DP said I was abusing him when I reacted to this behaviour

[Louyt]

I can’t get my head around it. I know my reactions WERE abusive objectively but I feel like his own behaviour is now overlooked and I’m made to feel guilty for being pushed to breaking point. We found out I was pregnant around 8 weeks ago which was a surprise as we had been using condoms. However at new year we had both said we’d ttc this year at some point and he was happy when we found out…More so than me as I was quite shocked and scared though wanted the baby.

Two weeks go by and suddenly he’s asking me ‘what I did’ to the condom. Not exactly being nasty but clearly suspicious of me and frowning and being cold. I answer him and talk about it, obviously saying I have no idea how it happened just like he doesn’t. He would then randomly bring it up at tomes which was v upsetting and confusing, to the point where I (wrongly) ended up asking him to leave for a while as I was not able to cope emotionally with the sudden questions all the time. He’s said this was completely out of order and how dare I have made that demand.

He seemed to move past it but then became generally accusatory alongside drinking increased amounts. Asked me once if I had been in his wallet - I hadn’t. Had I opened his post - I hadn’t. I was really really insulted and stressed by this and shouted at him, swore and said i was sick of him putting me through this for no reason. When I worked away a couple of nights both evenings he had got himself too drunk to talk so had to put the phone down. Two days I didn’t actually hear from him at all as he was so drunk he didn’t have his phone even during the day. Again I was v upset with him and in his worlds verbally abusive. He forgot the first scan and was pretty much silent all the way to it, made me feel really awkward and uncomfortable in the car. We had a huge row on the way back as he again was barely speaking and didn’t say why when I asked - embarrassed to say I threw my sandwich on the footwell!

Im not saying I’m usually some angel but I’ve never felt so distressed/confused/alone before and it’s made me feel genuinely out of character. I know that these things are abusive so he’s right about that. I’ve apologised for them but feel he takes no responsibility at all for his side and I’m left feeling absolutely dreadful that I’ve done these things and called him names… which has apparently made him feel he’s done nothing wrong.

i know people will this this is simply toxic and just leave but it’s more than that for me. I feel horrendously guilty now that this is all my fault, that I am awful and actually he’s done nothing wrong really in comparison to me at least. I have a terrible guilt complex at the best of times and I am beating myself up despite feeling so sure he was in the wrong initially. I feel so confused.

“Abusive” vs “non-abusive”

Why waste so much time analysing it?
He doesn’t want the pregnancy and feels trapped and angry. He does not love you. Accept it and move on. In your shoes I would end the pregnancy but that depends on whether you’d be happy to go it alone.

He'd being abusive to you and then trying to make you submissive by playing the victim when you stand up for yourself. I'd run for hills he's trying to manipulate you.

Good old MN.

A man kicks their partner out, shouts, swears, throws things etc - he’s abusive.

A women does exactly the same - it’s still the man that’s abusive.

OP if you can on here saying your DP did what you did you know that you would have very different replies - that shows you that your behaviour is completely unacceptable.

He sounds like a prick but no one can make you act a certain way.
You are a grown up and can decide to walk away.

You are both blaming each other for your own actions.
You both need to take some responsibility of yourselves.

This relationship is not working.
Adding a baby into the mix is going to make things much more stressful.

If you don’t want to terminate then you need to accept the fact that sooner or later you’re going to be a single parent as this miserable relationship cannot continue.

I don’t know if what he was doing was abusive though

Of course it was. A classic tale of abuse starting in pregnancy.

he is quite a sensitive man and I probably should have been more careful what I was saying

He’s not a manipulative person I don’t think.

He certainly is manipulative, he has you think it's was because of what you said.

Last time we went out at the weekend he sat in silence in the car all the way, no real explanation and I was so nervous I kept saying silly things about the view or local towns etc. I didn’t feel like me, I am usually a happy and positive person but I just wanted to try and make sure he was ok as he wasn’t speaking much.

Have a think about how he has manipulated you, again.

want to understand and for us to fix it but after he’s called me abusive I just despair because he clearly doesn’t understand how I felt in the middle of all these things.

You want to fix it? Goodness OP you need help and fast. Please speak to womens aid. Fast.

what if he actually doesn’t see that he’s been abusive though? And it’s not intended?

Of course he knows what he is doing. However, even if it wasn't intended, it's happening and you deserve better.

I wonder what he'd say if you said you were going to end the pregnancy as he clearly doesn't want it. I suspect his attitude would (temporarily) change. The thing is it's not that he doesn't want it, he's relishing it. He has you trapped so he thinks and has a stick to beat you with over it too. You need to leave and consider if you are happy to be a single parent. Remember he may want contact 60/50 and you are going to be linked to him for the next 16- 18 years.

