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Relationships

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

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Original poster

Someone else's opinion please.

98 replies

tootsey · 17/10/2014 16:48

Just need someone else's thoughts. DH has always been paranoid and insecure, (many years). So today when I made a few phone calls about tracking down a part for my car, instead of him getting on with other things, while I was making the calls, he insisted on sitting down with me and listening to everything I was asking and saying. He has always had a problem with me even speaking to another man, even a stranger holding a door open for me is a problem for him. Apparently if someone does that, and I say thanks, then I must want to shag him!. So today, after him sitting with me and also staring over my shoulder as wrote an email trying to get prices, I had it out with him. Told him he was still as insecure and paranoid as from the time we met. He denied it and said it was all in my head. He never has a problem if its a woman im speaking or dealing with, just men. Am i way off the mark on the watching and listening, or was I right?

OP posts:

JaceyBee · 18/10/2014 16:51

I'm a counsellor in the NHS and I just point blank don't believe that he has had 5 years worth of therapy. It just doesn't happen anywhere in the uk.

Original poster

tootsey · 18/10/2014 17:33

As ive said 5 years. Started in 2009. 1 and half hours a week on a Thursday every week since then. What more can I say. I know other people who have had counselling for longer, much longer. It is available. Mentally he has been in a bad way, but should have been more honest with counsellor. He just turned up at more door 2 minutes ago, as if nothing was wrong. I made it clear that I was not happy after yesterday. He is adamant that he done nothing wrong by standing with me while I made phone calls and watching over my shoulder as i sent an email. He said he done nothing wrong and I am the one who has the problem. I sent him home. I cannot get through to him, and now all im doing is sitting crying like a stupid prat.

OP posts:

TheHoneyBadger · 19/10/2014 07:44

sorry this isn't about doubting you but i trained as a counsellor and have never heard of hour and half sessions. i will drop it though - i just want you to be careful of believing everything he says when it seems so utterly unlikely. anyway it's dropped.

his turning up and trying to make out you're the one with the problem yesterday is yet more evidence he has no interest in changing and essentially no interest in how his behaviour effects and upsets you. you don't matter in that sense - he doesn't care that it has upset you and his i've done nothing wrong is more important to him than your feelings. he's presumably still assuming (and who can blame him really after this length of time) that you will just put up with it forever.

i think it's time to give up personally - what about you?

gemdrop84 · 19/10/2014 07:58

Sorry you're dealing with this op, he is abusive and you deserve so much better. He won't change, not while he's so busy blaming everything on you and doesn't see it's his problem/issues.

gemdrop84 · 19/10/2014 08:04

Well, I'll rephrase that last bit, he does know it's his issues, he just doesn't care....because he's an abusive arsehole. Can't begin to imagine how stifling life is for you living with this. And I will repeat myself, you deserve so much more.

emma16 · 19/10/2014 08:09

Get out of this relationship. That's all I have to say.

Pumpkinification · 19/10/2014 08:17

He doesn't see himself as your partner, partners don't treat each other like that. He sees himself more in the role of your owner.

Until you do something about it, you are allowing him to continue mistreating you & modelling this terrible relationship for your child.

He is never going to get better until you do something about it - he has clearly demonstrated that.

SnookyPooky · 19/10/2014 08:38

I used to be with a man like this. He blacked my eye because an old friend (male) said hello to me in a nightclub. I stayed with him for 6 years.
I couldn't speak to or see anyone outside work and his or my family and even then, I could not be a millisecond late home.

It was before mobile phones and the internet so he would also listen in on my phone calls, would notice if the phone was a centimetre out of place so knew I had been on the phone while he was out and would grill me about it. I could go on.
Worst time of my life. These men don't change

AnyFucker · 19/10/2014 11:22

Why did you let him in your house for more of the same treatment ?

Just bar the door

Original poster

tootsey · 19/10/2014 11:31

I didnt let him in, I was outside when he arrived. And on the counselling time issue, I dont know what more I can say. It is 1 and half hour session. Clearly different availability in different parts of the UK. I have taken him there, waited in reception for him until it ended, not because I didnt think he was going, but because he had no car to get there on a few occasions. Its all above board.

OP posts:

AnyFucker · 19/10/2014 11:36

You have an answer for everything, lovey, apart from how to get your life back

Are you going to take any action here or is this simply a vent and then carry on as usual ?

ItsGotBellsOn · 19/10/2014 11:37

He sounds extremely abusive. I had a relationship with a guy like this. If I smiled at a barman or male shop assistant when they were serving me, I was interrogated afterwards and told I was showing him up. He tried to make me believe that the problem was mine - I was a flirt, an attention seeker, a slag etc.

This will escalate. If you stop obeying and appeasing, the abuse will ramp up. Guarantee it.

Get away from this dangerous man.

