Abusive husband can also be kind and caring. Have others found this confusing?

[Sebantha]

In your experience, can abusive men also have good bits? Can they be kind and considerate to some people, including to their partner, but also be abusive at other times?

My husband can be abusive and very unreasonable. For example, he shouts and says mean things about my family and friends. He is very critical of me and I am sometimes shocked by his selfishness.

But he can show kindness too. He gives to charity. He cares about a friend who's lost a brother and wrote him a long letter. He can be caring towards me.

I feel like I can't work him out. I know that people are complicated and are neither wholly good nor wholly bad.

My mum knows a little bit of how controlling he can be. But she tells me 'there's good in him'. Which I think is true.

I wondered if anyone else has had this experience with an abusive person. And if you have found it confusing.

@Sebantha @MsRosley

Thanks for liking my post, I hope it was helpful. I will copy and post "the Argument" one in a bit. In regard to the niceness being part of a cunning plot and part of the abuse I disagree. @Sebantha I think when your DH is writing a letter to someone who has been bereaved or he is helping a neighbour it s genuine and that is the problem you are wrestling with . I think humans are very complex and don't necessary see their own contradictions. My DH has done a lot for our children, he helped our eldest son set up a landscaping business, he got them all through their driving tests and offered to buy them cars if they wanted, he paid off the students debts of our 2 girls, he used to take the eldest to rugby all over the country, he even paid for my mum's hip op as she was waiting so long on the NHS! I am sure he sees himself as a good, honest citizen (his colleagues at work thought he had a high level of integrity!) but I think @BeautifulAndBrave comment is spot on.

Most people are pleasant enough when things are going their way, the problem with abusers is the way they react when things aren't going their way.

There's certainly the case with my DH - he likes everything to be his way or its the highway.😀

Op you have contradicted yourself. You said that he doesn't deliberately have two sides to his personality but in the same paragraph say he puts in a facade so people like him.

You are in the fog of abuse but you are picking up on the truth slowly.

A kind and decent person can't be an abuser but an abuser can fake (for short periods of time) decent behaviour. Don't be taken in by his lies. I've been there where you are and I walked away. Best thing I ever did.

@Sebantha This was original post, sorry for the lack of paragraphs, a bit of a rant I'm afraid.

"My DH! 😡OMG I find him so incredibly annoying at times! Last Saturday we went to a lovely party and I wore a gorgeous and very expensive gold dress which I posted about on style and beauty and he was fully of compliments and it was a really lovely, lovely evening and this Saturday we had a bit of an argument about Christmas arrangements and some other stuff. The youngest lives at home and then our eldest son and his wife and out granddaughter are coming Christmas day but not sure what’s happening with the two girls who I phoned and was talking to for ages and then got accused of pandering to them as I wanted to see them over the Christmas period and they weren’t panning to come over Christmas day with their b/fs. DH thinks he’s right all the time and doesn’t like me disagreeing with him and he doesn’t listen to me so when I get really het up and we argue he accuses me of being pig-headed and bad-tempered.

