Support thread for those in Emotionally Abusive Relationships 30

[CharlotteCollins]

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!!

I wondered about your name Kou ! now i know how to pronouce it even.

welcome to round sad that your circumstances bring you here, but its the best ploace to be in your circumstances. take care

KA at the friendly place none of us wants to join. So true. But it was totally the place I needed to be although I have not needed to be here lately.

Hi round welcome.

Waves frantically to charlotte and alice how are things?

And what is a KD being trying to suss it? Not a big orange knob of entitlement BOKE as they were once called

My very own x FW is very little trouble apart from very irregular patchy contact with DCs.

I was mostly good. In new rs. Was going well. Kept waiting for him to turn out a prat and was surprised when he was normal. (Sad to be surprised at normal) but out of the blue it seems to have gone tits. no fwittery think it is just a case of not that into me after all.

And I have been in a slightly dark place for last month anyway although doing my best to hide it.
In my EA rs, before it ended I would not have admitted there was abuse.then suddenly it dawned on me there was VA. I ended it. Arrived here, realised there had been EA...then limited FA...then some PA. All I have to say, without minimising, nothing compared to some of the horror that so many on here put up with. But I would always, always have denied SA. I love sex. I don't want anything to tarnish that. I enjoyed sex with FW. He was pretty good at it. So I was so relieved there had been none of that.

But now...now I finally have to admit there was some coercion. not assault (and my heart goes out to those on this thread who have endured assault and so much worse I am thankful to have been spared) but coercion. There. I said it. Finally. I was confused because on most occasions, once I got round to it, I enjoyed it. I like sex. But thinking back a lot of the time I consented when I cba because to not do so would have had consequences, even if that was just not being allowed to sleep it is still I see now, coercion. And so many times I pretended to be asleep when I wasn't. Who does that in a normal rs. Turning the lights off and hiding when they hear nsdps footsteps on the path.
Sorry to burst in, after all this time, and blurt that out. Just needed it off my chest.

And sorry not to have read back the whole thread.

Thank you for the kind words. Felt better after I got some more sleep, some sadness through the day but I'm hoping this night goes easier.

I do have my mum checking up on me, no DCs, just myself to look after.

Hello Round, welcome. You'll find a lot of support here.

minkembra I understand not wanting to admit/label what you went through as abuse. But do know it can happen to anyone, the strongest women, and if you do choose to acknowledge your experiences as abuse, it doesn't mean anything about you. You can enjoy your memories of enjoyable sex and not let it affect your future experiences - except to acknowledge your ex was a manipulative FW, and be able to recognise between sex you want from the outset, and sex you were coerced into out of fear, so you never have that experience again. You don't have to apply a label at all - though I do think it can be empowering to do so, to have a concrete reason for why something was wrong.

You certainly don't have to compare your experience to others, or think any abuse you experienced was "lesser" than someone else's. While obviously there's the ultimate extreme end of women who die at the hands of their partners, that doesn't mean that every point of abuse on the spectrum isn't unacceptable and wrong, it is, there's really no "little bit" of abuse.

Well done on getting out . It can be so, so difficult to remember the things they did. For me, it's like getting flashes of an old movie: sometimes I remember these rosy, colorised moments, and I think of the good times, but often it's like an old black and white horror film flashing through my head at speed, and I remember moments of abuse with clarity and get chills with what I went through, put up with, the fear, the times I couldn't leave. It's so hard to come to terms with those experiences. But I know I've gotten through it, I'm on the other side, and my life is my own now, regardless of what I went through.

I think the problem is that we tend to compare our relationship to other levels of abuse to see what's normal, rather than comparing our relationship to other healthy relationships. So instead of saying "this is not normal - I do not deserve this type of treatment" we see others in what we perceive to be much worse and think "this isn't abuse - THAT is abuse" and muddle through.

And our muddled view is then reinforced because when we initially say something to family or friends, we generally only disclose the tip of the iceberg, so it gets dismissed - "oh men are just annoying, aren't they?" kind of thing. And that just makes us relocate our boundaries....

