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.

i can't seem to
Change my username to anything apart from userxxxxxx!
Thanks for replying. i know that my h suffers with some sort of self loathing as it's like he takes whatever he feels about himself and then hits me with it as a verbal insult- ironically when he calls me a bully it is absolutely when HE is being a bully to me. I worry about what that does to the kids, hearing him say bad things about me in front of them. Then I feel guilty for standing up for myself. My mother used to goad my dad all the time, provoking and provoking until he snapped (I am not victim blaming but it sounds it I know) and he would hit her and sometime I used to just think 'just STFU!!' But she wouldn't. That's what i feel like I'm doing if I argue back with him. It's just all so complicated! The thing is that I know now that he knows all this and uses it against me whenever he can in order to weaken my defences.

User I hope you can definitely see you are with an abuser and not shoulder the blame. I think a good thing to remember is the airline advice - which seems selfish - to put your own oxygen mask on first before helping your anyone else, children included. So in my opinion I don't think your job is to sacrifice your happiness, as you have to be able to function as a healthy human.

I am not sure about the absolute reasons for the lateness, is it incompetence, a bad habit? I know it as possibly both of those, but also a knee jerk reaction to baulk at any expectation to do the right thing with other people in a social setting - as though it is infra-dig & possibly some sort of inverted sense of entitlement and looking down at others. When we were just married and been invited by an old acquaintance of mine to a special lunch, where a guest had been invited especially to meet him and it would have helped with his work too one way or another, he suddenly wanted to make love just when we should have left. I took at it then at face value!...he just loves me etc! When I think of it now I am absolutely mortified. We got to the lunch about an hour late. I could die. I don;t think we knew there would be just one other person invited there, but even so. It has taken me about thirty years to realise it was part of a syndrome, for whatever reason. Did he consciously realise what he was doing? Now I would know the signs and have nothing to do with it. I have stayed as he definitely is a kind good husband who gave me a lot and things are generally better now - though it seems a bit late to salvage the energy of life that we lost. It definitely can spoil things.

(I feel worried here, because I am always late for church when I go! I don't feel I am doing it on purpose, I am going from my own free will, so what's going on? I am going alone though so no one else is affected)

Moodiness at the wrong time at a special occasion is horrible too. That scene in front of the teacher sounds awful.

Now you know what can happen, refuse to countenance it.

Would like to add,

Do not think I am always this self assured. I am a bit now because the emotional distance between me and h is growing which means I am able to see myself and the whole thing more clearly.
Also because by feeling freer I realise how caged I have been and how much invisible work I have put in and what a toll it has taken.

I will be reporting back when he moves out.

Pippi - Funnily enough my h is never late for work!!
I agree that there is no reasoning behind it. When we split up before I took on the responsibility. I accepted that I was going to be the bad guy and let him be the victim because I was getting out and THAT was my reward. I was strong enough to face that but I am not going to be the bad guy this time. No way.
I have enough self awareness to avoid conflict especially if Something meant so much to someone else. If we started talking about something that was upsetting to me then I would say 'let's talk about something else' or park it. The amount of times I have said the 'wrong thing' and pissed him off and then begged and begged him not to ruin the night because of it is ridiculous. I took him away for his bday last year, I spent a fortune on this trip to London. I started talking about a tv series that I had started watching and that is explained the plot to our ds (it wasn't suitable for him to watch but he'd seen the adverts so I told him what it was about). It came up in conversation that night and he went ballistic, called me a shit mother etc. I begged him to leave it but he wouldn't speak to me the rest of the night. £800 I spent down the drain. That is a very typical thing that happens every time.

Kind - I really like the airline analogy, that is very powerful.
Pippi - that feeling of strength and self assurance will keep growing!
I was talking to my counsellor about how my ds was not happy we split up last time. The thing that pushed me over the edge of getting back together was this:
One day I opened ds's school book the teacher had written something on a post it note on his behalf as he was too young to write it himself 'my mum and dad are not together anymore, and I cry'
That was it. It broke me.
I told my current counsellor about that and she gave me a new perspective on it. She said that the fact that he didn't like it there and then was NOT to say that it wasn't the best thing for him. He was a 4/5 year old kid! That made sense, sometimes you have to look at the long term effects of things as a parent and do what is not the obviously popular thing for a 5 year old. That might sound really obvious to everyone but to me it wasn't!!!

