Be honest about your ex husbands

[Raveon2000]

Just for those who have divorced or left a LTR with someone who ended up being an arse..... Were there warning signs at the start that in hindsight are clear? Or did the stuff just start years down the line?
For me there were definitely red flags from months in ie bad arguments that we used to have that I thought were healthy and that we were 'passionate' with.
Now would instantly be a deal breaker.
Although it was really after having children that the major problems became apparent and that's when I really began to go off him!
I don't want to make the same mistakes again for my future so I'm asking please share your experiences.

Yes, I'll never forget the first sign about four months in, I asked him not to spend so much time at my house.

He had a perfectly nice apartment in the city but worked outside it. I lived in the sticks and commuted into the city.

I just didn't want to come home from a long stressful day at work to find him there day after day. I wanted my own space.

I saw a sulky thundercloud appear above his head. In hindsight I should have cut and run. We were married for nearly two decades. He was emotionally abusive.

The first time he was violent before we married should have been a massive red flag but I was young and naïve and thought it was my fault! Needless to say it got worse 😞

There were a lot of signs that I've only just realised about 20 years later. I'd have always seen it with my friends and family, but couldn't see it for myself. Everyone is worth more...

He lovebombed. I thought it was great at the time but in hindsight it was controlling. A definite warning sign for his later coercive bullying.

I'll never forget all of these....telling me after we were married that he'd left a previous girlfriend within minutes because he'd met someone else he wanted to move in with. I should have known. Because he did the same thing to me. What was worse was his father telling me how proud ex had been for abusing a five year old child because he'd wet the bed and the graphic description of how this child had been punished. It was horrific. I have never forgiven them for that. They knew he was an abuser but welcomed me and my daughter and said nothing. I also could have done nothing about the abused child as it was many years later and I had exactly zero information on which to act.

Ex has no contact with our child and his equally abusive girlfriend is subject to a Prohibited Steps Order. I will also never ever have a relationship again because my judgement is off.

ExH = Loud, shouty, volatile, drunken (him) arguments. Once it was so bad I had to flee to my mums in the middle of the night. I also suspected cheating but had no proof. Looking back, he obviously was and I should have just left him sooner. It was an emotionally abusive relationship, you get stuck in the cycle. It’s hard to let go, especially when you have kids. His behaviour at the end was truly awful.

More recent ex = less obvious signs of abuse, much less severe (financial and refusing to help with anything, putting himself first always). These were more red flags than abuse so I ended it sooner.

I didn’t even like the first one, when I first met him. Goodness knows why I even got into a relationship with him.

The second one, there were red flags from the start. Little ones, that built over the years.

Trust your gut, would be my advice!

No. My ex-husband appeared to be a gentleman. Very considerate, hard-working, funny, charming, romantic. I was very careful, so dated him for years before we moved in together. Our friends and families knew each other well and nobody had any suspicions or reservations at all (the type of people I have in my life would have told me if they did). He did more than 50% of housework, he would cook lovely meals ready for me if I was coming home from a hard week at work. He was sensitive and kind and thoughtful and used to book surprise holidays for my birthday each year.

After 8 years together and 3 living together he proposed. We married a year later. It was another 3 years until I became pregnant (planned, much discussed re. equal parenting and much wanted by him).

When I was 8 months pregnant he told me he had run up tens of thousands of pounds of gambling debt. I supported him, and paid it off. Got him therapy. Checked his credit records each month (by mutual agreement) and this breakdown seemed to be over. He was a good father to our daughter, pulling his weight at home and seemed to be making a huge effort to make up for all of this.

We then had a second child. When she was four months old, he left suddenly. It then transpired that there had been many affairs.

Then, when despite all of this I put my feelings aside and made sure he had a good relationship with the girls so we could co-parent well, he was arrested for being a paedophile. Nobody had any idea. A friend who works in this area of policing and knew him well had no idea, either.

Some people really are psychopaths and incredibly good at manipulating everyone around them and making sure that even very astute, objective people who are not involved in the relationship see no red flags at all.

I think it can be damaging to victims to assume that there are always red flags that they ignored, either consciously or subconsciously, because sometimes there simply are not and everybody is fooled, not just the wife. It's a little victim blamey, although I'm sure that isn't your intention.

I'll have to live with the consequences for my children of what he has done and who he really is forever, as will they. But no, there is no way we could have known. It has taken a lot of conversations with the police and therapists for me to be able to believe that, but their view is that actually the worst people are very, very good at hiding who they are and convincing others of the opposite and that it absolutely isn't the fault of the victim for not somehow anticipating what they would later do.

Mine was a drinker. Also financial disaster zone. And yes, when I look back I saw signs a few months in. Possibly weeks. Maybe even days. I believed a story about it all and tried to help. That won’t happen again.

