What one thing (if just one) made you realise you were in an abusive relationship?

[AnaisAna]

I didn’t realise at the time (and that will seem ridiculous to some!) but ‘D’H once told me that if I didn’t have sex with him he would ruin the following day for everyone.

I was suffering with endometriosis at the time, and by everyone, he meant me and our 3 children who at the time were 1,3 and 5.

Now we are separated I’m looking back through all the red flags and this sticks out the most. How I stayed another day I’ll never know, but it took me another 8 years.

Such a stupid thing but my parents were visiting and I'd made dinner for everyone. XH kicked off with me in front of them because I'd made rice with the chilli and he wanted nachos. He refused to eat any of it and sat sulking instead.

We were all mortified, but sadly it took another couple of years and him leaving for me to look back and realise that that was only the tip of a very large iceberg, really.

@NoMoreDickheads I'm a long time out of that situation now. I got counseling from Women's Aid after a particularly nasty row and did a daytime flit when he was at work. At the time I didn't know WA would even listen to me because it was rarely physical but they were amazing
Other highlights were him keeping his promise not to smuggle drugs home on a flight in his case so he put them in mine instead and only told me when we got home, and another time he gave me his rent & housekeeping money in counterfeit notes and only for a friend of his was decent enough to warn me, I'd have probably got arrested the moment I tried to pay for groceries.

I find it odd that some things I remember really well, but others not at all...just the aftermath. I remember him saying or doing something so hurtful that I sat in the garden on the grass and cried with the pain of how trapped I was and the shame of it all. Outside though so the kids wouldn't hear In the pitch black, in the winter, in the rain....and nowhere to go but back inside. I can remember that so clearly, but I have no idea what it was he'd said or done because it was just another thing in a long list of things. Threads like this do help because it's good to know (even in hindsight) that ts not just you. I also used to cry a lot in supermarket car parks.

People had no idea it was so bad and the thing with EA is that it's very difficult to describe.

I still haven't fully realised I was in an abusive relationship.

The first time I was really terrified was when he kicked the bathroom door down and dragged me out.

Hugs all

@AnaisAna
I have recently left dh after years of thinking about doing so.
He sounds similar to yours.
He also did the lovebombing but it soon stopped after he saw that I was serious and initiated ending the marriage. After this point, once he'd seen I was serious the mask slipped off and has stayed off. Do not fall for it. It is all manipulation. I was recommended Lundy Bancroft on these boards - that book was revelatory for me, have a look at his website and get the book.

As for your question, I agree that it wasn't one thing but certain things stick in my mind:
I was a frigid bitch - because I didn't put out overtime he wanted it, he told me I was not normal and lined up a sex therapist for me to see, saying it must be from my childhood.

Calling my cunt, slag, whore, bitch - then denying it.

Having full on rage attacks then suddenly calm - also denying he'd raged, gas lighting me into thinking I'd made it up.

Refusing to take me to hospital when the dr said we had to go - it was an emergency and he didn't want to be inconvenienced - cried on my bed, he did take me after the dr kept calling to check, but swore at me the whole way there, then calm and stroking my hand as soon as we arrived, and were in front of people.

Gosh so many things.

A friend who was in an EA relationship told me that her exdh could not believe it when their couples therapist told him - just because she is your wife does not entitle you to sex with her whenever you want, nor does it entitle you access to her body. He was apparently shocked and could not believe that any woman would think like this.

He did so many things that are worse than this, but he’d mock me and that really unnerved me, it was so ... not normal. He’d repeat what I said in a nasty voice and say “waa-waa, what a pathetic baby you are” when he’d make me cry.

You don’t always understand it’s happening at the time is the problem it becomes your normal. The first time he sexually assaulted me should have been the day I left. I was in such deep shock, so embarrassed and had no one to turn too. My home life was so awful that I forgave him and hoped he wouldn’t do it again and went on to marry him. He emotionally and sexually abused me. I began to develop a stutter because I was always worried I’d say the wrong thing.

@Ritascornershop I hate when they do that! My ex was the same. Oh I just want to throw something at his little pea shaped head! Grrrr 😡

I was recommended Lundy Bancroft on these boards - that book was revelatory for me, have a look at his website and get the book.

It's free online here (has permission as I understand it);

www.docdroid.net/py03/why-does-he-do-that-pdf

@HansBanans it is really awful, isn’t it? The person who should make you feel safe is suddenly making you afraid to even speak. And it’s so bloody ... well we say childish, but of course most kids aren’t this mean @ sociopathic.

