What kind of relationship is this?

[annaomar]

I met my DH four years ago. He is Arabic, I am English. I do love him very much and he says he loves me but I think actions speak louder than words....... We married after about 6 months. We have never lived together - I see him, always at his home 2 or 3 times a week. Saturdays I sleep at his and maybe once a month during the week. He has always been more interested in his friends than in me - I assume this is an Arab man thing. He goes out to meet them to drink tea, play billiards, smoke shisha etc. he never tells me where he goes and he gets angry if I ask. I don't entirely trust him regarding other women - I don't have evidence, just a strong feeling which he laughs at. He stays up late and sleeps late so even on our days together we rarely go anywhere or do anything together. I often think he treats me with a sort of contempt but I also feel like I've lost perspective and don't know if I'm being over sensitive. I earn more than him and give him money - although what he does with it I don't know and he gets angry if I ask him. When we are together he is very loving - he gives me lots of hugs & kisses and he is very good at spotting if I've been upset by someone or had a bad day, so he's obviously paying attention somewhere along the line. At the same time though the relationship seems to be driven by what he wants. I spend lots of time thinking I should leave but I don't want to hurt him.

1. Tell him you'd like to book your wedding to make it legal.

But FGS don't marry him.

If his cafe is anything like the ones I see regularly come and go bankrupt then you do not want to be financially linked to him.

I am sorry you feel the way you do about him but the truth is if you stop paying him money and leave his life then he will quickly replace you with another woman who will lap up his lies. I would not feel sorry for him. And don't go believing everything he says.

Anna - you are wasting your life with this man. He's already taken four years from you, don't let him have any more.

He doesn't respect you.

A simple way of finding this out would be to ask him if he would be happy for his sister to have a marriage like yours. He wouldn't and would probably consider it an outrage for you to even suggest it.

But you'd be scared to ask him that, because he'd shout and rage and then withdraw those little crumbs of niceness and make you grovel to get them back.

You seem to think that if you're patient and loving enough, you'll get what you want in the end, but he's given you zero evidence to believe this. Enough is enough.

YY of course when i said 'tell him you want to book the wedding' I didn't intend for her to go through with it.

She won't have the option anyway. He'll never agree. If he does initially agree it will be to appease her, then he will back out at the last minute on some pretext.

I feel so sad though and can't get rid of the feeling that I'm letting someone down.

The person you are letting down is yourself. Not the man who looks derisively at you if you give him less money than he thinks he's entitled to.

You do not need to keep rereading your own posts Anna, you have been nothing but honest and kind about him.

We can understand your pain and disbelief, but you do need to reread what EVERYONE ELSE has posted, again and again and again.

Then let us know what advice you are going to follow. Step by step. We are all here to help you. But you have to start. Stopping giving him money would be the first.

You are scared of him, you back down when he is angry, you have stopped asking him questions.

He therefore has learnt that shouting at you and making it out it is all your fault for 'breaking/ruining his life' works well in his favour.

He has power over you and you enable him by giving in. He loves the fact you are a feeble, subservient, weakminded female there to be used and bullied by anyway he deems fit.

All he has to say is 'you broke my life!' to make you feel as if you have badly let him down.

This is a well known form of emotional blackmail.

All he has to do is buy you some chocolates, listen to your concerns for a bit, shout at you when you've overstepped the mark, give you a good time in bed and TAADAA he gets unlimited funds, unlimited freedom and unlimited access to meeting other men/women for sex.

How much money have you given him over the years op? Can you count it up and let us know?

I think you do know how deluded you have been now though, so now the 'spell' is breaking you can be sure your family, everyone here will be breathing a big sigh of relief.

Hollywhite...I'm sorry, I didnt see your post. It really is as simple as that.

Anna for gods sake - we are not all wrong.

And just in case you missed it before - I have been married to an Arab Muslim, and lived in the ME for almost 40 years.

To be honest im losing patience with you now.

Anna for gods sake - we are not all wrong.

And just in case you missed it before - I have been married to an Arab Muslim, and lived in the ME for almost 40 years.

To be honest im losing patience with you now.

I can't see how we could be wrong. This isn't what marriage should be like.

OK Anna, let's play your game.

You stay with him. You give him your money, your youth, your child-bearing years. You continue to sacrifice a good relationship with your family and lose any relationship potential with your 'spouse's' family. Occasionally you find the courage to suggest something that will satisfy just one of those loving, affectionate cells in your body. He shouts at you for your audacity and your self-esteem and confidence is chipped just that little bit more. He's sorry he shouted at you and buys you a Twix. You're so totally grateful to receive this show of affection that you react as though he's asked you to move in with him, meet his family and have his babies. But he hasn't. He's only given you a Twix, or cooked some sprouts or lobbed a Christmas tree in your direction. Your gratitude becomes like that of a starving man who finds a weed to eat growing on the side of the road. The strange thing is that because humans always have hope, you hope upon desperate hope that tonight's the night when he throws a crumb of niceness in your direction and that hope drags you back for a fix, like a heroin addict trying to get that amazing high from their first fix.

Alternatively you play the game the MN way (which deep down you really want to do). You tell me him you can't see him any more. You change your phone number so he can't contact you. You don't show up at his house. You demonstrate all the courage it must have taken to post here and ignore the first few weeks where you miss the habit of him - because that's all it is - a habit, a nasty addiction.

