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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

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Original poster

followed mumsnet's advice to LTB, regret it now

27 replies

grittypetal · 27/10/2016 19:01

Some years ago i first came here (following Internet links whilst searching for solution to some of the realtionship's problems) and read numerous threads in which similar problems - cumulatively, not all at once - were described. The prevailing tone of the advice given seemed to be - the dp's behaviour is EA, the best / only thing is to leave. As I at the time I had already been in a bad and angry emotional state this advice might have given me the last push, so i left.
Felt good about it then! Blocked any attempts or hints of his to reconcile. He didn't seem to explicitly acknowledge that he was the root of the problem. But at the time it seemed to me so obvious that he was.
I suppose we were both just very set in our ways, opinionated and not communicating good in personal matters (hm, sounds like a recipe for desaster on its own already).
However, recently, i started wondering whether the advice given here was such a good one after all. After all, each person is different!
And now for various reasons I strongly regret not having fought harder, for having fallen so deep into this EA/LTB mode.
Probably, this post is just an attempt to shift the blame somewhat off my own shoulders :)

OP posts:

PickAChew · 27/10/2016 19:03

You need to ask yourself if you would really, without putting on rose tinted specs, want to go back to the life you had.

Wolfiefan · 27/10/2016 19:05

You ask for advice. You listen to advice. You don't have to take the advice.

DamePastel · 27/10/2016 19:06

So at the time, you weren't conflicted and ''felt good about it"

Why do you regret it?

You really shouldn't assume that other people leave so easily though. It took me about four years of agonising. I started a thread and even though the advice was overwhelmingly clear and unanimous it still took another four months. That would be more typical than somebody who left on a whim, if that's what you think you did.

DonaldStott · 27/10/2016 19:06

There have been a couple of threads like this today. I think people can offer advice, by relaying their own experiences. You can take all the info and board and make a decision, but you can't lay the blame at the door of anonymous people on an internet forum. You can bet your bottom dollar, you would have been in exactly the same position now if you had stayed with this wonderful man, as you were back when you asked strangers for advice.

Original poster

grittypetal · 27/10/2016 19:07

no, definitely not go back to the life. But I wish now I'd have fought harder to sort the relationship out. For example, should have went to counseilling first!

OP posts:

Lweji · 27/10/2016 19:08

Do you think he'd have made the effort too?

Original poster

grittypetal · 27/10/2016 19:08

DamePastel, I definitely did not leave on a whim. The relationship just felt more and more unbearable. Took me around 3 years to finally throw the towel.

OP posts:

RunRabbitRunRabbit · 27/10/2016 19:08

Would he have gone to counselling?

DamePastel · 27/10/2016 19:10

I think you forget how awful life is with an emotionally abusive man. Even one who is slightly emotionally abusive, that is entitled and selfish and manipulative.

There are things about being couple which are easier, the whole, ''fitting in'' and being on the surface of it, normal etc..... and at times I missed that, sort of. But never to the point where I regretted leaving. never, ever.

I actually can't believe that you left because people on mumsnet told you to.

Threads on mumsnet only ever remind posters that they deserve more and have the right to leave.

fuzzywuzzy · 27/10/2016 19:10

You sound like you regret leaving the relationship you could have had.

You can't change another person.

Not sure it's advisable to have relationship counselling with an emotional abusive person.

SallyR0se · 27/10/2016 19:10

We all know what's wrong / bad / unacceptable about DH / ourselves / our lives. Nothing / nobody is perfect. It's all about choice. We choose to stay / leave / change, depending on myriad factors. What you did was probably right for you at that time.

DamePastel · 27/10/2016 19:13

So, I think you're just going through a rough patch.

You did try for three years. I'm going to repeat that back to you. You had tried for three years before you left. And you say it was NOT on a whim. And you say you were not conflicted at the time.

I think you are experiencing one of the natural lows that come with life post split. Bad years, good years. Once when I was sidelined for being a single parent I wished they could see my x! I didn't want him back, jesus no, but I wanted a bit of the status or something And at times I was nostalgic for some elements of that life. But never to the point where I would have gone back.

Three years of trying is a long time. You should work on your self-esteem if you regret leaving a man who was to quote your emotionally abusive and had resisted three years of you trying to be reasonable.

Original poster

grittypetal · 27/10/2016 19:14

Sally, "What you did was probably right for you at that time."
I suppose this is exactly what I need to hear at the moment.

OP posts:

Msqueen33 · 27/10/2016 19:15

What's your life like now? Sometimes I think if you've left someone for some people they miss having someone regardless of what the relationship is like.

When my ex left (he cheated on me). I missed him and our relationship felt in my head better than it was. At the time he stressed me out, I felt a mess when I was with him as he wasn't an open person.

