bit of background: I grew up with an extremely violent father who would inflict the most horrendous physical abuse on my mum. It continued throughout my childhood and as a result I have been left with skewed boundaries as to what is acceptable in relationships. I’ve been in therapy for years with different counsellors/psychotherapists but I still have problems with self esteem and with identifying abusive behaviour.
I’m in a relationship now with someone who constantly blames everything on me to the point where I feel that I am the problem. Some examples:
He criticises my mannerisms, the way I speak, the clothes I wear but will say he is ‘joking’
He sometimes questions my whereabouts and will try to trip me up I.e he will ask me to repeat to him again exactly what I was doing and will look for discrepancies in my answer. He will then say that I changed my response or that I said something I don’t remember saying and I end up tied up in knots
He is extremely paranoid to the point where he has asked me to FaceTime him when I am not with him. He says it’s because he ‘misses my pretty face’ but I am sure that is not the reason as once I couldn’t FaceTime him (I was visiting a relative who lives rurally and I had poor phone reception/data) and he said he’d driven to my house to check that I wasn’t there. He said his gut was telling him that I’d lied about my whereabouts and he thought I was at home with another man
I told him I wanted to break up with him a month ago and he grabbed my arm to stop me from leaving his house. He called me a cunt and shouted at me. When he finally calmed down he said he was sorry but he loves me so much and is scared to lose me. He also said he finds me very difficult to be in a relationship with and he thinks I am emotionally abusive towards him.
None of this is ok is it? This isn’t me causing these problems? I feel like he is fucking with my head everyday and I can’t see the wood for the trees. He’s started saying his friends and family are concerned about how I treat him but that if he is happy with me then he will just have to put up with it.
I’m awake at this time of the morning because I can’t sleep due to anxiety. He told me that he’s been treated badly in all his past relationships so that is the only thing that makes me think it can’t be me in the wrong - the common denominator is him and he can’t have been unlucky enough for every women he has met to have been abusive or a cheat surely? Although I also know he is still friends with his exes friends so if he was that awful then surely they wouldn’t want anything to do with him?
Any advice or wise words would be much appreciated.