Should i involve his parents!

[Helenemjay]

Having problems with dp, since we got together 6.5 years ago he has physically attacked me a few times, i recently caught him 'chatting' many (at least 10) women over his messenger and he admitted he has been 'friendly' with them for about 6 months! he is consistently rude and disrespectful to me, and there are other tings too that i probably shouldnt mention but which i dislike greatly, the question is, his mum and dad are lovely, his mum is very shy and suffers alot with depression, but his dad is a very lovely kind hearted down to earth person and i cant help but feel like if i sat and had a chat with them about dp's behavior i may be able to help our relationship, he is 28 and i know he has alot of respect for his mum and dad, and he would listen to them, i dont doubt his mum and dad think he is a very good boy and he would NEVER do anything bad, his mum has said before 'he's a good boy!' should i talk to them or is it a bad idea?? im in such a pickle!

kids in one parent families are not fcuked up always by virtue of being the same - its about you, your insecure your scared of starting again. its not about the kids. your worried about being poor and skint and having nothing.

id rather have nothing than allow anyone to take my self respect

Then you have to choose the option that will fuck them up least.

Leave.

Would much rather have my parents split up than see my father hitting my mother. Do you want your kids to see that this behaviour is OK?

One of these days he could kill you.

What's that going to do to your children?

What would your mum say if she read all of this? I think she would be appalled and very sad.

Thats because she knows how a violent, abusive man can turn on the charm for outsiders to see. She knows full well the hurt it caused her family to stay with someone so awful. She wouldnt want that for her daughter, or her daughters children.

You need to face up to some reality. Either that or there is just an awful lot you arent telling us here.

My mum left her abusive husband and as a result she lost her kids, and spent years on her own where she had a break down and ended up marrying another abusive man who made our lives hell for 19 years, so my mum (who i am very close to) thinks i should stay and make it work! maybe without her i would have left, maybe without her approval it makes an already BIG decision seem impossible.

Of course you do not want to repeat what happened to you - your parents' divorce when you were 14 affected you very badly and you have seen violence in your life towards your Mum.

"I would do anything to avoid hurting my kids"

Well leave him then. One difference now is that he is not married to you. You've got three kids and a violent man as a partner so there's no security there anyway. At least if you made a fresh start they will then no longer see his violent rages towards you.

This violence has affected two generations of your family unit - you do NOT want it to affect a third.

Ah ha. Now its starting to make sense.

Look, if you do nothing else, ring Womens Aid and ask for their confidential advice.

Whether its advice on whether what your partner does is considered abusive, whether you would lose your children purely on the basis of putting them first. Advice on how to resolve things. Whatever. But dont just sit there and do nothing at all.

There you go.

Its your life, your kids life, NOT your mothers.

"My mum left her abusive husband and as a result she lost her kids, and spent years on her own where she had a break down and ended up marrying another abusive man who made our lives hell for 19 years, so my mum (who i am very close to) thinks i should stay and make it work! maybe without her i would have left, maybe without her approval it makes an already BIG decision seem impossible".

Is this what you're afraid of ultimately - that you will lose your children if you leave?.

You need good legal advice but the courts will look more favorably on you than him.

Your Mother made some bad choices in her life re men (she left one abusive man only to marry another such person)- but you do not have to repeat her mistakes. You are in danger of doing exactly this hence my generational comment. Abuse is often generational.

Why seek her approval to leave?. You are your own person you know.

I would also put money on it that your Mother saw violence between her parents in the family home when she was growing up.

I do think that slapping your partner in a fight, no matter what gender you are, is not acceptable.

That being said, if you're behaving badly enough to "bring this on yourself" in your view, you must be behaving really really badly. In which case, you should get away from the relationship, anyway.

sorry but if i was getting this verbal and mental torture i would see a slap in the face as accepable!! even more if im honest

Helen, my stepmother's father was a violent man. He beat his wife for many years. The violence got worse and worse - apparently this is what happens with wife-beaters. Unless the victim leaves, the violence escalates. It was so damaging for the children to witness this. They were scared too. You don't know that he won't turn on the kids one day - he's a violent man, it may well happen.

My stepmother left home as soon as she could and got a job on another continent. She just wanted to get as far away as possible. Sadly, while she was away, her father killed her mother. That could be you.

My stepmother has tried very hard to be a good parent to her own dd (my half-sister). But it's not easy - she has no model the way most of us do. Her relationship with my sister isn't anything like as bad as it could have been, but it's not great either. The children of violent marriages often have a very hard time as parents themselves, because they tend to recreate the pattern. Please, call Refuge or Women's Aid and get out before your children learn these terrible lessons. Don't let him screw up their lives. Don't risk them being left without a mother.

Or Helen, think of another possibility: when your lovely DD is twenty five, she lives with a man who regularly knocks her about. How will you feel about that?

Because by staying with this man, that's what you're setting her up for.

