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!!

Hope you're OK today, thats, and he's still at the other house. Did you call the police?

Evening everyone xxx hope you're okay that's I just read back . Xx really nervous as fw due back from sport any time now and sport = drink.

How did it go last night beezle? Hope it was uneventful, I know that feeling of anxiety when they are due home and you just want to pretend to be asleep.

thats you ok?

Hi...not going too well. I came out to the other house because his texts and phone calls (in the 100's, I didn't respond) got really dark. Been here before. Suicide threats, of course (yawn, sorry!) but was threatening to come back to the house plus he'd manipulatively arranged some things with friends for Sunday (today) so I've ended up here. Totally sucks. Plus, he didn't even read the solicitors letter past the first sentence then decided he wasn't interested...so he didn't even read the reasons, the carefully crafted letter (yet, that is). So got all that to come. Still!

Been overspending this week, as I'd been feeling rich because I didn't rent another flat. But now I'm wondering if I do need to move out. Work contract might end 20 may, I could stop working and disappear. Not what I want but might be an option.

H's main points of conversation (constantly criticising me all day) were that he believes in family (wtf?) and that my mother was always did what my dad wanted (not really true but he moved jobs/cities a couple of times, the whole family went) so therefore I should be happy to let him take the lead in deciding where to live. That burns a bit because I have issues with my mother (she is emotionally/verbally abusive) and H knows this and freely supported my ranting against her over the years, also he totally makes fun of her taste in decorating/furnishings so I furiously reminded him that my mother always had free rein to choose and decorate any house we lived in and was that what he was offering? I have never been able to choose, H thinks he has such good taste. Anyway, I've been 'engaging' when I totally shouldn't. Feel like I'll need to start again tomorrow from square 1. Aargh!

The usual advice is to respond to suicide threats by contacting 101, the police usually go round to check up.

We've probably all engaged when we shouldn't have done - but you are not back at square 1, because you can learn from this.

What a FW. Sending strength.

Thank you silvery! I have to remember that at least he now knows that I'm serious and capable of seeing a solicitor. So, progress.

He's been emailing me a list of how lucky I am that I have as much 'wealth' and freedom as I do, that I should be grateful and millions of women would love to be in my position, it does make me wonder if I should just try to turn things around and make the best of it... I know it's not viable but perhaps I need to go through the scenario.

I think.. square 1, being back to your house and lock him out again, and ignore the phone and yes, absolutely report him for any further suicide threats and keep the texts as the worst kind of emotional and pyschological blackmail. Keep your DC away from him whilst he is 'dark' texting. What woman would love to be in your position??? [sigh] how deluded he is, in such a place that you are divorcing him, a very enviable position indeed NOT!

Yet more reasons to run for the hills! take care

BTW if he doesn't respond within a given time frame the divorce can go ahead without his response!! thats freedom! so just sit tight thats hunker down and ignore ignore ignore. Don't be drawn into his plans no matter what they are. No friends of anyone's would expect you to be dancing attendance with him when the ink is still wet on the divorce papers.

I don't know how long it is, but you'll be able to look it up on webs... or your solicitor if they're any good will be telling you this too.

fi's advice is spot on, thats. You need space from him. You absolutely do not need to give him one more chance as this will just get harder each time. Go back to your house and lock the door. If he turns up and won't go away, call the police.

And then put all his messages, unopened into a folder to look at some other time. Read them once a day at the absolute max. None of what he wants to say could possibly be urgent. You could probably let them pile up for a month while you remind yourself what your head feels like without that invader in it and try to start thinking your own thoughts.

for strength.

He hasn't acknowledged the paperwork so the 21 days cant start yet. I've got no idea what I should be doing. I keep wondering if I need a new solicitor but I don't want an antagonist, so the drip-drip preferable. H is working this week so back at the house. Perhaps not talking, then letting solicitor have papers served is best approach.

Doesn't it help that you saw him take the papers? My sol said I should let her know is he mentioned the papers in any way as it was evidence he'd received them. Have you checked?

Ifyou personally handed over the papers thats then he's 'served'. Its unusul and not recommended, but you are still cohabiting ish. Once served he can ignore all he likes, too bad.

Ignore at his peril. No its not up to you to chase him, you are nothing to do with him now and his actions are his owned entirely.

I also wonder if you need a new solicitor, he clearly doesn't need to mention the papers in order to evidence he received them when it was you that handed them to him? and you watched him read the first bit and then tell you that he wasn't going to deal with them... well thats his clear choice, but it doesn't stop the divorce.

Please make sure you lock him out, he's not homeless, and you need to keep yourself safe. The property situation can be resolved along withthe divorce, and he might suddenly decide to take notice once he realises he doesn't have you dancing to his tune. Keep up the self-defence

Interesting, thanks Fi and Charlotte. He opened the envelope, according to him he only read the first sentence before screwing it up and throwing it on the floor. I didn't see him do this but came back to the house 10 minutes later...my solicitor seemed to think that he should sign and return something but I couldn't actually see any page in the packet that needed returning and when I asked solcitior he didn't actually answer my question (all this done via email).

