Feeling sick. Abusive “ex” and his wife and child have moved to my small home town. What happens if I “speak out”?

[LundyBancroftwasworththeread]

I had a very brief “relationship” with this man at University many years ago. (I use inverted commas because it was very short-lived; around two months and we never actually went on a date, just visited each other a lot in halls of residence). He was emotionally abusive from the start although I didn’t recognise this until I discovered mumsnet a few years ago. He did a huge amount of damage in that very short time.

After we broke up (he ended it) he treated me with absolute contempt while I was desperate for us to get on as we lived next door to each other and were part of the same social circle. There were so many occasions when I bent over backwards to be friendly while he treated me as being unworthy of even the most basic respect. It was the most awful year of my life and it took me years to feel I’d properly got over it.

After not giving this man a second thought for ages now, I have just found out that he is living in my small home town with his wife (who I also knew) and young child. I have woken up every day since finding out feeling sick to my stomach at the thought I might run into him/them or find out that he has become friends with people I know. I thought this feeling might fade but it has been almost a month and I am not feeling much better.

The only way I feel I can deal with this is by being completely open and honest about the situation with people. I don’t want to be sitting in a restaurant and not be able to explain why I have suddenly gone quiet and started shaking were he to walk in or why I need to leave somewhere quickly if I have to. I don’t want to have the whole traumatic conversation with people under such conditions; I’d rather they were up to speed on the basics so I can just say “he’s here” and they’ll understand what that means for me. I have started telling people already and it has definitely helped and I now have some real life support but at the same time I am incredibly uneasy about the situation as this was something I didn’t ever intend to discuss with anyone other than those closest to me.

My main issue now is how to behave if or more likely when I bump into him/them? I can’t very well be civil when I’m going around telling people that this man is an abuser. And the last time I saw him I was falling over myself to be friendly and I worry that if he were to approach me he would be expecting the same. I don’t want him to come anywhere near me and I don’t want to so much as even have to acknowledge him if I pass him on the street but he won’t know this and may try to approach me any way. I would be ok with telling him I don't want to have to so much as acknowledge him and the reason for this if I came across him on his own but this would be totally inappropriate if he had his child with him or something. I can’t avoid him forever either and even if I could, it would eventually get back to him/them that I have been telling people about the abuse. I am worried what will happen when they find out. Should I write to him to make him aware of what I am saying? He will find out somehow someday any way. I am just feeling totally lost at the moment. Please could someone offer some advice?

I don't understand why there is so many abuse-apologists on this thread? This really isn't helpful. Abuse is abuse. OP lived in close proximity to this arsehole for a year, during a difficult time. Not so hard to understand why it was difficult, surely?
Having said that, SolidGoldBrass talks much sense, as usual. You would benefit from extra help with this. I feel you maybe haven't had one of the world's best counsellors. It happens. Maybe someone else, or another form of therapy, would help.
Really people, we are meant to be supportive of women! Come on!

I honestly think getting this all out and talking about it with someone, either a very good friend or a counsellor will help enormously. I can relate to what you are saying, I had a different but extremely unpleasant thing happen when I was younger and I dreaded seeing the perpetrator and it also was at the back of my mind, even though I didn't really talk about it or consciously think about it for at least a decade.

It did bubble to the surface though every few years, and I'd push it back down, but often seemed upset. My lovely husband after a few years of this said to me- just tell me everything, every single tiny detail. I'd spent so many years not telling, or using euphemisms, and not really thinking about it- I told him every single thing, it took hours. He also said he was happy to listen again and again if that's what was needed.

Since then I have felt much much better, like that dark cloud I was ignoring has gone and this person has just lost their power over me. I really think if I saw them I would be ok.

I think sometimes if you are a very positive upbeat person, like I am too, you don't get your 'turn' at talking through the darker things, or you may even believe they don't affect you too much and you've moved on. But clearly you haven't, and the cloud is still there even if you ignore it for a decade or more as I managed to do.

I hope you can talk with someone, I think it might help, I'm also not suggesting a one off chat would bury the demon, everyone is different and some things take much longer to process.

