Would you accept this in a relationship?

[Wouldyouaccept]

If you know your partner had suffered severe childhood abuse and trauma - would you accept aspects of their personality that were shaped due to this and are negative traits ?

Therapy is ongoing and there’s full awareness of everything and an huge effort is being made but it’s not ideal. Is this a case where the person who has been abused should not be in a relationship until they are ‘better’ (what if that never full happens ?)

The issues are :
Attachment issues / fear of abandonment (leading to jealousy)
control issues

Seconding the advice about not doing couples therapy.

I did do this with my partner and I was very, very lucky, the counsellor saw the dynamic then asked to see me alone.
The counsellor gave me the higher authority help to give myself permission to walk away. I owe her so much.
However, in general, couples therapy can be more damaging when dealing with an abusive dynamic.

Can you tell us something about how his behaviour manifests itself? And can you also tell us how that behaviour doesn't affect the children?

Nope I'm a strong believer that you choose your own destiny and any trauma shouldn't affect people around you.
Example my partner had the worse childhood but he chose to be an extra amazing father so his kids wouldn't endure the same 🤷‍♀️.
You are who you want to be not your past.

Not all traumas can be healed. I am the product of an abusive upbringing and now choose not to be in a relationship because of it. My energy goes into ensuring that my kids are not affected by my upbringing. They are young adults and I have succeeded in this.

While therapy has helped me understand why and how, that knowledge has not cured me and never will. I will always be mentally scarred and not spreading the effects to others must be my priority. It's shitty having trauma and I don't want others to feel even a portion of the mental pain I am in. I do not have the mental energy to make a romantic attachment to another adult any more. I have friends and as a woman it's not hard to find sex. My children are great too.

I feel for you.

I am divorcing a controlling person. My ability to put up with it and my willingness to tolerate fell drastically at menopause. I finally had the wisdom to leave.

Many people are telling you that you shouldn’t feel guilty if you leave, you have given it your best shot. You deserve to live your live for yourself. Apologies for repeating this saying but you shouldn’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. We are looking at your problem from the outside in with no skin in the game, it’s easy for us to say leave and difficult for you to do.

I would consider keeping a journal for a while. Write down all the arguments, problems, times when this arises, he said, you said etc.

Then go and see a highly qualified therapist. I saw a chartered clinical psychologist. Then discuss whether there are other strategies available to help you deal with this. My therapist talked with me about how couples can get into a toxic dynamic which leads to arguments etc.

Explore whether your partner has progressed as much as he should/could have. Are his behaviours so entrenched that nothing more can be done, or is he still (maybe subconsciously) using his childhood as an excuse to control you.

It feels to me that you are maybe excusing his behaviour more than you need to. Ok if you lose a leg you can’t be expected to run a marathon, but others have come on here to say how the deal with their own issues by themselves and don’t make their partners suffer the fallout.

Or maybe the therapist can help you deal differently with him and yourself so it doesn’t affect you so negatively .

My first question to my therapist was ‘Is it me or is it him’. She resoundingly said it was him. At last I felt validated.

Follow on with couples therapy if your therapist recommends it. Many people say don’t do couples therapy with a controlling person.

If you try all this and nothing improves, then maybe you would feel your only other choice is to leave.

Finally I would recommend reading Lundy Bancroft “why does he do that?” Its free on the internet.

Also, OP, most abusers come from a place of dysfunction. Traumatic childhoods and the like. They generally don't just decide to be a horrible person for the craic.

Everything they do, the control the rage, the anger, the tears, the blame, the recriminations, the restrictions, the punishments are all motivated by a fundamental need to feel safe. And rather than provide that emotional safety for themselves, they seek to control others around them so that they don't feel unsafe in the first place or to punish them for 'making them' feel unsafe.

Honestly, speaking to you from experience, if things haven't got better by now, then they aren't going to, irrespective of how much effort is being made. Often being with someone who "tolerates" it actually holds you back and makes it harder to make those changes. Even without meaning to, you staying is enabling. Also, as much as you'd love to think the children aren't aware/affected, they will be, I can guarantee that. You are their model for a healthy, happy, equal relationship.
Could you consider a 6 month break, to give them time to try to make some noticeable strides forward and if things still aren't better then make it permanent? At least that way you might feel you are giving it one last chance?

An interesting one. DP had a lot of serious trauma as a child/young adult and 100% it has impacted his behaviour – he finds it almost impossible to communicate his feelings which can lead to a lack of affection, and he can be a bit selfish at times because he has a very heightened self-preservation instinct.

