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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

so unhappy and feel guilty for breaking up my marriage after abuse

8 replies

Oscar1999 · 19/12/2013 11:14

Hi all, only my 2nd time on here but would love to have a vent to someone who does not know me. i have been with the same man for 20 years and have two kids. from the outside got a lovely life but he can be very nasty at times and a bully to me and the kids. when he is nice he is lovely and very affectionate however when he turns he is horrible. at the weekend we had an argument and he punched and kicked me (i hit him back twice). The odd thing has happened before but nothing as bad as this for a while. i feel i have had enough now and feel guilty for accepting things for so long but feel guilty for breaking up the family especially at this time of year. We have both spent all night crying and I know it is devastating to us both but I feel i have no choice but to teach the kids that this is not acceptable. I just am scared to be a single mum and to be on my own.

OP posts:
bibliomania · 19/12/2013 11:43

Oh poor you. No wonder you're feeling awful when it's so recent. But sit tight - it does get better.

I also feel miserable and so guilty about what my ex must have been feeling. That's the thing about abuse, it puts you in the position when you're always trying to understand your abuser and think about how things seem to them.

I gave myself permission to take an hour when I would stop trying to feel his pain and just feel my own. After all, it wasn't as if I was magically taking away his pain just by trying, so a single hour couldn't do much harm, could it?

When I concentrated on my own feelings, I realized how much relief was mingled in with the grief for the past and anxiety for the future. It really was a sensation of physical lightening.

You've honestly done the hardest bit now. There is mourning for the person you used to love (all the worse if you realize that person never really existed). There is worry about the practical/financial side of things, and the fall-out for your future. But oh, how wonderful it is when you can close your door and keep the bully on the outside.

What you're feeling is normal. It's painful, but it won't always feel like this, I promise.

bibliomania · 19/12/2013 11:44

My second paragraph should have read "felt" not "feel". I don't feel the slightest bit miserable and guilty any more!

CustardoPaidforIDSsYFronts · 19/12/2013 11:44

best of luck xxx

CogitoErgoSometimes · 19/12/2013 12:28

I'm a single mum. Haven't been in anything like a permanent relationship for years. I really don't understand this aversion, shame, guilt, stigma or anything else that puts 'single mum' on one side of the scale 'being beaten up by an abusive man' on the other..... and says one is just as bad as the other.

For what he did to you he should have been arrested. Please... park whatever misplaced guilt you're feeling and get yourself and your kids safe.

EirikurNoromaour · 19/12/2013 12:34

You're so brave! Well done. You are doing the right thing.

Oscar1999 · 19/12/2013 12:47

Thank you for you comments, I don't think being a single mum is anything to feel bad about, my mum divorced twice so I was brought up by a great one. I just wanted my kids to have two good parents so feel I have failed them. I know it's gonna be tough but I wish I could just stop crying as not helping them or me at the moment.

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Handywoman · 19/12/2013 13:18

Oscar9999 I understand those feelings even though they seem so illogical. My ex didn't physically hurt me but was an entitled misery guts and life for me, with him, was intolerable. I did the right thing to kick him out. I could not allow my kids to grow up thinking dads are entitled to be stroppy and contribute nothing to family life. Yet I also feel like I failed by ending up in this situation. It's like I can't switch off the desire to empathise and figure him out. I am hoping to explore all this with a counsellor when I start (on waiting list). I need to get perspective and keep hold of it. I wish you all the best OP you have done the right thing.

Oscar1999 · 19/12/2013 17:35

Thanks Handywoman they certainly screw with your head x

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