I guess i knew this would spark some heavy opinions but i didnt think you would have such a strong opinions of how im ok with letting my kids suffer, or how im happy to let their future relationships go to hell without a seconds thought like some of you clearly do, i appreciate all your opinions and help, but its not fair to imply that i would in anyway 'let' my kids suffer or pay for my mistakes in their future, im painfully aware of the state of my relationship, and having been through my mums relationship split i have many times wondered if she had tried harder to sort things out or had she and my dad tried counselling could they have sorted things did she do EVERYTHING she could to keep our family together? im not confident she did, i love her immensley but she is very much the sort of person in a stressful or bad situation to run of crying at the first hurdle, i dont want my kids to think the same of me, i want to know i did EVERYTHING i could and i want them to know that too! not all violence in relationships means the man is some kind of large muscular brute who throws his weight around day in day out, sometimes i believe these things might be fixable, he has serious temper issues there is obviously a reason behind this, i owe it to my kids to do my best to give them a happy home with BOTH parents and i will do my best to find out why dp has such issues, maybe that makes me stupid, a crappy mother, and selfish, but i think people give up on their relationships too easily sometimes, and what does that teach our kids???

helen
dont know if this has been mentioned
could you not go to a zero tolerance centre or phone a dv helpline and ask for some anger management courses for your dh
maybe a bit of counselling would help also
good luck
xxx

If you tolerate this then your children will be next.

Helen, I honestly don't think anyone here is criticising you, more trying to show you that staying with a violent man is not only bad for you, it is bad for your children. Whether you think 'other people' give up on their relationships too soon isn't really the issue here. It's about a violent relationshp and in that situation the best thing you can do is get out before it gets any worse.
Please do call Refuge or Women's Aid - they have far greater knowledge of your options (including the possibility of salvaging something) than any of us do. It can't hurt to talk it over with them and might be very helpful.

He is already threatening the children - he hit you when you were pregnant and when you were holding a six week old baby. If he'd made you drop your baby, he or she could be dead or have life-long disabilities now.

Please do call Refuge or Women's Aid. You may not feel ready to leave right now, but at least make that call.

Hope you and your kids are safe today.

Helenemjay, I've read this thread and all your posts carefully.

I hear what you say about wanting to work on your relationship with your DP and not give up on it too easily. But having gone through your posts carefully, I can't quite see what it is that you think you have with him that is to save? Not only is he physically violent to you but he is also disrespecting you by his "friendships" with these other women, he is rude and disrespectful to you in other ways, and there are other things which you don't even feel that you can mention - and to boot, he is not even clean!

You sound as if you are envisioning some kind of life of self-sacrifice, sacrificing your perfectly human need to be properly loved and cared for, "for the sake of the children". I know only too well that there is a certain sick kind of satisfaction that you can get from this sort of martyrdom - but honestly, honey, you can build something far more "real" for yourself than that.

Helen,

Its not about giving up on relationships too easily - you are wrong there. He has given up on the relationship a long time ago and does not give a toss about you; look at how he treats you. Quite apart from the violence there is the fact that he's been chatting to at least 10 women on his messenger. People in violent relationships often come out with exactly the self same issues you write about so I am not surprised to see this.

I think counselling for you would be helpful as you still have issues regarding your Mum's split when you were a teenager. You at heart do not feel she tried hard enough to keep them together. This would affect anyone; its not a reflection on you as a person.

For all you know your Mum did try everything but she'd had enough of the abuse. You do not know the full ins and outs of their situation and what she did to try and sort things out between them.

Could they have sorted the underlying problems out?. Well perhaps not, not unless he himself wanted to change and to admit he was wrong. She had two men in her life, both of whom treated her very badly. Such abuse is generational and now you as her daughter are doing the self same thing and making the same mistakes this time around. Can't you see this is generational - emotional and physical abuse often is. Staying with someone who seemingly does not want to be helped means you are condemning your children to the same problems.

Helen, you cannot act as someone's rescuer or saviour in a relationship and you cannot save someone who does not want to be saved. Hard lesson to learn certainly but they are true.

If he does not want to address himself why he has temper/anger issues then you cannot make him address that or try to help him. Your mistake is trying to help someone who clearly does not want to be helped. Self sacrificing martyrhood like this will ultimately destroy you and do your children no favours.

Unless he says that he's truly sorry and wants to be serious about addressing why he acts as he does you are on a hiding to nothing. It will mean heavy duty and sometimes emotional counselling for both of you. If neither he or you want to address it then the situation will get no better but will deteriorate further.

Violent men can change but most won't. Domestic violence is a choice.

abusers usually only hit their partner (this is true for 85 per cent of abusive men)

abusers usually only hit their partner in private

they usually only hit their partner on parts of the body that are normally covered with clothing so that others won't see the injuries

if something negative happens such as arrest, they are less likely to do it again.

Violent men often believe they 'can't help it'. In fact, it's this misconception that allows them to avoid the issue of taking responsibility for their acts of violence.

Many men are capable of accepting this responsibility once they're taught some strategies for positive change. However, the abuser has to want to change; others cannot make him change.

Helen, what is this relationship you're so scared of giving up on too easily?

As others have said, he's already given up on it. Unless he's suggested that he wants to go to anger management counselling to learn how to treat the mother of his children with some respect and love. Has he said that?

Your children are learning from your relationship, about relationships. You are teaching them about the nature of love. They're learning that love means hitting the person you claim to love and being hit by the person who claims to love you. It doesn't matter what we tell children, it's what we do that counts. There's just no getting round that.

This isn't a criticism, just an attempt to get you to see into the future. If you stay with this man without forcing him to address his violence to you, you are increasing the odds of your little girl being bashed about by a man when she grows up. That's not a guilt-trip, just a statistical fact.

Helen, sorry you feel criticised. I agree with Edam and Caligula. Honestly, a man who hits a woman, let alone a woman who is pregnant/is holding a BABY, has serious problems and doesn't deserve to live with those children. And I really, really, doubt your mother 'didn't try hard enough' honestly.