Red flags I should have heeded - share yours for womenkind

[ParsleyTheLioness]

There were various red flags that meant I should have headed for the hills, but I was vulnerable at the time, and he only upped the ante several years and a child down the line. I will share mine, in the hope that someone may take it on board, and hopefully others will share theirs too.
In no particular order: very early on in our relationship, he would throw a strop for no reason that I could discern, and looking back, still didn't know what had triggered it. I just knew I felt bad afterwards.
He was always unaware of personal space, and would frequently invade mine. Eg in the car, he would suddenly lurch accross me to access the glove box, without any warning. His car, his space.
Subtle undermining tactics. I am very particular about the perfume I wear. Anything else is a bit of waste of money really. He knew this, but would always try to 'convert' me to another one.
There were many others, and things got worse, with lots of EA, some dv, but I am just thinking of the things that had my Twat Detector been working, would have encouraged me to get out before I had emotionally invested. Please feel free to add. I'm sure I shall think of lots of other things later.

used to ask my opinion on things and then make fun of my answer expecially if it was in front of people.....then he'd go and do exactly as I had suggested but of course it was his brilliant idea!

You know the first month after I got rid, I had the most amazing time with my girls, I decluttered the house from top to bottom, gave him all his stuff...made numerous runs to charity shops just decluttering everything in the house, then I blew stupid money on toys for my girls, he wouldn't let me buy toys for my babies apparently they were a waste of money , got new clothes for me (I wasn't allowed to buy clothes while with him as I had too many clothes...I had basically no new clothes since we had been together ),and for a whole month we just ate out, purely because I bloody well could, I stayed up late I called friends, I had friends over I went out and met up with loads of old friends (who all came back and helped me declutter the house).... it was so utterly utterly cathartic and amazing like I could breathe for the time in forever........

My STBX would sit and comment on the following:
You can't
1.stack the dishwasher

1. make gravy
2. make a bed
3. paint walls/woodwork/anything
4. pack a suitcase
5. pick a car
6. drive
7. dress the kids like that
8. get a promotion as it doesnt fit in with 'our' lifestyle

10. garden 11. organise a trip 12. ask for sex 13. question anything I do 14. expect to be right at any point 15. go out as I cant look after the children 16. move the furtiture around because I dont like it 17. buy me clothes with button on because they make me freak out 18. have friends round because its not convenient 19. talk to my family 20. talk to your family 21 buy anything without me researching it first

Oh I could go on and on. What I could expect was in the end ot be disrespected, ignored, blamed and unloved. What did I do?......Just love him and accept all his 'oddities' but that was never enough in the end. Now the OW can deal with it.

I had a boss whose nice personality changed to irrational arsehole around the time he started getting nosebleeds. We ganged up on him staged an intervention and told him to stop the coke or we'd call the cops (there was always enough white powder in our office to mark out a football pitch). Since he wasn't an arsehole underneath the coke monster, he did stop. Just goes to show: if it can turn a nice bloke into a raging bull, imagine what it can do to a nasty one :(

OMG, I just remembered something, this was right at the beginning, whenever I received gifts ie birthday christmas whatever, he'd always open the gifts and start using them/eat them.... my manager used to give me lush giftboxes for christmas and in all the years I was married I never once got to use the contents of the box as twatface would use it all up first, and not even tell me he'd done it, I'm so stupid I never even realised...once when I was having a bath with a lush bubble bar, he kept urgently knocking on the door, when I let him in he pretended to wash his hands and then suggested he bathe first, when I told him no, he suggested we bathe together, he kept dipping his hands in the tub, in the end to get rid of him I just pulled the plug on the bath tub.... it was really bizarre......

garlicnutter, that is so true

My ex was aggressive, domineering and petulant without cocaine...the coke turned him in to a monster, though.

fuzzywuzzy - sounds as though you had a great time decluttering your ex out of your life! Good for you

Yes to the lack of respect for privacy WhippingGirl.

My ex would always barge into the bedroom when I was getting dressed or changing. He said he didn't need to knock on the door as it was 'his house too'

And yes to the nightmares! I used to have a recurring dream where my ex was either burying me in the ground or pinning me down on the floor so I couldn't breathe.

