thinking of leaving.. been married less than 3 months

[jollyme12]

So I have been married for under 3 months but was with my DH for quite a while before tying the knot. We had a big lavish wedding mainly funded by my parents and his (makes me think before I consider leaving), currently renting a house together before we buy.

Quick background on DH, his mother was abusive throughout his childhood so he does not speak to her and his father is in his life but isn’t the greatest support. His siblings do not speak to him at all. My family are lovely and always have been. Sometimes he has issues with my family because according to him I treat them better than I treat him which is not the case at all. My family have done nothing but be good to him. My brothers are laid back and we always have a laugh and I feel like he is the opposite of them sometimes, and is always in some sort of mood.

When we argue he gets really nasty and swears uncontrollably at me, swears such as you’re a cu** or he will tell me I am selfish, he will then bring up incidents from the past and use them against me even if that argument was resolved already. He then goes on to say he made a mistake in marrying me, he provokes me to swear back at him (I never swear) fast forward few hours on when I have cried and felt distraught he apologises and says he didn’t mean it and about how much he loves me etc. I am sure his broken family upbringing where his mother was constantly swearing has impacted him in many ways. Sometimes he will just snap at me randomly, for example yesterday we were making dinner in the kitchen and I must have left some packaging from some food on the floor, he picks it up and comes in to the living room stating why are you always leaving rubbish around pick it up. I believe he does have anger issues and I have even said maybe you should go on anger management to which he responds I don’t have anger issues.

Before we were married, things were different, he was a nicer person however we did argue then. Sometimes I blame myself, I should have known.

I feel embarrassed about the length of time I have been married and i already want out.

I am so confused, half of me wants to leave but the other doesn’t as I do love him. And when we have good times they are good. Has anyone been through anything similar?

jollyme12

re your comment:-
"I am a headstrong woman, so i will refuse to take any shit off a man, but i am left confused for the first time ever"

But you are taking abuse from your H and this state of confusion/ being given spaghetti head is par for the course with such men. As mentioned before, their nice/nasty cycle is a continuous one.

He targeted you and deliberately so. You're both nice and an empathetic person, perhaps also someone who felt sorry for this man because of his upbringing. Perhaps a part of you thought you could rescue and or save him or even love him better.

Some abusive men like supposedly strong women because they see them as an additional challenge to bring down to their base level. He is now dragging you down with him.

I would worry that even if he does pull himself together and improve his behaviour that it might only last while he thinks you can still get away easily. It would more than likely get worse again once you are more permanently entwined with him, like when you buy a house or get pregnant.

thank you everyone for your responses, honestly means a lot

If he's markedly changed since you married then he thinks he's 'got you' now.
I imagine he'll buck his ideas up if you tell him how you feel - for a while at least. Then once you've a mortgage/kids he'll start up again.
Which is fine if you ever want your children to hear their dad call their mum a cunt.
Hes already trying to cause conflict between you and your family which is an isolating technique.
If you want to leave you dont need anyones permission and you'll never be in a better position to leave than you are at this point.
He will have only himself to blame.

If he's jealous of your relationships with your family imagine how he'd be if you had a baby that takes your focus off him completely.
Tell your family,you need people irl supporting you .If you weren't married and he had changed like this you would be gone.Or you could stay because this is just the begining.

I am considering marriage counselling, we hardly argue, but when we do it is so horrible, he turns into someone I don't even recognise

OP I could have written your post. And I wish I had done 10 years ago. Because now I have two DC and I won’t leave.

I live in a ‘grey relationship ’ - not good enough because when he goes through episodes relating to him family he is miserable and mean. All the other times he is lovely and he is lovely to the kids too. There are some posters who immediately jump to ‘he is abusive’ - I don’t think it’s true. Many people have poor behaviours that they have learnt and can undo them. My DH has taken big steps to undo them but it’s not all gone. My tolerance however, plus maturity in understanding what a relationship should be, has changed.

My own parents have a terrible relationship. My dm has been emotionally, mentally, verbally and financially abused for as long as I can remember. I didn’t know the first few times when DH swore at me or called me names that that was a good enough reason to leave. And no one told me that either.

I cannot tell you how much I wish I had known to set the bar higher.

@AttilaTheMeerkat I agree, hearing from other people makes sense

Typical abusive pattern.
He feels you're hooked and he feels entitled to treat you poorly.
He doesn't think you'll leave for the very reasons you're reluctant to.

You have two options.

1. Leave now.
2. Continue as you are and see it get worse when you have children, and then let them witness his behaviour or be the victims of it too.

*BobblyRash

I haven't really expressed my views in that manner, I am not sure he even knows I am considering ending the marriage, I am going to have that conversation and take it from there.

I do love him and he is a good guy, the last argument we had, I made it clear that if he ever speaks to me like that I am out the door*

So you have told him.
And you didn’t leave.
Therefore there are no consequences to his behaviour and he knows your “threats” are empty. You have inadvertently given him clear permission to continue to abuse you.

He is deeply flawed and abusive. This will get worse. Just leave right now.

Tell your parents and friends everything. They will welcome you with open arms.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

He doesn't have anger issues. He has abuse issues.

Your partner is abusive.

