Going back to an abusive relationship

[purplepavements]

Hi
I have namechanged as I wanted to hear advice and maybe experiences without people having the info from my previous thread.
I am seriously considering going back to my ex. I feel like it's safer and easier to be back with him. He never hurt my dd and she's the only one I really care about. Has anyone had any good experience of going back because since leaving him I just feel shitter than ever.
Tia

I'm still here, trying to understand at the minute and finding it all difficult. I don't get any of it . Thank all for your messages. I don't know how I can be helped and I don't know what else to do.

OP, you deserve so much better than this. I am sure that your daughter loved you more than anything, she would not want you to be hurt.

You need support to get through this, but your violent ex is not the person to provide this support. There are many other people who will gladly help you get through this.

The point made up thread about your ex being nice to stop you giving evidence against him is a very good one OP.

Today is a new day. The sun is shining. Get dressed and walk up to your doctors and tell them how desperate you are feeling and that you are not coping and can't trust yourself at the moment. I am sure they will fit you in today. Please get the help you need.

Then call this number for Women's Aid: 0808 2000 247

This is the link to the survivors' forum. At the moment you are a survivor, don't do anything that makes you a victim again.

Then google women's aid to get into their website. I'm sorry but I can't get the link to work.

Why are you all being nice to me

Purple - I wondered about you after you left your last couple of threads. Now I fear for you, grieve for you in the midst of so much pain and self-destruction.

Everyone has made some very good points here with references to available help. If you could follow BeaufortBelle's advice, you might find some relief from this relentless road.

Your view of things is off-kilter, Purple. You think abuse is normal behaviour and that you deserve it. You think everyone else is right and you are wrong. Which is why everyone always punishes tortures and uses you. This is wrong-thinking on your part. Abuse has wrecked your mind's wiring. You can't believe we're all being nice because that makes us what /// wrong too? Like you see yourself?

You are an abuse survivor but you're trying to crawl back into what you know best - punishment, pain and devastation. Please please please seek help.

you deserve nice - you haven't done anything wrong. he is the enemy here not you.

You sound like a loving mother who has lost her daughter and is vulnerable and being preyed on by a horrid man. You have had an awful tragedy. Why wouldn't we be nice to you?

We are being nice to you because it's human instinct to have care and compassion for others. Your pain touches us deeply. You have unfortunately gotten used to being around people who hurt you and have no compassion, and now you think that's the norm and that's what you deserve.

But it's not. You deserve caring and kindness. From others, and from yourself.

Please be kind to yourself today. Have a treat, speak to your GP about your feelings of hopelessness, see what kind of groups meet in your town that you might find interesting to join... Do a little something nice for yourself every day, and soon that will become your norm, and you will only accept people in your life who also treat you with kindness.

Because not one thing you have said indicates that you are anything other than a good person with potentially a good and happy future ahead of you.

We all want to empower you to take the positive road to a better place. I am a mother and I would want other women and MEN to be nice to my daughter. To be kind to her. To keep her safe. To look after her and to help her. Today is her 17th birthday. She was born 51 weeks after my baby son died so I do know something of the grief you are going through. But my life got better after that grief and she is the living result of how a life can be better. I couldn't save my son but I can channel all the love and all the goodness he should have had into another person. I could not have done that if my partner had been anything other than loving and kind and good.

If you were my daughter I would be driving to collect you right now and bringing you back to safety and peace and nurture. I am sorry you don't have a mother who can do that for you but you can contact agencies who will stand in her place whilst you recover and who will help you to get back onto a safe and positive path for the rest of your life. I suspect you aren't very much older than my own children. My heart is breaking for you.

Please, Sienna please reach out and get the help you need to keep out of this man's path.

The gp said my appointment is on Friday. And I can't have one today. I don't think I deserve your kindness.

Everyone deserves kindness, purplepavements. (Unless they spend their time beating up their partners and cheating on them - people like that should never, never be in relationships.)

I have to go to work today and it's making me nervous too

Oh, well done on contacting your GP! Good for you.

The GP's receptionist clearly didn't understand that you're an emergency.

I would call your local mental health crisis team (google for your area).

Tell them you've been in touch with the Samaritans and you're in such distress that you're considering going back to your abusive ex, who is on bail for beating you up.

I understand how difficult everything feels for you right now, but going back to him will make everything 100 times worse.

purple so sorry for your loss. You are getting some good advice here and some lovely people are helping you.

I agree that you should contact your GP again and stress that it is an emergency. They must be able to see you quicker than Friday. All GP's usually have emergency appointments that are released on the day.

Once you start to get some help and maybe some medication, then hopefully you can clear your thoughts and realise that going back to him would not be best for you even if it feels like all you have at the moment.

Thrilled that you have been in touch with your GP. Tell them what you have told us and I'm sure they will bring forward your appointment.

