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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

Original poster

DH and DD can't get on

159 replies

Boswellisdead · 18/09/2019 14:24

Posted about this before about a year ago, when my DH was shouting at DD and scared her. Things improved dramatically after that and he was really trying.

Now things have slid back into the old pattern. He doesn't open his mouth without nagging or criticising or telling her off. I don't think he's even conscious of it. So she gets defensive and starts getting annoyed. So he gets annoyed and has more of a nag. She shouts, he shouts, and it all escalates.

It's getting to the point where I worry about going out for an evening or a weekend away because I don't trust what's going on at home.

OP posts:
Winterlife · 19/09/2019 08:21

She will know that her mother doesn’t condone the behaviour and supports her and if she decides not to see him when older she can.

Sure. That will definitely be a help to a six year old trapped with her custodial father 50% of her time.

Lisette1940 · 19/09/2019 08:30

I have parents like your husband. It does awful damage. I became the family scapegoat. Happy ending though because I've a lovely husband and am no longer in contact with either of them. But I'd like my childhood back.

madcatladyforever · 19/09/2019 08:40

My mother allowed my stepfather to do this to me and completely stripped me of self esteem for life. I'm nearly 60 now. Should be a senior manager in my job by now but have not made it due to my total lack of self esteem and chronic crippling anxiety. Please don't allow this to happen to your daughter.

joblotbubble · 19/09/2019 08:41

People are fucking nuts on here.

In what world do we teach women to stay with abusive men?

There is no argument for this, there is no debatable point, there is no justification. Fucking batshit mental nonsense.

SnuggyBuggy · 19/09/2019 08:59

So what is the answer to the abusive father having unsupervised contact?

OP I'd get advice off someone with some legal knowledge of how an abusive father might be prevented from getting unsupervised contact.

joblotbubble · 19/09/2019 09:02

So what is the answer to the abusive father having unsupervised contact?

I have absolutely no idea. But staying in a relationship with him is most certainly not the answer.

Winterlife · 19/09/2019 09:03

@joblotbubble, posters aren’t nuts. This is DD’s biological father. If he fights for custody, without compelling evidence, he probably will receive it. How, exactly, does that improve anyone’s situation?

I think more counselling, including for DD, which builds an arms length opinion, will serve OP better.

Thegullfromhull · 19/09/2019 09:06

It isn’t about teaching women to stay in abusive relationships. It’s about recognising, as women, the challenges and hurdles women face in extricating themselves from abusive relationships.
Being aware of how existing laws and policies repeatedly fail women, is the key to tackling domestic abuse.
We know for instance that women are most at risk of violence in the immediate weeks after leaving. We know that men will and DO use threats against children as a method of coercive control. This includes the type of abuse that the op mentions (she daren’t spend time alone for fear of what may happen) but it also includes other methods (threats not to return the child after contact, exposing the child to abuse between man and his new partner and so on and son on). It’s just ENDLESS.
Financial abuse. Emotional blackmail.
Of course the op must leave. But it isn’t as simple as people assume.

joblotbubble · 19/09/2019 09:07

Of course it's nuts to suggest OP stays with a man who abuses her child. What planet are people on who think this is ok?

This child needs protecting. The OP staying with him won't protect her. It isn't protecting her now so that arguments a bit crap.

All OP would be doing would be teaching her DD that she has very little worth. That the abuser is more important. That it's ok for men to do this to women. All while enabling him to continue.

Of course it's ridiculous to suggest staying with him.

IdblowJonSnow · 19/09/2019 09:08

Your poor DD. Would he want 50% if he finds her difficult?

joblotbubble · 19/09/2019 09:09

@Thegullfromhull

Oh I'm not saying for a minute it's simple. I'm saying it's a must though.

Iggly · 19/09/2019 09:09

Why did he stop for a bit then start again??

To be honest, the dynamic sounds all wrong.

He needs to go and get himself some help. Have you told him how unattractive this is and how he’s damaging his child??

Thegullfromhull · 19/09/2019 09:10

So what is the answer to the abusive father having unsupervised contact?

It would be good if anyone has helpful suggestions to this. It is an issue that is raised repeatedly , and always falls into the abyss. What’s the answer?

pinkyredrose · 19/09/2019 09:12

He is a bad father. If you continue to subject her to his emotional abuse you will be a bad mother. Leave. Now.

Iggly · 19/09/2019 09:13

If someone stays with their abusive partner then they need to call it out every single time.
The OP doesn’t sound scared of her dh - he’s directing it towards the child - so she needs to challenge it every time.

He clearly needs regularly counselling if that stopped it last time??

