I need someone to believe me

[Wilhamenawonka]

This is about abuse. Not sexual financial or physical or even verbal in ways that are generally understood.

It was covert passive aggressive abuse over 17 years and i finally got him to leave 20 months ago. I now know that it involved all the above but so subtly that even now it feels like a fog trying to penetrate it.

Although I know intellectually that it was abuse it's only This week that I've started to get it emotionally and now I'm broken.

I'll never be in another relationship because i can't trust myself to stay safe and also i have vaginismus which ideveloped due to his approach to sex.
Every day more and more things hit me and break my heart all over again.

The thing is that i can't even give examples because I'm so scared of people not getting it and making me question myself again.

I'll never stop questioning if it was all my fault. I'm broken.

Please say you believe me because he is such a master at subtle passive aggressive abuse no one (except my counsellor and close friend) would ever get it.
I'm not a drama queen making this up but thats what I've been telling myself for years.

I feel sick all the time and just need to get it out.

It does seem that it can be relationship dynamic that easily gets carried to the next generation.

Sometimes a loving but suffocating, slightly incestuous mother can make a man secretly aggressive too, in a hidden way, in my opinion.

Your MIL sounds terrible. Was his father an an angry one?

Yup. He called the organization that helps adult survivors of childhood abuse when we were separating and they confirmed the dreadfullness of his childhood

I also found the link between h's behaviour and his very pa mother. Like you say kind it can fuel a lot of anger and resentment later transferred to you.

H's mum very pa and also very controlling, h's dad selfish, distant, harsh with dh overprotective with sil. very unhappy marriage.

My dad def narcisistic, some personality disorder
Mum pa and invisible
Very unhappy marriages

In both the only emotion was anger. No other feelings existed. You grin and bear it.

I remember clearly H and I saying in the beginning that we'll not be a family like these we came from.
We did. I strongly believe h pushed me kicking and screaming into it, but I had so much examples of a crappy rel that I could not truly believe myself.

Whilst I believe he was ea and unfair etc I do start to recognise why it took me so long, why I struggled, etc

I feel this isimportant for me not to fall into these traps again. Hopefully.

I think it is difficult for those who have experienced angry vs. passively angry parents living together in a bad relationship [war] to make a good relationship themselves. It takes years and years to try to understand it all and see it for what it was.

Trying to trace it all back is all interesting, but it does not mean Wil that you don't have the right to grieve and be angry for what you went through and that you don't have the right to be believed.

And that can explain the temper and the anger with which we respond to these abuse: on the one hand come a bit unprepared at times having known nothing else, on the other certain behaviour are so similar to past experience that we do not want repeated that we react so badly.

I also recognise your worry of being the abuser... i do too. After reading this thread I googled 'bully' and was shocked to recognise myself in the descriprion of the phisicalities of it - cue panic.
But you know, as a child I was not told how to express my feeling or that emotion were a good thing and when anger surface I was deemed the one with a temper. Being defined like this angers and terrifies me at the same time.

Funny how I never had this problem in the ten years between i left home and met h. Never.

Apologies for grammar and typos, rushing away with fingers and thoughts.

Sorry pippi that's exactly the sort if thing I've been worried about with the thread.

kind i feel believed when you write. Don't know why i can hear it from you and not the other lovely posters but thank you.

And thank you to everyone else who's posted. I'm reading and rereading constantly (can get away with it because small stuff is ill and zoned out)

Well, I'm glad Wilhamena.

I have only very recently been coming to understand about PA in relationships myself and in my own life too. Before I only knew about those one off acts/remarks any one might indulge in instead of being directly assertive.

And and and when he went through the house looking for his Christmas presents

Then the stupid dick admitted it to me because he felt guilty

Then i made him feel bad

Then the next year he was proud of himself for not doing it again!

HOW did i ever manage to have sex with him?!?!?!?!?!

That sounds like one of the worst cases of wanting your wife to be 'Mum' that I have ever heard of.

In answer to your dismay at your own past feelings, my experience of some men in this sort of relationship is that maybe he seemed cute and appealing when you met him, and seemed special and romantic like a wandering minstrel who understood the world more than anyone.

Wow. You met him

In my case I think I did a sort of deal in my head with inadequacy because I was trying to avoid avert alpha male dominance and sexism. I think I thought that if I found a man who wouldn't or couldn't support me, then he couldn't expect me to do the traditional wifely stuff (I wouldn't have to be submissive, do all the housework, etc).
Obviously it was crap because while I might have been thinking "this can be different, we can have relationships that look different that are based on what we want, not traditional gender roles", he was thinking "oh good she isn't going to expect me to step up and be a man. That's nice and comfy for me. of course it is bad and wrong and abominable if she expects to get out of acting like a woman, no one would reasonably expect that"

Yes! And the woman isn't allowed to get upset because they are trying their best and they are better than x husband.

Today is hard because I'm planning Christmas. 'We' had so many little traditions around Christmas. He claimed to love Christmas but what he really loved was getting presents.
I'm sat here just feeling the wreckage of everything i worked for.

To know that things were the way they were because inside he hated me is sooo hard. There was no way i was ever going to be allowed to be happy.

I did have a weird moment yesterday. I (and all of you) must be amazingly strong to have survived all of this. Normally my thought process goes along feeling sad/angry so to think something positive was a good feeling.

Just imagine what we could achieve without the immovable object!

In a way it' may not be the wreck you thought, Wil in that now, without him, you can realise the potential of who you are.

Maybe realising what he was really like was the catalyst for seeing yourself for the first time: you are a strong person, you know how to make decisions, you know how to organise, you know how to take charge of your life, you know how to have aims, you know how to look after your children, you know how to see both sides of the question, you are not an angry bitch when when you are not being undermined by an adult child vying with your real children for your attention.

