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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

I think I’m suffering from emotional abuse, what now.

5 replies

Emrel · 31/05/2018 04:48

I was happily married for 10 years, DH had his faults and would often struggle with my younger child, his family is filled with odd people and excluding people is their forte.
I was working a job with long hours and dealing with most of the childcare. We had just had a lovely family holiday abroad, really the first with kids we’ve ever taken, when DH suddenly decided he wasn’t sure about the relationship anymore. I decided to give him a year to work on himself to see what he wanted and offered to go to relationship counselling as we had not really had any issues as far as I was aware. My husband is a narcissist and has a really weird relationship with his mother which is completely excluding of anybody else. My first child is included in that odd relationship but my second like me has always been unwanted. While happily married DH didn’t put his mum in her place ever and it had gotten to the point that I would just ignore her and try and do other fun stuff with my younger child.
bullying from MIL included literally turning to face the other way and refusing to speak to me at the school gates, forgetting to pick the girls up from school, nursery etc when I am at work and telling me it’s my fault for working. Refusing to pick the kids up at different times when the school is 5 minutes from her house.Offering sleep overs to my first child but not the second. Telling my second child that her face will look like a fish if she doesn’t stop to suck her thumb and not allowing her to. She has now started to bite her nails.
DH declines councelling and started to lie through his teeth, taking out loans to buy cars, taking money out of the joint account, going on business trips that are somehow always in the school holidays and over the weekend. He stopped paying his way into the joint account and has started to make it increasingly hard for me to work. I have been lucky that I can take on shift work and have so far managed to stay a step ahead and continue to work but I was mainly on nights last year while he was still in the house and mainly on weekends but he is becoming more and more reluctant to have his kids and every time I do work he sends me texts to see if I can start later or can I come home sooner which I can’t for obvious reasons. I have explained to him that he is financially killing me. I am also doing a full time degree and have some health concerns and the stress of not being sure of how to make ends meet at the end of the month, continue to pass my exams and the dawning realisation that I’m being emotionally abused by DH and his mother is just getting a bit much. The solicitors are now involved, he refused for months to tell me who his solicitor was, and I really hope that there will be an end in sight. My credit rating is now shit, my faith in men has gone completely down the drain, and I haven’t been able to do as much work experience as my peers and am therefore struggeling to get work but I would take that if that is what is necessary to move on. But today my MIL picked up only my first child and left my second child with the carer I pay for without prior notice. She just rocked up and instead of picking up both she just left my carer with an unexpected child and I could do nothing because I was at work. My second child initially seemed ok but then became incredibly upset when I got home and felt left out. When my first child came home bearing gifts I had had enough, I bought another toy and had a chat with my first daughter that allthough I did not want to punish her in anyway her sleepover with MIL was cancelled and from now on they will both go or not at all. And I told my MIL that aswell, apparently it’s all
In my head and I should not dictate what to do to her. There will be some punishment as there always is and it will usually be further restrictions on childcare from both of them. I cannot wait to get divorced. But how do I stop this emotional abuse and make it clear to the judge that this is happening and that I and my kids need protection. He has never been violent.

OP posts:
Plentyoffishnets · 31/05/2018 05:45

emrel- I just wanted to reply and say that what you are going through sounds terrible and you are amazingly strong in continuing with this situation. I don't have any specific advice other than I think you should contact women's aid who are specialists and will be able to help you come up with a plan of how to exit the relationship, good luck with everything you are amazing.

Blondebakingmumma · 31/05/2018 06:23

Please tell me you have your own bank account and your wage isn’t going into an account he can access?

Has DH moved out?

Sally2791 · 31/05/2018 06:36

So sorry for what you are going through. Unfortunately the more that you cope with people like that the more they up the ante. Best of luck with escaping

Emrel · 02/06/2018 08:36

Yes I have my own bank account and froze DH out of the joint account.
He moved out last year. I’m worried that he is going to withdraw what little childcare he did just to make a point.

OP posts:
redastherose · 02/06/2018 11:29

It's awful dealing with a narcissist as an ex. The only way to do it realistically is to not rely upon him for anything. Get maintenance sorted out through the courts and organise your work around childcare that you can control (ie childminder or your family - people you can rely upon). Make it clear to your solicitor that you cannot rely upon him and his family for any childcare (keep a diary of incidents where they have failed to collect your DC's or have treated one to the exclusion of the other) so he has to pay his fair share of the paid childcare to compensate.

In relation to the preferential treatment of one child over the other. Tell your childminder/nursery/school etc that they are not to allow your stbxmil to collect either child. Only your ex or you are to collect your DC's if they kick up a fuss make it clear to them that it is down to her behaviour towards the DC's and you will not allow it to continue. This is a toxic person and she will be damaging both of your DC's by treating them like this. The golden child/scapegoat dynamic is very very damaging to both children. It gives the golden child the idea that they are special and can get away with everything even blaming the other child for doing naughty things when they have been witnessed by someone else to do something wrong. The poor scapegoat ends up feeling like nothing they do matters because they are blamed when they haven't done things and their achievements are overlooked or dismissed as nothing special.

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