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!!

pmsl Fi

charlotte ? re: magic rhonddabout? if y... read other appropriate movie viewing for today ^ thread, like Dai Hard, etc.. DD had to explain pmsl! durrr! isn't it.

oh and should add that first one should have read 9 & half Leeks... typo

No, the sad face - and I thought, "Oh! What did I say that she thinks I'm having a hard time?" and then realised that it was cos I don't speak Welsh! And the additional consolation - very funny. :o

fool if he really has swallowed Lundy and digested it then he will accept that he had to change anyway not for you but because he was a FW and that if you don't want him back after what he did then he has to accept that...if he really has changed...and if he hasn't changed then he hasn't changed...so either way...he still can't have you but at least if he is reformed he won't make someone else miserable.

can't believe I am the only one who has anthems. must be too much 'get it on' (program on Rscot for everyone not in scotland (is it my imagination or is everyone except me and pony in Wales? (and what does this say for the FWs of the Celtic nations)))

Can'tthink of any Welsh films but just incase you ahev never seen it is a classic.

My anthem is the Taylor Swift song. Have listened to it endlessly. Don't need to listen to it any more as have memorised every sound and can play it in my mind at will. (Stop it playing, not so much. :o )

Yes, definitely Taylor Swift. You know, the really stupid thing is that I did tell him the first night we met, that I didn't want a relationship. I should have run for the hills. Except I have a gorgeous little one who brightens up every day and I have learnt oh, so much. But goodness me, trouble, trouble, trouble.

now I am on the wrong page, so I hope I get things right.

Notmyname, I read the meter story and am another one who doesn't think it tallies. How on earth did he get a price for the damage so quickly, if there even was damage?

Fool, I can tell you, if my FW had a conversion on the road to Damascus and started talking reasonably about how we might sort things out, I would be conflicted (and very amazed and probably distrustful, i have to say), but I think that what other posters have said is true - if he is reformed, he will accept that you are your own person and have to be true to yourself and your own feelings, and if that means that you don't want to get back with him, then no need to feel bad AT ALL. Actually, I wouldn't get back with FW, too much damage, but there is no chance of him being reasonable anyway.

Hissy, thank you for your post about entitlement. That is so much it. I feel he is also a bully. His way or the highway, or whatever the expression is.

Lahti, I also got the 'but how will me not being here help, how will we be able to talk and sort things out' response. It is really hard, because if they were reasonable, there wouldn't be a problem. But no shed. Somewhere else.

Well, I have the joy tomorrow as that is contact day. I just wanted to record that I was feeling nice and positive this evening when I got home from work. Had a nice evening with DC, cleaned the house, made bread. An email and two texts later, not so positive. Roll on tomorrow evening. That's how I know it wouldn't be okay, even if there were a conversion on the road to Damascus, it is a very physical feeling of anxiety.

Love and strength to everyone.

Fool where is he getting the info from I wonder?? has he been tipped off or is he doing a program... and do you have to respond to his letters, ie do they demand your participation, or would it be better to just put them to one side... sounds like a form of harassment but quite subtle really.

I hate playing games but it is what I am reduced to when dealing with H.

Anyway the electric thing was a 'game' he was playing. Of course I knew that the problem couldn't have been my fault (FFS elecs are not that fragile?!?) but he used it as something to blame on me-- bad feeling because we'd argued before he left and I got really upset when he hit me on the head with a wrench.

So he called back later in the evening and said that it 'may not' have been my fault because the special eco-boiler hot water tank wouldn't stay on and kept tripping the mains power. Well there you go. Not my fault but earlier in the day I'd had to put up with THE MOST awful phone calls, in each of which he DEMANDED that I apologize for... whatever, until I just screamed YES I BROKE YOUR STUPID HOUSE AND I NEVER WANT TO GO THERE EVER AGAIN... which makes me look unstable and unreasonable... OK so he was upset about the elec problems but clearly it was a textbook case of him taking it out on me.

It's really sad because it should be something so positive, it should be a pride-and-joy project but I just want him to stay out there and never come back.

I had a great evening with DD and now have had a great night's sleep. Not sure what today will bring.

Lahti re the shed-- don't even consider it! It does sound just a tiny bit pathetic doesn't it, and I'm sure he could manipulate the situation to his advantage. I seem to remember you're not in England (?) but here someone cannot 'live' in a garden shed without the householder getting planning permission first... permitted development only covers sheds for non-res purposes. Don't break the law on his behalf

LeClerc that is so nice about your friend, when you were together she probably would have hesitated to say anything bad about FW in case she offended you. I wonder how often that actually goes on!

Interesting too about that gut feeling, sense of foreboding that we all know.