End that marriage as quick as you can and gtf out of there. Under no circumstances go to counciling. Never go to counciling with an emotionally abusive partner.

turns into someone I don't even recognise

The mask has dropped. I had the same following our wedding, although before the marriage had been passive aggressive. He would morph into a different person during arguments, turn very nasty and appear to have contempt for me. He would over react to any perceived slight and started to be more controlling. Outwardly he was charming to others.

I don't recommend joint counselling as this isn't a joint communication issue. He may be motivated to change if he feels the marriage will end but change is very difficult and often impossible.

Have a look into disordered personality, especially covert types, and see if this fits his way of acting. An abusive childhood plus genetics appears be the root cause.

Your family may not understand it, mine struggled, as they couldn't understand why someone would act like this. They assumed one off factors such as stress and this thinking kept me in the marriage for much longer than it should have.

All you can do is enforce boundaries, let him know his behaviour isn't acceptable but I think your instinct that the marriage won't last is probadly correct.

People who don't understand why the marriage ends quickly won't have knowledge of disordered abusive people, that is fortunate for them. Anyone who has lived with an abusive partner gets it.

You are deluded- you have an image f yourself and of him that you keep repeating then give lots of actual examples that totally contradict the image.

Read what @AttilaTheMeerkat has said. She is absolutely right and you are taking no notice because it is not the narrative you have created.

Children are completely out the question, I couldn't bring a child in to this world if our relationship got so nasty

He then goes on to say he made a mistake in marrying me

Also typical. He thinks he has the upper hand here and can even threaten to leave, because he's so great and you're a disgrace.

Has anyone been through anything similar?

Yes. Sometimes I would sit and just wonder at how happy we could be one day and how utterly miserable I could be the next day because something had set him off. I would try to avoid 'setting him off' and anticipate when he was going to have a go at me. Of course I always failed because he wanted to have a go at me and was just looking for the excuse.
Men like this are emotional abusers. The lovely/horrible cycle is part of the abuse. It will drive you insane.

@Gutterton the last argument we had, we haven't had an argument since hence the reason for me not to have left yet. I ma going to talk to my mum tonight about it

And mrs tumbletap I'm glad your counselling helped you but a woman eye rolling or being sarcastic doesn't compare to shouting and calling someone a cunt does it.

You get to know people when they're angry.
And you should measure the health of your relationship by your arguments.

Every single wife beater can be nice. It's the bad moments that define a relationship.

But by not leaving for what are really your own reasons (because it may appear "easier" for you to stay) you are also showing these children that a crap and otherwise loveless marriage is their norm too.

He is not a good father to his children if he treats you as their mother with such disdain and contempt. He sends them mixed messages too.

We learn about relationships first and foremost from our parents and unsurprisingly your own parents marriage was and remains awful too. You can break this cycle if you so choose.

As with many commonly held beliefs we owe it to ourselves to really examine them to determine if they’re valid. Often, they don’t really hold up under scrutiny. Are we really staying together for the sake of the children, or are we fearful of coming to terms with our own lives (and in that case using the children as a scapegoat)? Second, is divorce necessarily harmful to children? Last, what are the effects of remaining in an intact family in which the parents are either conflicted or simply loveless?

Are we avoiding our larger fears?

When marriages are angry, conflicted, or terribly mediocre, parents often default to staying together for the purported sake of the children. As our children grow older, they tend to replicate relationships similar to what their parents modeled. As parents we’d never say we want our children to suffer or struggle in their relationships. Yet that’s the greater likelihood. It’s not what we say, but what we do that matters. Telling our children they deserve healthy, respectful, and loving partnerships isn’t taken to heart if we don’t have the courage to live up to our own words. What we model for them is very much what we might expect for them in their future relationships. From this perspective we might question the sincerity of the expression “for the sake of the children.”

If we want our offspring to have joyful and successful relationships, we need to provide them with the best example we possibly can. Living in mediocrity or worse burdens children with very confusing messages about relationships and happiness. It certainly instructs them that loving marriages and partnerships are not their birthright.

@LuluJakey1 that is not true, i am just writing how i feel so i can know what someone on the outside thinks. And i have taken notice, there is nothing to say that i wont leave this relationship, I know if i tell my family i can move back home and carry on with life. Its easier said than done

And that message is to Illstartexercisingtomorrow.

Your children won;t say "thanks mum" to you for staying with this man for your own reasons. Just as you do not say thanks mum to your own mother for remaining with her H for her own reasons.

It is only too late to raise your own relationship bar higher when you are dead.

Can you have a trial separation and see how you feel?

What do you think your mother will say here?. Is her counsel really going to be useful, what if she advises you to leave your H and asap?. You need support to leave regardless and to also properly work out exactly why you embarked on a relationship with such a man, let alone marry him, in the first place.

@AttilaTheMeerkat his parents marriage was abusive since he was a child whereas my parents have a great loving relationship. Thankfully we have no children

Don't wait for another 'argument' (I don't know about you but I've never called someone i gave a shit about a cunt no matter how angry at them I was).

If a stranger spoke to you on the street that way would it be OK? No. So why the hell us it OK for someone who is supposed to care about you to do it? He is a disgusting bully. Don't get caught up in his shit a second longer.

Talking to others sometimes helps, but unfortunately, people have a tendency to try to rationalise irrational and unnaceptable behaviour. To think the best of people.

You need to bare in mind, no matter what, his behaviour is abusive, that is not your fault and there is no excuse for it.

Start making plans to leave.