50 shades of idiot: silly tales of the abusive ex (meant lightheartedly but also could be triggering)

[Cakehanded]

Namechanged in case any of this outs me but something I had to do today brought back loads of memories of my abusive exH, some that are very deep 'kind-of healed' wounds but some that seem like silly little things but things that I never got to have a go at him for and never told anyone in RL as I didn't want the pitying looks. I'd still like to be able to talk about them somewhere though and get it out into the virtual open, maybe even have a laugh about it if I can so going to do that here.

Anyone else is more than welcome to chip in with tales of the idiot they've left (or even if you haven't if you want to!), I hope nobody finds me starting the thread too triggering/offensive.

1 - When I left, leaving virtually all of mine and baby ds's worldly goods behind but taking what I thought was a restrained 50% of the cash in our current account (which was not a lot at all) to support us he emailed that he thought I was unreasonable as he didn't understand why I'd 'drained' the account as he couldn't see what I'd need it for. 'Dear' ExH, shall I write you a list? Nappies, food, shelter, bills, any of that ringing any bells? Considering you haven't paid any maintenance for 6 years I assume you're still confused and think ds and I live in a field sustained by the smell of flowers.

2 - He said I had 'strange eyes'. No more explanation mind, that was just listed as one of the things I'd done wrong in our relationship, had 'strange eyes'.

3 - Another thing I'd done wrong was that I was 'obsessed with psychology'. Could almost seem a vaguely rational point until I say we met at uni, when I'd just started a degree - anyone like to guess the subject of the degree?

Feeling better already!

[DesertDweller]

Oh god! I let my mental ex cheat on me repeatedly for years but kept taking him back. I was very young and silly. The last time was after he told me, in tears, after we had had sex, that he was getting married! I think by this point I was properly over him. He got married a while later, and in a misplaced spirit of 'staying friends' I went to visit him in his new flat with a small housewarming gift. (Yes I realise now said gift should have been a turd through the letterbox). His new wife wasn't home. He practically dry humped my leg. In fact, he did at one point, begging me to sleep with him. I think I actually laughed out loud. What a dick!! It's true that when you meet the right person, you just can't believe you ever had such low standards before. My husband now is absolutely lovely. If the person you are with makes you feel shit or insecure, they're not right for you AT ALL. EVER!

[OnlyMakingMeStronger]

Apparently it was my fault we had silver fish. He would have to spend all evening killing them and I was encouraging them to breed - by not cleaning under the Neath the floor boards. I swept the floors EVERY evening and mopped 3/4 time a week but still my fault we had bugs that every other house has...

He would sleep in the morning til 8 and then get up and kick off that I was 'making him late for work'.... His work was a 45 minute tube journey away and he was supposed to start at 8.30 but somehow it was always my fault.

He didn't have many friends and didn't use social media and would continually tell me that anyone who does is 'stupid' and if I stopped using it then I would be 'cleverer' - incidentally he did not see the irony that cleverer is not a real word.

If I started doing any housework after dinner and dc in bed he would say 'relax, you are doing too much' or 'sit down and be with me'. Then about 10 mins later get up and do the thing I had started and say he had to cos someone had to....

Forced me into a position of giving up my job then refused any responsability for the situation and refused to support me financially. I was given food money and half the bills and had my child benefit. Got into considerable debt with utilities and rent. But he said I would have to get a new job - not easy when your pregnant!! No one wants to hire you!

Continually promised to get me a wedding ring but it never materialised.

Would always complain about my holiday ideas and insist we do his (always much more expensive) but then when it came to booking his he would moan about how expensive it was and we wouldn't book it!

Any idea I had he always found fault with.

I don't cook enough. (I cooked every evening but would sometimes cook extra to reheat or freeze - this was lazy)

I called the police after he pushed me while pregnant and broke stuff in our flat. He called my mum to 'tell her what I had done' ie I had called the police therefore I was in the wrong.....