Not difficult to analyse those dreams.

Redtulip. Im not sure it was supposed to, but that bit about the buttons freaking him out made me laugh. What a twat!

probably already done but looking back the things that stick out as red flags for me:

very jealous, i was not allowed to talk to men at all
constantly accusing me of sleeping with people
sulking over sex
demanding sex
saying he'd leave if i got fat
stopping me working
stopping me going to college to retrain in his words -"it's a slag proffession"
taking all the money
refusing to put gas and electric on even though he had more money
slagging women off
turnng any saddness of mine into his own
little "joke" punches/nudges at the beginning
could not be wrong in an arguement
would ask me to go to the shop for food he'd say suprise me but what ever i bought was shite
chatting up women, shagging about
pissing n shitting himself when drunk the weirdo
jealous of the baby, abuse significantly escalated when ds was born
blaming me for everything
locking me in and taking all my fags the bastard

im sure theres loads more

• Insulting me, then saying it was a joke, and i had no sense of humour.
• mathanxiety, I had one who wouldn't use the urinal. Said it was because he was always getting propositioned in public lavs he wished
• Blaming every obnoxious act of his on 'cultural differences' (he wasn't British but from a very similar culture)
• Awful presents that were really for him (I got a Top Gear DVD one Christmas)

-Telling me he loved me after a week
-his mother warning me had control issues
-hated my family and tried to isolate me from them
-jealous of dd when she arrived as i had not got enough time for him

• chatting to other women online
• criticise me for not washing/ironing his clothes correctly

-total control over finances and would not allow me to buy things without him approving them first -sexually assaulted me but it was fine as it was not rape according to him -accuse me of being a bad mother -accuse me of being controlling -intimidated me -threatened me -threated suicide to guilt trip me

• insulting me e.g you fat bitch 3 weeks after dd arrived

we split up nearly 3 years ago and he has minimal involement with dd (through his own choice) and I could add to the list but i still feel quite vulnerable now I have typed that down!!

Have just found out about a friend escaping a relationship that was turning violent.

He:
-was charming
-well-educated (think Oxbridge-type university)
-has a great relationship with his family and parents
-is a success at his career
-is intelligent
-is fantastic with her family and her friends and me, we all liked him.

Never did anything when we were there that in any way showed what he was really like. Sometimes the only red flag is when they do something. And then it's so hard to leave because apart from this one thing (which quickly turns into many things over time) they're perfect.

So I guess another red flag is when you feel so terribly conflicted with who they appear to be and how they act.

Bastard.

Btw the reason I posted the description is because she kept on going over and over things like the above thinking that he wasn't the type and that there was nothing that could have caused this, when really someone can have a seemingly "perfect" background and life and still be abusive.

Just now remembered how terribly nervous I always got around the most recent ex.

He never did used to say much, would just sit and wait to be entertained with a look on his face that was very hard to interpret but always had an edge of 'we are not amused' about it to me.

I sported two massive black and blue and purple bruises for two weeks where i'd tried to adjust my (makeshift) curtains in my little flat while he was round and being so bloody unnerved by him I fell off the desk I'd climbed on.

He thought it was hilarious even though I was clearly in agony (FLAG) while I thought the nerves were butterflies from all the excitement of seeing him.

Mmh, strange that i used to find a monosyllabic man with no facial expressions 'exciting'

strange that i used to find a monosyllabic man with no facial expressions 'exciting' - Are we quite sure you weren't with my X2???!!!

Same thing with the nervousness, too. I had actually forgotten I wasn't a self-second-guessing scaredy pants when I met him!

The thought of you with the cap'n has just made me laugh garlic.

I hope it wasn't him, just another incarnation of a similar personality.