I think you have misread this, massively. No surprise there

His motivation is irrelevent so stop focusing on it. The only reason you might care about why he behaves as he does is either because you want to excuse his behaviour (you shouldn't) or because you think you can fix him (trust me, you can't). Would you feel compassion towards Harold Shipman if he genuinely believed he was doing his victims a favour? Would you feel sympathy for Jimmy Saville if he honestly believed he was showing his victims love and affection? It's the impact on you the victim that matters here, not his self-awareness or whatever it is going on in his mind that's motivating him to be so damaging to you. Stay with him and I can all but guarantee he will suck all happiness and confidence out of you until you are a mere shadow of who you should be and god only knows what impact it will have on your child.

No you are not abusive. You are reacting to situations he's engineering to get you to react.

I had an ex like this. He'd say and do things to upset me, make me doubt myself, even outright lie.

Then when it had all bottled up inside me, I'd explode. Then I was the crazy one.

He actually made me think I was loosing my mind/the plot at one point. And because I'm a generally ok person and don't go around hurting people - all this anger and hurt inside me had to come out some way and I ended up self harming for a while (not for a minute suggesting it would be this way for you)

I spoke to my mum last night and she thinks he must have had no intention of ttc. I think maybe that’s true but it’s something we’d spoken about lots! We had a plan. He was happy when we found out initially. None of it makes sense to me at all.

I agree with your Mum. He said what you wanted to hear about TTC but thought as you were using condoms, you would not get pregnant hence the sly digs at you about the condoms. He reacted well as he was shocked and reacted as he thought he should. Now he has had time to digest the news and realise what it means for him, his true feelings are coming out.

Thank you for all the posts. I feel quite overwhelmed by it all.

If I was earlier in pregnancy I would terminate. But for me at this point it feels too far. Im also in my mid thirties now and had a termination years ago that was very traumatic. I am not sure that is the right option.

OP
Does he give you the silent treatment often?
Does he actively want to do things with you?
Does he listen to you?
Do you feel you need to compensate for his childhood?
@TommySaid - “good old MN?”… you think this man is going to accept responsibility for his actions? Really? Like he’s going to regret accusing her of going into his wallet? Of doing “something” to the condoms? Of opening his post?
He didn’t speak to her on the way to the scan.
He has to be asked to be nice god a few hours..
Its clearly a woman/man bias issue 🙄
It does not matter what the sex of either person is hypothetically in abusive relationships but it does in reality when one is a pregnant woman who has just been accused of deliberately and deceptively becoming pregnant. When one is carrying an unborn child, with the hormones and illness and anxiety that brings and the other is a stronger, heavy drinking man who has the ability to cruelly accuse her for something she didn’t do and expect her to live with that - no apology,
oh yes, it’s just because she’s a woman 🙄. Have a word with yourself

For not god

He's been abusive as well OP. Constant accusations, guilt tripping, excessive drinking when you're pregnant - that's all emotionally abusive too.

He's created a toxic environment where neither is behaving well. I'd prepare to split tbh.

@Blue4YOU the only thing I would correct there is that he did speak on the way to the scan but it was just really uncomfortable and distant. I had blood taken and afterwards needed some food and he was so abrupt about it as he wanted to get home. He did agree to stop but clearly could not have cared less how I was feeling.

@TommySaid i agree my behaviour was absolutely shit. I was not coping well at all

He sounds exactly like my best friend’s husband, she was his first relationship as well in his 30s. He says he wants something, they both agree to do it, only when it happens he turns nasty, gets paranoid and starts accusing her of all sorts, says he doesn’t want it or never really wanted it or has changed his mind, starts drinking more and generally just blames her for everything including his awful behaviour

Yes, I do think the OP's boyfriend has got some serious unprocessed issues from his childhood. He sounds chillingly like my ex - and the guy above. Will say he's keen for something, the plan moves ahead, once there's no going back he starts acting funny but insisting he's fine, and then weeks, months or years down the lines it's all "I never wanted that" "You forced me into it" "I felt like I couldn't say no or you'd go crazy" etc. Rewriting history, behaving like a total asshole and more importantly, feeling fully entitled to behave like an asshole because he (apparently sincerely) feels he's been abused or taken advantage of first.

Please, OP, pay very close attention to this behaviour and see it as a massive red flag. It's a dysfunctional pattern and it will repeat over and over again. It's nothing to do with you, it's a product of his dysfunctional background, paranoid mindset, and constant feeling of victimhood.

