H has taken son away

[ElCorazin]

My (d)h had taken my son away without my consent. As he (h) is working a night shift he has taken him to stay with a school friend. I called said school friend's mother and she refused to discuss with me.

My h is controlling and emotionally abuse even and uses DS to threaten me. I am unwell with depression and taking medication, my depression (made a whole lot worse by dreadful relationship and lack of support).

H says to me that I am 'unfit' to look after DS and he has now done this. The reason being I have been in bed and crying today and more or less begging him to show me some love & support, to no avail.

Surely this woman cannot hold my son against my wishes? God only knows what tale H spun her about my so called 'mental illness'... he also told me he called mental health services to 'get me help' earlier.

He does this in a threatening and menacing way, not out of any genuine care for me. He stands over me and shouts 2 in from my face YOU. NEED. HELP.

I'm scared and utterly desperate that he's taken my son away and humiliated he's involved a school family like this.

I have called the police & am waiting for them to contact me. I have never invoked and services before but feel he has crossed a red line now

OP you have a lot to sort out and it is going to take time. Your health is your priority so seeing the GP is a wonderful idea. Unfortunately your dh will have told this woman all sorts of things which no doubt has been made worse by you (understandably) ringing her in anger and then ringing the police. It will reinforce to that woman that what your dh said is true. I think you need to sort your health out and then look at an exit plan. Are you going to leave him? You need to work hard at sorting your health out so it can be clearly seen that you are fit to care for your child. Obviously he will still get significant access and that may still involve him leaving your ds with others while he works, just as I am sure you would leave him with others if you were at work.

Why do you not have access to money?

I am reading this as you suffer from a very common illness, depression. You had a serious row with abusive h which led to a migraine and so you lay down, tearful after the way he spoke to you. H then decided to punish you and control the situation by removing your ds from the family home and leaving him with a friend. This is disgusting behaviour.

Obviously if your h had written the post it may have read as you have a very serious MH problem, spend most days in bed crying, he lost the rag with it all and took your ds away for his own good as he didn't want to leave him with you.

Personally I am going with the first version of events however no one on here can ever really know the full story, and so it is important that you get help and support from people local to you. Social services will become involved now you have spoken to the police which I think it a very positive thing.

Hi all,

Thanks for the reports.

OP - we're so sorry to hear that you're having such a tough time at the moment. We're going to move this thread over to relationships now.

Can we also remind folks to stick to Talk Guidelines? We've had to remove several posts that really aren't in the spirit of the site. Please bear in mind when posting that MN is chiefly about supporting one another.

OP - I'm so sorry you;re having to deal with all this. I had a very similar experience when my son was 1 - abusive ex basically decided that I was lying about being at work one day, rang me on my mobile and said I was a lying mentally ill bitch and DS was better off without me. Instead of dropping DS at nursery he'd dropped him with his friend, and refused to tell me where he was. He demanded I came home asap so he could berate me for being shit some more - I just rang the police. My ex was amazed that I'd do that - I said you;ve just told me I'm not going to see my son again and you won;t say where he is!

Anyway the police rang my ex, made him say where DS was, and retrieved him. And that was the end of me and emotionally, financially abusive, controlling ex. Life is so, so much better now. Hope you can get free from this as it won't improve. Womens Aid are fantastic if you can get through to them.

No doubt everyone my ex spoke to thought I was mentally unstable. Total bollocks.

OP good luck for the GP . Did you collect your son this morning? When does your husband get home from work?

I second calling womans aid and leaving immediatley.

Miss duke- I am concerned about you thinking it made things worse for me to call her & then the police. I believe I was completely within my rights to do so.

Mental health problems are often exacerbated by unhappy relationships remember that OP, pleased you are going to the GP today, as addressing your health is critical

OP whatever you say you post was very concerning, I don't think any parent would want to leave their child when the partner was as distraught as you were, I am not victim blaming and I diont doubt that your partner is unkind. But we also know that depression can be very hard to live with, so getting your self calmer and on somne decent meds so you can get strong

good luck OP

Op I hope you got on ok at gp? Get wheels in motion to leave. You will be so much happier alone. Its fantastic, speaking from experience!!

It sounds to me that OP was upset and feeling very down and was in need of support from her husband, he instead decided to use it against her and became emotionally abusive and gaslighted her by making out she's unhinged and unfit to parent, I suspect he didn't remove their child out of concern but out of spite to hurt OP and give the impression to others that she's crazy and a danger to their child. He's probably fed a pack of over dramatic lies to the other mum which has put her on guard to keep OP away from her own DS to protect him.
He's clearly emotionally abusive and using their child to hurt her and her depression to gaslight and discredit her. It's a shame that people on here are falling for his bollocks too.

Hope you get on ok at the GP's.

OP glad you're getting more support on here now- many of the messages last night were horrible. Hope your son is okay, and that your GP appointment went well.

This thread is horrid in places just wanted to add that not everyone is as un-understanding. My thoughts and best wishes are with you, stuff will get better just keep going forward

If you have no access to the joint account, why wouldn't you be paying your salary into your own account and using that money to get the hell away from such an abusive man?