@Ritascornershop yes! If we were arguing about something he would mock me as he said my bottom lip would quiver after I'd finished saying what I wanted to say. Used to make me so mad and upset after I'd literally just spouted out what he had done to upset me and then he would just mock me to my face. Thank god we don't have those people in our lives anymore! x

@HansBanans - a giant toast to that sentiment!!

Mine held me responsible for his mum's much needed medical treatment at a hospital miles away by saying he would only take her if I went along, and if I refused it would be my fault her condition got worse. She couldn't get there by herself so I endured the hours of threats and intimidation while stuck in the car. There were other things but I started planning my escape after that day.

I loathe and love these threads in equal measure. The first time my ex's mask slipped was when he raged at me because a fallen tree caused a diversion in our route. This was well before marriage. I was so shaken, I cried in the toilets when we got to.our destination, and yet, I stayed and put up with another 10 years of his s**t. Life is so much better now. Hugs to all of you.

@5LeafPenguin

I find it odd that some things I remember really well, but others not at all...just the aftermath. I remember him saying or doing something so hurtful that I sat in the garden on the grass and cried with the pain of how trapped I was and the shame of it all. Outside though so the kids wouldn't hear In the pitch black, in the winter, in the rain....and nowhere to go but back inside. I can remember that so clearly, but I have no idea what it was he'd said or done because it was just another thing in a long list of things. Threads like this do help because it's good to know (even in hindsight) that ts not just you. I also used to cry a lot in supermarket car parks.

People had no idea it was so bad and the thing with EA is that it's very difficult to describe.

5leaf I find this as well. I am not sure if I really just can't remember the incidents or I have blocked them out, but every now and then something will pop into my head, mahbe watching something on telly or reading something here, and then it brings it back. I do, like you, remember how I felt though. I don't don't recall what upset me so much.

I do vividly remember leaving the house after some incident, that of which I can't recall, and I drove to an empty car park and I just sat there for hours. When I got back he asked me where id been. I said out thinking and he battered me so with questions that I eventually said I'd been in the carpark. His reaction was not, are you OK, do you want to talk about things, which is the normal response I think, no he just laughed at me, he mocked be for ages about what I tit I must have looked sitting alone in a car park.

Then I went on to have another relationship which was also not good for me, also red flags but different ones. So once again I was back here as I didn't think things were right, but he was more subtle (covert).

Needless to say these walls are up so high now that I doubt anyone will ever get through.

“he told me I was not normal and lined up a sex therapist for me to see, saying it must be from my childhood.

Calling my cunt, slag, whore, bitch - then denying it.“

He said all of this to me! Thank you, will check out the book

@NoMoreDickheads
It’s truly amazing to think that we reach out on an internet platform to people we don’t know and how quick they were to fathom out that there is a much bigger problem going on. As the person in that situation at that moment, it’s hard to recognise sometimes that it’s just the tip of the iceberg and that there are multiple layers of abuse going on. Like yourself mumsnetters gave me a sense of where it was heading and I left one night while he was asleep drunk as his behaviour was escalating.

When I looked in the mirror and could only think about things he called me and started to believe them.
I got told we could only have sex on certain days (his terms), I do actually laugh to myself about that one now though
Doesn't it make you wonder why you stayed so long looking back

When he started getting angry and critical every time I did something social on my own.

I would have a conversation with him about it, he'd appear to accept he was being unreasonable, I'd get my next social outing hassle free (though he couldn't help zeroing in on everything I said afterward and dropping in little criticisms and greivances) .. but then, sooner or later, the next time or the time after that (or even just planning an outing) .. bam, off he'd go again. Angry, indignant, highly critical, threatening to end the relationship, or appearing to end of but not following through.

He got increasingly verbally abusive too, and wrote it off as him being "fiery". He scoffed at me when I said he was verbally abusive.

I took over a year of that shit.

When I asked him to cook for one night after him refusing to cook for months, and he turned the oven down really low on the sly and refused to get up and check the food.

We didn’t eat until 10pm.

He admitted the next day he did it to punish me for not having any food in the house because he didn’t go food shopping on his turn

When he shouted at me for balling his socks up wrong.