@NoRedFlagsAtAll - you have pretty much lived my life. Although I suspect you are further down the line from things than me.

My ex did show some signs of being selfish in the early days, but we were younger and both a little that way. Wanted to live our lives and have fun.

Then, years down the line, all the rest of it came out that no one saw coming.I agree with the fact that there are some people out there who can hide who they are for a very long time and are skilled in manipulation.

@TotallyFloored I am very sorry that you are going through this, too. It is utterly heartbreaking, seeing the impact on the children and not being able to take it away. Them being too young to even understand. The complete lack of support from social services etc. Trying to cole with the trauma yourself and traumatised children and fight on every front for support for them.

Please do PM me if it would help. But never, ever blame yourself. I know everybody will have told you that and you still can't believe it so it'll carry no more weight from a stranger on the internet but there really is nothing you could have done to prevent it. We were both just incredibly unlucky. All we can do is look to the future.

No warning signs at all. When the end came it was a total bolt from the blue, never saw it coming.

And ignore all the smug people who claim that their situations aren't luck, it's because they were soooooo smart and didn't marry a psychopath.

Those people have clearly not met a real psychopath and have no clue about how well they "pass" as an intelligent, funny, kind man. Until they don't.

There were signs. We were both in bad/dramatic situations when we met and that's what we bonded over. We had nothing else in common really.
The end of the relationship 12 years later was just as bad/dramatic as the beginning.

These days I flee at the slightest hint of red. The tiniest bit of discomfort and I'm gone. I don't try to unpick any misgivings. I do believe there are Always signs - just sometimes they are explained away very well indeed.

Again, given the very nature of psychopaths, there aren't always signs. That's what it means.

With just "normal" but shit men of course there will be. But to assume that's true in all cases is simply wrong. No matter how careful and smart and rational you are, you can be fooled. For years.

And it does smack of victim blaming when people pretend that's not the case.

The police don't believe that. Psychologists/ psychiatrists don't believe that. Neither do social workers. So - in these limited cases - if you believe that still applies then you're wrong.

I understand that mostly people aren't talking about such cases. But making sweeping generalisations about how there are "always red flags" drags people into that for whom there were none and makes them feel even more terrible than they do already, when their lives have been trashed already.

Of course we should counsel people to observe and react to red flags when they are present. But to pretend they are always there and therefore some culpability lies with the victim for not spotting them when there are cases when this is not possible, is harmful.

@NoRedFlagsAtAll I agree there are some very skilled decievers.

Some people can be next level, you were very unfortunate, a victim I can't imagine what you've ben though. That level of deceit.
It appears that things changed when you were pregnant, was there anything that changed at that period with him, any illness of any kind ? just wondering.

With mine there probably were red flags but mainly due to his quiet nature and being quite unemotional, but he was not unkind, not enough flags to think he would change into what he did, but did he change ?, he was probably always like that, he just covered it well.
Something usually triggers you finding out the first thing, with mine it was financial stuff, not gambling, finding out properties had been bought without my knowledge, different retail units aswell, what was he doing with them, lock ups in different cities, that lead to finding out about women, that was tough as he was somebody I would have never have thought would. (I suppose we all say that)
From then on it was a snowball effect, anything which he could have lied about he did, it seemed to be inate.
I was astute as a person, I wasn't a dim wraped up in my own world girl, I was truly shocked at his level of cunning.

Yes some phychopaths and narcs are extremely devious and sometimes it's many years before you see their spinning plates start to fall, in fact I bet some are so brilliantly devious they are never found out.

I don't think people on here are puposefully victim blaming, they just don't understand, they may have had horific experiences with very bad men, but I really do think evil exists and many will never experience that, thank God.

I'm not minimising anyones abuse at all, but with some people there really will be no signs and then the atrocities come.

I think of someone like Jimmy Saville, who although he appeared odd, he did for many years fool a great deal of people, people in power and that's usually where it counts, that he was a man doing good.

The way pychopaths present is usually intellegently kind with upstanding reputations, their bad behaviour can fly under the radar for a long time if not forever.

He was almost 40 with nothing but debt to his name.

He shamelessly exaggerated about everything and sometimes outright lied to big himself up.

He smashed a work phone when his football team lost.

He snored so loud I couldn't sleep a wink, and told me it was my problem.

Again, given the very nature of psychopaths, there aren't always signs. That's what it means.

With just "normal" but shit men of course there will be. But to assume that's true in all cases is simply wrong. No matter how careful and smart and rational you are, you can be fooled. For years

@NoRedFlagsAtAll
The very nature of a psychopath is a destructive one. There ALWAYS will be signs. The only question is: signs to whom?
Any troubling behaviours will be only witnessed by their chosen victims.
Then there's the question - can the victims identify those behaviours?
If they can't, then those signs will not exist in their reality. We see this "blindness" on Mumsnet often. The REALLY nice boyfriend who insists on picking up, dropping off, escorting his girlfriend everywhere "to keep her safe". The victim can't read the situation but it doesn't mean that the signs of controlling stalkerism are not loud and clear.