Hi there, wrote a long post early this morning and lost it all grrr! Anyway, the gist was 'humanity and kindness are running very low in some parts of our world right now, support and kindness cost nothing' and lots more of that nature. So glad others came on and have got your thread back on track as a support thread vs a bash someone whilst their down thread.

How did seeing your gp go?

And did you collect your DS from her house before school or after school this avo?

It's a very well trodden path, the 'she's crazy and not a fit mother' story. And it's a really good way of maintaining the abuse.

Trouble is (and this is from my own experience, not a judgement in any way!), whilst you are living inside an abhsive relationship, it's all too easy to seem crazy, hysterical and irrational when others cannot (or will not) see the abusive acts but can see your reaction to those acts. And of course living in a truly awful abusive relationship means your mental health is under attack every moment as you try and make things work against the purposeful chaos and nightmarish reality the abuser has created. Crying, despair, anger etc are all perfectly reasonable responses to an intolerable situation. But take that situation away and all people see is an over reaction.

So SO easy for him to then start saying you're mad and not capable of being a good mother. And everything you do is seen against that frame of him = mr reasonable, you = falling apart hysterical woman.

So, please please be aware of this. You need to step away from this environment where he has the power to make you look crazy, and also make your mental health suffer. You can't win against this.

I'm concerned that you don't sound ready to separate or to stop allowing yourself to get tangled up in his abuse. You don't win and get to live happy ever after like this. The best you can hope for is that you can just about hold it together to pretend on the outside it's not an abjsive relationship... and that will slowly rip you apart.

What do you want to happen now? Are you at the stage where you are keeping on fighting for your marriage and for him to finally see how horrible he's being and change?

Or are you further along where you want to make plans to get away as best you can for you and DS?

Either is ok by the way, it takes a long time for people to recognize the abuse then cycle through all the emotions around that before usually multiple attempts to leave. I'm just asking so we can support you better - it's easy for us to jump straight to the practicalities and actions stage, but it's just as useful to support someone towards that end goal at an earlier stage on their journey.

I posted quite a few times on here before I finally split. I'm sure people got frustrated as I had NO CLUE how bad things were. And kept disappearing when posters wouldn't help in the way I was asking ... which was all about 'how can I help him' vs 'how can I get the hell away from him'! Was years ago now but I've only just been able to come to terms with what abuse was actually happening, and that it was all very very wrong, and that even if I feel guilty, I'm not to blame for my own abuse.

''Twas emotional, financial, social, sexual, and finally physical though now I look back and realise it was physically unacceptable waaay before the punch in the neck that drove me to mumsnet.

I didn't recognise most of that long list of abuse for ages... but I was suffering from it and reacting to it all the way through, even when I didn't know what was wrong. It was all so complicated and such an individual situation others couldn't understand it (Ha! Great excuse when you think you're in such a special situation with so many good reasons why he didn't act like other, kinder, people. That kept me stuck for aaaaagggges).

And yup, I got the 'you're crazy' crap too, and believed it more fool me! I was depressed and anxious absolutely... that's called having a reasonable reaction to an unreasonable situation. I still have mh issues now sometimes, but not in the same way. I got so twisted round I thought I was mad, was all my fault, me being mad 'made him' behave how he did etc etc etc. and others believed him too, I believed him! I even thought that I was the abusive one. (Hits palm on forehead! Doh!).

It was a living nightmare. And the more I tried to tell and got negative feedback, the longer I stayed and the deeper I sunk. I really, really feel for you.

And I think you might be right there, as I was, sinking...

Sorry I'm waffling! I just want you to know that however dark things are right now, there will be a way out.

And there will be people to support you - in spite of the shocking way this thread began.

Take care. And don't give him any more ammunition if you can possibly help it.

Making plans to leave this marriage, is something you should seriously consider.

When you reach the point of begging for attention, there is little hope. Added to the fact that he abuses you, which can't be a good environment for your son.

It doesn't matter whether he sees you crying, I imagine he can pick up on the lack of love in your home and it doesn't feel like a secure home for him.

Your husband must be pretty close to ask 'a friend' to have your son overnight, but you've got bigger fish to fry.

You don't need the abuse and you'd benefit from some counselling...CBT is a good start. Then if you need more intense therapy, you'll likely be referred to a psychotherapist.

You've put up with this abuse for a long time and need help to understand why you've done so, because you'll need to be strong going forward.

Yes health first and future second

We are rooting for you OP

OP you are doing great, well done for handling this so well. Gaslighting is an appalling thing to have to endure. Best of luck for today x

I'm so sorry you are going through this (and all the horrible comments)

You are absolutely in the right regarding your son - unless there is a court order in place then both parents have parental responsibility (unless dad isn't on birth certificate) and the person withholding them from you can be charged with kidnap (I'm an Ofsted registered childminder, we have to be very clear on this because of parents separating etc)

Is there anybody you and your son can stay with? I would try giving women's aid a call and see what they suggest.

Best of luck x