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.

Sorry for typos

My own story mirrors so much of what has already been said by others that I'll not go into detail. We spent 18 months in therapy. He subtly implied that I had problems with my temper in such a way that felt so unfair I would have exploded if I'd said anything, thus confirming everything he was implying. Eventually she sussed that things were not changing, and terminated the sessions. However, I was still too confused to really ask her what she meant when she described the situation as toxic because I was worried she thought it was me.

We limped on for a further year before I finally realised that he didn't want to be with me, hadn't really wanted to for about 13 years (since a ONS which I didn't find out about for 7 years) but somehow had completely failed to mention this when directly asked by me, the therapist etc etc. Turned out that he blamed me for the ONS - if the relationship had been as good as it should have been he wouldn't have been tempted.

Years and years of therapy are now beginning to allow me to resurface and find myself. It's very apparent that the difficulties in my relationship with my ex-husband had their roots in my very early childhood. It has been a slow and painful process with relapses along the way but it's been worth it. Recently, I found Pete Walker's book Complex PTSD: from surviving to thriving very helpful and there's a lot of information on his website www.pete-walker.com/ as well as the first half of John Bradshaw's Healing the Shame that Binds You. Toxic shame is what caused me to react so readily to the merest suggestion of being possibly unreasonable! I didn't like the second half as I don't think it needs to take years and years to deal with toxic shame - I believe that toxic shame is something that you take on based on other people's judgments. I recognised that I was born shame free and perfect (like my own children) and this allowed me to break out of the suffocating shame casing others had enclosed me in.

7 years on from separating, I still second guess myself a lot of the time and my ex can still trigger me, but I've got a great therapist and a friend who get it. I have a boyfriend who is emotionally healthy and provides such clarity at times regarding the behaviours of others that it helps me reset my sense of normal.

Freedom Programme . Do book a place asap - it will open your eyes and you meet other (lovely, 'normal') women in the same position, which helps enormously.

Lundy Bancroft 's book 'Why Does He Do That? Inside the minds of angry and controlling men'. This is a must-read.

Melanie Tonia Evans

here is the book I mentioned above re trauma re DV/war veterans.

I'm so worried that someone who is a proper abuse victim is going to read this and be triggered.
Seriously, i am their abuser talking about how i shouted and swore and abused because i was driven to it?!
It was their fault because they are a victim? !!

And now I'm posting for sympathy and understanding and getting it.

What a fucking manipulative bitch

I just want peace in my head.

Then get to the Freedom Programme and all will become clear. You will get peace in your head and that's a promise.

What do you mean 'proper abuse victim'?? YOU are a 'proper abuse victim'! Please don't think for one minute that non-physical abuse isn't as bad as physical abuse. In the Womens Aid support group I attended when I was going through all this, the women who had been hit said they'd be hit any day over the mind-bending, decimating, non-violent abuse. (I'm just saying what they said, folks)

My ex was too clever to hit me. No, he made mincemeat of my head and heart. No bruises (that you could see, anyway)

And, girl, stop talking about yourself like that.

I can't face womans aid for that reason. Everything that other women's abusers have done will be me. I just can't face it.

I believe you.

This thread has been a bit of an epiphany for me. This was my ex - I used to be 'in charge' of most things, from booking holidays to organising childcare. He made me out to be so sort of controlling bitch, but the truth was he liked it as it meant he always had a reason to blame me for something.

For example I organised all the holidays, which meant anything that wasn't absolutely optimal (the flight being too early in the morning, he didn't want to have to get up at 5am, if the weather wasn't as warm as we'd hoped, my fault too).

The thing was, is was never at the time as obviously as that - it was more 'why did we go on holiday in May, if we waiting to July the weather is guaranteed in Spain (reason, we couldn't afford to go in July). Why did you book such an early flight (sorry, I did ask the flight company to reschedule their entire timetable but they weren't keen).

Then other shit like making sure everyone knew how nice he was letting me relax on a sun lounger for 30 mins while he played super dad. Never mind I'd been up playing with ssid toddler from 6am while he snored until 10. But what strangers seem was this guy playing with his kids and his grumpy wife shouting and snapping at him.

Oh god I've had, and actually felt guilty about it too and apologised while on the too-early train, etc.
I was on a train in the summer and saw the most hideous scene play out between a couple: both had just left work, were on their way to a family event, the train was hideously delayed, both were standing. As the conversation unfolded I gathered that they were both about to go on holiday (the next day after dinner with parents / in laws) with their small child.
I also gathered that it was completely unfair for the man to be forced to stand up on a hot, delayed train. It was the woman's job (also standing) to try to make him feel better about this;

It was completely abominable that he was expected to have a sociable dinner that evening when he was still completely swamped with work. It was the woman's job to make some gracious excuses to get him out of socialising (who knows how she was placed, vis a vis her own work?) The excuses were not to stop him actually eating. He was still to be provided with dinner, but not to be expected to actually be nice to anyone;

It was really unfair that he was expected to go on holiday with his own small child. "So... when are WE having our PROPER holiday?" deep sigh. Here!! his wife PUT HER FOOT down! - "This is our proper holiday. We're going to love it." she said this very briskly and I silently cheered.