Round welcome.

hi to all on this thread, i'm still lurking, just a quick one before stbexh gets back with dd.

this week i've had a sudden realisation that it's all about being free isn't it, and when you're with an abusive fw you feel anything but free. So even when I wobble if he is being nice I still realise I don't feel free, i can't arrange the house how i want, i can't do things how i want to them, i can't guarantee that my day will turn out ok , all depends on his day. I remember when I broke up with previous ex, after 11 years, I was distraught due to OW but actually those years living on my own afterwards were my happiest. Cannot wait to get back to that - but this time with the joy of living with dd.

to all of you.

sus That's just it, isn't it? Even when they're nice, you're still waiting for the other shoe to fall. Wondering when they're going to be nasty again. Worrying that something little will set them off.

Indeed. It is sad but you come to recognise they are not a nice person who has nasty moments under extreme circumstances but a nasty person who has nice moments when it suits them.

There's a lot of that goes on - ladies saying that it was worse for others, and also being unsure about whether its abuse, due to the excessive amount of normalising, minimising, self-blame AND ABUSE!

I came across a grandmother earlier today, a good friend of old of mine, she is treated very badly by her partner, like a proper skivvy, she works and runs the house whilst he sits on his arse and gets more abusive to her, his son and granddaughter. She has brought up her granddaughter whose mother died when her daughter was still only a young baby. Her grand-daughter all credit to her is a wonderful girl, so kind and thoughtful and now I think, coming to terms with her situation and life without a mother. That grand-mother through talking to me about her situation said things that struck a chord with me, privately. She talked of things that sounded awful and wrong, and I realised how awful and wrong my rs was. She was so kind and supportive and I just realised this morning what a desperately unhappy person I was back then, without a clue in the world what was really going on. I was a mess and hated my life, but just surviving day to day, trying so hard to make the best all the time, create lovely times for us all to try to balance the bad, but no amount of pouring treacle and custard over the eggshells made them palatable.

Through unravelling all that spaghetti headedness and really opening my eyes to it brings such positive change for self. Someone once said in one of my really dark low moments (and there were many), 'use him to get you happy' It didn't always feel like that, but using this experience to grow this time, instead of jumping with eyes wide SHUT, and denying the experience, straight into another!

It really happened, and there are going to be further challenges to face, but the awful daily erosion of me has gone from my life, and is not something I will ever let happen again.

So those of you fighting for better, doing the daily climb out, keep aiming high, the view's great

mink lovely, so sorry to hear about you've been not feeling great, and so sorry as well about your revelation re FW and sex.

I was in the same position (if you'll excuse the unintended pun) in that I enjoyed sex with my FW most of the time, some of it was the best I'd experienced. But there was no doubting that sometimes I went along with it more because I knew if I said I didn't want to/was too tired then it would end in things being verbally bad. I struggled for a very long time with that, not wanting to add sexual abuse to the list of everything else. But at best I was consenting (probably about 50% of the time) out of an unspoken and subconscious fear of his reaction if I didn't. And that is sexual abuse. My FW did go further than that unspoken coercion sometimes as well, and I could (eventually) admit that he sexually assaulted me several times. I still can't quite bring myself to say rape but on one occasion it probably was. But still the hardest part I think is admitting that outside of those individual incidents, sexual abuse was present throughout our relationship due to that subconscious fear of his reaction. It's really difficult to come to terms with. But stare it full in the face, if you can.

Sorry, love. and a hug.

(KD is Kid's Dad, btw)

A kids dad i was too busy thinking about Knobs (a common problem)

Thanks for your kind words pony. You are right I need to look it straight in the eye and not blink. Think I might be due some more counselling. Got a few ishoos coming out of the wood work. The good news is at least I recognised them.
Also realised that if in a rs I am angry or upset I push it all down in case if I say anything I get made to feel guilty for having feelings.
It's a long road.

