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!!

You can tie yourself in knots trying to figure out why Newbe, trying to be better, not to aggravate him, to be more loving and supportive, but if he is an emotional abuser, none of it will make a scrap of difference - he will still find something else to be displeased about.

There's no helping them or changing them. You can try to change how you react to them, but really all you can do is decide if this is really the life you want to live or not? When it involves upheaval for you children and yourself its so tempting to stay put (put up and shut up) but once you realise that you deserve more your life can really start again.

I hope you find the support you need to have a better life, you deserve to be happy. x

Ugh, NSDH has gone up a gear in his attempt to get me to have sex with him. He just went for a shower and afterwards came in to show me he'd shaved all his pubes off (he used to do this every once in a while in the early days of our dating as I quite like it ). But now I felt like being sick.

Sorry you feel bad Nini, and under pressure. Hope you're OK.

Dragging myself along by my teeth juggling, but still going. Hope you're ok?

I think I've been rumbled. He came upstairs 5 mins ago to tell me there was a message on the phone for me from this morning - the HV's referral for marriage counselling has come through. Thank God the lady who left the message was clever enough not to say why she was ringing, I could kiss her. He didn't ask what the message was about, but he might later.

If he does, I need to bite the bullet and say it's about marriage counselling. We'll see how he reacts to that.

Ewww Nini! Mine had a strange fetish about wanting to shave off all his body hair once. I felt physically sick at the thought, but he often trimmed it to make himself look bigger

Bald ball-sack just isn't attractive - God put the hair there to hide it!

"God put the hair there to hide it !"

lol Juggling

Nini im sorry things are so difficult im glad the referral came through and really hope they get the ball rolling and it works for you not against you. i remember crying down the phone to the receptionist of our marriage counsellors and she was lovely. she was so kind on the phone, it makes a big difference when they are understanding about our situations.

i feel pretty down today. things have been difficult at home since our counselling on wednesday - nothing really BAD has happened but there has been such an atmostphere, he has been all lovey dovey and apologetic in some ways, and accusing me of not talking to him enough etc...truth is i am just worn out working on it all and don't feel like talking much apart from the basics of conversation.

its hard though. its hard living in an unhappy atmosphere as all of you know. sorry for the moan.

I think the trouble is that by the time you get to the counselling stage you have already used so much of your emotional energy trying to fix things yourself that there's not enough left to make any difference. i hope you haven't left it too late if you think this can help you Jan.

I couldn't even be bothered to be honest, bu stbxh insisted that we try as at least it meant we had dome everything we could before bailing out. But then the one session we went to, he treated it all like some sort of amusement, while I just sat and wept quietly, ashamed that my H could be so callous and cold, so I refused to go again with him and told him to get some solo help (that didn't help either, but at least it put the 'blame' back with him where it belonged).

doinitformyself that sounds awful - what a terrible experience for you. do you think the counsellor realised?

we should have been in marriage counselling at the beginning of our marriage - he refused. he wanted to start it when things got so bad i wanted to move out, and i was pregnant. i kept moving to mums for half the week even before i was pregnant as i wasn't very well and he was making it worse. now i can't do that as shes too far and the baby has her own routine here, plus i don't want to have to be moving here and there all the time. i do want things to work out. i just don't get it - he can be so lovely - and then those times when he decides to disrespect me its awful. but what if every couple is like this? i mean, tbh, my dh doesn't sound as bad as the ones mentioned here. he likes me to see friends, go out, doesn't mind if i spend money etc. but when there is decisions to be made he's controlling, and there is a whole load of other stuff i went to WA and talked about and its not as clear cut as all that. for example its ok saying he is supportive of me going to see friends but how can i if im depressed or crying over things at home.

i just get confused by it all.

We tried joint counselling once. I had already left him and was in Refuge, he got desperate and booked us a session. Needless to say I just sat there all the way through while he and the counsellor talked about him and his issues with me. About halfway through I said 'I am NOT coming back'. They both just looked at me, then carried on talking together. I was fuming when I left, I had just got to the angry stage with him. When we left he said to the woman 'do you think we need any more help?'. She said 'You could certainly do with mediation' (i.e. for a divorce). Even that didn't go in. To him that meant 'you could do with talking together'. I knew he would never let me go unless I divorced him, so here we are, very happily (on my part) divorced. And he still thinks he can buy me back, poor deluded idiot.

It doesn't bode well jan It is almost a sign of an EA partner that counselling makes things worse.
When I went with FWH he spent lots of time explaining to the Relate lady how badly I had behaved, and getting her "on his side" as Mr Reasonable and Hard Done By. Then when I was reduced to tears and sobbed over my awful behaviour he felt she "took my side". If I was honest about my feelings he was terribly hurt so it was easier in the end just to keep quiet. Overall it only highlighted to me that I would never be happy or lighthearted if I had to stay with him. Possibly if I had dressed in sackcloth and ashes and crowned him Best Husband Ever he would have felt it had helped. But for me it just confirmed our relationship was over.

By all means go to show you are trying everything before you call it a day. But don't expect much!

Last bit addressed to Nini !

Interesting reading everyone's experiences of counselling. Big hugs to you jan. I'm also feeling that his small attempts at 'making an effort' aren't enough as I'm so emotionally exhausted. Which makes him mad as he thinks I'm just being difficult.

