Support for those in Emotionally Abusive relationships: 17

[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
a check list Use this site for some concise diagnostic lists and support
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

what couples therapy does for abusers

If you find that he really wants to change
should 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!!

For the ladies that have already broken up with their FW. How do you manage the facebook situation. Are they on your friends list, or are they deleted and or blocked?

My FW irritates me, and today I found myself biting my lip when he wanted to go into some obscure talk about gas companies and them hiking up prices illegally. But I do feel a little odd at the thought of seeing a woman all loved up with him on his facebook. I dont want to sleep with him, so clearly it should be none of my concern. I dont know what I am trying to say. I really dont feel any emotional intimacy with him, so why am I worried about how I am going to feel when I find out he is shagging some other mug woman

Ha! My FW thinks FB is the devil's work. No end of snide remarks about my use of it when we were together, so no problems there. I have deleted and blocked his sister and my nieces though in case they were using it to snoop.

Hi Rose I don't manage it. He one of my worst enemies ever, I would never have him as a 'friend' or allow him any vision into my life... he gets everything he can glean from asking DC or snooping about himself

Wish him well with new gf, don't ever believe it will be anything better than you could have done. the hard reality is that (in most cases it seems) they are on the pull the moment they are out the door and they call us the fickle ones who want a shag the moment they look the other way

I have a friend that logged into farcebook one night when she came over for the eve, and she looked up his profile - this was shortly after separating - guess what his 'interests' were? blueeergh bluuueeerrrrgh women

It makes my skin crawl and I remembered him taking photos of me when I was dozing in the sun in a bikini on holiday this was VERY VERY rare! and I opened my eyes to find him taking pics of me (which he never does btw)... he's just fucking weird and I wish I'd never met him, and never ever had to see him again as long as I live, but with all the extreme dis/stress he caused me and deliberately set out to tear me apart, that probably won't be so long,so thank christ for small mercies heh!

er i thought about staying friends with my ex then read baggage reclaim which says if you stay friends with an abuser you are saying hey its ok what you did to me.

if you are not friends then no Facebook.

but that is easy for me to say as i am not on Facebook and i hate it.

i look online stalk my ex via his public blog which is about fitness so of some interest and also he dissed me on it the day before i exed him. but i still shouldn't look but it does remind me he behaves like a twat because his attitude to women on it is Michael winner patronising. but i shall stop looking soon.

yeah, and he also went round sending 'friend' invites to all my friends, fucking weirdo! Then I was told that he had posted lovely pics of pissed him and pissed new gf. I don't want to know his sad and trashy life so I stay away and do ask others not to 'tell tales'. I also don't like to hear the stuff that DC say after visits, but nod aimiably and listen to the tales, but all sounds like parading and self-promotion to me!

plus you have already caught him up to no good online. cannot imagine that will get any more palatable to see once you have split. he's not exactly subtle from what you have said.

disney dad and full to overflowing with empty promises

any of you that are out and hiding should take note that, if you didn't know already, you can be easily stalked as can DCs by the mobile phone movement, they can all be traced within mins (no GPS or special smartphone req'd). I don't think anyone is in hiding here, but there's no privacy anymore just in case anyone thought there was!

Can you track anyone's phone though? I didn;t think you could and have turned my iphone tracking off...

More wisdom from y'all - thank you.

He will not start putting on shoes and coat until DD and I are stood in the hall waiting to go. And 9 times out of 10 we're stood there getting hot when he decides that he needs a toilet trip. But then the second that he's ready we're supposed to jump to it.

Oh yes. And if we do keep him waiting for a moment, he will exaggerate ridiculously and say he's been ready for 20 minutes and we would've been on time if we hadn't kept him waiting.

To think that before I read this thread, I thought that nobody in the world had a H like mine... I had a fun little fantasy that he was an alien sent from Mars to collect information on us humans.

Mrs M - my local WA has offered me counselling, which I intend to take up as it's paid for and is with a DA specialist. Have you asked what your local WA can do fo you?

regular handsets get tracked, nothing to do with apps or iphones

Just by anyone who wants to?

I blocked FW from seeing a status update last summer on FB, as it was a picture of ds's birthday cake that I'd made and was proud of, but I knew he didn't want to know about it and he'd already been nasty about it. I found out the other day that he's been blocked from all my other status updates since then, too! Feel quietly subversive, which is a feeling I like. :o

hi again,

Sorry, I can't get on-line that much, but have been reading whilst feeding my little one. So, feel far behind here...

EternalRose, belatedly, huge congratulations on your university place, that should let you know that you can go great things - if you can manage that with the stress you have, you will do even better once you don't have the stress.

FairyFi, thanks for the link on baiting, yes, it was that. It is funny how it was easy to see him doing it to DD, but not that he was doing it to me.

