Support for those in emotionally abusive relationships - thread 31

[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 think everyone deals with the stress of it differently, Silent. I've never had panic attacks, although I know others on this thread before have had. But when I was with my ex I was in a state of anxiety at all times, I was never relaxed and permanently anxious. When I left my hair fell out in two patches on my forehead, which have never grown back.

Do you have panic attacks? I know there was some excellent advice from a previous poster in an older thread about helping with them, I'll look it up if you want.

Another weekend gone. My stupid 'surrendered wife' game backfired in that it felt so normal, so usual, H was in his element. He never thinks of me, although he says he thinks of me all the time, but he only thinks of what I can do for him. Its demented thinking.

my head is going in circles ... so i have to just write this down to see how it looks...

The FW ex hounds me round the house, and breaks something precious, shouting absolute nonsense at me and bright red and looking very out of control. I run out of the house and hide in the front garden hoping he will stop because i'm scared that yet again the DC will wake scared and crying.

After i go back in (hiding out in garden about 2 hrs - well listen to make sure its all gone quiet then nip to curry house to grab a take away which i sit hidden in the garden eating). I go in and go to bed and spend yet another night trying not to cry silent tears rolling down my face clinging to the edge of the bed to be as far away from him as possible

then try to stay completely out of his way for days. Whilst he's buys flowers and some expensive gadgetry as 'this deserves something significant', and promises to go to anger management. Tells me he's found someone and had his free introductory session (i think not anger management but counselling perhaps), and that hes started 'whats likely to be a series of painful looks in the mirror'... some few weeks later this has turned into 'the counsellor wants to see you as he says he's only getting half the story and thinks my life with you is like an out of control vehicle and you are a fucking controlling bitch' - oh... any anger management issues? no, just me, all my fault and he's gonna drag me to a counsellor to prove it. Righty ho!

I cannot deal with this shit. Did his counsellor really think this??? (minus the expletives he librally pepppered throughout) - is that what they all think of me?

Then he just didn't go any more as far as i know.

ARe you still on target with your plan Thats are the papers that will free you close by? ready for despatch or are you rethinking?

I dunno, I leave the site for a few days and I miss all this thread .

thats, sounds very familiar. I too tried the surrendered wife role and had the same reaction from FW. Thats what they want remember.

Fi theres no way any counsellor worth their salt would say such a thing. Hes either lying or twisting their words considerably. It speaks volumes that you'd even think that they may be right. Really hope you're ok .

Things are moving quickly here. House has sold, I have a few weeks to find somewhere to live and its looking bleak. FW is doing whatever he can to make my life difficult for me and DC and good for him. It hurts that he doesnt care about dc having a comfortable home to share with me. He's just so focused on screwing me over. i'm finding it all so hard and stressed to the point of exhaustion all the time.

hello nini this all sounds horribly familiar and exhausting ... but does this mean that the end might finally be in sight for you and DC now?

would a counsellor ever request that another party even join in someone's 'anger management sessions,turned counselling sessions'? I did think they were supposed to be for the one who requested the counselling and therefore only for them and would be wrong to have another onboard because that counsellor would have conflict of interest, but maybe thats not so... just going round and round... Have i been sold a complete load of bollocks lie. How will i ever have any answers to any of this?

Yes it is Fi. In a month we'll be free (mostly). I can't wait, but right now I'm just worried about finding a place to live.

The only time I've ever read about a counsellor suggesting another party join in 'anger management/counselling' sessions is here on the Relationships board. And every time I've seen it, it's always been said by a FW to his suffering partner/wife. So I've never believed it. I think it's all part of the 'its not me, its you' mantra that these FWs are so fond of. Liars, one and all.

You might not get all the answers, but over time I think a few things become clear. Maybe the further away you get from him and 'the fog' they spread, the more answers you'll figure out?

Great news "Nini*!

The new place will be wonderful! It won't have a FW in it!

Fi :(

Yes indeed it will AF. It'll be pure bliss, and an age in coming.

