Interested to know stories of men who are in abusive relationships

[PinkTwinkletoes]

I'm asking out of interest as we generally only hear about the ladies on here who are in abusive and coercive relationships.
My ex husband left me for OW and I can hand on heart say that I have no interest in either of them... however, my adult kids see a very sad father who they feel is controlled by the OW (now wife). I'm sad on behalf of my kids but really it has nothing to do with me.
Just wondered if others had stories so I can let me kids know that it's does happen to other men and reasons why they find it hard to leave.

I know of a few, but the worst I've seen was a man who moved in with a single mother.
She had been living with her daughter alone since the daughter was born. They knew each other at school, she had always been a bit quiet and had a crap home life, so he just wanted to take care of her.
She asked him to move in, he did, he purchased everything she didn't have, washing machine, fridge, and a new cooker because the rest was new.
So he had no savings left.
His wages became family money, her benefits that she could keep became her money. He would be scraping about for money to feed them whilst she was sat on money.
She was very controlling, he lost his friends, he wasn't allowed to do anything outside of their life together. She would say, he doesn't need his job, benefits could allow us to survive.
Eventually, she convinced him he didn't need a car and he could use a push bike to get to and from work, they just didn't need it and she wasn't willing to pay that expense (out of his wages)
Like everyone else in his life, he distanced from my family who all knew him.
She would always try to seem like she was so vulnerable, and he was taking such good care of her, doing things like lifting a glass for her because she couldn't do it.

Last I knew he tried to kill himself because she was so controlling, now they have 2 children and her eldest has had the police called on her, because she has assaulted her boyfriend numerous times at school.
The latest incident- she pushed him off the path into oncoming traffic because someone was teasing her about her teeth, and he didn't want to fight the boy... I'd like to say that he was likely to leave that relationship, but he's already in care because he was physically abused by his mum and step dad.

It's really sad and I think everyone in DV relationships need support and understanding to leave.

@TammyJones I gave 4 examples of women abusing their male partners. I added the extra comment to make it clear I knew lots of people in screwed up relationships in my teens and 20s. Unfortunately on MN people as in rl will come on not believing men are victims of DA/DV and say women always have it worse.

I don't know what happened to the guys I knew who were being burnt as like with the guys who were being controlled emotionally they weren't allowed to hang around with women. I only knew some stuff because I have a unisex name, once their girlfriends realised I was a woman then they had to stay away from me.

Btw my DP is a victim of a controlling ex-wife. However due to certain things I can't go into his ex-wife is not allowed to contact and communicate with him. Luckily there are some professionals who do recognise that DA/DV can happened to anyone. Unfortunately the ones who don't can cause an absolute fucking mess.

My friend was emotionally abused by his ex wife although he is still in denial about it. He is a kind, self conscious, not confident soul and has never been a ladies man and had 3 partners his whole life so far. He didn’t lose his virginity till his 20’s. She told him that she had been cheated on before so didn’t trust him even though he never did the cheating..

She would throw a tantrum, stonewall him and accuse him of she texting other women with absolutely no proof of this (and he wasn’t as he was scared of upsetting her) the worst example was her throwing a huge hours long public tantrum when he planned a surprise party for her birthday - because he had been texting the other guests the surprise plans and she was monitoring how long he has spent looking at his phone or that it had bleeped. However she would go on nights out regularly and not bother coming home…

She also would accuse him of fancying women in TV shows or movies because he said he liked/enjoyed the movie and then he was afraid to watch TV or movies with women in them at all.

She would go into a mood and not tell him what the matter was he had to guess. So he would dread coming home or her coming home as there was always something she was going to accuse him of, and he would panic about that it might be and the whole atmosphere would be horrendous.

She would get her friends to join in with emotional blackmail, nagging him about what he had, or had not done that was not good enough for her. She stopped him seeing his family and friends over time too.

If he told a joke or made a comment about anything she might decide to take it in an obscure way and become offended by it - even once him playing a song on a random Spotify playlist while pottering around the house she stormed out of their house and wouldn’t speak to him for hours as she thought the lyrics were an intentional dig at her.

He would work and work and she would spend and spend and it didn’t matter how he tried to talk to her about money she would just carry on spending it.

They only broke up as her disappearing on nights out then ignoring him for days took its toll and he confronted her.. and ended up breaking up with himself for her.

They do have kids and she is now controlling him via the eldest child who reports back to her. Initially she vanished doing her own thing for months leaving him with the kids on his own. She now calls multiple times a day to talk to the kids, spending hours just taking up his time, checking up on what my friend is doing as a parent and she will text/call/confront/criticise him about comments or decisions he’s made about his own kids on his own time with his own kids and makes him feel like nothing he does is good enough. It is sad how she has roped in their child as a constant critiquer now too. What is good is that he is more emotionally detached now and it bothers him less and he just thinks she is an idiot.