I'm wondering if I need a more proactive solicitor!

He's said wait until the end of the week, I straightened the papers but haven't given them to him. He seems to have spent last night at the other house.

Hi Thats, that's amazing progress well done for serving the papers!

That's the scariest bit done. You can focus on the long-term goal of getting through this now.

Have you managed to move away? Perhaps spend a few days at your weekend home?

Thank you namechanger, it feels like a big step for me as well, however I need to keep up (or create at this point) the momentum.

He doesn't seem to accept that I want a divorce but at the same time he spent ages pointing out to me how awful I was in so many other ways, I have had long emails detailing how I contrive to ruin everything (because I 'hate' everything...he sent me a long list of things he claims I hate including strangely car boot sales, ducks, and walking on towpaths WFT??) and I have said to him that his litany of my transgressions just proves that we shouldn't be together and would he prefer to divorce me. Nothing specifically threatening, I've really been on the lookout for hints of impending violence but all I've had were the usual (done it many times before) suicide threats, not detailed ones just very general 'I'll top myself'.

Last night he didn't reply to my texts asking if he needed the car (complicated situation re two locations, he must have taken the train) and I also responded to a text in which he asked me to buy his dad a birthday present (I did, didn't want to antagonise) and again no response. But a strange email from him later in the evening, half vulgar half pleading... does he really think I want to know that he 'fancies' me at this point? Like I would be flattered?? And he's not taken on board anything I have said. I've told him that there is a counsellor available who would talk to him (this is a very famous one who deals with abusive men who I had a session with) but he has not asked for his name or contact details so that options's out the window.

He insists that I am 'mad' and that I 'need pills'. I'm past the point of boredom with this statement. He found an article about low thyroid issues in women and decided that I had that problem, I do have slightly low but not enough for treatment. Before it was thyroid, it was HRT and before that it was that I had Autism (he read articles about all of these things in the Daily Mail). He knows I'm going to be retested for the thyroid issues at some point and I've not denied this. So he might be still holding out hope that some pills would 'fix' me. I know 100% that even if I need pills for any random reason it won't make any difference to our problems.

So, what next? I know I need to detatch, again, not respond, and figure out what's going on with the divorce process. But it's so nice having this lull, where I am in one place and he's in another. Fabulous evening and morning just going about my business, my life could be utterly charmed without him in it but when he goes so will the financial security. It would be nicer if I knew that he couldn't come back into the house but without an occupation order I can't keep him out so that's why I would rather keep things 'nice' rather than slamming the shutters down, so to speak.

Please ignore his communications thats... you know that you will be wrong in all of them, and even now when i read the FW's writing it still messes with my head; everything you say and do is wrong [in his world] accepting that and knowing there will be more of the same to come somehow depersonalised it a lot for me, knowing that he will call me names to others was so painful until i thought that one through.

You will not gather momentum if you talk to him, this gives him power, and he will twist and turn your words against you until you don't know which way is up or down or anything at all!

Please don't consider his ridiculous ramblings. yes, like you say, just detach...this process is not dependent upon him detaching and signing, or half the divorces would never get done.

I would stick with the utterly charmed as that just sounds wonderful Thats - if thats your alternative option jump with both feet into that

thats I have gone and done the same mad thing as you and started engaging with FW again. My SHL suggested that it would be good to give H a little heads up about the divorce papers coming his way, so I did.

H is now bangin on about how much he loves me and his anger/actions/control have all proved how much he wants to be with me. Which I am sure he does, just not in the context of a loving and supportive relationship.

It's confused me yet again, and makes me hesitant to go ahead to the next step, but I have no idea why I feel this way when he has been so unfair and unloving over the entire course of our marriage.

I know I loved him so desperately, and wanted so much to make it work, and now I guess there is nothing left to do but to let go - along with all the hopes for a rosy future and and the financial security that kept us all going for so long.

Hopefully I am doing the right thing, I'll man up and insist on the divorce this week.

well done you too name !!! gosh everyone is at it - its hard to not keep reflecting back, just remember what got you the point of issuing divorce papers, the place you were at in order to get to acting to end the abuses finally.

Big brave steps, and done for very good reason. You have both done the best things to protect you from further abuse.

Thanks fairy - although I wasn't quite as brave as thats - I didn't tell him papers were on their way explicitly - I said I wanted to end the marriage. He then sent me 20-or so messages, saying how we loved each other, and he is surprised that I haven't seen that, etc. In the end I just stopped responding to his messages, and I will just go ahead and serve the papers.

You are right in that I have to remember what got me to this position - I keep thinking back to lovely things when we first met, and our shared history - having met and dated him aged 18, marrying against our families wishes at 31, and now divorcing him at 40. It's sad, he has been a very big part of my life and I loved him deeply. But I do love my kids more, and I need to do this for them if nothing else.

I'm taking this evening off and will check the papers and have the SHL serve them this week, so it's over and done with. I have the rest of my life to get back together with him if this does turn out to be a big mistake.

