happening.

I really hope he doesn't start using this tactic on your dd's, OP

Promise us you will remove them from it if he does. Perhaps that will be your "lightbulb" moment ? You don't matter (to you, clearly, nor much to him, possibly) but I assume you would want to protect their precious evolving psyches from something like this

Geordie, he recognises that he treats you badly, on a regular basis. Yet he refuses to seek professional help. Do you honestly think this is not deliberate? He may not intend to harm you, but he is deliberately deciding not to do the very thing that could stop the harm. I'm sure this avoidance is driven by fear, but at the end of the day his fears and personal problems are his responsibility. Wouldn't you seek counselling if you were the one with the problem?

He is damaged, and he is damaging you and your children. This situation will not improve without serious intervention. But it will get worse. That is guaranteed. What kind of life do you want for yourself and your children? Do you really think that the three of you deserve to be manipulated and emotionally abused like this?

If I were you I would find a way of removing myself and the children from the home, with the condition that you both see a good counsellor together (get a recommendation if you can).

He will not treat you with the respect that you deserve until you show him that you mean business. And your children will grow up believing that this is the way people relate to each other. What future do you want for your family life, and how are you going to set about building it?

X-posted there

I wish you luck OP. I hope you're right too, it would be nice to have one of these threads that doesn't follow the usual script

secrets, we're like twins on this thread

I was clear that my behaviour was straight and not manipulative.
Yes, that's crucial for your won well-being, and invaluable in the long term.

having been brought up on 'do as I say not as I do' - Blimey, you are my twin!!
What a stupid instruction, eh.

own

Sorry, am behind by quite a few posts!

NANG, these are excerpts from an "open letter" I wrote just shy of a year ago:

The shame and humiliation burned inside, and I became ultra-aware of the ways in which he belittled me, and saw traces of that behaviour aimed at our son. I was used to it, accepted it as part of my life, but there was no way I was going to let him treat my baby like that. I don't even think he knew he was doing it.

...

A very good friend convinced me that Women's Aid was the way forward. I called them thinking "they're a domestic violence charity, they won't help me." Within two minutes of speaking to them, I was assured that they were there to help women just like me and set up a meeting with a legal advisor and support worker.

That meeting was the first time I truly admitted to myself just how bad things had been. I was shown a wheel of domestic abuse and there wasn't a section of it where there wasn't at least one box ticked. I felt utterly ashamed of myself. For the first time, I properly acknowledged the life I had been living and 'what I had allowed him to do to me'. It took an awful lot of counselling for me to be able to change that to 'what I had tolerated from him to try and keep my family together for the sake of our son'.

I really hope your DH never turns his behaviour towards your DDs. I hope you never hit the low that prompted that letter.

Take care of yourself xx

Even if he doesn't turn the behaviour against his DDs (which he almost certainly will eventually) he is right now showing them how women should be treated by men.

He's creating victims every second you all stay in this.

NANG, please keep posting, please keep reading, please don't modify your behaviour, stay you! Regardless of that that actually means!

What garlic says is true to a certain extent. However I think that theory works only when you're having a genuine argument where both of you are trying to work towards a resolution and are perhaps going about it the wrong way. That isn't the situation in your case. Your H is pushing your buttons deliberately in order to get a reaction - he needs that reaction from you. If you start denying him the reaction then he'll start trying different ways to get it, either by being nastier and nastier, by targeting the children or by intimidating or hurting you physically.

The bottom line is that unless he recognises he has a problem and does something to change it himself, then nothing's going to change.

NANG

What are you getting out of this relationship now?. I can see what he is getting out of it but you?.

You are as much caught up in the cycle of abuse as he is because you want to help and support him. He does not want your help nor are you even remotely qualified to do so, you are not his counsellor but act instead as his emotional punchbag. You are too close to the situation as well to be of any real use to help him. He does nice/nasty very well; problem is that it is a continuous cycle that you have no hope of changing. He is refusing to be counselled for his own messed up childhood.

