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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

If you stopped someone emotionally abusing you how did you do it?

95 replies

spad · 24/01/2016 13:26

Please can you tell me. I am finding it difficult to keep being strong.

OP posts:
AttilaTheMeerkat · 24/01/2016 13:52

spad

Such men also hate women, all of them with particular scorn reserved for their mother.

Do not let your children grow up thinking this is at all normal because it is not. The only acceptable level of abuse in a relationship is NONE.

ObsidianBlackbirdMcNight · 24/01/2016 13:52

You can't change someone else.
Abusive people can in some cases change themselves. It's very difficult, and it's very unusual. So don't pin your hopes on it.

spad · 24/01/2016 13:54

How do I show him he has to change?

OP posts:
ALaughAMinute · 24/01/2016 13:59

I tried for years to change him but couldn't. I am now in the process of getting divorced.

I rather foolishly waited until my children finished their A levels but if I had my time again I'd have divorced him years ago.

Your children would probably find it difficult at first but in time they would cope. In fact, it might even be better for them if you separated because they would no longer be living in a volatile household.

Life is too short and you deserve to be happy. Flowers

AttilaTheMeerkat · 24/01/2016 14:01

You do not do anything of the sort. You cannot change someone else's innate behaviours. He feels entitled to do this and thinks there is nothing wrong inherently in treating you like this.

Trying to change even one aspect of your own is difficult enough. Do not waste the next say 3-5 years of your life (and by turn your children's) waiting for him to have an epiphany because that will not happen.

Contacting Womens Aid could really help you now.

spad · 24/01/2016 14:01

i feel so scared and sad.

OP posts:
AttilaTheMeerkat · 24/01/2016 14:05

I am so very sorry you feel like that but there is help out there for you. You need to be brave and take that first, often the most hardest of steps, to do this for you and by turn your children.

0808 2000 247 is the phone number for Womens Aid.

It is not your fault he is like this, you did not make him an abusive person. He likely blames you for all his faults and failings, such men never take any responsibility for their own actions.

ObsidianBlackbirdMcNight · 24/01/2016 14:05

You can't! You just can't.

venusinscorpio · 24/01/2016 14:06

I really mean positively take control of your life back. It's not easy, but if you don't you will end up believing you are partly to blame and that the abuser has a point. I think witnessing an abusive relationship will be worse for your children than leaving.

TempusEedjit · 24/01/2016 14:08

He can't change any more than you can change yourself to feel happy at the way he treats you.

I expect in the early days pre DC your focus was all on him so his personality wasn't "tested" by real life, now that you have DC you are seeing the real him.

TempusEedjit · 24/01/2016 14:09

(Btw I am in no way implying any of this is your fault)

smallfry16 · 24/01/2016 14:10

Detached and took control over my own life. Didn't hook in to the abuse. He would kick off if I questioned his authority and blame me because I didn't say it in the right way.
Found out all financial information and got a fulltime job. Waiting for him to leave.

littleleftie · 24/01/2016 14:12

Agree with PP. You absolutely cannot change him. The man you had in the beginning was him with a mask on. If he was like he is now all the time, he would never get anyone close enough to him for him to be able to abuse.

He gets off on abusing you. If you try to pull away,he will be bewildered and nice for a bit so you fall back into line. The more you tolerate it, the more he will escalate.

spad · 24/01/2016 14:20

But how do I not tolerate it?

OP posts:
venusinscorpio · 24/01/2016 14:24

Spad, the point that it's got to, where it's making you miserable. It's more likely than not that the relationship is broken now. You won't be able to go back to how it's been in the past. Why would he treat someone he's supposed to love like that?

kittybiscuits · 24/01/2016 14:25

I left him. He's still abusive. You can't change him. You can only detach and remove yourself.

DespicableBee · 24/01/2016 14:28

Leave, then you will spend the next few years of your life looking back at the relationship and kicking yourself for staying so long

littleleftie · 24/01/2016 14:30

Sorry, I meant that everyday you stay you are tolerating it. The only option is to leave the relationship. It will hurt, but not as much as staying with him will hurt.