Am sure work will be fine. Hopefully it will take your mind off things. Is it work you enjoy with nice people?

You deserve all of our kindness. You deserve it because you are worth it. You are worth a happy life and finding happiness, safety and security.

Keep in touch with us on this thread please and promise us you won't contact your ex before seeing the GP
With love.

I'm here, too, Purple, holding your hand and offering You are worth it. You're entitled to help, you deserve it, and you will make it through this part to come out happier & stronger. On your own sweet feet!

It struck me upthread that you want to get back with your ex because you can't bear to be around your own thoughts.

I think you are in the pits of grief, Purple. You lost your baby. And not so long ago.

(And that is on top of having to deal with horrific abuse)

Purple, some places to start in helping yourself straight away before the doctors appointment:

1. Join a forum to discuss your grief.

Or go on the bereavement threads on here. You might be surprised how many of your feelings are the painful consequence of losing your little girl - that yes, so far have been diverted away due to the stress of being with your ex, but are still there.

1. Resolve to take it a day at a time away from your ex. Just try today to not contact him today. See how you get on. It might be easier if you change your number - could you do that? Or block him from texting you? But it is a day at a time.

1. Try and write down the thoughts you are having when you are on your own - like a diary. So much research shows just writing it down (somewhere private obviously, never to be read by anyone else) can help relieve the overwhelmed feelings you describe.

1. Keep posting on here.

You deserve so much more than abuse and rape. Period. One day you will believe that too.

Do you have family or friends you can reach out to? Has he isolated you from those who really care?

So sorry for what you're going through. But please please don't go back to the bastard.

Hi Purple
I posted on Reallys thread about why people stay in abusive relationships in AIBU. I said that for me it was mostly about feeling worthless and like no one else would ever want me - because that's how the relationship trained me to think. It also left me isolated so when I did try and leave I was so sad and lonely that I was desperate to believe the promises that things would change and I went back.

It didn't change and no matter how perfect I tried to make myself, how much I gave up - never seeing friends, wearing make up, answering back, handing over all my money, never refusing sex etc.etc. It was never enough. It never could be enough because what really mattered to my ex was that he kept showing me who was in control so there always had to be something.

I think you can identify with this? I think you know really that you'll never be perfect enough to not wind him up because really it's not about what you do - it's about keeping you in your place, keeping you off balance and upset and trying desperately to please him.

It's nice for him to have you running round trying to make everything lovely for him while he has to do practically nothing for you but the occasional pat on the head so he has no motivation to change it. He won't change it.

Please don't go back. Getting out for good is the best thing I ever did, it was really hard sometimes but it was worth it. It's 13 years ago for me now and I have a lovely DH who is kind and caring and supportive and makes me feel good about myself but the best thing is that while I love him to bits I don't need him for that - I feel good about myself, proud of my achievements and who I am and I know that if I needed to be I'd be ok on my own.

I know you're grieving and that must be so unimaginably hard so I hope that you get some support with that from the GP and from the boards here and also seek out more counselling maybe? but also do look at the freedom programme it can be really helpful with the relationship side.

I'll be thinking of you

he came to my work and now I am at homefeeling worse and worse I just want it to be okay and better

please will you tell the police - he is not meant to be contacting you! Call 101 and tell them he has contacted you several times - it has to stop.

My work called the police but I don't want to give a statement I just want to hide away

you have to give a statement. Have they arrested him again?

I am going to leave ongoing advice to lovely knowledgable posters but wanted to share my story with you.

I've been on this site for years under many names. I kept going back you see. I was lonely, I was broken, and I didn't know what normal love looked like so thought that maybe he wasn't as bad as some people on the internet had said - I mean, they didn't really know him like I did, they might have got it wrong. He got worse every time I went back. Worse. He'd be lovely at first to win me back, really lovely, and I'd think oh god, I did get it wrong. I'd go back and within weeks it'd start again. And once you've gone back it's even harder to leave a second time, or a third or a fourth, because he's watching you more closely, he's onto you and he's going to make sure you can't get away again. And of course you feel embarrassed asking for help because you have to admit you were stupid enough to go back. That despite all the advice and support you didn't listen, you went back and now it's happening again. You feel like you are wasting resources by calling the police, like you deserve the pain he inflicts on you because you were stupid enough to get yourself into this mess.

He was more abusive each time as well. His contempt for me rose every time I went back because he could see just how weak I was. He hurt me and it went crawling back anyway. I chose to go back and he saw that weakness in me and despised me for it.

I'm free now. Over a year down the line. And there won't be anymore going back. Please don't take the route to freedom that I did the route that has no guaranteed way out, and which will destroy you along the way. Now I'm stronger than I ever have been, I'm happier than I ever have been and I feel like I could take on the world. I know I could have felt like that without all the pain, if I'd just listened and stayed away. Don't make the same mistake I did. Please. Just don't do it. No one is worth so little. No one.