Hold on in there nini. You can do this, even if you leave with nothing it's still a victory for you because you are leaving.

fi that sounds so stressful. I agree - either he lied, twisted the counsellor's words or willfully misinterpreted them. My nice ex (DS1's dad) had has a drinking problem and he got done for being 2.5 times over the limit when DS was 3months old and banned from driving for nearly 3 years. He went to drink-related counselling, but told me after some months of it that the counsellor said his drinking was fine, and that a lot of the issue lay with me. I didn't believe a word of it but it did sow a seed of doubt and after that I worried that I was unwittingly the issue. I soooooo wasn't - ex still has significant drink problems, and we've been split up for nearly 8 years!

Fi, I think we can take it as read that FW thought you were the problem. So, in the first place, we don't care what the counsellor thought of you as he doesn't have a clue about you.

But given that I still don't believe any counselor would say such a thing, let's summer for a moment that FW wasn't out and out lying. In that case, the most likely thing is that the counsellor said, "What do you think Fi thinks?" Or "how does she feel about things?" Or "I think you're only considering this from your perspective: try to see it from Fi's point of view." Because any one of those would sound to a FW mind like, "nothing's your fault, let's blame your partner for everything!"

All part of their entitlement and delusions. Not in the least to be worried about. Find a counsellor you can talk to, and see what they think of you. (Spoiler alert: it won't be what FW said!)

nini, hold on in there. Not long now. You are preparing the way for a better life for your DC and for you and it will all be worth it.

Summer?! Assume...

ninireally pleased you've come so far. When your life is back in your own hands, I'm sure that housing will sort out. So close!

pony when you write it down it is clearly his fault, isn't it? But I too know those seeds of doubt.

I had a situation recently where H sadly stood on and broke his glasses, I was of course genuinely sorry it had happened, I'd been standing nearby and saw it happen but couldn't stop it. I did, lightheartedly, ask him afterwards why his glasses had been on the ground...he pondered for a minute then said I must have knocked them off the table earlier. Wtf? No way. But he'd spent time and brain power immediately reconstructing events to make it my fault. I'm fed up! But I told him I wanted divorce, he said he'd crash the car into a wall so I dropped e subject. Papers still tucked away, not dealt with. It's all my fault.

thats not your "surrendered wife" experiment was not a failure, it yielded plenty of insight, that's because you managed some detachment while you were doing it.

It was my Ex's default that everything was my fault/any fact or opinion I offered was wrong! So I understand your analysis of the glasses thing. But in my further analysis, there was no such thing as a light-hearted way to ask why they were on the floor - this will always sound like blaming to an abuser (and, tbf, to some who are not abusers). By the end, all Ex and I could do without it leading to argument, was very basic communication of facts.

(in new house, on-line at last, stuff still mostly in boxes (and cash in the bank, hooray for down-sizing from marital home which I kept in settlement )

Silvery I'm glad the house move went well - and you still have cash in the bank, hoorah!

My lovely stbxh has finally been in touch again. It appears that Tuesdays are the day of the week he calls the DC. Just one call a week for his 7, 5 and 2 year old children, and even that is during the car journey to work/school.

He asked to have the DC next weekend over the Bank Holiday. I said yes for 1.5 days of it. He asked me if I would also like to join them for the weekend (??!). I said no, he said why, I said No reason, I just don't want to. It was easier than saying 'because you are a lying abusive arse'.

So I'm sure he will now be telling everyone how he is trying hard to fix us and I'm not co-operating.

It made me wobble (again) and think I should be trying harder etc, till I stopped and thought about it and realised this is all part of his abuse. To be unreasonable and horrible to me, violent, and then pretend all is well so I am left questioning whether these things really did happen.

The thought of getting back together with him and living with him made me shudder, and the tiny hope of living alone with the DC, without him there to criticise and belittle us felt so good. I hope he just goes away.

"I said no, he said why, I said No reason, I just don't want to."

Perfect reply.