When after months of begging him to pick his dirty boxers up off the floor, I stopped picking them up. When it got to a weeks worth of boxers on the bathroom floor and on the landing I realised he was doing it deliberately to ensure I picked up after him... after I approached him about it he pointed a finger in my face and said ‘if it bothers you so much, why don’t YOU pick them up.’

Leaving his wet towel after a shower on my side of the bed also on purpose.

Standing on the stairs during an argument to make sure he was higher than me. Standing up off the couch when we were sat down to tower over me in the same respect.

Having time off work ‘sick’ and not telling me about it, and waiting until I said something to use it as an excuse to shout at me.

Withholding information because it was ‘none of my business’ and Shouting at me and calling me disrespectful and pointing fingers in my face/backing me in to a fridge when I asked him how much food he had fed our cat.

Calling me abusive when I finally said the word ‘abusive’ for the first time.

Getting drunk and admitting that he had been an arsehole because he ‘knows I’m always right and he hates it‘.

Spending the whole of his wage on shoes and aftershave and clothes in himself, and then making me pay for his family at Christmas. Then shortchanging the rent in January making me fall behind on my personal debts.

Spending his spare money on himself In the first month of us moving in to our first home, then crying about it... then shouting at me For ruining his night when I brought up him going out for a meal with his friend and picking beers up from the shop after I’d footed the rest of the household bills for the month!

Getting the keys for our new home and him refusing to move in for days leaving me to sort all the house moving in and cleaning on my own.

Making me cry over dinner in a restaurant on the night in my nans funeral.

We used to split the payment and the undertaking of the food shop on a biweekly basis... him going out shopping and getting nothing but Meat based freezer food For himself to live off for a week - After stalling the food shop for a week - leaving me without anything to eat in the house unless I did my own shop (I was vegetarian at the time) and my daughter without school Lunches.

Saying he will split all the house bills 50/50, but then wanting additional sky sports and entertainment added on to the sky bill for his own needs... then refusing his share of the £2.50 per month for the kids channels for my daughter!

Washing up (during the time I was working at home) and walking over to my plate to take it, making a point of not taking it so I had to wash my own plate.

Purposely staying at his mums house At the weekend Until 9pm On Sunday evening to dodge the housework when he knew I had an important piece of work on and childcare, so I couldn’t do my work he knew I had an important deadline for.

Fell out and had a go at me for under riding his decisions for bringing a free (small) desk home for the bedroom, so I had an actual work station.

Refusing to put ketchup on my plate for me at tea time and saying I was taking the piss ‘I’ve cooked you a burger I’m not pissing about putting sauce on it for you as well!’

Oh the list is endless. Funnily enough it wasn’t one of those things that’s made me realise, it was all of these things put together over a few counselling lessons where I finally realised he was emotionally, mentally and financially abusive.

Glad you are away from him madcat. That's exactly the kind of endless list I had...Id forgotten about the information withholding.

I'm reading this thread in horror that there are so many of these twats out there.

Mine frequently used to insert his fingers in me whilst I was asleep then rage at me for not wanting sex. This continued until I had a panic attack.

Gave me ultimatums and dumped me a few times if he didnt get his own way. He did this whilst I was pregnant.

Strangled me on two separate occasions. I know this is not emotional abuse.

Verbally backed me into a corner meaning I couldnt have a say on anything. He would rise his voice, deflect issues, tantrum, derail the convo so it purposefully went off topic. I realise it was just a tactic to shut me down.

Mocked me for being upset at things he did. He constantly did nasty things and when I tried to tell him the manner in which he did it, he would say "no I didnt do it like that" or "i didn't say it like that" when he clearly did. It was just his way of not having to apologise.

There loads, i could write a novel on the incidences and that's not including the physical abuse.

Listening to him flirt with another girl whilst he could here me crying in our room.

Lying about having cancer and then chemo.

Coming on a trip to Dublin with me (his birthday treat) but breaking up with me the night before and then blatantly talking to another girl on the phone for like half an hour whilst there. Then calling me crazy. Also said he'd make the trip hell if I didn't have sex with him on the flight.

Saying if I didn't make him come every day then he'd find someone else who would.

I was sooooooo stupid to stay with him as long as i did. I was 17-19 in my defence.

Oh he also showed the regulars in the pub very explicit pictures of me - I wasn't even aware he had taken them. I only found out because one of the regulars told me he'd like to see my tits bouncing. I said, you'll never see them m8, he said he already has but now needs to see them bouncing. I was 17!