Support for those in Emotionally Abusive relationships: thread 28

[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!!

tweedle you are one of the people on MN who most inspire me and seem to feel the same things that I sometimes feel. You're a little ahead of me in the process and so I am still in the LETS GET OUT OF HERE phase but I can totally understand the weepiness.

I had cancer a few years ago and while I was having chemo and all that I was emotionally kind of ok, holding it together to fight. The nurses told me i might find it hard in the bit straight after chemo. And boy did i. I started to lose it totally. In the end what saved me was counselling. A space to go and talk and cry and just sort your thoughts out - and get out all that anger about what has happened to me. It sounds very much like you are in that place and I think you need to reach out for some help now. This stage is a stage but you need to be helped through it. And an independent listener is better than a friend, who you might hold back from, a good counsellor shoudl make you feel like you could say anything at all without shocking them.

try and do some gentle exercise too, but also let yourself feel this, it's part of recovering from trauma.

remind me of this in a few months when I'm on here in the same stage!!

xxx

agreeing with thats re the rocking and howling.

I had a long time of being out and not really. it took me a long time to get to the scales finally falling from my eyes. Feel so thick for such long realisation of it all.

Want to come back up out the hole!

so strong sus to have already recovered from your treatment and overcome cancer.

Letting yourself feel it [lack of], was I think what caused the so long realisation stage; keep pretending i was ok and could manage and keep coping.

This is a different sort of hard though, I had fw to lean on then, now I m on my own. I don't feel like seeing anyone either, just sucking up the time I have alone to try and unravel my head. Very much not unravelled. Just trying to hang on to he idea this is the right thing.
I spoke to someone today who left her violent partner when her baby was a few months old and she was 19. I felt so ashamed that I hadn't done that, fw was v violent while dd
Was chronically colicky, and I didn't leave. I can't understand why.

niether can I Sus

or why I blocked out all the things I did [block out] and carry on regardless!!!

thinking I would leave if it happened to DC, but it did and those are the things I blocked out????!!! feel quite fucked up about it all still, and yes, lots of crying.

Dd talked about it today and said she was scared of daddy when he shouted, but also scared of me when I shout back. That made me feel resolute. I am not a shouty person and I hate that she has seen me driven to behave like that. That's not what I want her to see in me.

She's seen way, way too much. And I ve let her by staying. I was trying to get out during one episode and I got her out the door and then he yanked me In and slammed the door leaving a 5 year old alone in the street. He wouldn't let me open the door for quite a few minutes.

Put down the sticks, ladies, no beating yourselves up about this. We all make the choices we have to, and sometimes we have had no choice. Especially when it comes to physical safety, of ourselves and our DC.

Thank you ladies - I think I do need to speak to someone.
I t ought I had dodged this stage because I seemed fine and to be enjoying myself but then bam- I started crying at everything. Mostly when I see things about weddings and I start to feel really angry at him for having taken away what could have been amazing moment in my life and turning them into situation all about him. Any opportunity for us to be closer he would take a huge dump on it and make sure it was only about him.
Sus thank you. your words brought a tear to my eye - bit then so did an advert about a poorly dog yesterday it's like my emotions are un-regulated, maybe I have been filtering them for too long?
I do need some exercise, I need to get back into my yoga - I have slacked and my body feels so drained. But I know it would help.
Sounds like the colic made FW realise he wasn't the centre of your world anymore and the only way to make you focus on him was to hurt you - it's a horrid FW logic. Any attention is better than no attention.
Reminded me of a time when DS broke his femur and was in a hip-spiker (plaster on both legs and hips) and the day DS came back from hospital FW went out drinking - he was missing for a day. And when I questioned him about why he had left me (I had spent 3 days with no sleep in the hospital) he shouted at me about how selfish I was and that he "never goes out" and when I told him DS had not slept at all that night FW called me a liar. WTF??? FW then threw stuff at me and took DC's out for the day. ID.IOT!!!
I have a number for a counsellor i'll call her today...and make myself a voodoo doll

i might want to kill him, but the image of killing him by using a voodoo doll worries me.

What if it works! how mad is that?

oh tweedle sounds, yes, emotional and familiar If your thoughts are turning to yoga and the pleasure/energy that brings you perhaps that will be you doing that.