No-one really understood in RL (some almost did, and let me rant!!) - only people on here know what it's like. Hold on to your truth. I found I just had to let go of caring whether anyone else knew.

*whether anyone else knew = what anyone else thought

i wasn't 'allowed' to just say 'no', or 'its my opinion' that was tantamount to expressing the desire to go toe to toe with him . I realise how many triggers there were to his abuses.

I have told my DC tonight of a couple of things, and thats something i've not done before because i have wanted to 'protect' them from who he really is, and perhaps i might be done with that now?.. possibly?

I really hope sooooo...

lovely to hear your satisfactions Silvery great the way things have worked out.

I wish i had seen that many years ago Pony - i wish i'd been here many years ago too [boo] perhaps before i got to the point of his view being my view

absolutely same as silvery - letting go of what others thought about situation, but that one gave me many deep disappointments and lead to even more distrusts and senses of betrayal... like what is the point of friends even if they lie to court! or turns out they have been lying to me and trying to catch me out/trip me up/know better than me whats been going on... oh and [especially in the light of what i recently revealed on here recently] apparently 'he's not abusive' ...okaaaay

name that is classic entitlement - he feels entitled to have you explain your thoughts and actions and decisions to him. Imagine if you a friend questioned you like that if you said you couldn't make a particular outing - they'd just say 'ooooh that's a shame' or something like that. Well done for not explaining yourself. That's a difficult one to get past. Fi like you I wasn't allowed to say no, I remember after we'd split (but I was still trying with him) he told me he wanted me to go to his sister's wedding with him. I said no - and held my breath. He wasn't pleased. But somehow couldn't make me change it. He said he wanted to take my son (his stepson). I said no. He called me selfish. I said yes, I agree, and wouldn't recant. It felt amazing!

Hurrah for being sorted in your new place Silvery!

Fi maybe that is a good thing for your DCs to hear. Hope you are doing ok.

pony - that is classic entitlement - he feels entitled to have you explain your thoughts and actions and decisions to him.

I have never thought of it that way, but you are right. I had to explain/justify everything. Nobody else has ever spoken to me like that, they respect that I have my own views.

i wasn't 'allowed' to just say 'no', or 'its my opinion' that was tantamount to expressing the desire to go toe to toe with him

Yes, this is exactly the same for me, I have never been allowed to say no. Today was the first time I felt I didn't have to explain or justify myself to him. I could never say no without damn good reason.

It's so enlightening having these behaviours pointed out to me. For years I just accepted this as 'how he is', instead of finding it unacceptable.

fairy fi - i wish i'd been here many years ago too [boo] perhaps before i got to the point of his view being my view

You are here now, you are heading in the right direction!

Name thank you.. yes.. i am anxious not to waste life and do feel lots of it has been and wishing i had exposure to this whole other side of life that i could be getting me some of a loooong time ago..but absolutely i'm doing it now and definitely have loads of making up to do, and cathing up!

step wth caution tho over standing up to him more, as Pony and I were saying it would traditionally lead to escalation of abuse, this could be very dangerous? you not being under his control /in fear of speaking/standing your ground, will drive straight at the heart of his entitlements and power meaning he will have to up the ante to regain it?

its shocking for DC Pony and thank you, feeling wobbly i have to say and extremely tired from poor nights. Getting through this though will give me back my strength and DCs too! when they realise who he is, which i always tried to stop them experiencing/realising, and its wrong. Don't get me wrong, I certainly wouldn't ever just name call or rubbish him to them that would be cruel. Just simple facts which would be leaving them open to not developing some self-protections around if they do not know.. if that makes sense!

It absolutely makes sense. It's perfectly possible to give simple facts and phrase it in a way without badmouthing.

I've had problems with so-called friends too Fi, finding its a very lonely place sometimes.

I'm stressing so much about finding a house (less than a month to go and nothing on the table) that I'm not sleeping very well at all. I'm exhausted even as I get up which doesn't help at home or at work. If I can just do this last push...