Enough about me though how are you guys?

Some quite inspirational posts today!

I've been thinking about sex, too, recently. Particularly, why do I feel so negative about it? It'll be a long time till I want to go down that road again, despite feeling more positive towards men now than I did a year ago. I definitely recognise coercion in my experiences with FW, but I wonder if there was more than that. He was usually pretty self-absorbed, too, like I couldn't get him to notice me in the experience. Or if he noticed me, it was only as a mirror to show him how great a lover he was. But I think there were times, early on, when I didn't want it and he went ahead anyway. I let him. My words said one thing, my actions were probably unclear. I shut down my emotions and just let him, since what I wanted seemed irrelevant. I then felt that that was horrendous; I felt I'd failed in some way, or maybe he said I had because I didn't enjoy it and how did I think that made him feel? I don't know. And I geared myself up to getting into it after that, so that I wouldn't have that unpleasant feeling again. Does anyone understand what I'm talking about? I'm not sure I'm making much sense.

I'm defiantly familiar with coercion aswell. I'd posted on here a while back and written all about the financial problems, lies and cheating etc and just mentioned at the end that I'd felt a little cringy around him as I had said no to sex but he did it anyway, the overwhelming response that it was rape really shocked me as I'd never thought of it like that. Again we had good sex and bad sex, he would be persistent shall we say until I just couldn't be bothered anymore and gave in, he would never let me sleep if I dropped off he still be trying,t
he occasion I mentioned was particularly bad as I did feel he forced it plus my head was covered the whole time and it felt degrading, he did apologise after. When I brought it up a few years later it did seem like he knew what he had done but also blamed me as i had driven him to it.
There was another occasion where he was very forceful and again I never saw it as rape and I was heavily pregnant, don't really want to go into detail with that though, that was over 11yrs ago thou, looking back there was a lot of red flags along time ago, some behaviour a lot worse than some of the more recent stuff but it's only recently I've acknowledged that, and even though that stuff was a long time ago I know he has it in him to be that bad again, hence the reason I'm seeing the light.

Had my DD's birthday party today and it went well. Gonna give it another week or so let things settle then may try and talk to him about plans for separation if he still isn't willing then I will be seeing a solicitor.

Oh Charlotte, so sorry lovely. I do totally understand what you are saying about feeling like a mirror to reflect back how great he was in bed, and also about gearing yourself up to have sex. But maybe it was more about fooling yourself into believing that you were ok with it and wanted it really so you didn't have to think about that unpleasant situation whereby you didn't want it but he went ahead anyway. It's another coping mechanism. You didn't fail in any way at all - he did. (I also recognise the FW warcry of 'how do you think I feel with you making out like I violated you in some way' - it makes it all about him again and not about you and your feelings/needs at all.)

Bizkit how awful for you. It's so hard to look it in the face and say 'he raped me'. It feels like a big deal, but we are so good at minimising everything as part of being in an abusive relationship that it's just another thing to minimise, along with all the other abusive behaviours. So sorry that happened to you.

"All about him" - yup, that sums up FW nicely! Pretty much everything he did could be summed up by those three words. Even when he was altruistic in public, in private he was vile about the people he'd been helping. It was all about image.

I'm ok, really. Just going through one of those more reflective, remembering periods. They come and go in waves!

Bizkit, glad your DD's birthday party went well.

You are right charlotte they come and go in waves.

Hope everyone is alright at the moment. Just checking in to keep the thread bumped up a bit.

I'm actually doing okay. The longer he maintains NC, the happier I am. Less stress, less demands, less upset for the dcs.

Today has been a day where things seem to be moving on. I ve booked an initial individual mediation session for Thursday. And fw started sending me texts, as I have been quite remote- I have told him twice I want a divorce but he s
Been carrying on as normal. Today I got a load of fairly abusve texts about how unfriendly and basically shit I was, so I reiterated I was serious. Had lots more texts about how I am selfish and don't think about dd . He's worked late and on his way home now but texts are much calmer. I m going to work late tomorrow so I can take dd to school, he normally does- while I assess his mood.