False accusations are a covert form of abuse and one that's a massive headfuck. I was accused of so many things by my ex - lying, cheating, forcing him to do various things, taking drugs, lazing around, treating him as sub-human - none of which was true and of course because none of it was true, he didn't have the slightest shred of evidence for his accusations! Didn't stop him from making them though, and in a way that seemed absolutely sure of himself at the time. And because I was a decent person, I felt horrified that he thought such terrible things of me and tied myself up in knots wondering what I could have done to give him that idea, and how I could prove that I wasn't the awful person he thought I was.

Get out now, OP. You will be an absolute shell of yourself in years to come if you don't.

OP, how many weeks pregnant? 8 weeks!

That shouldn't be a '!'

It was a '?'

OP you can have an absolutely amazing life with you and your baby. If you want it then keep it. Being a single mum (especially to one) is a LOT happier and easier than doing it with an abusive man.

Make single mum friends, join all the classes and get as much social support in as you can.

@CheekyHobson that’s how I felt with the accusations! I was DESPERATE for him to know I hadn’t done these things. It was so so upsetting. Once he thought I had said he should work part time…I hadn’t said that at all, I’d suggested we both look at flexible working at work IF it was possible. That’s all I said yet he latched into the idea that I had told him he must go part time… it’s been one thing after another.

last weekend we were due to meet at 4pm and he didn’t turn up, called him at half 4 and he said he has been asleep. Eventually met me at 7. A totally minor thing compared to everything else but made me feel like shit.

i agree my behaviour was absolutely shit. I was not coping well at all

But you’re allowing it to continue.

Do you think you can be shouting, screaming or throwing things when the baby comes?

When are you going to say actually I don’t like the person I am when I’m around you so I can’t be around you anymore.

His behaviour is bad.
He’s trying to make you terminate the pregnancy without saying so. And when the baby comes he’s going to be twice as bad.
But you don’t have to put up with it.

And I don't think throwing a sandwich around the car when angry is abusive from a man or a woman op. It's a ducking sandwich not a glass or an iron bolt.

He's twisting your brain to see him as the victim so you ignore his horrific behaviour.

@TheWayoftheLeaf im so embarrassed about the sandwich. It was so childish.

i can’t believe any of this has happened, I was so hopeful for a wonderful life with him. That’s clearly not going to happen :(

You're making excuses for him. You're judging him by your own standards - which is what normal, basically nice people tend to do when faced with behaviours that are alien to them. We make excuses when the truth of the matter is the behaviour is inexcusable.

We go round in ever decreasing circles trying to make things right. We adjust our own behaviours. Out of sheer frustration we blow up. We are shocked by our own response. We hope they will somehow also be shocked and feel what it is like to be on the receiving end of that behaviour.

It doesn't work like that with an abuser because it is turned back on us.They say we are the abuser and the punishment continues. We, being nice and normal, assume there must be some truth in that. We question ourselves endlessly. We feel we are no better than the abuser. We adjust our behaviours yet again but our frustration simmers away.

Add in periods when he will appear to be nice, normal and protective and we further doubt ourselves and our perception of the abuse.

He is emotionally abusive. You should take action now to end it with him. Then focus on you and your baby.

You will not win. You will not effect a miracle. He will not change. It will get worse.

id say the only problem we had was he could be quite selfish with his own time, so very strict about time we could spend together, only able to have a week of holiday in summer, he is v focused on what he is doing rather than us as a couple. But we were happy yes, definitely wanted a future and family with him. I have felt shocked by the pregnancy and that’s made me more on edge generally I think.

Why were you actually very happy with this? Of course he was happy because he was controlling and getting his own way.

And you also say he was focussed on what he was doing rather than you as a couple.

The early signs were there. Have you been changing your behaviours and just accepting that what he wants goes from the beginning? I suspect you have.

If he doesn’t want the baby in reality then he is absolutely the sort of person to just run away and delve back into work. I can’t imagine for a moment he would be involved if I walked away, he would turn his back completely i expect.

Why did you stay with such a man if this was your assessment of him - and why did you choose him to be the father of your child?

This is never going to work, and you know it. Get out now and make decisions that are best for you, instead of hoping that he'll change. Because even if he did 'change' it would be no more than an act. He has shown you the real him - believe him!

You’d be best to leave him now, he sounds horrible and life with him won’t be happy.

You weren't being the slightest bit abusive. If you question your own right to verbally defend yourself you’re in for a life of timid subservience and eggshell walking as his behaviour will worsen over time. Do yourself and your baby a huge favour and leave him.