You get counselling so that you recognise abusive behaviour so you can name it and avoid it. You meet a good kind man who wants the same things as you do. He introduces you to his family, you introduce him to your family. He wants you to have his babies and share his life and he wants to walk through life with you as the two of you stand shoulder to shoulder, a team. You blossom in the sunlight of not being a dirty little secret only worthy of scraps.

Stop giving your 'husband' the benefit of the doubt. Listen to who he is. He is telling you, through a megaphone, that he is a sponging, abusive, bastard. Just get on with starting your new life before you waste your life and your child-rearing years on him. You will have a lot of healing to do so the sooner you start the better.

If I could "like" a post on here, I would like that. That is the absolute, unvarnished truth.

Are you so reluctant to see anything bad in him because he is a refugee and you feel sorry for him?

Stop giving your 'husband' the benefit of the doubt. Listen to who he is. He is telling you, through a megaphone, that he is a sponging, abusive, bastard.

This, with bells on and music playing.

It should be at the top of every post addressed to you in capital letters and bold.

Read it, take it in. Then never, ever contact him again. Change your phone number, don't respond if he can contact you.

Just walk away.

'I fell for the nice part of him - the man who makes me laugh, the man who has such quirky, independent ideas, the man who gave me a surprise Christmas tree and even tried cooking sprouts on Christmas Day. I would be so happy to share everything I had with him.'

Anna, there is nothing special about all this. I know that when you are with someone abusive then these little crumbs of kindness take on a bigger meaning. I've been there. But really, they are nothing special - they are what is NORMAL and everyday when you are in a healthy relationship. I shudder now when I think about how much crap I took from my ex. I still don't understand why - although BeforeAndAfters post rings a lot of bells with me - I'm smart, I'm strong, I'm feisty, but I got ground down, gradually, tiny bit by tiny bit. This is what's happening to you. Life isn't supposed to be like this. Men aren't supposed to be like this. Marriages aren't supposed to be like this.

Make a choice now. Don't put it off for another ten or twenty years of wasted life.

Can you explain a little of what you mean by "you feel like you are letting him down"? In what way?

I'm sorry I'm being so pathetic. I am listening to everything you are all saying, but I am finding this so difficult. H told me once that he had just walked out on girlfriends before - given his stuff to his mates, packed a bag, threw away his SIM card and left so that when his gf turned up at his flat there would be no trace of him and they couldn't contact him. If its true its a dreadful, cruel thing to do. I think alarm bells rang in my head then but I seemed to be able to brush the thoughts away. I don't want to do that (even if it is a case of live by the sword, die by the sword)

As a much younger woman I had a really horrible relationship. In many ways quite similar to this: secretive, scraps from his table, abusive, disrespectful.

I clung on because he could be really kind and do kind things- like your anacdote about the Christmas tree, that sounds just like something he would have done. And I'd be so grateful. He would do just enough kind things to drag me through the terribleness, so just when it got so bad he would do something lovely and that would get me through the next little bit of time until it got bad again and then again he would do something nice.

We eventually broke up and it wasn't until I met my now husband that I truly realised how fucked up the previous relationship had been. My DH is simply, kind all the time. He values me all the time. He does nice things all the time.... To the point where for the first couple of years of our relationship I thought that he was some kind of Saint. I couldn't believe anyone could be so kind and considerate. Until it dawned on me that THIS is how it is supposed to be and actually this is normal. How I was being treated was the not normal.

I don't think you have to be as cruel as that anna (although how this sits with your idea that he's basically a decent bloke, I'm not sure), but what do you gain by staying? Apart from the noble feeling of not letting him down; what else can you possibly gain by staying?

He IS dreadful and he IS cruel. You are like a loyal, spiritually badly beaten dog and he knows that and so do you.

We can't help you because you don't want to be helped.

Never mind, just make sure you abide by all his rules ok? Don't ask him questions he doesn't like, give him more money than he asks for and tell him it's ok that you don't have a true marriage as a piece of choc, burnt sprout and christmas tree is enough for you.

Pathetic? It's much more than that op, you need psychiatric help and mumsnet does not offer that.

There's an old Mumsnet saying...when he shows/tells you who he is, listen.

He's basically implied that if you don't knuckle down, he'll just bugger off and leave you high and dry. Because that's what he does - he's done it before and he'll do it again.

And I'll ask again, what do you gain by staying?

There is your warning, anna. Ifyou rock the boat he will up and leave.

Rock it, anna, and set yourself free. Stop giving him money. Right now. No more money.

Lois, you've already hit the nail on the head. Anna gets to feel noble, like Mother Teresa, saving her poor war-torn refugee from the evils of his past. It's the only constant in this relationship that makes her feel good and, sadly, it comes from her not him.

I had a brief involvement with a refugee and it does get to you. You think - oh they've seen such awful things and if they go back they'll be KILLED. It kind of lends a romance which isn't really there. There was nothing romantic about my refugee and there is nothing romantic about anna's.

I have resolved not to give him any more money and I haven't called him/ texted/ what's apped him since I last saw him on Sunday. But I know eventually he will call me and I don't know how to deal with it because he will be all nice and will be hurt that I've not called him etc.