Worried/Scared, advice please.

[RyVeeta]

Going to see someone about the emotional abuse I have been coping with, with an aim to leaving in due course. I'm not terribly good at explaining things and am concerned it'll all just sound trite and trivial. Would it be an idea to print off some of my threads from here to take. I'm far better expressing myself in writing and they would hopefully make it clear how long it's been going on and to what extent. I'm really worried I'll be dismissed or told that I am heartless because of dh's disabilities. It's taken me years to get to this point and I don't want to mess it up now.
Thank you.

This will keep going round and round until YOU take action.

So step out of the cycle. Take action NOW. Not next week when the latest crisis is over (there is always a new crisis) not tomorrow when he is sleeping (fuck him and his sleep) not later when whatever whatever whatever. Now. Go and lift the phone and call womens aid. Talk to someone in RL. Start making a plan to go.

He wants you to excuse it, excuse him, pander to him, serve him. He will never change and he will never recognise his abusive behaviour. You could write it out in bullet points and he still would not care.

You deserve so much more than this. Stop going round in circles. Your mental health is suffering.

Apologies, £125.00 per month! Still a lot though. Well, it is for us, that's nearly three weeks petrol money.
Liz First appointment is this week and follow up has already been organised. Thank you.
All quiet at the moment because I've given some ground. Don't know how long it'll last.

He's 'dying of a broken heart'? Is he buggery.

What he's doing is shovelling shit at a great speed and attempting to bury you under it and you could tell him that from me! becauseIvehadwineandamfeelingfeisty

I could keep on repeating myself until we're all blue in the face, but as you've already said you know it's blackmail. Emotional blackmail. Not very attractive that is it? not very fair. Most definitely not the mark of an honourable person, or one who loves their partner.

The time for you to feel guilty my love is if you saw someone suffering and you didn't care to help them At. All. Not when you know you're being played and manipulated and made as miserable as sin.

Now, get back in the room.

So glad to hear that. I hope it goes well.

You say you buy wool. Do you knit or crochet?

I know how to knit a bit but I am not very good at it...not very patient so if it doesn't work right I give up. (Trying to work on this trait in general.)

Itching to learn crochet. Been watching youtube videos. I want to make a huge crochet blanket in lovely soft yarn!

Honestly, walk out on this waste of space. If he did kill himself it would be probably the only useful thing he's ever done.

Liz I crochet. It's relaxing and productive!
I use a double knit in the main with a size four hook. Gives a tight (and therefore warm) finish. Nice and soft, too.
I tried to tell him that he'd have to buy his own books, he's decided he actually wants thirty quid more than suggested. So he's taking £70 quid a week from the family budget to feed his obsessions, which is a 40 quid a week hike from where he was at. Oh, and guess what, he didn't mean it about getting rid of the Sports channels. I decided not to pursue things as he told me I was just trying to guilt trip him! So then he's all sweet and as if nothing's happened. Talk about confusing!

Have had meeting and been assigned a support worker. There is an aim to this and apparently support worker will help achieve this. They were very understanding, although I found it very shocking that all of his behaviours were listed on their wheel of abuse diagram. They said that this is common and it's because we're trained to think it's us. I have a lot of processing to do. They also told me how I can safely leave quickly and where to go should it be necessary.
To be honest, I'm not sure how I'm feeling at the moment, but by the time I see the support worker next week I hope to be more together.

I found it very shocking that all of his behaviours were listed on their wheel of abuse diagram

For me the thing is that you find it shocking Ry but no one reading your thread will find it shocking. That must also tell you something?

It's not you. It's him.

That said, once it sinks in, you process it and come to terms with what you're beginning to realize, it sounds very positive to me. You now have someone who gets face to face to listen to you and to help you. That's important. Embrace it and
take those first steps.