Hundreds more. Was with him 3 years. Had one dd, and am due in September with DS.
Life is easier. Painful as the nice side of him I am still very much in love with and we are still working out the children arrangements etc. But it is better. Was the instant I left him. Money is hard and I'm terrified of having a 2yr old and a newborn but that will be a doddle compared to being with him.

[pearlongreen]

littletigers Yup, it's horrid! Sort of being stared at, whilst they "analyse" you like some creepy armchair psychologist.

Like he was trying to imply I was "showing off" or "flaunting myself" or "trying to be someone I wasn't". And this linked to me just being well-presented, or polite, or normally friendly, or wearing a nice dress.

It was like walking out with a Daily Fail article! Projection, as you say - THEY have no sense of self so they imply everyone around them is the same.

[Littletigers]

pearlongreen odd, I used to get 'you're such an actress, you're such a player' I am neither!!! Talk about projection!
It's as if they have to learn what's normal!

[PurplePunkPrincess]

My ex told me (on our anniversary) that being with Pippa Middleton in his dreams is still better than being with me.

We was at the airport, in one of those little shuttle buses filled with people while I tried not to cry. Looking back, I no longer care, he was probably gay

[pearlongreen]

arowhens yy good post, that rings a bell with the self-consciousness, and the "act natural" thing...

The whole staring at my face and (perfectly natural, content) expressions/movements and going "You're acting like this! Why is your face like that? What is your expression saying? Why are you walking like that?"

As if they're trying to crawl inside your skin and live there

Now that I'm older, I realise staring at other people and loudly making comments on them is generally the thing done by ugly weirdos with no boundaries.

[bubblebabeuk]

I wish there was a website that listed all the twats so other women could avoid them ;-)

[utterlyconflicted]

This is the most depressing thing I have ever read. Why are there do many abusive arse holes? They must be everywhere.

[arowhena]

"If I hadn't wasted so much of my life on this it would be funny." Yes that! Although having read this thread I no longer berate myself for staying with him - I was deluded, not stupid. Just remembered another one - he would suddenly reach to grab e.g. an eyelash off my cheek and if I flinched I would get a long lecture on how it hurt him that I would flinch from someone I loved. So I used to try really hard to sit still on the offchance that he might suddenly put his hand in my face. Purely as a headgame, I realise many years later!

[newnamesamegame]

And another choice one: for years I would ask him what he wanted to do at the weekend and he would say we couldn't do anything because the house was filthy and needed a clean -- he refused every single invitation and suggestion on this basis for years. Saturday morning would roll around and I would set about cleaning while he slept in then by about 3/4 in the afternoon he would go out on some spurious "errand" and invariably come back six or several hours later pissed. This routine repeated itself almost every single weekend for three years.

When I challenged him about why all our weekends ended with him going to the pub he would say he was depressed because I took no pride in the state of the house.

If I hadn't wasted so much of my life on this it would be funny.

[KERALA1]

My awful nutter ex called me a "gold digger" which was interesting seeing as I was working as a solicitor and living independently whilst he, though six years older, was unemployed and living with his parents. I had to send him £50 notes so he could pay the train fare to visit me. If I were a gold digger I was a pretty rubbish one!

[newnamesamegame]

STBX, on being challenged by me over a long distance online EA which had gone on for several months and loads of messaging of random women on FB, said it was "payback" for an event that took place literally on our second date when at a club he went to the loo, came back and was disgusted that I was dancing about a metre away from a bloke. Didn't shag the guy, didn't kiss him, speak to him or even make eye contact. But apparently that made it alright.

[Bobbybaby]

One of the first things my first boyfriend asked me whilst "chatting me up" was if I was a virgin. I was 16 and the answer was yes. Later told me he would have walked away if I'd have said no. He then spent 3 months pushing my head towards his crotch every time we were alone and finally got me to give it up by threatening he would go elsewhere.