Thank you so so much to the people who have posted being supportive and kind. I appreciate every one of you enormously and I'm really sorry I haven't been able to reply to you individually. And I am listening but I feel I am getting attacked so much that I can't discuss the things I want to discuss but instead have to keep explaining things I've already explained, like the "relationship" thing. I put the word in inverted commas in my original post for the very reason that I am not trying to claim that we were boyfriend and girlfriend but we obviously did have a "relationship" in the broader sense of the term and it sadly happened to be abusive in nature. And if you can't call a relationship that's abusive in nature an abusive relationship I really don't know what you can call it. I also don't get the attention seeking accusation. Why would I need to seek the attention of someone who's 100% attention I already have? These people are my friends. I can phone them up and get their attention about anything I want whenever I want. And I usually like that my friends find my company funny and interesting. I wouldn't bring up abuse if I didn't feel I needed support, even if it's just a few kind words before we change the subject.

And for everyone's information I was planning to end our "thing together" (if I'm allowed to call it that?) myself but he got in there before me. I'm terribly sorry I didn't mention this but I just didn't think it was particularly relevant. I have omitted various other details that I also didn't think were relevant. I stayed for 2 whole months because I thought I could get things back to how they were the first two times we were with each other if I could just figure out how not to make him angry and I tried to be nice to him afterwards partly because I had to live next door to him for the rest of the year, partly because I try to be nice to everyone and partly because I thought at the time that his anger was at least partly my fault. I was young and naive and I'm very sorry that so many people seem to find my behaviour so fishy.

Finally I'm astounded so many people cannot see that every instance of what I mention is emotional abuse. I am honestly beginning to wonder whether some of his friends are on here and are trying to defend him. I have read about all of these behaviours in books written by professionals on the subject but I have also seen every one of these behaviours described by other OPs on other mumsnet threads and the response is always almost completely unanimous that this is abuse. WickedLazy - I really appreciate your apology re the gaslighting but I just don't get how you can't see that everything else on the list is also emotional abuse. How does one person's insistence that another person believes and feels what he says she does when she is saying over and over again that no she doesn't feel like this and then him getting angry at her for supposedly feeling as he tells her she does not emotionally abusive?? There was a thread on this very subject recently and everyone told the OP she was experiencing abuse iirc. I just don't get how people can't see that this isn't just normal inconsiderate teenage male behaviour.

I think I will sign off now. I'm not getting to discuss what I wanted to discuss and I am going to try to get more support from other sources. Thank you so much to everyone who "gets it". Just you saying that made a big difference in the face of all these ridiculous accusations that this was just some sort of teenage infatuation gone wrong.

On a positive note I spoke to Women's aid today and the person was absolutely wonderful. I am going in to speak to her more on Monday in person. Thanks again to all the nice people.

Of course he was abusive, by any interpretation of the dictionary definition that you care to make. But the term 'abuse' is a very wide ranging, one-size-fits-all sort of word. If I call you an idiot it's abusive. If I held you prisoner for a week and hit you over the head with a hammer repeatedly it's abusive. One would understandably leave you mentally and psychologically scarred for life and cause you to shake in my presence, and the other (one would hope) would not.

Let's not get too caught up in arguing over semantics. Yes it was a 'relationship' of sorts, albeit a short, casual and patently quite unhealthy one and yes it was emotional abuse of sorts, technically speaking.

It's not that we don't think he was at all abusive towards you. It's that in the great scheme of 'abusive relationships' he wasn't that abusive, he wasn't sexually or physically abusive, it wasn't for that long, you weren't forced into it, you made no attempts to get away from it, nor did you even recognise it as abuse at the time, and so your reaction to it now, more than 16 years later seems completely disproportionate and more than a little emotionally unbalanced. The language you use to describe how you you'll react if you see him comes across as histrionic, catastrophising, and yes, sorry but rather attention seeking. You are highly likely to NEVER EVER bump into him in your life. How on earth can you know that you will shake and cry for goodness sake - you state it like it's an absolute fact. You say you dread seeing him but I can't help feeling you might actually be willing it to happen and perversely enjoying getting all het up in your own your own drama. How is it that you know he is living nearby again? You never said.

