Support for those in Emotionally Abusive relationships: thread 27

[CharlotteCollinsinherownplace]

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 violence Are 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.
Warning signs you’re dating a loser 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’re 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 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
What you should expect as a starting point for your treatment in a relationship, as you will of course be treating others!!

Well done, Muff, I think that's a very sensible decision. Have you read Caitlin Moran on terminations? She has a great no-nonsense approach!

Sorry I missed you out earlier from my grand name-checking list. Shouldn't do it - setting myself up for failure! :o

Oh, almost forgot to say, I've got the job! Actually (I was punching rather below my weight), they've altered it to better suit me. And will be paying me more. Life is really looking up!

Thanks charlotte, I rang the booking team have a phone consultation Wednesday and they will book me in for treatment within a few days of phone call. Feel so much better now I have decided what I'm doing.

Congrats on the job

Yes, having an important decision hanging over you is all-consuming, isn't it? And especially when it has such strong emotions wrapped up in it.

Thanks all. I'm just reading other peoples experiences and drawing strength from them, knowing that I am doing the right thing.
I told H in October that it was over (second time of trying - I originally tried in January and allowed him to talk me out of it). He has 'accepted' this (in so far as he knows it is happening - not that he agrees that this I'd a good thing) and is set to move out the week after next.
At the moment I swing from feeling really strong for finally putting my DCs and my emotions ahead of his to feeling really crap (he reminds me as often as possible how I'm destroying everything).
But I know I'll be in a better place in two weeks... Onwards and upwards...

He may tell you you're destroying everything, bigbird, but no-one, not even a FW, can remind you of something that isn't true! He is the one whose behaviour has brought about the circumstances in which you all find yourself. You have merely decided what you are going to do about it.

muff the happier feeling is your gut telling you that you've made the right decision.

charlotte fantastic news about the job. I adore my time with dd, but having days at work does help to keep me sane. And even better that they're paying you more. Bet fw is pleased

bigbird I swayed for months and then one day last week just thought, I'm going to do it, and then did before I could talk myself out of it. Fwiw, you're 'destroying' his everything but improving everyone else's

X posts sparkly !

bigbird in-spite of 4 years of his emotional, financial and physical abuse when I told him I'd had enough and was leaving I was still the one who was destroying it all. He refuses and always will that his behaviour was in any way a catalyst for my leaving. Its what they do because nay acceptance of what and how it is happening mean being complicit in its end and in turn they must acknowledge their own misgivings. These are things a FW will never do (unless they don't know WHY they are doing it and are actually only doing it in order to win you back).

muff I am glad you came to a decision.

Thanks for listening I just want it over and done with now.

Have been having a manic week this week and trying to catch up on the thread.

thatsnotmyname - hope you're okay, it is devastating when you realise that things have got to the stage of police being involved. I know only too well that feeling of "oh ours isn't a case like that" and worrying that you're being over-sensitive. I think it's important to realise that the police take these things seriously for a reason. How are things now?

Muff - welcome to the thread (and anyone else new; I haven't been here long either!). FWIW having read your posts I breathed a very slight sigh of relief at you having made your decision. And am very pleased that as soon as you made it that's what you felt, rather than increased anxiety and confusion.

Unlike many of the people here, my FW hasn't bemoaned the end of the relationship really, or tried to make me feel guilty (other than sometimes going on about how we're destroying the family for the children). Which just adds weight to my paranoia that it was just a horrible co-dependent relationship, albeit one in which he expressed his unhappiness in vile awful ways. It really is so nice now to live in a house without the millstone around our neck that was the spectacle of 'living with an unhappy husband'. We had the nativity at the DC's nursery yesterday and were both there, me happily chatting to friends and him skulking around looking odd and not talking to anybody. I felt sorry for him and was tempted to go and be with him, until friends told me I shouldn't feel obliged to do that at all. It's so hard to break the links, and interesting that I feel sorry for him when I see him in a crowd and want to 'look after' him, maybe that's what the whole relationship was about..

Chat with CAFCASS officer has freaked me out, he wants me to try to get the court case pulled forward and seemed to take very seriously the incidences of missed contact and messing around with contact that FW has been engaging in for the past 6 months. Oh and on top of that have to get my Form E off by Monday... no pressure!

Just a quick pop in to say Charlotte fantastic news on your job, see you can do so much when you put your mind to it!

And Muff - for you - a very hard decision for you to make, there's never a right or wrong in situations like this, just what is best for you, and it sounds like you are doing that. Hope the next few days go ok.

thats - how are things? You ok?

Very hard, I just keep thinking a week and I will be back to normal hopefully.

I know it sounds awful but I just cannot be bothered with the the third nightly bath, the third mouth to feed, washing bloody bottles and all the things a baby entails and having to do it without no break. Then taking FW into account and his shitty slipshod parenting jheeze.

I also want to do whats best for the dc I already have and me being sick, tired, stressed and miserable isn't whats best for them right now.

muff it doesn't sound awful. You made a good choice - and it is not so long ago that choice was not available. How many women found themselves trapped with their FW because of that? How pleased they would be to know things are different now.

