Support thread for those in Emotionally Abusive relationships number *8*

[foolonthehill]

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
why financial abuse is domestic violenceAre 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.
heart to heart a wealth of information and personal experiences drawn together in one place

If you find that he really wants to change

I stay or should I go bonus materials this is a site containing the material for men who want to change?please don?t give him the link?print out the content for him to work through.

The Bill of Rights
bill of rights here is what you should expect as a starting point for your treatment in a relationship, as you will of course be treating others!!

Well big we can take comfort in the fact that we had the ability to create a lovely family home which lives on as a testament to us. So with a fresh start we can do it again. Whereas the FWH can only keep the shrine and not create a new home.
I think the sadness is grief, and will pass as all things do!

Actually I wouldn't sit down with a catalogue and reorder all the same things again - I like a change and a fresh look to my house anyway. So I shall suggest some recompense. There are four double beds in my "big house" still!

Now my new man has the most cluttered and untidy house I have ever stayed in. I probably need a whole thread about that! I'm not going to take it on, even though he would like me to, but until it is better I couldn't live there! I need the Little House as my refuge and place of tranquillity.

I am longing (and hoping) to be able to swan about in this big house, just me and the cat. Am crap at homemaking, so is ex but better than me, so the look is functional Ikea but who knows, the saga is still ongoing, but sol is just brilliant. If it comes to it, I do have a plan B.

Hi pink and how great that you have a solicitor who will get the best for you. Mine is dealing calmly with FWH who denies receiving a letter and thinks the system is out to get him.

If you like functional IKEA then that is just fine. Without the unwanted clutter (ie H) it will look a lot nicer.

I harbour thoughts of having a house done out in M&S homeware, sofas & everything, but Ikea would do just fine! I like a good Ikea browse, but I'm not good at homemaking either, Pink, my first flat was decorated in bright purple, turquoise and orange (I tend to not be able to choose between all the things I like, so opt for everything), but I think whatever makes you happy is good. I wish I had my cat to swan about with - I had to give up my elderly but still glorious ginger posh lady last year, because H is allergic to cats & dogs.

Speaking of homes, I floated the 'how about you move out of our large 4-bed house and let me move back in' question earlier today. Did. Not. Go. Down. Well. And I feel further away from him than ever now. He did say that he realised I wouldn't be coming back any time soon, and it might be months but that was fine, maybe I'd even be going and renting some furnished house nearby and that was fine, we could come and go like that. I suggested that I could move back in and he move out. Why, he said. Well, given that all this is his fault, by his own admission, why should I be the one relocating with my kids into some furnished house. I suggested he should be doing that. [mock ] His mouth went flat. Mr Hyde returned. He started talking about what we'd do with the house if we split, as this was what I seemed to be saying. I kept saying 'that's not what I'm saying at all'. Am very disappointed. but not surprised.

Pony well done, you are a strong person, you should be proud of yourself. You tested him and saw what was underneath!

Lemon I agree, we created those homes and they rode on our coattails and could not create their own warm atmospheres.

Mine now talking to kids but has clearly decided I am to blame for his appalling behaviour to them so is being very menacing and nasty (non violent) towards me.

i need a little vent about my mother;

1. it is my 40th soon. she has asked me if i want a nice piece of jewellery. i dont wear jewellery. in the past when i have, it has ALWAYS been silver because i dont like gold. And necklaces. I said I dont/wont wear jewellery and told her some stuff I really really want for my 40th. So she took kids today to go shopping for my birthday present. DCs are sworn to secrecy, so as soon as my mum left dd1 tells me, they bought me a really nice expensive gold bracelet!!! I KNOW I sound like an ungrateful brat...but WTF?!!!!!?!!! Im sooooo mad. How am i going to accept that present in good grace???? I am starting to see how I ended up where I did. Its funny how the pieces of clarity start jumping up once you are out of the situation. What would you do? What can I say to her?

2. On way back with kids at 630pm they phone to say did I want to go with them to pizza hut for dinner. I said no, I thought they would have eaten by now and so i had had my dinner. And no, I didnt feel like just going along for the hell of it-quite miserable and tired. 15 minutes later they arrive at the door. I say again, I dont want to go out, why dont they come in and ill make something. No, mother says, I have to go with them to help her with the kids!!!! It was ok in the end. But why just ignore what I have said about not wanting to go

sorry-its really petty trivial stuff. I know it is

bejeezus hi, sounds like some serious passive aggression to me, you are right to recognise it as trouble making, imo. I agree, we all ended up where we did (with EA relationships) for a reason and it's interesting (but awful) when those moments of clarity jump out. I hope you're ok.

bejeezus if it were me I would accept the bracelet with really well acted good grace, and make a point of wearing it on special occasions involving your M, because, selfish old cow that she may be, it will give her pleasure.

When it comes to pizza hut and kids that is a different matter - you didn't go, did you? If you stuck to your guns then that is just fine. No need to invest unnecessary emotion in this.

I preach a good practice, though I may not always practise what I preach

what to do or say though trying. Im not sure I have the nerve or the energy for a confrontation...Im not sure I have the nerve or the energy to just carry on as is!

it really pisses me off. She has only recognisably become like this since I told her I am divorcing stbxh...maybe she was always like this, and i just didnt realise...