We are not telling you that you have no right to feel the way you do. We are telling you that it's not all together normal to feel the way you do and you would probably benefit from seeking professional help to manage the intensity of your emotions. If you could live with them in your head it would be fine, but to be running around externalising them by planning on telling lots of other people (and that is exactly how you made it sound in your OP) and wanting to message the man to warn him to stay away from you (you found him on facebook I assume?) and to be talking about labelling him in your community/social circle as 'an abuser' all because of some weird and emotionally immature shit he said when he was 18 is just NOT NORMAL OR RATIONAL OR PROPORTIONATE in the context of what actually went on. Can't you see that?

You say you were ill and very emotionally fragile at the time, well it's possible that he might say he was emotionally fragile at the time, too. First year away from home, lots of social and academic pressure, learning to live in harmony alongside people who are not your immediate family, having sexual relationships maybe for the first time and learning to manage your intense emotions and insecurities in relation to that…it's a tough learning curve for lots of young people. Sometimes they fuck up. I'm not excusing or defending him, just asking you to get some perspective on it, now, as a fully fledged grown up.

My best friend's DD is going through something similar now, at uni. In a fit of drunken anger/jealousy she hit her boyfriend so he dumped her and will not have her back. This was months ago but she's still absolutely broken hearted and very bitter that he won't give her a second chance. She's struggling to keep it together and concentrate on her work, feeling extremely lonely and socially isolated and I am sure that comes across in an awful atmosphere as they share accommodation too. She did a stupid immature thing, she acknowledges she was wrong, she's living with the consequences, she's not a wicked person or necessarily a lifelong abuser in the making, she's just an emotionally immature kid who screwed up.

If he pitched up in her life in 15 years time when she was a more mature, non-abusive, happily married woman with a family and started slurring her all around the town and sending her messages to keep away from him when she wasn't even aware of his nearby presence in the first place I think my sympathies might lie more with her than with him.

It's that in the great scheme of 'abusive relationships' he wasn't that abusive, he wasn't sexually or physically abusive, it wasn't for that long, you weren't forced into it, you made no attempts to get away from it, nor did you even recognise it as abuse at the time,

WTF?!?!?! Not THAT abusive?? Oh, I'm sorry, are we COMPARING abuse now?

THIS kind of nonsense is one of the reasons that so many women stay in emotionally abusive relationships. They see other women getting the shit beat out of them, and people are saying "oh, you're not getting hit - he hasn't forced you - it can't be that bad as you've not left - if it was abuse, you'd know it at the time!"

FFS! This is AWFUL! Educate yourself on domestic abuse please, so you aren't spreading this ridiculous nonsense to others and perpetuating the problem of abuse being normalised. There is NO comparison measure here. Abuse is ABUSE. There is no "not THAT abusive" at all. It either is abusive or it is not.

Yes we are comparing abuse. I once had my lovely, decent husband of 20 years call me a 'fucking witch' in an argument. I also once had my emotionally unstable ex-husband who sometimes got his kicks from terrifying me witless, hold a very large, very sharp hunting knife to my throat and threaten to kill me.

I am perfectly happy to call them both incidences of 'abuse' and I am also perfectly capable of comparing and contrasting them and knowing which one was the bigger, more serious threat.

The OP is quite happy to compare abuse as well and she thinks her experiences of being repeatedly verbally harangued by this boy are on a par with being raped, in terms of the damage she feels has been done.

I think some perspective is needed.

It doesn't MATTER which is the more serious threat. I cannot believe you feel "your abuse trumps hers" and therefore she is in the wrong.

You are utterly in the wrong here in that regard.

Yes, I do think the OP would benefit from counselling to aid her in moving past this experience and gaining some perspective.

However, the situation she described was clearly domestic abuse, and it is disingenuous at best to waffle on about whether or not it was long enough or serious enough for you to agree it was abuse... or indeed "abusive enough" to suit you. Unbelievable.

Well with respect Alice I totally disagree. It's not about whose abuse trumps whose; each person can only react to what they have experienced so my experiences are worthless as a unit of measure to anyone else, I realise that, which is why I didn't mention it earlier.

But if you are going to ask me whether it's right to consider some 'abuse' more serious than others, then yes, I think it is, and I gave you an obvious example of that. Especially when it is becoming such a ubiquitous term that is bandied around by some people to describe any damn thing they want it to mean when there is even relatively low level conflict in a relationship. I think it's in danger of becoming a meaningless diagnosis that detracts from the seriously fucked up stuff many people live with, and in fear of.