Thanks sparkly

Charlotte brilliant to hear about your job. Also so exciting to hear they recognised they'd got a great deal with you, wanted to change the job and pay you more. That is so empowering when the outside world does this, because it ain't the kind of thing a FW would do.

Muff well done for making a decision. Sounds like it feels like a relief to have decided.

Parenting demands such a lot. I don't think we should feel guilty for recognising when we just can't do it (again) in the way we'd want to, especially when FWs have snatched so much of our parenting energy for themselves as manchildren. Personally I got bullied into conceiving DS2 by FW, who then never lifted a finger to support, just sat on the sofa shouting. Obviously I love him (DS this is). But life took another swerve, and I got trapped for the next 11 years, where with one child alone, I think I would have broken away quicker. Ah well.

I have been 'out' for five months and little by little am waking up to/remembering different abusive memories/feeling the pain of them. Its really odd, a bit like a numb leg getting the blood back again. When I was in labour with DS2, FW refused to phone anyone to look after DD who was three, so I had to ring around. I gave birth two hours later. Its as if he thought I were faking it...

I'm remembering when I had a showdown with FW and told him to leave our house. Kids very small, FW being no use at all, me working full time and getting up several times in the night each night, while he did nothing. So he phoned his brother and asked if he could come (without saying I've been chucked out). Brother said no. So he just didn't go. Sat there like a parasite. Blanked the fact I wanted him out, created confusion by shouting about different things. Refused to move or act. And I with two little ones, couldn't work out how to get him out, thought it was me in the wrong. And so there he stayed for another ten years, till I got the insight again and worked up a better plan. Its a bit like Sleeping Beauty in a trance, I can't believe I got caught for so long.

That is how I feel red, he really has took my energy reserves, I can't cope with anything else taking what I don't have to give.

I am sad about it, I do still sort of want it but I know the reality is it will be one big struggle and strain.

I'm in my new house!!

No tv but I don't care! I've got mn. Dd not here tonight as want to get all sorted before she comes in.

Fw still baffling me. He is happy for me to have dd most of the time as he thinks this would be the least unsettling for her. I'm delighted by this he's still doing everything I ask, want. Respecting boundaries etc. am really shocked but obviously still thinking he's just saying what I want to hear.

Thinking of everyone else

I'm the opposite. I wanted a dc2 but my head was telling me it was so definitely not a good idea. My heart was the other way. Letting go of the hope of a dc2 was one of my major hurdles. I never wanted dd to be an only child.

How did you reconcile yourself to that bounty? Its a major hurdle in my mind. I want another child and FW pesters almost every day. It would be so easy to agree but the thought of doing it all again when he was so utterly evil to me, when it would ruin another little life. Yet I know I will never have another child with anybody else, if I leave him I never want a man near me ever again. Hope you're doing ok bounty.

Sorry Im rambling. Good to hear from rose again. Welcome to newbies, its busier than ever here these days.

muff that is a huge decision to make - well done you for finding the strength! It is absolutely the right thing for you!
bounty sparkly and tweed thank you - you are absolutely right. This is his doing and I know the comments and digs now are to try and make me change my mind.
We are telling the DCs tomorrow - going to be a tough day, but an important step in the right direction. 11 days and counting...

bounty even in the extremely improbable case of him actually changing
a) it is very very early days
b) you don't have to go back - it remains your decision to make

But as I say this is very improbable.

I wish I could send you all a box of chocolates for being so lovely and the listening and advice. Even though I have been chatting to my mum and best friend they're not so impartial so thank you you lovely ladies

I know sparkly. It's hard to not allow myself to dream. But at the same time I'm loving shopping for silly things like towels and lamps etc that I've never got to do before because we always made do with the old unmathching ones. No decisions re trying again for 3 months though. That's my rule. And who knows how ill feel then

nini I think time and forcing myself to remember how truly hard it was at times. It helps that there are 2 slightly older only children in my family, who will definitely not get siblings, and I can see that they are happy, confident etc. And I have another friend who tried for years with ivf (and finally managed one) which reminds me that some people don't get to experience parenthood even once so I'm lucky really.

I do get terrible pangs of jealousy every time there's a new pregnancy announcement. I'm pleased for the people too, of course, but wildly jealous at the same time if that makes sense.

But it is what it is.

bounty - squeeeee! (incoherent excitement at seeing that you're in your own place) Hope you're feeling a bit stronger now?

Hmm. But also Nini, if you stay with him, you never want a man near you ever again, too!

Question for you guys: how do I check how the DCs are feeling about everything? What do I ask them? Have precious little time with each one alone and never have the guts to bring up awkward conversations. Usually too close to bedtime in any case.

bounty I am also discovering the healing power of interior design!! Every time I start to feel negative I am switching my mind to how I am going to make my house my own once he has moved out.
Looking forward to those Christmas sales!!