Why why why would you get someone something for their birthday which they had explicatly said they didnt want?!

yes, i did go pink!!

she refused to bring the kids in out of the car, and guilted me by saying she needed help to look after them...ffs....she was supposed to be looking after them to give ME a break!

• because you always wanted a gold bracelet but no-one gave you one?
• because you think your daughter would look nice in gold jewellery if she did but try it?
• because gold is more important than silver?
• because you can only express your feelings for your daughter through money?

I know these are all selfish kind of reasons which assumes she knows better than you, I reallly do know this. But I think they just don't know any better - you, her daughter, may be, to her, a kind of extension of you. Yes, it shouldn't be that way...

Hey I'm just coming up to my 40th as well only if you believe, as Babyboomers like me do, that 60 is the new 40

...reasons, and if any of those are her reasons, then she is assuming she knows better than you...

...a kind of extension of her

sorry 'bout that

christ-i hope i dont become like my mother!!! how do you stop that happening?!

i would hate hate hate my dds to feel like this about me
bound to become something they dont like though, huh

oops x-posted. That is a bugger. I would be grrr.

explicatly

just noticed this new word, i just made up!

nice word...

I fully expect to drive my DCs insane by my lunacy when they grow up but there are a few things i definitely will do (if it is humanly possible) LISTEN to them, HELP them out when DCs are little, HAVE A LIFE so am not too dependent on them.

Here endeth the mid season lesson.

Agree fool.... I had to meet a family through work this week who are very well know: successful business women that we all look up to. And I met their mother - 90, loud, utterly, utterly bonkers. And they all loved her. And she's produced these AMAZING women! It gave me hope.

bejeezus, if I were you before the birthday tell your mum that you have been thinking and you REALLY don't want her to buy you any jewellery, but that you will think of something that you would like and let her know. Perhaps a day outing for the family, if that is something you really would like, with or without her. Or a special meal, somewhere you would never normally go. A picnic to a stately home (oh the irony)

My mum just gave me a flyer for a day spa, would I like that for my birthday.. (er, no.) thankfully I didn't have a clear diary to allow a whole day, so dodged it. She even thinks it's a shame I'm away on my birthday. My 40th year I was told by her H to cancel my trip home. I spent it with Ex, alone in a fucked up country, no, i didn't get taken out IIRC. (no change there then)

The days of 'day-trips' with my mother have LONG passed. I know I have done them in the past, but that was before.

Roller coaster week for me.

Highs: Giving a speech to about 50 or 60 GPs about DA, and how GPs can support potential victims in coming forward and allowing help.

Low: having to call 101 and report the bloke I was seeing for potential harassment as even after 3 weeks of me having called the police on him before, he hasn't stopped with the occasional text, email. Yesterday he returned a soft toy I gave him (he asked for it from a trip I took) by placing it on the windscreen of my car outside my home.

Fingers crossed he stops now, the police were clear with him about what happens next if he doesn't stop.

bejeezus... you do realise your mother GROOMED you for the abuse don't you? You do realise how she is manipulating you and making YOU out to be the problem.

If there is a repeat of the Pizza Hut thing, take the kids inside and tell her that YOU will take it from here and then close the door. She is being Aunty Granny and making YOU look to be the killjoy. She is undermining you, she isn't listening to you.

Oh and I don't hold out any hope of her listening to you wrt the bracelet, tell her to keep the receipt, or you will sell it for cash anyway.

Hissy what great advice. Re the pizza hut incident, I think I could handle it in real time if it happened to me, iyswim, but can't think what to do from reading a post. (DM is far from like that, if anything she is too much of a people pleaser...)

Hi all,
Well done for your speech. [Hissy]
:( at creep still creeping around.
Sorry about your mother, Bejeezus - mine is probably at the root of all my troubles
I understand all your feelings about your houses Bighouse, Lemon
I left on Wednesday and am now staying in a hotel. I didn't make it to July :(
I had to leave by beautiful children behind - and I, and, I suppose, they have been crying ever since.
I had said that FWX had been on his best behaviour, but it just hit me over the weekend how much I have put up with. When I mentioned this (I know ... I know ...) because I had become so upset at the thought - I got called a schizophrenic lunatic who wouldn't leave him alone. It was just the last straw.
I can't say any more as I fear that the kids might read this. I have no friends or family to talk to, and I can't see the point in anything any more.
Really sorry for unloading

fingers, go get the kids! please? ((HUGS))

Sorry, Hissy I probably didn't explain it well enough.
My kids are too big to 'take'.
This is their home. Not a dingy single room in a hotel.
He has only ever been abusive with me. With the children he is only distant.
I am actually in FWX's house at the moment because he has an 'important business supper', so I have come round to cook dinner.
It is not that the children have been abandoned; it more that I just can't see the future with any clarity. :(

fingers, now that you have left, the fog will start to clear, and things will start to unfold. The next step will appear. Sending hugs, as only seem to be able to write stuff that's a bit trite (nevertheless I do think these things will happen).