Support thread for those in Emotionally Abusive relationships Number *9*

[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!!

Are you still with this idiot man Anastasia? Does your sister know what he's like? Would she be able to convince you that you are no more deserving of his shit than she would be?

Anastasia, is there a particular reason you need to keep some contact, like dcs, or is he just great at hoovering? (And I don't mean the housework kind!)

For some reason the retort 'No I'm planning to dye it purple to match my new minge colour' sprang to mind Anastasia. Although in RL I don't think I would have the courage.

The 'only joking' card should definitely be in the bingo, I've lost count of the times NSDH has used that one on me. . What's a good response to that anyway? I usually go for the 'well I don't find it funny' but it doesn't make it stop.

Sorry for being quiet here, things have settled uncomfortably. Pretty sure NSDH thinks things are fine (although I am waiting for the inevitable sexual advances I'll have to refuse). My exam is next week so my head is down in the books and I'm very tired.

Had a phone call from my sister tonight - she's graduating in a few weeks and managed to get an extra ticket so I can come along too with our Mum. She's moved back in with Mum for the summer (rent free and with no bills or food to contribute to of course) so both of them are happy. When sis was telling me about the ticket my Mum was in the background going "Tell her she owes you £20 for the ticket! Tell her!". It made me a bit and a bit , Mum thinks I'm a tightwad (when really i'm just permanently skint), but apparently my darling younger sister is very generous (when really she just knows how to manipulate things so someone else pays for everything for her, usually Mum. This is the girl who won't spend £10 on a train ticket to come and see me). The more I look into EA relationships, the more I realise how my relationship with my Mum also fits the bill. It's more painful than I can admit. .

Bigs hugs for all.

And at no point did either Mum or sis ask me how my studying was going or wish me luck for my exam. No wonder I picked the husband I did.

Toxic mothers, favourite daughters and money.
Now there's a combination I know A WHOLE LOT about.
Nini you are faced with the choice of not going - and being considered a miserable turd.
Not paying for the ticket and having it thrown in your face at every occation
and your final, and only, choice paying and going.
It is teaching yourself not to care that is the answer

The annoying thing is fingers is that I was really looking forward to going until now! I had no idea tickets had to be bought (hadn't occured to me) and sis hadn't mentioned it at any point. It was just thrown at me tonight.

I'll still go. It'll cause too much hassle not to. But it's £20 I could do without having to fork out (plus the cost of a train ticket to get there).

And you're right, she's very much the favourite daughter in Mum's eyes. I try to ignore it when I can but it still hurts. It's so hard not to care.

and camp out in the enlightened moral high ground making resolutions not to ^let^ people do this too you, but rather to choose to do it...that's a whole other more empowering thing!

Think I have got finances under control.
Maxed out credit cards and got toxic mother on board for a loan when they have to be paid.
This should tide me over until the end of August when I will have a cunning plan in place :)
This so makes me wonder, if I can run the house (more or less) on my pathetic salary where the f* has FW's salary been going?
I have always been made to feel like a freeloader because I earn so little. This despite the fact that I have always worked full time and done as much paid extra work as has been available - and done absolutely everything in the house - and I mean everything from cleaning toilets to putting up shelves plus all the childcare.
because Mr. Important FW is too important for any of that
I am beginning to revise that opinion. It now seems that as well as doing everything, I paid for almost everything, too.
Countdown until leaving.
I really would like to arrange to meet FW before I leave. Partly because it seems childish not to. Partly because we do need to talk finances and living arrangements. But, and here is the bit that is the problem, I want FW to actually tell me himself that he is not willing to do make any amends. He may no longer be an open wound, but he is certainly a FW shaped scab that I can't seem to stop wanting to scratch.

Fool is right 'thinking' and 'choosing' not 'feeling' and 'going along with things.
Nini the reason you were looking forward to going is because you are a nice person, and nice people on planet normal enjoy other people's successes. Hold on to that.

hey fingers well done, plans are good aren't they?

Suggest you don't really need to pick at that scab....email is a great invention and records what has been said!

From one full time working free-loader to another...i am sooo much better off now. Who would have thought it?? You may well find that you somehow have more to live on than you thought too.