This Christmas you could make a wish list of what you and your DC love about Christmas, and fulfil them and maybe do something a little new and special to mark your new lives.

I used to beg, literally beg for him to suggest things, for example ideas of stuff for us to do at the weekend.
He would say something and if i dared say anything other than wow what a great idea he would sulk.
I wasn't allowed to have an opinion or to, god forbid use his suggestion as the start of a discussion.
I stopped asking in the end and just accepted the controlling label.

And when we first got together at uni (guess who asked who out and guess who was non committal and made it difficult) he went through a box of photos i had from a gap year.
I took it as a flattering sign of his interest (he admitted years later he'd not really been interested)
That's not normal behaviour is it.

After about 6 months together i wrote a list of pro's and cons about being with him.
I always knew on some level that it wasn't a good relationship but blamed myself for having too high standards and being flawed for not being able to be happy.

I was taught that relationships took a lot of work and were hard work. I never actually expected to be happy in a relationship but still felt really disappointed when i wasn't
I thought i was at fault for wanting a Disney romance.

I always had my (mental) bags packed but i really did work so hard to make it work (can see how those two statements seem mutually exclusive)
I just wanted him to put the effort in too.

He found the list of pros and cons. We got engaged two months later

It all does sound just so tiring, like trying to carry him while wading through heavy sticky mud.

Was there ever anything nice that he sometimes did that kept you hoping?

It will surely be such a relief to be away from him. You were so young when you got together, it would have been so easy to make the mistake of thinking it would be OK somehow, yu shouldn't blame yourself.

Did other people find him a weight around the place?

Yes they do. I've even had his landlady complain about him to me while telling me with tears in her eyes how much she loves him as one of the family.
Getting people to look after him while driving them mad AND feeling angry about being infantalised is his specialty.

Does it really sound abusive or just childish?

It sounds like he was a kind of vampire.

As I said before, his jealousy over the DVD when you had the baby - abusive in its effects even though not hitting you with fists.

I once read this which is extremely interesting. It is not about Passive Aggressive abuse per se, but about men who never grow up. It is brilliant, and well worth reading even for its own sake.
It is based on Jungian philosophy.

www.amazon.com/Puer-Aeternus-Psychological-Struggle-Childhood/dp/0938434039

I just re-read a resume of the book I sent a link for, and though it is interesting, I don't think it quite fits what you described.You can read the resume here. drpetermilhado.com/puer_complex

I hope saying how difficult it has been for you here on MN and hearing how everyone else understands has given you perspective to stop blaming yourself and enjoy your new life. That is the main thing.

"In a way it' may not be the wreck you thought, Wil in that now, without him, you can realise the potential of who you are. "

Can I second this?

I don't think my ex is as bad as yours and I don't think what I am feeling is as confused or as difficult as yours, or that my recovery will take as long.
But. Even though I am sad and disappointed at the failure of everything, and even though I feel wrung out and exhausted sometimes, it is so much easier now for me to take decisions (even decisions that don't have, and never had, anything to do with him!) and there is a kind of mental clarity that allows me to get on with things.

I don't mean "oh I always wanted to paint the kitchen green and he hates green and now I can."
It's weirder and deeper than that. It's more: we both knew the kitchen needed to be painted, I couldn't somehow choose a colour and neither could he, we lived with this crappy kitchen with the time of painting it somehow indefinitely deferred because the process of talking about a colour, agreeing it, buying it, agreeing when the painting would be done, who would do it, and who would look after the children while it was being done, contained so many opportunities for the conversation to break down that I was just staying away from it - and EVERYTHING was like that

"contained so many opportunities for the conversation to break down"

• meaning:

opportunities for him to start thinking I am trying to control everything

opportunities for him to actually control everything by being incredibly negative about everything I suggest

I have to agree to everything he suddenly decides to buy which is not well thought out and includes a lot of wasted money. otherwise there is sulking and weirdness. He would refuse to test the colours and refuse to understand that they never look anything like the colour charts and it WILL be different and we may not like it

he would think I am just dumping the children on him "like I always do" (?) if I ask him to look after then while I do it in the day

Or, I could do it when they are in bed (but the light is not so good; and then I get the PA disappointment that I have gone off to do a PROJECT instead of watching a movie with him)

I could do some of it with the children? they are old enough to paint nicely with supervision and would enjoy it for about 10 minutes. but that doesn't solve the problem of actually finishing it. Also there would be a weird atmosphere about me being "Strange" by doing things with children that are potentially messy etc (can't put my finger on this one but I know it's there - it's not just messy but sort of "too old" "too odd" not prepackaged enough, can't explain it)

I could offer to take the children out while he does it but this would go wrong in 2 ways 1. Again I am giving him the hard job and having the fun one (this works WHICHEVER way I suggest it. absolutely predictably. so then I get the weird atmosphere and flip it - "oh I don't mind! if you want to do x while I do y that's fine!" THEN THE INJUSTICE AND MARTYRDOM FLIPS THE OTHER WAY IN A HEARTBEAT). AND the other issue with this is the painting would be a. badly done b. unfinished c. everything would be left for me to clean up at the same time as coming back and trying to make dinner. (I am very good at painting, at planning time, and paint, and surfaces and when they will be dry, and getting things cleared up neatly afterwards - not because I am special but because I think about it, and I do my best. OBVIOUSLY THOSE TWO THINGS ARE FAR TOO MUCH TO ASK OF SOMEONE ELSE)

This guy is now my ex. In theory it should be harder because the juggling of painting and children has one fewer adult dealing with it. IT IS A MILLION TIMES EASIER.

That is such a good description Maudlin. What a relief for you to be able to enjoy a simple flow of living without all that.