Thank you Enrique, your support (and others) has been fabulous. I hope you don't mind if I continue to witter on occasionally!
I think I half expected them to tell me to pull myself together and that I was being over tired and over sensitive. I know that sounds ridiculous, other than my mother I haven't come across parents calling their children names on a regular basis. I have never heard a parent accuse their child of being manipulative or accusing a child of trying to split up a couple. Admittedly said child is now 19 and would rather we did split but she wouldn't do anything to cause it, let's face it, track record shows me stopping, not going!
I felt and still feel odd. I keep looking at that wheel and yes, I still find it shocking. Strangely though, I feel safer knowing there's someone in real life who does actually believe me because the few people he meets (all professionals, doctors, nurses etc) all think he's wonderful.
I took my first thread from 2014 (different names over time, just in case) to show that this isn't just me having a bad week, and a couple from last year. The support worker will read them this week. The woman I saw today apparently sees it all the time and wasn't surprised at any of it.
Thank you all for just being there for someone who has no RL support and nobody to blurt it all out to!

It is also very common for abusers to be charming and come across as wonderful to people who they only spend a short amount of time with.

I am glad the penny may be dropping, even if only a little bit for now. Take it step by step. You have to give yourself credit for even going to the meeting, and for taking along your old threads. It is such a brave step to take.

Abusive mothers can be a mind fuck all of their own...and that conditioning is the worst, as it has happened from such a young age, it sets you up to believe that being disrespected and belittled and dismissed is normal.

I was just saying to my DH tonight about something that happened over the weekend with my own DD and how different, and extreme, my mothers reaction to the same situation had been when I was a child. I have been NC with my parents since August. I have had 10 months of therapy....and I am still rewriting "normal" and "acceptable".

I think I half expected them to tell me to pull myself together and that I was being over tired and over sensitive.

This doesn't sound ridiculous at all. Very very normal. Untrue of course, but it is probably easier to blame yourself than blame him, because that is what you have been trained to do, by him, and it also sounds like, by your mother.

I hope you make more steps forward this week to physically leaving asap.

He has been gas lighting you for years over everything I'm not surprised at how confused you feel over it all, even though you've been shown and told how abusive it all is.

Oh lord I feel for you RyVeeta what an awful situation :(

You have so much guilt weighing on you, I can almost see it, you burdened with a hundred bags of wet sand pulling you down so far you're crawling along.

This is no way to live. Actually, it's no way to love either.

I am severely disabled and with two of my family dead from the same condition, i am very scared for my little boy and what he would do without me. I live with this daily. My husband increased his abuse as I got iller. He doesn't know where DS and me are now. I am crippled, literally, bed bound mostly and in incredible pain amongst other symptoms. About half the time I wish I was dead, no one should have to live this hell. The other half of the time, I am terrified I will die. So not just sailing merrily through the whole 'becoming disabled, no family to care or help' thang.

I'm hoping telling you this will help add some credibility to what I'm going to say. Rather than being a dribble of misery!

So... I feel well qualified to say, your husband is a selfish manipulative cruel and revolting arse.

He has made you into his servant, well, his slave really, since he doesn't pay you for the abuse he gives out. He makes you pay though, every moment of every day it sounds like.

What he is doing has nothing to do with illness or disability. It has everything to do with his vileness and pathetic ness.

It makes me angry that he dares to use illness or disability as an excuse to be like this. Take it from me, it's not. At all. Do you think this is the way every ill person behaves? Its really really not.

I am by NO MEANS perfect, and sorry if it sounds like I'm putting myself on a pedestal here... I think that's the point though, I'm definitely not the image of the sainted ever-patient ill person. I'm grumpy, pissed off and over sensitive. I'm also depressed and struggling with that, and am getting help.

And yet still, I can't relate to any of the way he behaves... Even an impatient misery like me :)

Of course everyone has bad days, and being in pain makes it hard to think about anything else sometimes, but not the way he behaves. That's not from pain, that's from him.

He is using your kindness and sympathy. He is using the excuse of 'being poorly' to rule you, to torture you and to break you. And I'm worried it's almost worked, and so glad there is a flicker of your spirit left - it's amazing and brilliant of you to have this tiny spark left. Please don't let it go out. You need it

You deserve to be free of this terrible man. You need to be free, as no one can suffer through so many years of this and hope to come out unscathed.

I don't think you are selfish, or being unkind to the poorly man. I also don't think what you're living with as trivial. The opposite in fact.

