Support for those in Emotionally Abusive relationships: 24

[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!!

noregrets there will be compliments. And not from your FW!

Thank you Better and Mink for support. Glad you got some solace from exercise Mink! I just keep muttering to myself, this is the last time.... Thank God. Freedom beckons- when apparently I'll be a miserable lonely person for the rest of my life!! (According to fw obviously!) Bring it on I say- I can't imagine EVER wanting another person to infringe on my liberty. Friends and family will do me just fine.

I couldn't give in even if I wanted to, he gives me the creeps. Yuk!

Noregrets that's so inappropriate that your xfw 'confided' in your dd. it was clearly meant to get back to you and is one of the tool bag of techniques they employ- poor me how I love you, but how appallingly typically fwitted that he doesn't give a toss about effect on dd. this is a mirror if my STBXFW too- Them first, their precious 'suffering' obliterating any care or grown up behaviour towards to supposed objects if their love!

If I sound angry it's because my fw is being revoltingly adoring. 20 years of abuse and he thinks being a cliched creep now I've had enough is going to suck me back example- stroking me and when I ask him to stop he says 'but I just can't help myself' a nd continues. I'm so crowded and creeped out by his behaviour.

Oh, breathe, it is creeping me out just thinking of it, I am so sorry that you are in this situation. I hate, hate being touched now. FW has got the message, I think, but only when I told him it constituted sexual harrassment and was a criminal offence, and that was after we split. He still stands too close, though.

You are allowed to be angry, sweetie. I read an article which said that anger is the emotion that drives you out of the relationship, because it means that you are valuing yourself and realising your treatment is wrong. But, I think it depends how you channel the anger, because if you turn it in on yourself, it is destructive. I am struggling a lot at the moment with feeling angry about everything, and trying really hard instead to focus on what is good, all the things I want to do in the future, all the things which I would not have been able to do, because really, I think his end goal was to grind me down to nothing.

Which sounds melodramatic, yes, but that is what it felt like and every step I take away, I realise how much of myself I had given up. So, the anger is part of yourself, it is the part of you which says I am still here, I do not want this and I do not deserve this, I think. And that, at your stage, is really important.

Whereas for me, I have left, so why am I angry? Partly because it is still going on, I still feel like he is trying to control things (but that won't change, only how I feel about it), I feel overwhelmed with everything I need to do and that it is such a mountain to get to where I want to be, and partly because I am angry at myself for walking into it in the first place (which is stupid, because good and important things have come out of it, not least DC2, and all the things I am now learning which will make, and have already made, my life happier).

That is my introspection for the day. I am turning the mountain in my head into a path. Through green and open space. I wish you strength breathe and everyone else.

I am still angry too.
I wonder when I will stop being angry.
Angry and so, so disappointed.
I have an email i would like an opinion on but cannot post it here.

Do you want to PM?

Cold steely anger is the thing to aim for, (re your emotions, not the email). IMHO (perhaps we need a choice of two 'angry' emoticons, one red, one pale blue?)

On the equivalent Friday to this one, a year ago, FW began moving out. I can't believe what a difference a year has made

mink, pm me, if you want.

silver, thank you. Red would be hot, inside your head, walls closing in, steel blue would be directed,pushing the walls back out, using the energy?

on your one year Friday anniversary. Please know that your words have always been well chosen and a source of strength. I am glad that you are in a good place

Exactly so, petals

I have pm'd.

I do of course have the option of waiting it out for the several months it will take him to suddenly remember he is of course a doting dad and to rewrite history to make out that itwas me who decided he is not see his kids. or at least my fault. well of course it is my fault!

As he will no doubt change his mind when it suits him.
Although the not speaking and thus missing the chance to give me several mouthful of abuse is new. possibly because he knows he is in the wrong.

Thanks all. I know he's completely wrong to confide in her, I just don't know what to do about it. She worries about her Dad, and feels like i'm being cruel to him. She asks me why I don't do more to help - give him a cuddle. We hardly cuddled when we were together!

I want to say... Daddy doesn't love me, he just misses having me to sponge off. He's saying these things to make you pity him, and want to look after him, even though you're a child. He was a FW and that's why I'm divorcing him - I'm not the bad guy here.

But I can't say any of that. Instead I have to say that Daddy will be OK, that he has friends and family to lean on. And I still look like a cow.

Noregrets, I have been thinking about this. Yes, he is wrong to confide in your DD, it is manipulative because it is intended to get back to you. But it is worse than that too, because he is not respecting your DD's boundaries. Not only should she not be involved, but he is essentially trying to teach her that if someone loves you, you should not walk away if you no longer feel the same way. It is not cruelty to leave a relationship which does not work. (I know it was more than it did not work, but I am thinking in general terms as appropriate to your dd). It is cruelty to expect someone to stay.

So, the point is really not to take ownership of what he is saying and respond to it, but to help her understand he should not be saying it. That she does not have to listen, and that his emotional state is his responsibility. This is actually really important, because she will need to know it in her own future relationships. Someone's thoughts, feelings, needs are their responsibility. She does not have to 'fix' things.