User last year I also organised a lively birthday for h and he spoiled it. That was what finished it off. Whilst I sat there listening to this rant about how awful I was I thought "really!"

Kind a friend told me that in most cases being late it is indicative of a willingness to avoid something and I guess a fear of taking responsibility for it. Being late for therapy is a classic, not corageous enough to say "I am not going", not willing to admit "I don't want to go/I am scared to go or not to go" you leave it to 'fate' by making absolutely possible that something will be ruining it. Like in the case of your dh.

The ruining a great evening behaviour could be and indication of fear of intimacy, fear of not deserving, of not being good enough etc.

I can see in my dh a lot of hidden anxiety, lack of self esteem confidence etc but boy he hides it well. It took me years to realise he is a scared, unloved, emotionally scarred little boy who has learnt to imitate the (seemingly) confident boys and has done this ever since. Obviously this deceit and act takes a toll and he needs self medicating to alleviate the stress and the fear of being found out and also means a lot of anger towards me, some redirected from his past some genuine when he sees me much more relaxed and unafraid.

He is not a nasty man and I care about him and believe in him for this reasons (and others) I tried for so many years. Now, whilst still caring and believing, I decided I want to care and believe in me bevause I had all but disappeared.

You really know a lot Pippi! You certainly have put every possible thought into this. Good luck with your new life.

Thank you very much for that link fusspot66.

Ahahah Kind, I have! I feel I have a phd on my marriage!!

Thank you.

User I now read your first post.
Yes my dh uses my weakest point in an argument because he knows it will end a conversation he is not prwpared to have.

Having said all the above I cannot help thinking whether these men really love you or they try to convince themselves that they do. Because if I think of occasions when I have been quite not as fair as I should have been (not to say mean) I have to admit I did not like the person or that that person did not make me feel good about myself.

Anyway all my ramblings are speculations, I wish my h would have agreed to couple counselling...

Kind, I am truly happy that you both can make it work. It certainly would be the best option.

I haven't rtft yet but I will once the DC go to bed.
I believe you OP.
My 16 year relationship ended this year after my dhs affair with my friend. I still have people in my life who think he's a fabulous guy . He's not. He's a sociopath and a narcissist.
You're not alone

This seems to touch on many of the things we have been discussing.
www.abuseandrelationships.org/Content/Behaviors/subtle_control.html

I think there is an element of "No-one tells me what to do!" (which they (mostly) can't do at work, but feel they can be "a free man" at home. So a time to get to a wedding, even if it's on a printed invitation, seems like an order to them, one which they can use to show how free they are. Their so-called freedom is more important to them than the feelings of others and the conseqences of their actions.

This may be part projection on my part - it is a trait I recognise in myself though do my best not to manifest inappropriately.

A similar and perhaps related way of thinking may also explain why a good friend of mine continued to stand up for herself verbally, instead of stopping speaking, which quite possibly might have stopped the beating she was getting at the time earlier than happened. It was her way of showing she was free.

I believe you. You've just described my life.

I believe you. My problem is a relationship with my incredibly PA mother. It is so so hard to articulate what they are doing, but it is 100% real they are just very skilled and lack the 'wow i'm being a bit of a cunt' stop on their behaviour that normal people have. I now see her clearly and that is the start. As you go on you will move more and more away from his version of reality and find your own. A mindfulness course helped me a lot with processing emotion, you can find simple meditations online that give your head some peace and help you process the emotions peacefully. I was very angry but now i find it more helpful to breathe and sit with the emotions rather than get too upset. Dont know if that is helpful but hopefully it is. You have done an amazing thing to break free of this very unwell man.

^but it is 100% real they are just very skilled and lack the 'wow i'm being a bit of a cunt' stop on their behaviour that normal people have^

^Having said all the above I cannot help thinking whether these men really love you or they try to convince themselves that they do. Because if I think of occasions when I have been quite not as fair as I should have been (not to say mean) I have to admit I did not like the person or that that person did not make me feel good about myself^

^I think there is an element of "No-one tells me what to do!" (which they (mostly) can't do at work, but feel they can be "a free man" at home^

I'm finding this thread helpful and unhelpful at times but the things above really spoke to me.
The problem for me is that because i can see myself in the links and i don't buy the 'he drove me to it' argument i go back and forth on the I'm the abuser argument.
Can both if you be an abuser at the same tine? It felt like a war of attrition looking back.
Was i trying to achieve parity and partnership or control?