Joint counselling is a complete no in these situations due to the ongoing abuse, if counselling is considered then you NANG will need to see someone on your own

You cannot save or rescue someone who actually does not want to be rescued and or saved; you are just the sop now for his dysfunctional controlling behaviour and what he learnt in his own childhood is now being tranferred to you and his children. Abuse does travel down the generations; he has already been profoundly affected and now you and the children are being so as well. Controlling behaviours are abusive behaviours.

The emotional damage being done now to your children is incalculable, am sorry but it is. They will not ultimately thank you for staying with him and will perhaps wonder why you put him before them. They will not like you either for doing so.

Where are your daughters when hes brow beating you into crying?

That is not a good thing to watch your parents do.

You cant manage his behavior only he can do that and if he wanted to he wouldve done so by now.

You cant change him and while all that stuff goes on regardless of how 'nice' he is in other areas you are still in an abusive relationship

You can't manage his behaviour, only he can do that. If he is refusing to change or seek help to change, your relationship and family life is going nowhere good.

Recognising the connection between his past and his behaviour can help you understand his anger, but it doesn't change the behaviour. That's his part and in all honesty it's going to take a lot of work for a long time.

My ex had issues with his dad who was alcoholic. Tried so hard to save him but couldn't. Went on to become alcohol & drug counsellor. Then, when we had a son, he lost the plot and started drinking heavily. He said it was because he didn't know how to be a father to a boy, other than to be a drunk.

I thought this was a bit silly really. One thing he should have picked up on is that drunk didn't work for his dad and was unlikely to work for him. He went to counselling, I went to counselling, we went together... oh it was counselling forever. But he didn't change one jot. It's almost as though they are driven to manipulate their lives into re-writes of the past.

Sorry for the thread-jack but just hopeful this may help you gain insight.

I suspect disengagement will not work it will just escalate things - he will have to ramp up his behaviour because he needs your tears.

When controlling people start losing control they don't suddenly think "gosh it must be me I'll change".

The only chance of him changing is if he himself wants to. You can't make him want to. He needs to take ownership.

You say you're not afraid of him, so set him an ultimatum. He has six months to stop this behaviour. He can tackle it how he sees fit - counselling, books, whatever. He just has to sort it. Otherwise, he will lose his family.

Do not extend the deadline. Either he doesn't or he does.

A book that might be helpful to you is Patricia Evans' book on verbal abuse. She has strategies to help disengage - point out when he is being abusive and walk away.

Pity for my ex and his damaged childhild kept me with him for longer than I should have stayed. Never forget this - your first loyalty is to your dcs. You cannot be complicit in perpetuating the damage for another generation. Give him one last chance if you feel obliged to. But it truly has to be the last chance.

NANG I can see that you don't want your marriage to end over something that you feel can be managed. Without your DH going to counselling, I'm not sure how much you can achieve. You will have to do a lot of reading to learn about how to respond constructively to these situations. Maybe you could start by letting him know how his explosions affect you and the DC?

For example, after a scene, and after the "apology", maybe the next day when it's all calmed down, you could try saying:

"when you were so angry yesterday with me for changing the dinner plans, you made me feel very upset. You made me feel worthless. That you didn't respect me or my decisions. No, let me finish please, this is important to me. You know that meals change, for all kinds of reasons, and it's very unfair that you should get so cross with me about it."

or,

"when you were so angry yesterday about the change in dinner plans, DD1 saw and heard you. You know how much that upset you as a child - I'm worried now that DD1 will continue to hear this and grow up with unhappy memories of her childhood. If you are stressed at work, take time out either before coming home, or when you get home. Go for a run, go to the gym, read quietly for half an hour until you feel more relaxed. This is important for you, so you must do it. I don't want our family to walk on eggshells around you, waiting for the next big row with Mummy. Things will always change at short notice, that's life, we manage it."

I think your DH needs to acknowledge the impact his behaviour has on the rest of the family. He may be great 5 days out of 7, but what are those 5 days worth if you're worrying about the other 2?

Be careful with this NANG, it sounds as though he's perpetuating the behaviour that he grew up with - does he really want his DC to struggle with this in adulthood? And, do you?

he needs to seek profresional help.

it needs to be an ultimatum. it isnt fair on dc .

if he refuses then you should go to counselling yourself and consider the future.