Told me all about his rich, beautiful, blonde (I have the blackest hair on earth) ex girlfriend pretty much all day long. Had a picture of her in a bikini on the wall next to his bed.

Gave me an STD within a month of my losing my virginity to him.

Shouted at me for 20 minutes in front of all of his friends because I couldn't get into a nightclub. I was 16, he was 22. Later after I took my hoodie off and he saw I had quite a low cut top on he proudly told all his mates to check out my "sweet rack" then later that night called me a slag for wearing it

Used to breathe in sometimes when I spoke to indicate that my breath smelt

When driving past an attractive girl he would honk his horn and then do this weird motion with his hand that replicated him groping boobs and then tickling a vagina. One fluid motion.

Used to insist he picked me up from college every day in his car (regardless of what I wanted to do) and then charged me petrol money weekly

Every time I went to the bathroom he would stand and listen at the door to make sure I was only doing a wee

Once I initiated sex with him and he told me not to do that again as only dirty whores actually wanted sex, sex was for men to enjoy only apparently.

He's married to a girl now from a culture where the females are traditionally subordinate to males...poor lass.

I only meant to write one thing here but I just kept remembering more classic examples...it took me years to realise that that wasn't a normal relationship. I met one of his close friends about 10 years later who told me that their whole group of friends used to spend nights out with us trying to deflect his attention away from me as they felt so embarrassed by his behaviour.

[Wishyouwould]

I was taken to hospital by my Mum after spending 2 days in bed in agony. I had an abscess on my fallopian tube and spent 5 days on an antibiotic drip and then had to be sterilised, I was gutted. On my first night back home I dragged myself to the toilet at 2am, ExH was downstairs watching TV. He ran upstairs, I thought he was checking I was ok, he actually came to tell me that Tevez wanted to leave Manchester City

While I was recovering I put a thread on Facebook to thank everyone for all the cards, flowers and messages. His friends had absolutely no idea that I'd been in hospital - he had actually been in the pub with them while I was in hospital and never mentioned it!!

I took painkillers and antibiotics for the next month, I felt very low after my operation and the shock of having to be sterilised so I booked a house in Wales for us and our DC for a week and my ExH spent the first few days telling me to 'shut up' (nothing new there) and generally finding fault with everything, we ended up sleeping in different rooms and I told him when we got home I wanted to separate. When we got home I started the separation conversation and he looked at me like I was mad, what on earth was I talking about? I told him that he already knew I wanted to separate and he said 'well we're not, I've decided to give you another chance'

[mrsbrownsgirls]

I really hope this thread encourages some people of whatever gender to ditch a crap relationship

[arowhena]

I would love to think that a thread like this would have helped my younger self, or some current posters on here, but denial is so powerful. Ghastly ex once told me he'd had words with his brother about the way brother was treating his gf, and brother had replied "what about you and arowhena?" which shocked him. And of course I pretended to be shocked too because I was in minimisation/denial mode. It's a revelation seeing this thread and realising that all these brilliant women who I warm to so much, fell for the same thing I did (and worse of course, I got off lightly).

[squizita]

Yup the old prescribed phone call... Ugh.

And still you get posters on other threads saying there's no such thing as "spying" as true lovers share/tell everything... With no idea of how controlling and soul destroying having ZERO privacy (or you don't live him) actually is.

[EhricLovesTheBhrothers]

First boyfriend - used to expect me to call daily at 7pm if we were apart, when I got free minutes. We would then have to talk for minimum 30 minutes. I had to end the call with 'I love you, I need you, I miss you' or he would get the hump.
He once told me he was abused as a child, then admitted he made it up, couldn't work out why I was pissed off with this.
Accused me of shagging several of his mates.
Developed some MH issues at university, connected to smoking weed plus pre existing I suspect. Took medication for 2 weeks then stopped it because it meant he couldn't drink or smoke weed.

