Talk

Flip

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

1 2 3 4 5 6 ··· 11 12

Relationships

Think I Have Lost The Plot. Please Help.

278 replies

TotalTizzy · 14/01/2013 21:01

I've been with my P for two years (don't feel like I can add the 'D' in front). He was great for the first year but the second year has been difficult. He will be lovely for weeks on end and then out of the blue he will blow up over something or do something seemingly out of character. He has always been a bit funny about me going out with my friends but now it feels suffocating. He has started doing things like giving me the silent treatment when I get in or putting the deadlock (I think that is what it's called) across the door so that I can't open it from the outside. On the occasions when he has locked me out, I have spent up to half an hour ringing him and knocking on the door but he doesn't respond. I know he is awake because sometimes he cuts the calls off or answers and pretends he can't hear me. One time I actually saw him standing in the shadows of our bedroom window watching me getting tearful and panicky but he totally denies he did this.

Once a week I have a physio appointment after work and he will go out that evening without fail and get absolutely blind drunk. He always justifies it by saying "You were out of house having a good time so why shouldn't I?" Since when the hell has seeing the physio been classed as FUN? The next day he will give me three different variations of what he had got up to while he was on the piss and he always tells me that someone has chatted him up (usually a glamour model FFS). His stories never make sense and if they do then it sounds like he has rehearsed a watertight itinerary and tells me to call one of his friends to verify it (which I don't). I always feel worried when he goes out now - I honestly never used to care but now I feel very anxious. When I speak to him about it he just accuses me of being a control freak and of wanting to keep him under the thumb. Sometimes I ask him not to go out and I become very needy which causes arguments. I hate myself for being like this and I know he resents that behaviour because he tells me often enough.

Sometimes I try to have a normal adult conversation with him about something and he will turn it round on me and start going off on one. For example one time he was moaning about being skint and I said he should stop spending so much money on booze (he thinks nothing of spending a hundred quid on a bottle of champagne in a bar even though he is up to his eyeballs in debt. He never buys that when he's with me btw, only when he is out with his flash friends) He suddenly went beserk and started interrogating me about men I fancy asking me the same questions over and over again until I snapped. He then went very quiet and calm then said "I've caught you out. You're getting angry because you're a fucking liar." Two days later he booked us a last minute 'romantic' trip to Rome as a way of apologising.

I really think I am losing my mind. I honestly dont know what is going on from one day to the next. Whenever I threaten to leave there are tantrums, tears, proclamations of undying love and expensive gifts but then a few days later when the dust has settled he will make it known that I am the one who causes all the problems. Everyone thinks he is such a nice bloke and I doubt they would believe me if I told them what was really going on. I just don't know what to do. Last time I tried to leave him he locked me in our house and took away my phone, keys and purse until I "calmed down and saw sense "as he put it. He also said he loved me too much for me to walk away. It's like a rollercoaster except the highs and lows are getting more and more extreme. I don't even know who I am anymore. I guess I am looking for reassurance that I should leave but im scared.

OP posts:

Report

domesticgodless · 16/01/2013 13:45

'Part of me is desperate to get away, the other part is telling me that I have behaved badly in this relationship too (insecure, needy, paranoid, spiteful at times during arguments) It'a crazy that despite a unanimous verdict from everyone, especially all of the lovely people on here, I still feel responsible for a lot of his behaviour. I keep thinking of the times we've argued and he has said: "You would drive any man insane," "You come across as so nice to everyone else but you treat me like shit," "You've got an evil streak in you," "You just want to grind me down until I crack," "You've got issues," "You're a nasty piece of work." God, sometimes I wonder if it's ME who is abusive. He certainly thinks so.'

Oh god darling, they all talk from the same script don't they?

I'll tell you my long and shameful story (I feel ashamed because I kept going back) and maybe it'll make you feel stronger and proud of what you are doing now.

I paid for everything and chased my abusive ex around Europe (he refused to live with me because England wasn't good enough for an artistic genius like him, but demanded that I visit him as often as possible in Italy even though I'm a full time working and p/t single parent) and I did it for soooo long....because he made me feel like shit for 'neglecting' him.

I wasn't allowed to see his family or stay in his father's house (where he was still living...) because he had slagged me off to them so much as a toxic lunatic and they were scared of me.

He constantly accused me of abuse etc. I would argue back to him and get very angry, but chillingly, I found that he would find some way to turn everything I justifiably said back onto me. If I had reason to be jealous of him (and I did because he slept with another woman the day after we split up once, locked me out of his facebook a year ago and blocked me, etc), he would break into my computer and accuse me of 'gangbangs' and 'random sex appointments' (utter rubbish). He was omnipotent, arrogant, suspicious and deeply malicious at times. Then could be loving and kind (especially to my sons who loved him. I guess he was a kid like them!!) Everything I said to him that wasn't positive would be saved up and thrown back at me. So it was me who was arrogant, malicious, exploitative (?of what I wonder), etc. I got called a money-obsessed materialist for asking him to pay me back for air fares I bought him that he didn't bother to use.

He progressively drained my money, time and energy while telling me daily that it was me doing that to him, how grateful I should be to him, that I was a crazy promiscuous bitch etc (I have bipolar type Ii depression, so he translated that into my being a dangerous, loose madwoman); and the last I heard from him after I dumped him for the last time, was a long, raging moral lecture about my many inadequacies as a person (instructing me to watch two Italian films which would 'show me the truth about myself if I was willing to see and understand it' !!). (This was after I had deleted but not blocked him from skype, having already agreed to split).

And yes I got called 'evil' several times, including by his mother!! (This stuff runs through the family...)
As for the number of times he called me a lunatic and a 'psychopath' (his term for someone with a mental illness I think), I can't count them.

I had left a cashmere cardigan with him which was a present from my parents... I asked very nicely for it back, even offering to pay for the postage as he is sooooo broke, of course... and got told that I deserved nothing from him, he owes me nothing (he owes me about £2000 probably), etc. etc.

I knew for years that he was a pompous, arrogant paper bag of a kidult but somehow I stayed out of self hate (exacerbated by his accusations that I was a sick crazy abuser and he was a saint for putting up with me). and also of course you see a better side sometimes.. and there is something else that makes us stay... the abuser focuses almost totally on you. You're the centre of his world for good and (usually) bad. And I think there is something horribly compulsive in that for those of us with low self esteem. For me it created this weird sexual obsession which I still feel at times even though I'll never, ever get on a fucking plane for him again (he was very beautiful which I think didn't help the vast narcissistic sense of entitlement... I think he was used to getting his own way with women).

You are absolutely right to get out. You may miss him for a while, god knows I still do. But you are returning to a full human life. Very best of luck.