Anyway all this unfolded in this very gradual and subtle way where he didn't actually complain or demand special treatment but just projected this weary aura of gentle, hard-done-by victimhood that forced the woman into the position of implicitly agreeing that his life was terribly hard, it was all her fault, and she was duty bound to do whatever she could to ameliorate the misery.

I felt exhausted on her behalf, but also, weeks from the final collapse of my own failed relationship, like a failure. Like: "look, she can do it. She is strong enough. Why couldn't you just be strong enough to do evyerthing he wanted, carry the can for everything, and never complain?"

Seriously, i am their abuser talking about how i shouted and swore and abused because i was driven to it?!
It was their fault because they are a victim? !!

No, that would be confusion on their part.

That is why Passive Aggressive Abuse is so insidious, though. Not enough is known about it. Thats why PA people get away with it.

The abuser will be doing everything they can to get the other person to get angry. The abuser will be getting what they themselves need at the expense of their partner, by forcing them to shoulder everything, take the blame for everything & possibly get hated by their children who get manipulated too.

A dynamic gets set up. You were right to leave so you did not have to continue to be secretly and manipulatively goaded into trying to defend yourself the only way you knew how. So your life would not be built on constantly shifting sand, where the harder you worked, the more it was undermined until you had no energy left.

How did people at his work find him?

Maudlin... that has been my life.

My married life

No i mean that what i say about my own behaviour could trigger and confuse.

How is someone supposed to heal from violence and verbal abuse if they are in a room with someone who is constantly justifying that very behaviour and calling it being a victim? (I was verbal not physical btw not that out excuses it)

kind at work he was either bullied or not taken seriously or infantalised (older women buying him ice creams)

No really. I've just written that down. Ffs!

He kept losing jobs because his bosses never knew what he did and never stretched him.

I really am writing this shit down aren't I?!

He never made proper friends at work i.e. people he'd socialise with independently, but he was very good at the politics.

Thank you for that question.

WHY DIDN'T I SEE ALL THIS EARLIER!

Wil I think you are over thinking this angle of things, and you should give yourself a break. Nothing you have written here on this thread looks like someone who is justifying themselves for being an abuser.

It is just not the case that passive aggressive abuse does not really exist, that it is just a useful manipulative tool for an abuser to validate their actions against their victim.

You have given instances that other people are recognising have happened to them too.

If someone comes on here because they were abused, but who has not experienced passive aggressive abuse, and they seem confused, someone will explain to them. As I said, you have given many instances so people, even physically or emotionally abused people in the ordinary sense, will understand what you mean.

Relationships are not simple. As you said there is a cobweb and you had to leave to get out of what was causing your reactions. I am sure now you are out of this you will not be raging at all the people still close to you.

kind you're right I'm not raging at people although I'm very angry with my parents (and the kids drive me up the wall across the ceiling and down the kitchen sink too )

You seem to know a lot about pa. What causes us to seek out that type of relationship.
He's not the issue. I can look at his behaviour and get angry /explain /describe/ justify it for ever but that means its still about him.
What leads us to think subconsciously. .. here's a twat, I'll choose him?

I'm reading this with my brain in overdrive...
Dh resembles so much here, he's like a child needing to be told what to do all the time, I have to organise all finances, he thinks he's great if he does anything with the kids (not outside of the house unless he goes to the local shop), if I didn't save we wouldn't have any holidays, money for kids birthdays, Santa :(... He has a drink problem and if he asks me "can I have a few this evening" I reply it's up to you you're an adult, he decides ya ok I'll have a couple so, and sulk when I sleep in the spare room then, he's short with the kids coz he's tired and sulks when he can't go to the pub etc... I'm worn down and sick of it but can't arrange childcare around my job, no family or anyone to help... Sorry for this post but this thread has shocked me with similarities, I'm not sure why posting but like op felt I had to get it out

And thank you again.
Please keep telling me that. Hopefully I'll be able to believe it and tell other people.

Funny isn't it that I've not thought anyone on this thread is abusive

self the more the merrier

Sadly it seems that there are a good few of us out there.
Selfishly I'm glad as i know it's not just me but wish none of us had gone through it.

I had saw it in my parents, and have some experience for myself, and have seen abuse in my family generally. But do not dare write more incase it gets recognised! But I completely and utterly believe you, though I personally have not been through what you have!

That's one of the problems with abuse isn't it. It differs in the specifics for each person which makes it so hard to see yours as bad because it's not the same as someone else

Was one of your parents very controlling or angry to you? Did you ever experience violence? Perhaps you chose him because you were looking for someone 'gentle' but his apparent gentleness was a sort of feckless, passive attitude covering unexpressed anger on his part. He may have had an angry parent or difficult parent too.

Does he balk things at work, not pull his weight really? Act quietly obstructive?

I believe you. My mum did this to my dad, he had an affair and left, leaving poor mum alone, the victim, I became her replacement target. She was narcissistic and p.a, immature, entirely self-focused and helpless. It's taken a long time for me to figure out what she was like when I was a teenager, as an adult she behaves in the same way towards me and is still in a constant state of self pity but I have clear boundaries in place for her, I think she realises I see her true colours and she does it less and less these days. You will come out the other side, just give yourself some time for you OP x

Mum super passive aggressive victim
Dad overtly aggressive.
Only emotional outlet in the family that was ok was anger.

Mil. Wow the p.a. in that one was strong
Fil just plain nasty