He hasn't mentioned anything about the phone call from the referral team. I think he's just doing his usual stick head in the sand approach. So I'll have to raise the subject with him. .

Gutted today, we were supposed to be going to a local event with friends, I've been looking forward to it for months. But our friends have pulled out and the event's been cancelled due to rain. So stuck in the house with him and a hyper DD, watching the rain. It's going to be a very long weekend.

Thanks Lemon.

Morning all..sorry haven't been on much. confused as ever! More what I think is EA behaviour, suspected infidelity (standard) and being ridiculed for it crossing my mind. Last night, he said he wanted to be on his own so I should go home. So I left but went to a friend's for tea and wine. By the time I got to my friend's he had 'changed his mind' and wanted to do something and proceeded to get cross with me for making other plans. I texted him a few times after (I was not apologetic) and he ignored me, then I've woken up to loads of emails (no phone credit...) telling me how wrong I've been and to ring him or it's off. I'm not answering so far but I know I'm going to struggle and later I might start apologising and begging forgiveness.

Anastasia, that's quite typical, changing the rules suddenly and without warning and expecting you to jump when bidden. Keep ignoring him, it gives you the power in this situation as you were perfectly in the right.
Nini, sorry your plans were cancelled, you probably would have liked something to do this weekend after all the studying etc.
Agree with everyone about the counselling, sometimes it was helpful, mostly it was not. I found it exhausting and head wrecking and felt that the counsellor judged me for being controlling when really I'm just trying to keep our lives functioning with some normality with a useless, non earning, unreliable, alcoholic FWH.
The FWH is in bed. He was in the pub from around 3pm yesterday, only came home when I went there to drag him home at 8.30pm. He went straight to bed after puking his guts up. Got up this morning, ate some breakfast (which I made) and proceeded to throw it up all over the living room floor. Then left me to clean it up and went back to bed.
Well nothing happening in this house to persuade me that he is worth hanging on to. It would take a fecking miracle at this stage to ever trust him again.

Anastasia and ForSale I am just at what you put up with.

going to have a little rant amongst friends here...cos obviously have to keep up the ok face for the DCs...Yes, it's Saturday:

NSDH trying hard to stretch his boundaries by dropping by the house in order for DCs to sign DFil's birthday card. (He is on no direct contact so had to leave it outside the house for me to get). He was of course lurking whilst I picked it up...after nearly 3 hours of manipulative yuk on SKYPE this am.

Urgghhhhhh and arghhhhhh. It still makes me feel unreasonable, unhappy and down-right angry to even be in the vicinity of him.

He is going on an abusers course tomorrow..I know this is a bit of hoop jumping for my benefit as nothing else has got him back into the house. He is not coming back...I don't know how many times I have to say it. But we are at "disconnected" financial mediation next week (ie mediation where he is not even in the same building as me but we are negotiating the financial stuff) so I have to keep it together.

I still need to find time to pack up the rest of his stuff from the house (boy could I do with the space)...but he is in one bedroom at the mo so need to put it in mutual friend's garage and they are having troubles of their own at present and I feel really bad imposing on them.

argh life.

wouldn't it be nice to just finish it and walk away...no strings.

If you are in the position to do so...please do, it just gets harder.

Anastasia tell him to go fuck himself. Or don't contact him ever again. He doesn't deserve you, what an arse. My NSDH pulled this stunt on my once when we were dating and I stupidly dropped all my plans and ran to do his bidding. For you, this is the tip of a very large iceberg. Take evasive action before it's too late!

ForSale how awful for you, I was very . Is he still in bed now?

Fool know exactly what you mean about weekends, I dread them now. And agree, it would be nice to just walk away without having to see them ever again!

Things have deteriorated here this morning. Our friends found out about another event going on today so were making arrangements to go to that instead. Except it's not kid appropriate and I'm not feeling very sociable now so I told NSDH to go with them. It ended up becoming a row - he kept saying he didn't want to go as it was unfair on me, I told him just to go as I was going to take DD for a walk. He then started saying that I didn't want to be around him and he was really trying etc etc. I told him to get a grip and left the house with DD. Walked her round the park for 2 hours when all I wanted to do was cry. Came home about half an hour ago to find him still there. He asked again if I wanted to go, I said no. So he's gone. He asked me why I keep snapping and 'there's no need for us to argue'.

DD's gone down for a nap and I'm sat here crying my eyes out. It all feels like my fault. I feel unhinged, and no good for DD. I'm going mad.

Sending hugs and for Nini and Fool, wishing I could wave my magic wand (not the Hitachi ;) and make your FWs disappear forever! x

just wrote really long message and lost it! sigh!

but it was positive thoughts for you Nini and lots of empathy as that is exactly the type of thing would happen here all the time. least you have a quiet night to process all your feelings

if only we could get them out of our heads eh girls....if we didn't feel guilty, doubt ourselves, believe it was somehow our fault then we would be as powerful as they who know no doubt and understand everything and feel deserving....

I believe that is how people feel who get out or never get into these damaging relationships.

just waiting on him coming home now - any minute. and ive sent him an email.... to say how i feel. its quite firm in what i say and how he has upset me. i hope it doesn't lead to a full on discussion argument etc tonight

girls help me now please
i am trapped