I haven't spoken to a solicitor yet. Im too nervous about everything. Im frightened of speaking out because I don't know if Im getting this wrong or not.
Im keen to see the red flags because in my heart I still feel like he is a good man who slipped up. I know this isnt right but I need to just have it clear in my head. Seeing the red flags will add to my confidence about doing the right thing.
I have so many things going round in my head Im just going to write it all as a list.
Ok from the beginning 7 years ago.
we fell head over heals but twice in the first few months he dumped me without warning. But he would still phone me most evenings for a chat. when we got back together I was nervous for a long time that he would dump me again.
Being "addicted" to porn. Spening hours on it every night and then lying about what he had done.
in conversations with family, friends etc I would go to say something and he would often jump in and speak over me. Meaning I often ended up left out of the conversation. This happened with my parents and friends mostly, not with strangers so much.
Im not sure about this one but, subtly putting me down. eg I would say "Im really pleased with how dd has settled into nursery" because Id spent weeeks going through things with her and explaing it all to her and I felt like I'd done a good job preparing her. He replied, Its because she has older siblings its made her more self reliant" There are lots of times things like this happened. he could never just give me praise.
Whenever I suggested anything at all, no matter how trivial, He always had to suggest a better way of doing it.
If I pulled him up on anything he'd always give me these big sad eyes and say sorry lots but never really seem like he meant it. When the sad eyes stopped working on me he took to just silently staring at me like I was mad.
Always trying to get rid of me in the evenings by suggesting I take my sleepers and get an early night.
phoning my cpn when he was "worried" about me.
Often calling my Gp and (successfully) requesting a prescription of diazepan for me because I was "having a bad time". He doesn't have to even explain it to the recptionist anymore, just tells her my name.
Lying about every little thing, He'd tell me the sky was purple rather than be honest.
This all sounds really bad but we've not really had a bad life. Now I've starting writing this down I'm suprised by how much there is tbh. I have more stuff but I'll have to come back to it later as starting to get that horrible shaky feeling, need to go do something else for a while.