Farcebook, loving that name - you know, I deleted my account about nine months ago, because I couldn't do it anymore. There were lots of small things, but part of it was that I felt that our relationship was a lie, and it was all over there. His posts about my wife were a performance - like he would buy me a gift and post about it on FB etc. I didn't want to be part of that performance.

Charlotte, I am another one who read your post and thought, you don't have to give it another go if you don't want to. You really don't.

Anger, yep, tick that box, but it is receding. The thing I am finding hard is getting him out of my head, like the internal critic or the internal time-keeper, I feel the anxiety rise at points I know he would have started niggling at me, or complaining, and I have to tell myself it doesn't matter any more. It even goes down to the lane I drive the car in on certain roads. He drove much more aggressively than me.

And points of feeling utterly broken-hearted, not that I want him back, but like, how did this happen? Where did my future family and plans go?

Ds is waking, so I need to go, forgive the ramble.

snowshapes, it does get better. It really does

anything with a sim in. refuge worker recently tried to do it on a lady (in hiding from dangerous ex) at serious risk when she started getting silent calls, the refuge worker tracked her within mins. Easy, loads of services offer it, just google. Its the sim card, so handset irrelevant, anyone

on the being kept waiting theme another thing that used to wind me up- if we took the kids swimming, when we got out if pool, naturally i would tend to the wee ones first- they get cold! even if it was just to take off their suits and wrap them in a towel or gown before getting out of my wet costume and into a towel before dressing them. now you might think 2 parents 2 kids = 1 each. but no. he would get out of his dookers dry himself carefully, get dressed, fold up his swimming things very carefully and put them away and then only then think about tiny child.

he takes them swimming for his visit but if thru were not big enough to get thru own towels i would't let him.

ring any bells?

Thank you, Hissy. I hope so. None of this is what I wanted, yet I am the one who is painted badly.

It is just bizarre, I'm the one who is 'ripping apart a family' and then I just got in touch about the school holidays and sorting out time for him to see the children and for his DD to see mine, and it transpires he is away for the full two weeks. Because I know where he is going, and why, I really am going to have to start calling him a FW. He is a FW.

tis true re sim cards cos dd1 runs off on occasion. just forgets to wait and off she goes. was looking into devices to find her as she gave me one hell of a fright on a woodland walk the other day. and that is what most tracking relies on- you can find any sim.

so the moral is- change your sim if you want to hide and or take the battery out of your phone. (smart phones can be compromised in all kinds of ways).

scary really cos i used to work in childcare and we had a family in hiding from an extremely violent ex (god knows why he was let out) so no pictures with them in allowed etc. then one day they just disappeared :-(

always explain this to people who complain about no pics without permission rule at school concerts etc. it has nothing to do with paedophiles it is to protect children in hiding. lord knows how you hide now there is FB.

snow about holidays. bet it would be another story if you took kids away for holiday without telling him first.

ex used to say he wanted to go on holiday on his own (not that big a deal as he was particularly vile on holiday- ruined all bar one of them) and i said fine as long as i get to do same. he would say sure you can go on holiday with kids on your own anytime you want.

oh no i said, you have the kids, i go.

but that is not the same he said.

how, how is that not exactly the same??

one last while i am on a roll.

when the twins were tiny and i was bfing and up half the night (to be fair he did his share of night feeds- not all bad) his kids were staying. we had routine of walking every morning. but by time i got chance to get breakfast all the milk was gone.

he insisted we go out there and then, couldn't keep him ( or his kids) waiting. so no breakfast for me.

we got about half a mile from the house and i fainted. flat out in the street. his kids were lovely about it. dss gave me a tangerine he had in his pocket.

at time I thought oh well these things will happen when you are feeding twins but really looking back it was because he would 't let me go for more milk or have time to eat something else. don't think he thought i would actually faint. he just didn't think.

yet on the odd occasion the milk was gone for his breakfast 'how dare you let me get up when there is no milk'

That reminds me of a time when we were late to meet his parents, somewhere on holiday. So over a mountain pass we went, very fast. Felt very ill and asked him to stop the car - always took a while and a few repeats of the request before he'd actually take it seriously and stop; when he did, I threw up. Don't think he expected that. Of course, he was able to talk about it sympathetically when we got there, and sound very caring; and of course I kept his not-at-all-guilty secret that he'd been driving too fast because his reputation is more important than my comfort.

Am feeling strong again. Of course I don't have to stay with him - what was I thinking?! How on earth does anyone think clearly when their FW is there every day?!?!

Am seeing WA worker tomorrow; then have CAB phone appointment next week. Once I know my rights, I think I'll tell him it's over! I've been edging towards it slowly.