Thank you fingers, that's very sweet of you to say. :) I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I'm realising that I'm surrounded by people who don't love me and many who want to see me fail. It sounds really pathetic but why does nobody love me?

Your points on running the house ring very true - aside from the obvious mortgage/gas/elec bills I see nothing that NSDH contributes. I do all DIY, childcare etc. I have no worries that should I leave and find a way to pay those essential bills that I would be able to keep a house going. In fact I'd probably have more money.

I'd be very careful about scratching that scab too, it won't take much for it to become an open wound again!

Hi, I'm a free loader too - apparently I swan about and have an easy time (bringing up two kids, running a house and in fact paying all bills out of the small business I built but am apparently constantly holding over his head, ho ho.)

Constantly fighting feeling guilty and worthless....

OK looks like being a full time working, parenting, DIYing freeloader needs to be on Bingo too...sure someone can come up with the right succinct phrase!

Do you ever stop in amazement at just how fabulous we all must be to manage all this with Twats undermining us at every turn? You lot are incredible, and don't you ever forget it!!!

here's to us !!

trying why guilty why worthless? Just because he says it does NOT mean it's true...look at you, look really really hard at what you have done, 2DCs, business, household...the world he lives in would stop turning if you weren't there.

Let's hope he get's to experience that one day!

(muses on other things that trying could hold over NSDP's head.........to more satisfying effect)

Hear hear fool! :)

Big hugs trying.

I have made myself a real life . It's gonna be a long night of studying...

Hi Fool Sorting it out bit by bit, but finances are not as dire as I feared.
FW is a dinosaur as far as computers are concerned, and his email account is here, so I would be sending emails to myself (think there is some kind of deep truth in that) Don't really need a record as the court settlement says he has to provide for the girls, and that is in writing.
I was thinking about you the other day when talking to a friend (not about FW - haven't quite managed that in RL, yet) about her XH who has always refused to pay any maintenance at all for the children. They divorced 10 years ago when the youngest was 6.
He did not want the divorce, so he did not pay maintenance
It does seem that we do have to write these FWs as very bad debts.
I suppose that is why I want the meeting - just to convince myself that FW is simply a liability now. Comes hard after all these years

here, too.
Nini I wasn't being sweet; it is the truth.
As the great Lundy says, all these good things we have done and thought are ours to own.
Off to calm my baby teenager who has examitis.
to all of us!

Hugs to all and big thank you to fool - it's hard to turn around those feelings, isn't it...

Am I going mad?

I get so depressed. He never takes me out. Sometimes we go out with the children, but he never takes me out. He never took me on a honeymoon in fact he ignored me on our wedding day because I got drunk through nerves. The kids get all manner of love, nothing is too much trouble for the children. I am just an afterthought. Everything is nice until I get depressed (like I am now) and I can't talk to him. We never converse, not really. OUr conversations are sort of stoccato, even when we're at our best. Am I oversensitive? He says I am. He says its just the depression talking and that I'm getting at him, but he's impossible to have a conversation with. I've just had a go at him for calling my mother's computer 'a fucking cunt'. He did this the other day and I asked him to be more respectful as we hadn't paid mum for it yet and we were lucky to have it. My mum is dying, she only has a few weeks to live, probably. My dad was an abusive bastard, he knows that shouting at things scares me when I'm feeling down. But he still does it. I just went and lost it at him (unusual for me, i usually keep it in) and he was wide eyed and said 'don't be silly love, I'd never do that intentionally' when I told him that it disturbed me and that I suspected that he did it on purpose. the other day he kicked a t shirt out of the way and got me by accident. It hurt but he didn't seem that sorry.

Is this just my depression talking? I'm so confused :(

I suspect your depression is the result not the cause. As it was with me, at least in part. Mine wouldn't take me out anywhere either. Are you on ADs? They do help, though in my case the eventual solution was divorce.

Hello to the new ladies (the ones I don't know anyway) bb, artymummy and veeeeeeee. This is a good place for you to be for support. Nobody here minds if you have a rant or a cry or go crawling back to him and feel guilty. We've all done it at some time I think. My X used to say the same thing art.