Can emotional abusers ever change?

[yougotafriend]

Background - left an EA marriage a couple of months ago after 23 years together.

Im OK and realising how permanaently on edge I was as I'm relaxed in my new home. I have good days and not so good days, more about being uncertain of the future though than regretting leaving the past behind me.

I came home yesterday to a 3 page letter from H about how he believes we still a future together (we don't) and how he is going for counselling so he can change and win bully me back (he won't).

So it got me to thinking if anyone out there has turned an EA relationship around? and if so how does the "victim" learn to trust that the abuser won't revert to type?

It is way too soon for me to consider another relationship but I do think my perception of the dynamics is so messed up, I have no idea how a healthy relationship works. How do I learn to trust that someone else wouldn't try to control me in the same way?

No I agree, unless it's sustained change then I wouldn't have gone back. And there is no need to go back even if he has changed - only if we want to. They are the people at fault (for most of the time) and the reason why the relationship has ended, therefore it's not their choice as to whether we go back. Good luck in your new life. You sound so much happier x

Just wanted to say well done OP, you sound very resolute and admirably well-adjusted! Onwards and upwards, all the white giving yourself as much leeway as you need for any sideways slides...xx

Keep going forward - it's so easy to look back and thin was it really EA or am I making too much out of it. Doesn't everybody go through bad patches etc etc. My head has gone over my 23 years with stbxh (14 years married) and still tries to find the reasonable human being but there isn't one.

But as a loyal, moral, decent person myself I still need to find something in that relationship that made me stay. How could I have been so blind to everything. Why didn't I know when he started beating the dog that I should have run like hell.

I took him back years and years ago - things will change - but nothing did and eventually he left for someone else. So even in the end he was in control.

I can only hope that by attending the Freedom programme it gives me knowledge to recognise bad relationships and get the relationship I deserve (although at this precise moment in time I do not want anybody).

whyme you are right about questioning if it was really as bad as I remember - but it was, and.......even if it wasn't I wasn't happy so I'm better off out of it.

I was out with a girlfriend on Saturday night and while we don't fill our nights out talking about our dickhead exes they do obviously come up in conversation. When I recall some of the many little shitty things he did (that he will probably never remember) I am genuinely taken aback. These are the things that toally wore me down and ultimately killed any love.

Anyway on Saturday night a man attempted to chat me up but he looked so like my H that my friend thought it WAS him!!! I made no attempt at being polite but as with the story Cog shared, clearly withering put downs was an attraction to him as he kept coming back for more......what a nob!!! I'm clearly a magnet for small baldy blokes.....

oh dear - you'd better watch out for my ex as well - small baldy, full of his own self importance etc etc.

He'll be wearing the most expensive shoes in the pub and driving a white Audi!

Hahahaha whyme My "New Me" resolution is no more small baldy blokes - any future man in my life has to meet the minimum criteria of taller than me and with hair