Does that make sense? It is about your dd's awareness of healthy boundaries. I am presuming you are talking about an older child.

confiding in a child isnt healthy... its one of them things that comes under parentification... the more he does it the more shell feel like shes his shoulder to cry on, no child should have to be burdened by their parent's issues. at any age. thats emotional abuse, using a child like that. is there not any relevant professional like school nurse or social worker or the like that you cn discuss that with x

petals, very clearly expressed and helpful post at 21:09.

DCs are back! We have had a lovely day together, although the 3 younger ones this morning were quite suffocatingly clingy - almost a relief that DD1 was seems a little ambivalent towards me, maybe because she knows what is happening. But hopefully I'm being oversensitive and she's just growing up.

Plenty of FWery soon after return, including the announcement that he'd also like to look at the house that's available! Did not point out that that'd make us look so bonkers we'd probably both be rejected, because that would probably be added motivation for him... Did point out all the advantages of staying in this house and letting me do the moving!

He's trying to control the rest of the summer and I'm uneasy about it. Having had two weeks with the dcs when I wasn't there, he's now going to hang around here the rest of the holiday so that I get little time just with them. (Complaining all the while about how he can't work because of the noise. He does have a lot of work to do that really requires him to be in his office, which is unfortunately in the house!) And he keeps saying he can take the dcs if it's helpful to me; he doesn't think the dcs should go to X - why don't I go by myself and he'll look after the dcs?; he'd like to have the dcs on these dates because there's something good on and so on.

Maybe I'm just suspicious because he's being so different from how he's ever been before. I think he's up to something, though. In any case, I'm going to have to stand up to him at some point and make sure he doesn't walk all over me. Not looking forward to that: I hate conflict. Married the wrong guy for that, didn't I?

"DD1 was off doing her own thing, but she seems a little ambivalent..."

I think he's up to something, though.

almost certainly. they only change/do something if they can see a benefit in it for them.

crushed yes you're absolutely right. I have in the past talked about how grown ups are responsible for caring for children, but it doesn't work the other way round... grown ups are responsible for themselves. This was when she was explaining how he's so fed up when she's not there that he sits on the sofa all day doing nothing, not even eating. She really listened intently to that, but I think I need to say it again to help it go in. She's 9 - possibly 'older' but nowhere near old enough to deal with all this.

honey I did explain it to the school nurse recently. I'd said how I thought she'd benefit from talking to someone, and they didn't seem to think there was much of a problem. So I explained about the secrets, and she seemed to take it more seriously. At least it's on record.

Sorry I feel so selfish my brain's not functioning well enough to respond to everyone's posts. I hope when I'm back to full capacity I can 'pass it on' a bit better.

rose nearly there!!!! Mahoosive hugs. This time last year mine was at last moving out, I had no energy while this was going on to do much except lie in bed, which was probably for the best.

Red-hot anger is good, it is you authenticating your experience, watch out for an adenaline crash though. Calm steely blue anger [steely] is good for longer term battles with FWs. But not all the time - there will plenty of serenity, and one day you'll think 'I feel odd. Oh, I am happy :)'

silver, today I am in my element, just about to paint dc2's new bedroom. And we got out the house with no preFW anxiety.

rose, massive hugs to you, my dear. I hear everything you are saying. The pain is unbearable, but you are not used up. There is enough of you left to carry you and dd out the door to a new life, and as each day passes, you will find a little bit more of yourself, and dd too. Courage. You will get through this. Handholding

And nor are you rubbish! Would you say any of us are rubbish? So don't believe it of yourself. You are worth ten, twenty, thirty of the man who prefers you amenable (fw!).

rose freedom FUFW

I am off out to get some freedom myself.

Rose he will actually be gutted and lost when you go. a parasite cannot last long without a host. but who cares?
That is the biggest challenge, to stop caring whether he is dancing the fandango with carol vorderman or lying in a gutter covered in week old kebab. it is not your problem either way. (not easy)

But as i was saying on another thread it is a journey that passes through many stations, Anger, Pity, Bitterness, Guilt, Sorrow, Regret, Fondness, Contempt, Sympathy, Reminiscence but in the end the ultimate goal journey's and is Indifference.

So while FW is boarding the train to the Far Side of Fuck Off. Rose you can get on the train to Indifference. It comes with a full buffet service and a kitchen utensil army and it is taking you to a new life. It always travels onwards and upwards.

(sorry today is sugar and carbs day on my 5:1:1 and it makes me a bit high )

I am currently in Loathing. but some quite good looking guys got on at the last couple of stations. i haven't been in WasItMe for months, I have started taking the bypass past Guilt and I really enjoy visiting Independence it has many nice amenities.

All Aboard!!

I forgot to mention the other passengers are delightful and a lot of laughs as well as supportive. it has a drinks service run by the bar staff from the vixens. and a specialist smoking balcony....think i saw silvery heading that way.

the really weird thing though is as the train is travelling the passengers keep throwing bit of their baggage out the window and smiling.

Rightmink definitely losing the plot now. time gore cake...did i mention the cake trolley.

mink Love your train analogy! Wasn't it Bibi who used to issue FWs with train tickets to the FSOF?

Anyway. Hello all. Just back from holiday now. Catching up with everyone. Rose - just another day, and you are gone. Hold on in there.

Brilliant

Salutes mink from the smoking balcony