Questions about abuse

[Oxy81]

I'm new here, and hope it's ok for me to post this. I have nowhere to turn, and my ten year marriage is falling apart.

I feel that I have abuse issues in my relationship, but because I'm living within it I have no idea if I'm over-reacting. There are several issues, but I'm keen to break it down, and I'm wondering if any of you could give me your opinion on this particular situation to start with. I'm deliberately keeping it brief with few details to help me get down to the basics:

In November, I discovered that my husband had installed keylogging software on my laptop, discovered my email and messenger passwords, and unbeknownst to me had installed copies of those accounts on his own devices. Then for six months he monitored every email and conversation I had.

When I discovered I felt devastated, and told him the relationship was over. I eventually relented, but told him if he ever did it again, it would definitely be the end.

In June of this year, I found out he was doing it again.

I'm interested to know your thoughts on this: would any of you consider this appropriate or excusable on any level? I'm aware it legally constitutes stalking and harassment, but I'm talking about from a relationship/abuse point of view.

Thanks so much in advance - I don't mean to leap on here and automatically expect help, so I'm grateful of anyone's time.

What reason did he give for doing it and what is your relationship like in general? Were there trust issues on his part prior to this, have there been affairs by either of you? If not then I struggle to understand why he would do it.

If he doesn't trust you, to the extent that he is carrying out surveillance on you without your knowledge and against your explicit wishes, your relationship is already over.

Even if you were doing anything that would warrant such behaviour, the relationship would already be over.

Thank you so much for your reply. I am going to give an answer to those questions, but I just wanted to say that the reason I didn't elaborate in my OP and the reason I'm wary of giving them is because I wonder whether it could be a case of "abusive behaviour is abusive behaviour" regardless of what the provocation might have been. I guess that's what I'm trying to find out.

The answer is that I do think there are other abuse issues in my relationship, but I am similarly unsure as to whether I'm over-reacting. We have a non-conventional relationship structure in that we are consensually non-monogomous: our marriage looks like the traditional kind, but he has a partner outside of that, as do I. His reason for doing what he did was not about trust issues (he says he totally trusts me and could see from my messages I was always telling the truth), but he was afraid that I might eventually leave him, and felt that if he read my messages he'd understand me better and would be able to provide the things he thought I needed.

The intent may have been good; however the reality was that he read my messages every day, and sometimes would become irritated either by what he'd seen me say, or what he'd seen someone else say, or how long I'd spent talking to someone etc. But because he couldn't tell me why he was annoyed he would just be angry with me in general and I wouldn't know why, so I was walking on eggshells. He would use phrases I'd used to other people and quote them back to me in ordinary conversation, which confused me, and seemed to know things I hadn't necessarily talked about with him. He also went through a period of buying items I may have said I liked in a conversation or email, and having them sent to me.

So he spied on you and your other partner, and used what he'd read to fuck with your head. As has been said, he doesn't trust you at all.

He sounds very strange, and potentially unstable.

I don't see the behaviour as abusive, but as extremely weird. Whatever he may say about having trust, patently he has none. People don't install surveillance on those they trust. Period.

As someone has already said, this relationship is already over.
Leave.

Before you posted your reply I thought the fact that it happened once and you warned him and then he still done it again shows he has a lack of respect for you. That alone is reason enough to end the relationship. The quoting phrases you said to other people and buying items you mentioned you liked is plain creepy.

I agree he sounds unstable.

He spied on me and my partner (as well as my friends), but he says he didn't intentionally fuck with my head. His moods were influenced by what he was seeing as he was doing his spying, but he says he didn't deliberately use those words and phrases he'd seen me use, and he only sent me the items I said I liked the sound of because he thought they were what I wanted to make me happy. Those things were always intimate items, by the way - underwear and the like.

So, he parrotted back your private words acidentally, did he? Really? How did he send you things, did you know they came from him?

That's what he said - he said the parroting was accidental because he'd just picked up the words and phrases and absorbed them.

He ordered the items online while he was at work and had them sent to me at our house. I know he did it because his name was on the purchase invoices, and whenever I mentioned it to him he always knew about it.

He's lying. It's sometimes called gaslighting; telling you that something you know to be "off" (his parrotting) is perfectly normal. Really, do you want to live like this?

So what do you get from this relationship? Why are you still there? He had proven he doesn't trust you or respect you. He has also deceived you and acted in an atrocious way. Why do you want us to categorise his behaviour as abuse? So you have an excuse to leave? Because you don't need one.

What applepie said. What's left of this relationship?

Why did he not just ask you the things he wanted to know?

If he was so afraid of you leaving him, perhaps he's not suited to this particular kind of relationship structure.

Maybe that's what it is: maybe I feel I need it to be categorised as something because he has done such a good job at convincing me his actions were understandable and reasonable that I'm feeling it's an unreasonable thing to leave the relationship over.

The problem about leaving is that in many ways he is wonderful, truly wonderful. I know exactly why I fell in love with him, and we still have some really good times together. It's just that the bad times are BAD.

I've suggested that this is not the relationship structure for him, but he feels he is happy with his own part of it - it's just mine he struggles with. We both recognise the hypocrisy in that.

It's about controlling you, isn't it? That's a form of abuse, if that's what you need to leave him.

Yes I believe that's called having your cake and eating it.

Mumsnet gives you permission to break up with him, you know.

Utterly inexcusable. I don't care about the circumstances. You could have been having threesomes with his best man and his brother & that would still be vile, controlling behaviour.