Haffiana · 19/09/2019 09:18

The reason why the mother NEEDS to separate from her partner is because the child needs to know that someone will act to protect her and that a protected life exists and is a real thing.

The fact that she will have to carry on seeing her father for custody until she is old enough to say no, is a far better alternative than living her life feeling that she is not worth enough to ever be put first.

If the childs parents stay together they are both abusing her and she will be damaged for life by this. If they separate, only one will be abusing her, BUT she will have the knowledge that is is abuse because she will have something to compare it to - a safe home and a parent who showed her how to say no to this. She won't grow up thinking that this is how a man and a woman and their children have to live their lives.

How many of the women posting on this board walked straight from childhoods where no-one ever showed them how to be empowered and how to value yourself, into an abusive relationship as an adult? THIS is what needs to be considered by all women who have children and who put an abusive man first.

Thegullfromhull · 19/09/2019 09:20

The danger is the escalation.
Girls generally get more challenging as they go through the preteen years/ puberty.
Challenging as in, they challenge injustice.
Abusive men don’t like that.
Once the easy target stops being easy he will either escalate into full violence or transfer his rage onto the mother. It won’t get better, that’s a certain.

Haffiana · 19/09/2019 09:24

Re the counselling - it is not a magic wand. A person has to really, really want help in order for counselling to work. It is really hard work.

Counselling is a long, hard journey and can take years. No-one who is 'sent' to counselling is likely to get any long lasting benefit from it.

SnuggyBuggy · 19/09/2019 09:32

It must be bloody awful to have to keep sending your child to an abusive home where you can't protect them on a regular basis. Not to mention the emotional fallout that the woman has to manage. I don't get how it's in the children's best interests to have contact with an abuser.

AttilaTheMeerkat · 19/09/2019 09:33

Boswell

We learn about relationships first and foremost from our parents, what are you both teaching your child here?. Is this really the legacy you want to be leaving her (I am sure you would like to ask your own mother that question too). You had a bullying stepfather and that man did you a lot of emotional damage, harm that remains with you to this very day. You yourself went on to marry an abusive man.

Do you fear your H?. What have been your reasons for remaining with this man this past year, did you for instance think that after a period of "good behaviour" he had changed for the better?. Your stepfather I guess never changed either. Such men do not change, they feel entitled to act as they do and he continues to emotionally abuse his child. This house is more like a house of horrors to your child, its certainly no sanctuary for her. You cannot fully protect your DD from her abusive father.

Do you think that your abusive H would at all want anything to do with his child post separation?. He will continue to merely use this child as punishment against you for having the gall to leave him.

pilotsprincess · 19/09/2019 09:33

This is so sad Sad and you say a year ago he improved, so he was the same when she was 4/5 years old, just a baby.
You only get one chance to get it right, they get one childhood.
Poor little girl Sad

Hederex · 19/09/2019 09:42

I assumed your daughter was about 15. When I read she is 6...yes, you have to end this relationship.
I know it seems impossible, but you need to allow yourself to get your head round that idea, make plans and get away from him.

FrothyB · 19/09/2019 09:58

I'm coming at this as a man who was terrified of his own father growing up. The abuse was rarely physical, but I did get beaten from time to time, although if I were a girl I don't believe that aspect would have happened.

This behaviour from a father messes you up big time, being made to feel everything you do is wrong, that you are somehow wrong. It lead me on a path where I have severely under achieved in life and whilst I'm alot better now than I was as a teenager, I don't think the wounds will ever truly go away.

I tend to dislike how quick people are on here to suggest ending relationships for what I feel are minor things (the guy is a bit lazy, or maybe spends too much time indulging a hobby), but this isn't a minor thing. When my Dad worked nights, I used to go to sleep hoping that something would happen and he wouldn't be coming home, and this was at your daughter's age. How terrible is it for a child to think like that about their own father?

My parents separated for different reasons when I was a teenager, but at that point my mental health was so poor I was suicidal.

The fact he suffered abuse aswell isn't an excuse. I'm about to welcome my first child in a few short weeks, and already I can't imagine anything worse than hurting her and I will try my absolute hardest not to let her experience even an echo of what I did.

FrothyB · 19/09/2019 10:03

I should add, this isn't your fault and it will take great strength to break away from this situation, so many unknowns to contend with. I'm just explaining how being in that situation affected me, and how I don't wish it on my own, or anyone else's children.

Grimbles · 19/09/2019 10:08

Maybe that will mean splitting but the result of that may be that when this man is yelling at his 7 year old, there is no mother nearby to say "hang on a second, stop that

Which carries the assumption that he is being told to 'stop that' by the mother when she is around?