Of course it's possible to hide debt or affair or illegal porn or... anything! But none of that amounts to psychopathy. It's much, much more hard or even impossible to hide lack of empathy, narcissistic traits, volatile temper, the need to control...

No illness. Other than the gambling, which I suppose is an illness in itself.

At first, looking back, I thought perhaps he was desperately trying to pretend to be someone he wanted to be, but couldn't sustain it. That he'd had a mental breakdown. So I tried to support him with it: got therapy, helped him get set up with GA, etc. But the gambling was the tip of the iceberg, this was this whole double life and the person I'd known for nearly two decades was someone else entirely, and had been pretending the whole time.

Perhaps the effort of pretending was too much once children arrived? But even after he left us, nobody had any suspicion of what would happen next. I tried to do the right thing for our girls by making sure he had a relationship with them despite what he'd done to our marriage. What a mistake that was. The damage that has done to them can never be undone, whereas if I'd let him just walk away from them too when they were tiny and our marriage ended, they'd be in far less distress now. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

But later events proved it wasn't that he couldn't cope with family, or just had a breakdown as I thought initially. He is a predator. He is psychopathic, and will be heading to prison shortly.

This is a man who earned a good salary, was kind, clever, caring, very involved with his children. Then suddenly, the truth is revealed and this person is literally the opposite of the person you've known for so many years. I still can't quite comprehend how anybody can keep up an act for that long so convincingly, but they can.

Luckily for the children I kept my career and earn a high salary. So I now do three jobs effectively: my actual work, looking after the children, and fighting social services/ NHS etc for the support they need. Hence me being awake at such a silly time of day. I should sleep soon, ready for tomorrow's school run.

@QueenCamilla this is exactly what I mean. This victim blaming. There was no controlling behaviour. I am, and always have been, a very independent woman with my own career. I always earned more than him and he was successful himself. If there had ever been any attempt at controlling I'd have been off. It really is victim blaming to assume that such stereotypes fit all cases. They do not.

I met the most handsome, softly-spoken, highly-intelligent, polite gentleman. He had sweet manners and was charmingly self-effacing, but also so witty he could have been a professional stand-up. I was captivated and fell for him very quickly.

As we got to know one another, in all his anecdotes, whether about his day at work, something that happened with a friend or family member, something that happened years ago or in a previous love relationship, or employer, or colleague, or neighbour, he was always the victim, always hard-done-by. In all these anecdotes he always did the right, moral, legal, decent, honest, correct thing to do, and yet he was always exploited, hurt, walked over, etc by people he'd helped or trusted or ought to be able to rely on. He'd done so many favours for so many people, but when he was in need they were not there for him.

It sounds odd but at the time I did not realise that all his anecdotes ran to this same pattern. I am only saying this in hindsight. The sum effect of hearing one of these anecdotes every time we met made me feel really sorry for him - poor bloke, I thought, always doing right by everyone, and yet in return he was treated like a doormat, taken advantage of, and it made me determined to NOT be like all those shitty people but to treat him as I thought he deserved. It brought out motherly, protective feelings in me and I became determined never to let him down, never to take advantage of him, etc.

It took me three years to find out what he really is. He's what is known as a covert narcissist. And this is exactly what they do: paint themselves as the eternal victim, to get your sympathy. Once they have you, they can exploit you endlessly.

@Ladyof2022
God that sounds familiar.

Do we know the same man ?

I agree. With many awful, abusive or useless men of course it is red flag city and absolutely we should be helping other women with how to spot that.

My point was rather that if you do have good boundaries and an awareness of how to spot that, it doesn't make you immune or protect you entirely. There are people who can fool you, anyway. And that we should never make the generalisation that if women were better at spotting red flags then this won't happen to them because that is simply not the case unfortunately. It's still worth doing, of course! It would mean it happens to fewer women. But it won't eliminate it, because there are psychopaths who are very convincing and nobody spots it, even people who know them well who work in the police, social services, etc.

And spreading the idea that you should always be able to see it - when sometimes it's impossible even for professionals to do so - is dangerous because it makes the victims in those situations think it is their fault that it happened. It isn't. It's taken me a long time to understand that, but it really isn't and we all need to be mindful of that when posting anything about "didn't you spot the red flags?" or even worse, the smug posts about "oh this didn't happen to me because I chose a kind, intelligent, family orientated man". Guess how the psychopaths present themselves? Sometimes for decades before it's possible to see it.