Please don't feel guilty because he's an 'invalid', or fret over how will he manage without you. You need to start caring for and loving yourself.

You're the one in the most pain in that house, not him.

Brilliant post Miscell

Just de-lurking to say it sounds like you taken the first step Ryveeta Now, keep up the good work!

Miscellaneous
Thank you for taking the time to explain that it doesn't have to work the way he wants it to. I have coped, I've coped for 23 years. He has never been well, I've always accepted that. As the children have grown up and are progressively moving on he's got worse. I can comprehend the fear in that, but pushing me away, pushing me around wasn't ever going to help that. He's always been one to cut his nose off to spite his face too. We'll see what happens.
Things are quite quiet at the moment. I am not challenging or being distant because we have everyone here at the moment and I don't want to make things difficult for everyone else. This doesn't mean I'm not continuing. I have minutes when I think I can do this and hours when I think I can't, but the minutes, I'm realising, are becoming longer. The validation, (strange word) from the support worker has helped so much, I know the one of the GPs believed me, but there's never the time to talk, so this has helped a lot. Just believing me has helped so much. If you met him, you would see a man broken. When you got to know him a bit you would see this phenomenal intellect, so funny, so clever. It looks like I'm the one that is in charge from the outside, managing the calls, the bills, the food, the children. From the outside. That's why I thought nobody would believe me. I'm articulate, intelligent, always on the go, always smiling and staying calm for the children and only the children see what goes on. Why would anyone believe us, particularly as he claims that we gang up on him and as he's the only bloke he doesn't stand a chance. That's what he tells ds who doesn't live here. So couldn't, despite being articulate and intelligent, figure why anyone would believe it.

Liz Been nc with mother for years, that's a whole different ball game and I suspect it's been used to manipulate me here, too.

Still keep looking at that wheel though, and still very shocked.

Ry keep looking at the wheel, you'll be less shocked as you become more accepting of the facts.

I do understand what you mean about the validation.

A totally different story, but it kind of relates to that aspect. I was only just back from honeymoon, a very long time ago and I was really young. I found a lump in my breast. Believe it or not, my first fear was that when I went to the Doctor, he'd find nothing and think I was a weird young girl who was attention seeking and even before I got there I was massively embarrassed that it might turn out I was mistaken. When he confirmed it was there, I was actually relieved at first. Can you believe that? but it was the 'thank goodness someone's agreeing with me, I'm not making it up - it was validated, even though it was a horrible thing. Our emotions can be such strange things.

I have a second thing to put to you, back in a bit.

OK, this might seem a bit strange, was debating whether or not to post it, so bear with me

Some of us worry about whether our opinions are valid, whether other people will believe if we're not happy, what people will think. But change our opinion of a relationship for say the food we choose to eat and it looks quite different.

If we're sat in a restaurant and I say to you that I'm ordering oysters what do you think? and you tell me that you don't like oysters, I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong, or tell you that you must have the oysters. You might order pate or smoked salmon for arguments sake and they might not be to my taste, but that doesn't change your right to choose.

Anyone might tell you that oysters are fabulous, but if that's not your experience, then, put simply, that's your experience and you don't meed to justify it to anyone.

That's a convoluted way of saying that you really are entitled to your own opinions and your own choices regardless of what anyone else thinks is right for you.

Your life. Your choice.

I sort of see where you're coming from Enrique, I don't need the validation of someone believing me. I understand that and hope to get to that point, but suspect my mind has been messed with for so long, that for me, it is a safety thing. I've had to check with oldest DS before that it's not me, so the validation is a verification that I'm not always in the wrong (I'm human, I'm in a difficult situation, I do sometimes get it wrong. I have shouted back, I have stood my ground when perhaps I shouldn't have, I have name called in retaliation, I'm not perfect) and that I'm not a bully, or manipulative. I rarely do these things, and have done them less over the years. I've not even fought over the money issue. It grinds you down to such an extent that you just stop. You stop fighting, you stop arguing, you stop trying to go out, trying to do anything other than what has to be done. The dc say I have the patience of a saint, but I don't think it's that, I think you just stop. I do think I'd like to start again now.

I understand.