BUT:
a) he's very aware of these behaviours and actively works to address them while also acknowledging that they're unlikely to ever go away completely so it will be something he has to tackle for life
b) he's had tons of therapy and is an active participant in maintaining his own mental health, and he would have couples' therapy if I felt it was necessary / would be helpful
c) it doesn't impact my daughter

If any of those things changed, it would be a dealbreaker for me, and he knows that. But as it is, I think I probably love him even more for having overcome what he has and the fact that he's still working to get better. And equally I have my own trauma which leads to the opposite behaviours from me so we are quite good at balancing each other out, even thought it can lead to conflict.

So I think for me that's the key. Is he aware of how his childhood trauma has impacted him? Does he do anything to address the behaviour? It sounds like he does, but perhaps there's more you feel he needs to be doing. In which case it's not so much an ultimatum but a discussion. "These behaviours are making me unhappy. What do you think would help? How can we move forward?"

Equally, I was in a long relationship with a man who refused to tackle his childhood traumas and that eventually resulted in him abusing me emotionally and physically, and I stayed because "it wasn't his fault". It was. And I would never stay in a situation like that again. Nobody owes anyone that.

It depends if you can cope. It it's ok if you can't !

Does he do anything to address the behaviour? It sounds like he does

Her whole thread is literally about the fact he doesn't.

Even without meaning to, you staying is enabling - I agree with this. He knows that you'll put up with behaviour that is unacceptable in a healthy relationship (because you always have).

No it isn't...

Therapy is ongoing and there’s full awareness of everything and an huge effort is being made but it’s not ideal.

Was with boyfriend back when I was 14/15 who has been sexually abused when he was younger and he was atrocious to me. Mentally abusive, controlling you name it. He used his sexual abuse as a 'sob story' and I absolutely did not agree with treating people like shit because of this. They tend to go one way or the other and he never changed. That was 14 years ago.

But he's not making a 'huge effort' if he's emotionally abusing her.

Other people and I have made 'huge efforts' at our own expense to deal with the impact of our own trauma without making it someone else's problem.

He might be paying lip service to it by attending therapy but he is not making 'huge efforts' or he wouldn't be taking it out on her. He's making a choice.

He might be seeking therapy for himself but he's not making huge efforts to address his behaviour at all.

Nope. As sypmathetic to their childhood as I would be it's not your job to fix this person. And that's what it will end up being. Sorry to be harsh but don't waste your time when you can spend your time building a relationship with someone who doesn't already have issues.

You are in an abusive relationship with someone who was abused.

You have children with this person so the abuse is now intergenerational as you choose for your children to be around this abuse.

Would I choose this?

No I would not.

I wouldn't want my children to be in that environment.

He is not a project for you to fix.

You owe your children better than this, particularly as you knowingly went into a relationship with someone with issues and then chose to have children.

Protect your children.

That is whom your loyalty should be to first.

It depends what it was they were doing. My husband had something awful happen in his childhood and it still affects him. He can go very withdrawn and close himself off. He has had counselling but he can't ever get over it. He has no memory from before the event. But I help him when he needs it by being there for him and loving him. He's an amazing person and still deserves love despite what happened. If he was violent or aggressive I wouldn't put up with that.

Almost as if being a child in a high stress environment has wired their brain up incorrectly and made them hyper aware of ‘threats ‘

this is exactly what is happening.^ I recommend reading the body keeps the score by Bessel van set Kolk^

EMDR therapy is supposed to be good

But if you entered the relationship fully accepting the issues but expecting them to get better then should you stay ?

No. You have the right to say enough is enough. You only have one life, and you should not feel that you have to put up with this forever. It may sound heartless, but I can't imagine getting into a relationship with someone like this or relying on the hope that therapy would cure them. You have the right to a life without a controlling and volatile partner.

You're writing in a really curious way. I can't work out if it's trying to hide the sex of the people, or because it's you who's abusive. Late posts sort of mean it's unlikely to be the second.

And I think the sexes probably are relevant in terms of safety. I deal with these trauma-impacted situations with control and jealousy a lot (professionally). The ones that turn life-threatening to adult partners are the ones with a trauma-impacted male partner. And leaving those men is dangerous and has to be planned well.

Regardless, trauma is very very hard to deal with. Sometimes it can't be. I know people 'stuck' after decades. And no, those people can't be in a relationship.

Sorry you are kidding yourself re the children. And no I wouldn’t stay in this relationship. Have you had counselling? You sound massively co-dependant.

Just because someone suffered trauma or abuse as a child, it does not give them the right to abuse others once they become an adult.

Honestly no.

You have no chance of changing them, and only the most dedicated or self aware partner would do so.

I suspect you are asking this question because your partner is not self aware to do these things, but may be making excuses to you about unacceptable behaviour because of that upbringing.