Advice is just that advice. No one ever know your situation but you.

memyselfandaye · 27/10/2016 19:15

Why would you even bother trying to salvage anything with an emotionally abusive person?

Don't you think you're worth more than that?

People who give a shit about you don't abuse you, in any way.

Original poster

grittypetal · 27/10/2016 19:19

please realise also I do not want to go back to how it was. I am having that moment of missing "what could have been" :(

OP posts:

Joysmum · 27/10/2016 19:30

What 'could have been' wasn't, not because of you but because of what he was. As much as you would have tried to get the relationship you wanted and deserved, he wouldn't.

Lweji · 27/10/2016 19:31

"what could be"

is what keeps people in abusive relationships.

"what could have been"

is what sends them back.

I bet he doesn't think he could have tried harder. He just blames you.

Lorelei76 · 27/10/2016 19:41

You're hankering after a relationship that didn't exist.

ChazsBrilliantAttitude · 27/10/2016 19:41

You are regretting a relationship you didn't actually have but would have liked to have. Its understandable that your ideal would have been to have a better relationship with your ex and for him to stop being abusive, see the light and become the partner you deserved. Do you really think that would have happened?

Its completely normal to have these feeling but it doesn't mean you made the wrong decision. You don't have the pressures on you now so other options seem possible but in reality those options weren't there at the time.
(To give an example from my life - sometime I regret I didn't breastfeed DS1 longer and think I should have tried harder. However, the reality at the time was I was struggling with bf and I could feel myself slipping into depression. Stopping bf took some of the pressure off me and I was able to recover my mood. I wish the situation had been different but it wasn't and I couldn't have tried harder or done things differently and got the perfect outcome because the perfect outcome wasn't possible under the circumstances existing at the time).

Ginkypig · 27/10/2016 19:43

You can only fix a relationship if you both take responsibility for your own actions and both want to fix any issues and both want to save the relationship.

Ime a partner who is abusive (any type) will not want to and most likely not do any of the above so the relationship can't survive (healthily) the only options left for the other person are live in the toxic relationship or end it.

You admit he wouldn't take responsibility or even acknowledge his part in things so that tells me you had no choice!

Msqueen33 · 27/10/2016 19:43

I think we all have those moments in some form or another. We tend to look more to the bright side. You made a decision that at the time was right. And now rebuild your life into something better. It's what you deserve.

The likelihood is he would have destroyed you and wasted years of your life leaving you emotionally exhausted. Don't look back. Look forward.

SantasLittleMonkeyButler · 27/10/2016 19:44

I think it's perfectly normal to have regrets, or to wonder whether things could have been different had you tried X, Y or Z.

Ultimately though, you made the decision that was right for you at the time & you made that decision for a stronger reason than a bunch of strangers on the internet advising you to. I'm sure it's natural to sometimes resent the thing (in this case MN advice) that gave you the final push to change something - but as you yourself have said, that decision had been a long time coming. Well before you asked MN for opinions.

Sometimes, on a down day, SIL will say that she often wishes she'd stayed with her abusive ExH longer - because then she probably would have had children. She doesn't really regret leaving a violent man, she regrets never meeting anyone else to have a child with whilst she was young enough to do so.

TragicallyUnbeyachted · 27/10/2016 19:45

Relationship counselling with an abusive partner doesn't work. Abuse within a relationship is one of the red flags where any decent relationship counsellor ought to refuse to work with a couple.

Sometimes when the abusive party acknowledge that their behaviour is a problem and take steps as an individual (individual counselling/therapy) to address it -- sometimes they can change enough to make the relationship salvageable. But it doesn't sound as though that was the case here.

Would you really feel better if you'd followed up on his hints to reconcile and gone back, the abusive behaviour had started up again, you'd left again, he'd tried to reconcile again, the abusive behaviour had started up again, you'd left again, [continue the cycle until you'd eventually had enough] just because it would make you feel like you'd tried harder? In practical terms all it would have meant that you had to put up with more abusive shit before you eventually called it quits, and that you'd have had less time to have moved on from the relationship.

(This is assuming that his behaviour was abusive, of course -- it sounds as though you didn't specifically ask about it on here, just recognised some aspects of it in other threads where the consensus was that the behaviour was abusive?)

You gave it three years of trying and didn't manage to achieve 'what could have been' -- what makes you think you'd have got there with another three?

M0stlyHet · 27/10/2016 19:48

From the sound of it, Gritty, I would say you're hankering for what you wish could have been rather than what you think in your more rational moments could have been. (I used to have moments like this - but what I was hankering after was an imagined alternative universe in which my ex wasn't fundamentally selfish and didn't take every important decision in our lives in terms of what was best for him - not a real possible future, in which he would have continued to make the world revolve around him and I would have continued to fit around him, to the detriment of my career, desire to have children, feelings about where I wanted to live, even hobbies, basically everything and anything that mattered to me rather than him.)

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