[ouryve]

My ex was quite stable compared with a lot of these. few things stick in my mind, though.

I pronounced various words incorrectly (yeah, we're from different parts of the country, you dingbat)

My parents never did Christmas the right way because they were atheists (his mum went to church twice a year).

My kid sister was visiting and he took the piss out of her the entire time.

While she was there, we all played Uno. He wasn't winning, so threw all his cards on the floor and stormed off upstairs.

He had an old school friend visiting, before we got married. In front of his friend, he ripped my clothes off me. I somehow laughed that one off, despite being furious. It was so humiliating.

A couple of years before I'd had enough and LTB, he spent £500 on a massive 19" trinitron computer monitor. When he'd had it all of a month, he whacked it, in a rage, whilst playing a game. It ended up blurred all down one side. He insisted that it must be my eyesight because he couldn't see it. Eeejit.

He misplaced his debit card, amongst his piles of shit, so rather than cancel it or even look for it, he borrowed mine - so he could buy me a birthday present.

[InAnotherLife]

My ex had been planning to fly over for a couple of weeks (we were staying in different countries temporarily). A few days before he was due to turn up, my little sibling died suddenly/unexpectedly.

The first thing he said when I rang him to tell him was, "Does that mean you won't be in the mood for having sex?" And when I was silent in disbelief/shock, he said I should think about it and let him know when I thought I would be ready so he could change his flights.

Many more issues, but that right there was the beginning of the end for us.

[arowhena]

Ohh totally. It's hard to shake the anticipation of nutterdom. I unexpectedly cycled past lovely current DH on the way home just a couple of years ago, and instinctively didn't stop because I thought he must have been waiting for OW and didn't want to anger him. This thought process was over in a split second but it happened. And of course he had been standing there to look for me because he was locked out and there is no OW ffs.

[squizita]

People think my DH is really odd because he says things like "I'm inordinately fond of you" etc' because I was so thorny about the L word when we first met!

I remember when I tried on something pleasantly normal DH disliked in a shop (just a 'preferred the other one' face no comments) and went to put it back, the little drama of "how come you're putting it back? I thought you liked it and it's half price?" "Yeah but you didn't, you liked the other one." "OMG sorry I didn't mean to put it back, buy the one you like best!"

There should be some kind of flashcards showing "normal bloke" for people with weird exes! Yes! You can wear the leopard print dress even if he prefers black and white one! Diagram of man looking not that bothered.

[arowhena]

That's awful that he tainted that specific phrase for you. All these behaviours sound so bizarre and yet the same ones keep coming up from all different people. I just remembered mine graduating from mumbling to glancing at things - if he glanced at something to draw my attention to it, and I didn't notice (sometimes because I was facing a different way), there was an enormo-sulk. And he thrust his finger in my mouth when I yawned to "teach" me to cover it properly.

[squizita]

Being "disrespectful" for asking him to repeat himself instead of "listening properly" (he often mumbled to facilitate this)

Oh goodness me that one! Yes.
Would whisper "I wuv you" (yes, with the wuv not love honestly!!) very very quietly. Then become sulky or showily "hurt" himself leaving me puzzled then asking "what did you say... what did you say..." while he would go all "no, no nothing..." and eventually say what he'd whispered and I'd say "I love you too". It got such a routine that this would happen. This makes me sick a bit. I couldn't say "I love you" for a while to anyone (family, new DP, friends) after that. Sooooo creepy.

[squizita]

Oh and once in the middle of a guilt-inducing meltdown he deliberately slammed him own head in a window, to show how much he empathised with me having caught my thumb in it the day before.
This was to 'prove' in front of people how he was the BEST DP EVER. They looked at him like he was nuts. It was also to distract me from lies/weirdness and make me feel guilty/evil because I had tried (and argued back) to wear a vest top with a union flag in sequins on it to a sporting event where people would be wearing such things not to work or anything because it was common and low cut.