I worry that this whole process including the thread is part of me trying to demonize someone who just wasn't right for me. I desperately want validation but don't know what my motivation for that is.

I do know that I am unhappy and was unhappy in the relationship, my heart is broken and everything hurts.
Maybe if I'd just been able to accept him in all his fucked up and depressed glory he'd have had a chance to heal instead of me becoming yet another person being cruel to him.
But surely he could have taken some responsibility for his own life? Unless he was too depressed?
These are the questions which go round and round.

And in the middle of it are two small children

One thing about Christian forgiveness that nobody seems to have considered here is that the perpetrator needs to repent. Repentance means turning away from the sinful, hurtful behaviour for good. Without true repentance, forgiveness is meaningless. And I think it true to say that in most if not all the cases we've been discussing, repentance is not even in the picture, so it is not un-christian to take whatever steps you need to to protect yourself.

And so last night my dc cried with my h saying they din't want him to live somewhere else.
And I can see how easy it is to think of yourself as a selfish bitch for hurting everybody in order to reach your goal. And how easy it can be to change your mind and keep plodding along.
Interestingly I think my dc realise how much I want this so they act cool with me about it. Maybe they feel disloyal to me if they show their pain (although I keep asking them about it).
Generally they are really fine about it but they certainly would not chose this even if it might be bettee for them too in the long run (a bit like vaccinations are).
And I, the time nearing up, keep having very unsettling dreams - guilt filled dreams, dreams that make me doubt the future I am chosing. Dreams that try to dissuade me, that try to tell me how idiotic ofme to think it's the right choice, that I'll be happy.

I realise these are unconscious voices from my past. It is When these voices become real voices (say from h) that I seem to crack.
Luckily h in this is acting fair and square. So we all will have to wait and see.

And maybe they feel disloyal to h, when with him, if they don't cry with him.

Best to get it done quickly, Pippi.

I believe you.

My DH's previous relationship was with an abuser. When we got together he opened up to me about his past and he found it hard to talk about. I think he worried I wouldn't think he was a man because he'd been abused but I understood that abuse can happen to a man or woman and and be perpetrated by either gender as well.

He told me his ex was shallow, narcissistic, a bully, manipulative and passive aggressive. She was never physical but she drove him in to the ground emotionally.

To this day she still finds reasons to contact him and try to wt under his skin. For years he still let her do it because the abuse was pretty much ingrained. We have worked together to close down her routes of getting to him, in a physical and emotional sense.

I believed my DH even when I knew nothing about his ex. I've seen for myself now that everything he said was true, not that I needed the proof.

You are not alone. Keep talking and letting it out.

anna I've never thought of it like that. Thank you

pippi that sounds so hard
That's one of the hardest things to realise is that whatever path you take, you and your children are going to hurt. It comes down to a question of short vs long term pain and which will cause the most. I'm sorry you're in this position.

Today I'm in a well travelled thought process which goes something like this. ..
Did i do all of this because i like drama and attention? Have i thrown the baby out with the bathwater just because i couldn't mould him the way i wanted?

I'm certainly no happier now although my head feels more clear and definitely less angry.
In fact I've realised that my grumpy days tend to be those when i have to have some form of contact with him, for example when he picks the kids up. The rest of the time I'm fine.

Will These are my thiughts too.

Am I just doing this bevause I didn't have my way? Am I ruining my children just so I can have a nicer life?

I realise that the answer can be "yes" and that the question can be positive instead of accusatory.

We did it to improve our lives, to make ourselves feel better and be better, to get what we wanted out of a relationship.

Try to outwit your own damning thoughts - it is not you who says them, they've been instilled in you.

Oh my goodness! It's really not me

Yesterday was miniwonkas birthday. She really didn't want to go to daddy's house in the evening it was his regular evening).
In fact she was so terribly distressed that i broke all my rules and said he could see the kids here and make them dinner.

Not only did he only wash up half of the mess he made but told them he was doing it to help me. He left the rest.
To put this into context a little i can't walk right now because of back problems. The sink is full of dishes because i cant stand long enough to wash up.

Fair enough he doesn't give a shit and will make extra work for me. So far so 17 years of disrespect.
But to make out that he was somehow mr nice to my kids.

It really really isn't me! It's all so clear now

Oh my goodness! It's really not me shock we've all being saying that for the past million pages
Who the fuck does half the washing up 'to be helpful'?

Yeaaaaa!!