BertieBotts · 24/01/2016 14:31

Another one who had to leave. :(

BTW, it's often the case that it seems as though the abuse doesn't exist before children, and only starts to appear when children come along or when you become vulnerable and dependent on them in other ways.

What's actually happening a lot of the time is that their nature hasn't changed, but the relationship has. It's fairly easy to cope with a relationship which lacks support and where the expectation is that life will revolve around the needy one when you are fairly independent and self sufficient, you can take time out for yourself and when you're still in the honeymoon phase of everything revolving around them because you can't concentrate on anything else anyway.

When DC come along, everything changes. Now it does matter if the little things around the house aren't done. You are in need of support and the lack of it is crippling. You can't revolve life around your partner because you have DC to think of and they (DP) get jealous or take it personally. They complain that things have changed because, well, duh, things change when you have a child. But in a double kick in the teeth, they expect the same level of "girlfriend service" as they had before, AND they don't pull their weight with the extra work created by the children.

What was a happy relationship becomes a straining one. You struggle, they blame. You can try explaining this but it doesn't work because they literally don't seem to understand the concept that life can't revolve around them now and shouldn't have revolved around them ever. They feel like none of the extra work is their responsibility, so when they do a little bit, they feel like they have been super-partner and then are really outraged that you aren't grateful (because their little bit is nowhere near their fair share). It's weird and disconcerting especially when things worked well between you before.

BoneyBackJefferson · 24/01/2016 14:59

I told them that I wasn't going to be spoken to like that any more, they started/continued a relationship with someone else, left the house taking the contents with them.

So I divorced them (which really upset them!)

diege · 24/01/2016 15:10

This is a really useful thread. I'm at the stage when, just this last week, I've confronted dh about his EA (he's a Mr Sensitive on the EA typology I've discovered) which has been met with a range of responses from him: denial, best behaviour, then saying it's just as much me as him bits the pressure of all the kids and having no outside help. Today he wants a reassurance that I won't break up the marriage (says he can't live with that uncertainty, I'm being cruel). This stemmed from my refusal to give that assurance. I've made it quite clear that I'm not prepared to live in a climate of fear, and I feel better for doing so. Last comment was him telling me that dd2 was asking about the Easter egg hunt we always have in the garden and he couldn't answer as 'theoretically' that might not be happening, and what did I think about that then??!! I've ordered the Lundy Bancroft book and am trying to stay strong but it is so hard!

Catpants123 · 24/01/2016 15:16

I stood up to him and it made him worse. Then I left and I really got it then.

spad · 24/01/2016 15:44

diege

My situation sounds similar. In our relationship we don't row. I GET a row.

I feel so sad because if he could be the way he is with the children to me, and enjoy being nice to me then it would so lovely.

Please tell me how 'normal' this scenario is.

So I was in a car accident with our three children. We were all okay but it could have easily been much more serious. Today he wanted me to drive his truck to the centre of our city so that he could take the train to a different city and collect my new car. I said I didn't want to do that because I hate driving in the town anyway, especially in a truck and I felt scared about it. He was and is livid. He has done all the hard work to get me a car and I won't step out of my comfort zone and be a bit flexible to do the last bit of the plan. My Dad took him to the city, it was no problem for my Dad to do it. He loves helping me. :) (Even though he also thought I was being silly - but he wouldn't want me to be scared).

I have told him we need an exit plan because I can't live like this. He is from an emotionally abusive past. I so don't want him to ruin this for himself but I can't cope with the fall out of him not coping when I can't cope.

OP posts:
spad · 24/01/2016 15:45

Also, what is the EA typology?

OP posts:
VoldysGoneMouldy · 24/01/2016 16:00

Leaving is the only way to make it stop.

You can't make him change, you can't reason with him, you can't make him see his behaviour isn't acceptable, because he isn't a reasonable person.

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