After thurs they will either write to him to invite him to mediation or sign form saying its not appropriate. I m going to draft divorce petition after meeting in case he fucks off to his family for a bit as that will make it easier to serve.

Think step 1 is complete - letting him know I am serious. And I don't feel wobbly- hate thinking of him sad but then I remember all the times I have cried after his ranting and he couldn't hae given less of a damn.

Told him we can't live together during this so either he goes or we do.

Nice to hear from you Mink and what a thoughtful insightful post! I too was coerced into sex when tired, ill or unhappy. I have a block about calling it rape. But when I thanked lovely new DP for letting me go to sleep unmolested he was horrified when I explained and made me see how I had minimised.
It takes time to get all this in perspective.

Interesting posts about coercion I've been thinking overnight . Probably 80 per cent of the verbal abuse I've experienced has been about the lack of sex, I m dried up, frigid etc. he's said a few times in front of dd- other parents have sex. Said it recently and I realised that soon se will understand and it was a trigger for making this decision. He definitely feels entitled. The coercion others have suffered is awful, I can't even imagine it. Makes me feel so angry about these men. Important to recognise it perhaps as part of the whole abusive situation? I keep getting overwhelmed by recognising that I have been abused and this just teaches me that the recognition will just keep coming, until its all out. Hugs to all.

here here Alice NC is the best - everyone/everything calms and can get on with life and getting over

Morning ladies. Friend who is OD has found KD profile on 3 different dating sites (she was matched to him on 2 of them!). Apparently he's been divorced for over a year and has no DC . News to me.

Suffice to say, we're not together and he can please himself, I'm just non-plussed as to how that translates into putting his all into a reconciliation. And more than anything, lying about being divorced and denying the existence of our 3 DC!!

He doesn't know I know. Not sure how to handle it.

Curt Unfortunately, he will simply lie to you if you confront him, will he not? He's shown himself to be less than honest with you. He is certainly demonstrating very clearly where his priorities are, and it's not with you and the dcs. I think he was reeling you in slowly, while hedging his bets. (Sounds very familiar, as my KD was attempting the same thing)

Could you really ever get back together with him, knowing everything you know about him, including this most recent nonsense?

alice I know he'll down play it and have an excuse, I'd put money on 'oh I set those up when we first separated and forgot to deactivate' ..I can almost hear him saying it tbh. For the most part it's the 'divorced for a year, no DC' that's upsetting me the most.

Thing is he's been really good (read 'normal') and although I was no closer to deciding we could try again, he was doing a decent job of being upfront so this is a bit of a curve ball. I texted him 'how's the online dating going' and he's replied with just a question mark. So yeah, I think he'll come up with some nonsense or other about them.

Have you noticed the more you engage with him, the more convoluted it gets and the more confusing it gets? May I respectfully suggest you give yourself a week or two of NC to clear your head and allow yourself some time without him constantly working on you? I've had almost a month of NC from my KD. I highly recommend it.

My other (ongoing) issue is KD insisting DD1 start nursery (she's 4 on halloween) and my reluctance atm because after the year she's had, I don't think she's ready for it quite yet. Despite my reservations, I found her a nursery and she's been this week half days. She's been sick during each session and staff said she's very anxious which is affecting her experience there and making it negative. She's a nervous wreck when I get her up in a morning and won't even have a drink, let alone breakfast. And I feel like the worst parent on earth leaving her there to be frightebed and sick. KD has stipulated that he wants her to give it 2 weeks fair trial and I agreed. But honestly, right now this feels more like satisfying him than any type of benefit for DD1. We're always at under 5's groups, soft play centres, park etc so it's not like she isn't socialising. Not sure I can put her through this for one more day, let alone another week.

KD says I'm being over sensitive. I disagree. I'd welcome some input from you ladies!