Hatespiders · 19/10/2014 11:40

I agree AnyFucker. Why even let him in? He doesn't live there, he has no right to come in. It's like the Big Bad Wolf. Lock the blooming door.

I'm getting a bit cross (sorry). Why sit there crying after more of the same abuse? Why not get a hold of your self-respect and decide once and for all to stop courting abuse for yourself. (Because in effect that's what you're doing, choosing to suffer abuse when you needn't.)

Come on OP, you can do this. Tell him it's over, he can't come round ever again and then sit back and enjoy the peace and freedom, and see your son relax at last
.
I can assure you he will NOT top himself. He'll look for another lady to torment and control. But whatever he does, it won't be your business or your fault.

TheHoneyBadger · 19/10/2014 11:46

everyone is now reminding me of a boyfriend i had when i was young who tried to convince that ALL of my lovely male friends actually just wanted to shag me. these were friends i'd been going to parties with and entrusting my safety to (when sometimes a little too 'enjoying myself' to be entirely trusted with it myself) for years and who i could sleep in beds snuggled between and never feel at risk.

when he eventually convinced me to move and i started uni the friends i made there were apparently all 'sniffing around me' because i was 'fresh meat'.

in my defense i was very young, he was a fair bit older and more well traveled than me. i didn't believe him or get totally suckered into his mad world but i did put up with it for 2 years and get separated from a very comfortable friendship group along the way.

when you really think about these guys there's a horrible projection of their own attitudes going on, a sense of you as a 'thing' that they own and others shouldn't even look at and a complete mistrust and disdain for your own ability to read reality and have a moral code or instincts etc about anything or anyone.

it is not.good.for.your.mental.health at core. the whole thing is so undermining of you as a person that you can end up in a state of confusion and not knowing who you are or what is 'common sense' or reality anymore.

he doesn't even have enough respect for you to think you can read reality in a valid way - you are so 'stupid' that you don't get it and he has to tell you. you thought a guy was just being friendly telling you where there was a nice cafe? you stupid bitch, you can't even SEE what is happening. you know????

this is insanity and a kind of insanity that demands to be accepted as the truth and demands others to collude with it.

JaceyBee · 19/10/2014 11:47

Well wtaf have they been doing for the last 5 years?! The waiting lists must be horrendous! OP I would think it's probably safe to say that he isn't going to get any better. Probably because deep down he believes he's entitled to behave like this to you. I think the time has come to stop flogging this dead horse.

TheHoneyBadger · 19/10/2014 11:51

seriously OP it's nice out here. it has it's ups and downs, there are good people and bad people, there are people who surprise you with their generosity and kindness and people who you thought were ace and then let you down awfully. it can be hard, it can be great, it can be fun, it can be lonely but it IS.

whilst you're still hanging onto him and this madness for you and your child you have no chance of getting out into this big IS and choosing your own path and life on a daily basis.

there is no real shelter in being trapped in someone else's fixed and frankly fucked up view of the world and people outside of their hugely controlled and paranoid box.

come out and play.

TheHoneyBadger · 19/10/2014 11:55

sorry last one - it's a bit like being a child again. when you're a kid you're trapped and even if your parents are clearly deranged you are forced to live in their 'world' and negotiate with their projection of it. but he's not your parents and you are not a child - you can walk away and live your own reality by your own values and choices and degrees of risk aversion/tolerance etc.

sorry to say though your child doesn't have that choice and relies, as we all had to, on their parents choices and versions of reality they enforce.

neither you or your child should stay stuck in this particular fucked up mind box. it's not a good or healthy version of reality for either of you.

JaceyBee · 19/10/2014 12:06

Google othello syndrome, see if it rings true. Although it doesn't really matter much, he clearly isn't going to improve and all you can do now is think about whether you continue to put up with how he is or not.

JaceyBee · 19/10/2014 12:07

And honey badger is right, being an LP is great

I don't plan on living with a man again ever. Lovers, definitely. Partners, no thanks!

TheHoneyBadger · 19/10/2014 12:50

i am a LP yet don't think i meant it that way actually - just being an adult with freedom over your life. i would like to think that you can be in a relationship and have that to some degree or at least have enough shared sane ground that one persons reality didn't crush another's.

i'd consider living with the right man but he'd have to love cooking and cleaning and find all of my quirks and bad habits endearing. bit of a tall order.

TheHoneyBadger · 19/10/2014 13:38

and be amazing in bed of course and tolerant of an endlessly energetic 7yo not of his making. the list is actually quite short but it's slim pickings round here.

JaceyBee · 19/10/2014 15:19

I'm really not bragging but I have a lover who is all of those things, and I still don't want him under my feet full time!

Guess I'm just much better alone!

TheHoneyBadger · 21/10/2014 11:59

i'm guessing you have better childcare options than me jacey. the live in babysitter (and fact i would get any time with them unless they were under my roof) factor might swing it for me.

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