The hospital thing and drinking..mmm - a friend ofthe FW actually apologised to me about how it appeared when him and FW went booozing whilst baby in scbu with potentially very serious as yet unknown outcome, and yes whilst I wasn't sleeping and scared baby would die. Friend knew nothing of gravity of situation from FW and went out to party with FW. Must've discovered thro other means (not me) the situation some time later, and was really sorry to have been so callous. No apology from FW, as ever. None asked for, and not expected!

I agreed to let fw stay this weekend so he could take dd for a day out . Obvs I should have insisted he remained in the hotel but I didn't have the energy. I emailed my dad to tell of this and also that we were paying for his counselling course that fw had manipulated my dad into paying for. One of the reasons I decided that enough was enough was as fw has been involving my dad, going to talk to him about our sex life, our financial sit, my extreme pmt as he terms it.

Just had an email from my dad saying he hoped I could remain calm during my difficult time of the month!

I keep track if my cycle now and the only time I feel shit is during ovulation when I am very tired. Fw has accused me of pmt at all different times of the month, now that I have started standing up to
Him.

I can't believe my dad would see fit to write that, ESP since last week he saw fw kick off for the first time and was quite traumatised by it.

I think I am just starting to realise the scale of the damage fw has done o
Me.

Going to ema him in the week and say I don't want him staying here at all now. If it continues I am going to file divorce proceedings.

He was telling me last night how much his counselling was helping
Him change. I pointed out I am having no help and hat there are two of us i this- just because he may change I am now different to who he met and I cannot have a relationship with him.

Haven't really cried at all in 6 weeks since I told him to
Leave but that email made me cry.

God sorry loads typos using phone

sus so sorry about your dad's email. If it's any help, when I told mine on the phone that I was going to divorce FW in 2009, he didn't ask me anything just burst into tears. (I didn't go through with it that time, did the next time).

Gawd Sus all so upsetting. Altho I would make a very simple and clear reply to your dad in case he is worrying completely unnecessarily about your issues with PTSD

That it was a bit weird to hear him say that as you don't have PTSD, and wonder why on earth he would think this? Restating that you are still reeling from the trauma of the last shocking behaviour of FW, but thats not PTSD thats coping with trauma? or something like that!

What a shame that FWs lead us to doubt ourself, but by doing the diary you can at least know more than him about the truth of the situation.

you mean PMT fi

Basically your FW, sus, is saying that you are nothing but a malfunctioning biological machine. Therefore nothing is down to him. And he doesn't have to listen to a word you say.

ha ha!!! mmmm .. most freudian.. the lettersbeing too similar..

oh dear

Hi I'm new here so hope it's ok that I jump on this thread?

Only posted a few times but things are pretty rough and need some hand holding I guess.

I picked up my copy of Lundy today, I'm a bit nervous about starting it

Don't be nervous. It's incredible. Stopped me feeling mad and alone! X

Picked fw and dd up from the station. Bit stressful as chaotic so I said quick jump in as I was blocking traffic. Fw took f ing ages to get in, deliberately , cars start hooting, I say quick quick, he goes off on one about how I have ruined their lovely day. I m in tears, dd in tears. Sometimes I hate him so much. I'd missed her so muh today. He's gone to bed, I ve texted him saying he has to arrange in advance from now on when he wants to stay here so I can arrange for me and dd to be away.

When he is here I feel panicked and mad. And yet utter calm when he's not.

gotanymore jump on board the hand holding train. Hope you are ok

whoaw Ive been away for a few months & its thread 28!

KILLPEPPA UPDATE:for any who remember...
After the emotional,finical abuse & cheating (just to put the cherry on the cake) I left...
I am now, in my own house, with my two boys, I see friends, I have an ACTUAL social life & I have money & no one takes my bank card off me.
I am the happiest bean on the whole planet & alot of you MNers helped me to do everything I have achieved & to stay strong when I could have just carried on the cycle of abuse.

To anyone starting your journey, there is honestly a big bright light at the end of the tunnel, past the fear & past the worry.
Stay strong lovelies because my two DS & I are very happy bunnies & free to live our lives...

next stage- DIVORCING HIS ASS