I don't expect anyone else to dismiss their own experiences on account of them possibly being less scary than mine. That's not the point. It's about whether her reaction now to what she experienced then is rational or proportionate and I really don't think it is.

I don't think he'll recognise you. And tbh if he was a twat to you for two months while at uni, then you split up, maybe it's time for you to forget it too.

I would think long and hard before bad mouthing him. He's an adult now with a wife and child.

Let's be clear. Low level abuse is still abuse. And saying anything else is wrong. Perhaps if people were less sneeringly shitty about it and recognised that even "low level conflict in a relationship" can still be abuse, then more women would feel empowered to leave the relationship prior to it reaching the "knife to the throat" point.

Yes low level abuse is abuse. but let me be clear - it's less serious and less damaging than high level abuse.

And if we all waled out of our relationships at the first hint of any low level conflict there would be no long term relationships ever.

walked

He's an adult now with a wife and child.

I don't get your point.

My best friend's DD is going through something similar now, at uni. In a fit of drunken anger/jealousy she hit her boyfriend so he dumped her and will not have her back. This was months ago but she's still absolutely broken hearted and very bitter that he won't give her a second chance. She's struggling to keep it together and concentrate on her work, feeling extremely lonely and socially isolated and I am sure that comes across in an awful atmosphere as they share accommodation too. She did a stupid immature thing, she acknowledges she was wrong, she's living with the consequences, she's not a wicked person or necessarily a lifelong abuser in the making, she's just an emotionally immature kid who screwed up.

If your bf posted that her DD had been hit by her boyfriend in a fit of drunken anger/ jealousy, what do you imagine the responses would be? I'll guarantee a chorus of "Don't take him back. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them the first time" and the like. She's learnt a serious lesson about her behaviour. I certainly wouldn't want one of my sons giving her a second chance.

Tbh in relating that anecdote you come across as an abuse apologist. Good for him.

I am honestly beginning to wonder whether some of his friends are on here and are trying to defend him

Drama triangle again.

Fire I don't disagree with you in the slightest and I would be the first person to say that regardless of whether she was male or female. She is reaping the results of her inability to control her anger and hopefully she will to learn from it.

But I think it would be rather unreasonable of him, on the basis of that one isolated incident when she was very young, to be contacting her out of the blue 15 YEARS LATER to inform her that he is going to be telling not only his own friends and family that she is a violent, abusive person, but also telling everyone possible that she might know in their hometown just to 'bring them up to speed.'

Don't you?

Don'tdrinkandfacebook, that's a very good post. I totally agree with you.

Firstly, I was addressing your post. Hopefully bf's DD will get over her "bitterness" and look at her own behaviour. It might be the most important thing she learns at uni.
Secondly, OP is not referring to one isolated incident.

OP, perhaps this is a good time to address this issue through counselling, if that's possible for you. I wish you well.

Oh ffs people.

I also think in the OP's particular case its not just her feelings that need to be considered, but what of those of another innocent party in all this - the ex's child? Imagine him/her growing up in a small village with their daddy being gossiped and bad mouthed for something that happened 15 years ago? It doesn't make what the ex did right, but say he's moved on and is genuinely a good husband and father now then why punish the man's family? If he's still an abusive idiot then people will no doubt find that out for themselves soon enough.

Snoozy despite the wide range of opinions on this situation I can't remember one person supporting the OP's pre-emptive strike in terms of talking about her ex.

yes I know you were addressing my post Firecrest and I am saying that I agree with you. Obviously not about where you called me a Abuse Apologist, but about everything else.

DontDrinkandFacebook has said it exactly how I see it.

I agree with SGB too. People will think you're being melodramatic if you try to prime them in advance to see this man as a monster.

No-one is denying that you felt abused. It's just that what you describe is at the very milder end of the scale. That's not to say, of course that abuse is a competition.

You say counselling want much good. I wonder have you tried CBT. You say you 'can't' disguise when you feel upset. You can, it's something you can learn. Not just to disguise it, to discover your core beliefs and why they make you feel and act as you do. Not all the core beliefs we have are right or helpful to us. When you understand that, your behaviour will change. You won't care about some gobshites from years ago. He's irrelevant.

That would be a much better and more powerful feeling than quaking and feeling aggrieved over it.