Name I struggled in the same way - I loved him, and held on to the fantasy of 'it could be so good, it's all so close' for a long time, and I couldn't let it go. It was hard, letting it go - but to be honest, he (for all his impassioned pleas) seemed to let it go much easier, and within weeks of me saying it was all finally over he had a new girlfriend. Although six months later (while our house was selling) he felt so much for her that he texting me that he still loved me. (Ignored that and every other 'I still love you' text that he sent. They were never repeated during the day, ie while sober.)

You are doing the right thing for you and the kids name. Sad that it's come to this, but it's not your doing. (and in six months' time you'll be glad you are free of him))

Hi pony yes it is the feeling of it being so close to perfect but not quite there that is the killer. It's the nearly promised happiness that has kept me hanging on for so long.

I can't imagine him getting a girlfriend - and if he did it would break my heart - but he has never been without a wife/gf so we shall see if one appears. It would be terrible for the children if so, so I do hope he leaves that particular torture for another time.

I do have ridiculous sadness about not having a partner to go on holidays with, but the reality was that he didn't like going with me and the DDs because they are young and are still hard work and so he found it boring. Later on he claimed it wasn't the kids who were boring, more than he was annoyed that I never wanted to have sex when we were sharing a room with our three DDs .

So the holiday thing is realistically a non-problem as he was never interested in these anyway, so I have no idea why I am worrying about something so irrelevant.

If the divorce is all done and dusted within 6 months I will be the happiest woman on the planet!

Name please keep up your anger (he attacked you in front of your DCs!) and your momentum, if you don't know my backstory I've been posting here for 2+years now, at the start of that time he was totally (emotionally and verbally) abusive 'because I didn't have a job' then I got a job and he got much worse, I reported him on 101 because he was threatening me and he spent a night in a police cell and received a caution as a result...that was the first time I'd spoken to a solicitor (January 2014) so it's been ages coming and I keep smoothing things over as I have done for 20+ years.

And I still can't get it into my head that he's an abusive man who isn't going to change and the only way to fix the situation is to leave! Neither of my DCs really like him. Because he just isn't that nice. I've always pointed out his 'good points' to them (ambitious, driven, good at what he does as a professional) because I don't want them to feel tainted but they both seem to want to see him clear off and live in his beloved other house so we can relax.

So what I wanted to say is- don't waste time trying to fix him if he doesn't want to be fixed. I've scrabbled along carving out a 'part time' life for myself but being forced to attend to his needs every evening and weekend when we're together, I accepted this while the kids were young (they are both young adults now) and it set a ridiculous precedent, if I'd challenged him on it earlier I don't think it would have changed him, quite the reverse, I think he would have become more abusive and perhaps violent (like yours did). So I've had years of smoothing things over and keeping the peace when I could have been building myself up. What is sad is that he won't see that me having work, bringing money in, HELPS us. It's not me being abusive to him or challenging him.

In my case, I really have no loving feelings towards H. I haven't for a very long time, the only emotion I feel for him is very strong waves of pity quite often. I do respect him as a professional and I'd wish him well for the future. But he said something to me the other day, that if I divorced him 'he would easily find another bird, probably someone who has a kid already'. I felt a chill...and suddenly felt I should take him for everything I can despite me saying I'm not vindictive just because if we do divorce he will probably not contribute financially to our DCs, not that they should expect it, but I always automatically assume they'll be my only 'inheritors' so to speak and that I'd be there for them if they needed anything. H is honestly so selfish that unbelievable as it sounds I think he might cut them off. His parents did that to his sister for dating an unsuitable man...and it really sort of ruined her life (didn't pay parental contribution to the grant, back in those days, she couldn't get loan and had to drop out of uni. She'd been a straight A student at A level, now in her 50s and never had a real career).

Whew. Sorry for the long essay!

Ok. And more! Without trying to be too Pollyanna-ish about it, don't we try to see the best in people? Pony I too have been living in that rose-tinted world, it seems selfish to try to say that it's not good enough.

I'm going to call my solicitor today and ask him how to speed this up. I'm giddy with excitement right now because I've just done some calculations and am thinking of proposing to buy H out of the house. Even as I write that it looks unrealistic! But there may be a deal to be done.

Definitely a Pollyanna here thats - i dunno pollyanna/blind/rose-tinted/stupid? alll of those, and definitely uneducated about whats acceptable in marriage, and whats definitely not!

Sorry for all that you've suffered...onward and upwards for you now though, and looking forward to hear the outcome. Would be so great if you could buy him out!

Here court looms again FFS!

Definitely a Pollyanna here thats - i dunno pollyanna/blind/rose-tinted/stupid? alll of those, and definitely uneducated about whats acceptable in marriage, and whats definitely not!

Fairyfi, you are none of those things. I think like all of us, it's far easier to give others advise then it is do actually follow through with it ourselves.

But the support coming from people who know exactly what this feels like is invaluable. Don't sell yourself short.