My DD and I had a night in watching movies last night and she suggested a movie called Waitress, which she knew about, and it is one of the most realistic (but uplifting!) portrayals of domestic violence I've seen... worth watching if you get a chance.

Hi everyone...you are all right..

I never ever respond to FW's letters and even if I try to my life is so busy that by the time I've sorted a response another letter has arrived!

he instinctively does the thing that makes it difficult for me (a true and as yet not fully reformed enabler), absolutely knows what makes me anxious and pressurised. Completely knows how to get other people on side and to play the victim in oscar winning style.
To hear other people talk you would think I was the one with years of abusive behaviour.

I am not myself.
Glad you are in a good place LeClerc
and strength to you all wherever you are.

PS He is "trouble" and he's "never, ever coming back"
but the best anthems are Arths favourite "I am Woman src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/mmifO2sKT7g" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen> here

or this

what every one of us deserves!

BTW he has had 16 months of individual counselling, 10 weeks of anger management and nearly a whole Abusers course....as Lundy says he is now a well adjusted and much happier abuser!

Question about domestic abuse: Does the victim often end up engaging in abusive behaviour too? I did, and it often leaves me feeling that it's all my fault, and that I was the one in the wrong and caused all the problems in the relationship and that I'm the abuser - though when I look at it objectively and calmly I can see that it was him in the position of power (I had no money, I couldn't leave, couldn't afford a lawyer, believed I was mentally ill and wouldn't cope on my own) but over time, after putting up with increasing appearances of Mr Hyde, I became abusive back - withheld affections (couldnt' bear the though off sleeping with him), gave him the silent treatment, shouted and screamed at him when he ignored my feelings/requests etc....I increasingly over time became unreasonable over things sometimes and it began to take less and less stimulus to get to me. Can anyone shed some light on this?

I'd like to add that I'm a completely different person now he's no longer around me and me and my partner talk about things (which I find hard though because I'm expecting to be ignored, eye-rolled at, treated as if I'm crazy/nasty/neurotic/overly-sensitive).

I think what bothers me the most is that I grew up in a psychologically abusive household, and when faced with dealing with my ExH I reverted to the behaviour I'd grown up with...so who was the abuser? Is it all my fault?

I too believed I was mentally ill and wouldn't cope on my own - also did wild screaming and sobbing etc which reinforced the idea of my mh - as soon as I put in divorce petition my depression lifted (to be replaced by just stress - still hard but such an improvement). As many have said here, if you worry you're the abuser, you're not - such an idea never crosses an abuser's mind.

Now he's gone, I am a transformed woman :)

Tis mine claimed in his submission for the settlement that he had supported me in my return to uni. He didn't say how - what could he have said? supported me by playing Civ in the same room I was working, not doing housework, not doing as much for his MIL as he could have done etc. I got my MA and had to withdraw from further study. (Although that is partly cos I can do taught courses, not so good at self-directing)

As to work, when I was moved from one employer to another, and hadn't yet been allocated a permanent place of work, I had loads of files on the kitchen table and did a lot from home. FW and DD teamed up to complain constantly about the files (even though we used to eat on our laps in front of the TV anyway ) and didn't seem to grasp that those files were our income, or part of it.

So glad to here you are planning to finish degree and do PGCE and teaching. :)

Hi all, leclerc interesting and very good news about your friends child's observation about you being happy. It just goes to show that we try really hard to put a brave face on everything.
I am on my phone again which makes it hard to read thru properly and comment but H is out this eve so I can get on the pc later instead. H has agreed to move out at the end of the month not into a shed which is good.
He is now asking me to go to couples counselling as well as him attending individual counselling. We went to RELATE 5 years ago and I really can't see the point in doing it again.

He has annoyed me this morning by telling DD (3years old) that daddy may not be home every night, which has upset her.
He also told me that he wishes I had forced him to go to individual counselling in October, as we may have avoided getting to this stage. I just said that he would never have agreed to have gone.

Why is it so hard to leave? today, got woken up to discuss things...

If I'm ever out of his sight he always thinks I'm seeing someone, he keeps bringing up a time I went xmas shopping with a friend because when he checked my phone (which he denies doing although I close all the apps on my iphone, messages, calls and emails are always open when I get out of the shower etc) I hadn't texted her beforehand... wtf.

Hey all, sorry not read any of thread yet....still trapped....dmum visit wasn't as productive as Id hoped....two house viewings came to nothing as either don't want to rent to someone on benefits....had to cancel my solicitors appt again.....back in my black hole....and the in-laws in town until next week.....uggghhhh....will be back on later tonight hopefully to catch up properly/read thread. Hope you are all ok x