Strangely enough, I think I've just had an epiphany - my boss at work now invokes the very same feelings of nervousness in me daily and he's of the 'little facial expression, always seeming irritated' variety

this is kind of cathartic...

making a huge fuss if planned anything - he didn't like to feel obligated to anything. he hated me inviting people over. i actually used to say 'well how can i go to x y and z's socials if we don't host one now and then' as if i was doing it out of guilt!!! as if - i love my friends and im happy when my house is jammed with friends and kids :-)

exp worked a away a lot got annoyed that i had routines during the week - baby groups/regualr meets ups. weekends were always free though. exp moaned constantly about this as if we were just supposed to sit at home waiting for him to come back and be availalbe all the time. i wouldn't mind this is he actually took us/the dc out anywhere but what he wanted was to watch tv all day with his laptop. of course when the dc began an activity he liked this al changed and actually argues with me post separation that he should get to take dc to this lesson as its 'his thing'. not his worst crime but an example of him cherry picking to a huge extent only the things that made look like the perfect dad whilst screaming at his wife at home every day.

the first night on my own i dreamt exp was suffocating me with a pillow. i still jump in the night if i hear a noise though thats tailing off a bit now a few weeks have passed.

yy to the massive criticism over household tasks. this got to the point where i refused to talk about housework as one of our 'relationship problems' because it was so ridiculous. if you heard xp you'd think my house without him was something out of how clean is your house! its cleaner and tidier than when exp was here because guess what? for all his bitching he did hardly anything anyway - surprise surprise

TheBurderer you have just described what my ex appeared like to others (apart from great relationship with his family)

yeah, tickling. He would do it in the car where I couldn't get away easily, he wouldn't stop even though I hated it.

You know, I'm very tempted to contact exPs soon to be ex-wife. She and I are on reasonably good terms, she's been a brilliant stepmother to the DCs. I want to ask her if he treated her the same way he treated me. Would that be a very terrible thing to do?

She's kind of hinted at things, that he can turn very nasty when he doesn't get his own way. He's been awful to her regarding contact with the DCs, doesn't think she should see them because she's not their real family. Funnily enough, for a while after they separated he allowed her to come to his home and see them, but I think now that it's a fairly sure thing they're not going to reconcile, he's decided that she can't see them.

When i was pregnant with our 1st.He used to go out all day turn off his phone and say his battery died very convinient.It was awful i thought i was gunna give birth alone as he made himself uncontactable even on my due date

Would I be right in thinking that the police really don't use taxi drivers to transport victims of incest to safe places, and even if they did they most certainly wouldn't inform the taxi driver of who they were transporting and why?

My ex, after he got fired from yet another job (naturally not his fault the boss was out to get him) started taxi driving and sometimes he would tell me the above story and say I couldn't phone him for any reason as he wasn't allowed contact while he was doing this very important job.

He also used to claim he was transporting organs for urgent transplants, but he always knew before hand that this was going to happen. Again - I wasn't allowed to phone him because he wouldn't be able to chat.

Oh I recognize the nervousness so well. I'm a strong, confident, outspoken, independent woman. And just a few months with the ex reduced me to a little scared doormat who tried and tried, but could not do or say anything right. Massive red flag if your OH makes you feel like nothing you do is good enough.

while I thought the nerves were butterflies from all the excitement of seeing him.

Bibi I thought exactly the same thing and was horribly confused. My ex used to work away all week and when he came home on Friday nights I got that feeling too. I also thought it was because I was excited that he came home - it upsets me now to think that I was so fucked up and headworked and gaslighted over the years that i was unable to even recognise what I was feeling.

I have also done the Freedom programme - best thing I ever did - I'd be dead now if I hadn't done that (through suicide) - I can't recommend it highly enough.

I wasn't allowed to :-

pack a case
mow the lawn
initiate sex
drive

any meals I made were criticised
my oral sex technique was criticised (and that was the last time I did that!!)

He didn't get promoted because it was a 'fix' and an old boys network

"making a huge fuss if planned anything - he didn't like to feel obligated to anything"

Yes, that too, right from the start.

To the extent where he'd go ape if I got a whole weeks shopping in because he liked to decide what he fancied on a day to day basis and doing a full shop was 'committing' himself to particular meals.

Twat twat twat!!!!

"I have also done the Freedom programme - best thing I ever did - I'd be dead now if I hadn't done that (through suicide)" - so glad the programme helped you, NotSuch, that's so chilling to hear he got you so low :(