You may have seen me say it on here before. Sometimes a relationship goes wrong and people behave badly within that relationship, name calling or worse, because the relationship isn't right, not because they're necessarily bad people, either of them. They're just not right for each other at that point in time, not a good combination, not making each other happy any more.

When you say you had to check with DS that it's not you, that's what I was getting at. So what if it was you? Putting all your personal circumstances to one side here, even if it was just a question of things changing and the relationship having run its course, then sadly, that can happen and it's OK. Its not great, but it's OK to feel that way.

Whether you look at times you haven't behaved well, or times you've been cowed down, the result is the same, a miserable life. It's perfectly fine, it's more than fine, it's absolutely essential really, that you want to make that stop and want to have a peaceful and pleasant life instead.

All of that is without taking into account the personal issues in your situation that you've seen to be abuse and know well what you've experienced.

Enrique, you're saying it's alright to go, no matter the reason, if everyone is unhappy then it's time to move on. I can see that too. It's just, even now, after a few good days, I'd still like it work. I feel guilty about seeing someone and have a stupid hope that maybe this is the road to recovery. That is purely emotional. I know that in a few days that will change again. Don't worry, I'm not going to change my mind, unless we have six months of good behaviour, but we won't. He mentioned money last night, I didn't bite. I won't anymore. Head down, work it out.
Thank you for keeping me going. I feel like I'm dragging this out for everyone, apologies. I hope nobody minds if I keep posting, it's helping to keep me sane and I can show it to the support worker.

You're not dragging it out, it's not a short process to work through all your emotions, your worries and all the years of incidents that you need to release.

You say I'd still like it to work That's something you read a lot on MN from people who are in an EA relationship, along with apart from xxxxx he's a good man, a good father, a good husband etc The big big problem is the apart from
Of course you'd like it to work, you remember love and the good times, but what you have to work with is reality. For things to work again you need your husband to totally change his behaviour and his attitude and for that to be a permanent change.

Please don't feel guilty about seeking help, it's not as though you've been married a few months and you want to throw in the towel without trying. You need to speak to someone face to face in the same way that you'd go to the dentist for toothache or take the car into a garage when you know it's not running well.

Ry has it been suggested to you before that you do some reading up on the subject of emotional abuse?

Lundy Bancroft is frequently recommended on MN and here's a quote that might resonate with you. It's been copied from the Good Reads site.

“The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.”
At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees. Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right.”

I will look when I can Enrique, not always easy.
The excerpt made me feel a little sick. At two o'clock today everything was fine. By five past things were awful. There was something wrong with my face (the way I looked at him) and heaven knows what else he went to bed and left three of us thinking what just happened and how did it happen.
Gets up at four and says oh I don't think I took my meds and why is everybody being funny with me! Even ds who is his biggest defender made a sarcastic comment under his breath earlier. I think being home for a while has made him realise that life is not particularly easy here.

Oh Ryveeta, it's so draining keeping up with the constant mood changes, inexplicable wrongs you've committed, petty misdemeanours that get blown out of all proportion etc.

You must be a very very strong person to have stuck it out as long as you have. And, if you're anything like I was, as soon as you get away from him you will feel that strength returning and wonder what had kept you there so long.

Keep posting, keep taking small steps in your exit plan, try to stay detached.

Just go at your own pace and how you feel comfortable, there's no pressure, only suggestions for you to take from as you need. People reading will understand how difficult and unpredictable your life is

Are you secure on line? do you use private browsing? If not I think you should clear your history and make sure your log in here isn't likely to be discovered. Just a thought.

Thank you, again. All of you!
Enrique, I use private browsing and email addresses even the dc don't know about. It would be hard to find me if you were just casually browsing. I hide any threads that discuss life here. He would guess if he saw the threads but I suspect (hope) they wouldn't be particularly easy to find if someone just decided to browse the site. Having said all that, I feel relieved for getting things out when I post, whilst feeling sick in case of discovery! I suspect this will improve when I see the support worker as I'll be able to blurt it out in RL at some point. I don't think I did particularly well on Monday and was pleased I took print outs. Somewhat frustratingly I am incredibly articulate in all other areas of life!