I joined MN and posted about things being difficult since DH had retired in 2018 – which was my first post - backstory here. He had a high-powered high-income job in the City. We married when I was 25 and he was 38, that was 33 years ago! I became a SAHM with an allowance which I loved as had 4 children now aged 32, 30, 27 and 22 – the youngest being at home still (I was so, so happy when the children were young and really loved life! The children all went to private schools but didn’t board and my life revolved around them to a large extent. Our eldest played rugby and if it wasn’t for an injury would have become a professional and our eldest daughter played cello in an orchestra but not professional). We wanted for nothing and had a lovely lifestyle and lovely family holidays. DH has always been good with money and we moved house quite a few times to make money on sales and he invested in property as well and stocks and shares like his dad who owned a stables and holiday lets and a shop. His mum was a SAHM and his dad was very traditional in his thinking. I always got on well with his parents who owned a villa in Spain (we now own it) and used to take the children out there even if DH was working and could only join us for a short period but the truth is DH has always been a bit difficult. He’s very traditional, serious and stern and I guess I’ve always been a bit placid and submissive but on the flip side he’s always been faith and loyal, supported me financially (in fact he’s very generous to me and the children) and backed up with anything to do with the children. When he was working he often worked late and played golf every Saturday, so we didn’t see a huge amount of each other. He liked coming back to a nice home and when we went out socially he’d always be very complimentary like he was last Saturday and oddly that is when we get on the best as he likes having a younger wife and the fact I’m quiet ‘chatty’ and sociable as he can be quite quiet. He’s never minded me going out with friends, shopping, beauty treatments, going to the theatre etc and but he’s always been in charge. In fact one day I overheard him talking to my Dad (my parents used to babysit a lot for us and stay over) and Dad asked him what I thought about something or other he was planning for us to do (probably move house!) and DH said ‘oh she’ll just do as she’s told.’ As I say when the children were young they were my life and I guess were my Achilles heel when it came to DH and why I didn’t push things when he made decisions I wasn’t happy about (oh and I have to say he knew that too!) like moving house which was a big upheaval especially for me and the children but now they have all left home apart from the youngest, so I don’t need to care for them so much. We have recently become grandparents and I over committed on childcare, but DH sorted that out. After the last post I put some things to DH which had been suggested by kind MNers. He said he didn’t want to be a NED or do any form of voluntary work or anything like that but wanted to relax though he did like the auctioneering idea, and we have done that together and he’s going to specialise (he used to collect rare books and James Bond/Ian Fleming memorabilia which he loves and is surprising valuable) so that’s really good and we’ve had some good days out with that, going for nice lunches but again DH likes to dictate what I buy so I tend to just let him buy things and I look around. When we sat down to talk things over (I’ve learnt over the years to do this is in a way that I’m not 'having a go' at him or he gets defensive) his issues with me were that I was always phoning and texting the children (he thinks I molly coddle them and we have an ‘uneasy peace’ shall we say with the youngest still being at home) and had continued my life as it was before he retired. He admitted he’d found it hard to adjust to retirement and although he doesn’t pick holes in me so much or try to organise me so much now we are alone together I know we don’t have that much in common, which is why the auctioneering is good because at least we’re kind of doing something together. I was hoping he would ‘lighten up’ (as our oldest used to say to him!) as he got older but that hasn’t happened (in fact he’s got worse!). I love him and know at 71 I know he’s not going to change and to be honest I can’t imagine life without him so I’m not going to leave him so really I’ve just come on here to vent and let off steam really – ahhhhh - he is so f**king annoying at times!!!! Thanks MN - I feel a lot better now!😃

In my earlier post I said:
I don't feel he is some kind of monster who is bad all over, but puts on a facade of being nice so that people like him.

I think I should have phrased it better, because some have pointed out that it sounds like I contradicted myself. I meant that I don't think he's a monster and I don't think he puts on a facade of being nice.

Thanks for flagging that @Char65 and @KitchenSinkLlama and I hope that makes my post clearer.

Hi @kti , thanks for sharing that and I'm glad you're in a much better place now. You mention you wrote a post about your ex which was identical to mine - if you're able to link to that, that would be very helpful to see....

Thanks @Char65 for posting your MN post 🙂

Yes, @kti, I looked for it and couldn't find it.

do you know that you deserve to treat nice and right ALL THE TIME!.

i think abusive husband cant be nice. He nice to you sometimes its just the way to make you confused and cant let go of him. He play with your emotion. So NO!. Abusive is wrong. Cant be nice. He just pretending to be nice

A loving relationship cannot be built on one party not knowing what version of their partner they are going to get from one day to the next because you will end up trying to please and that's no way to live surely.

@itscoldoutsidetoday The whole basis of his reality was that I needed to behave in a certain way and his contribution to the relationship was dependent on this. So if I behaved the correct way then all was great.

This is exactly my marriage.

@Char65 it just felt so empty in the end, there was no growth even in 12 years. He brought up old arguments all the time so it was just 12 years of the same argument over and over…basically I do all this #list everything he’s ever done, what have you done for me.

Hi @SebanthaI hope you're OK? You've not updated on this post for a while. I hope the advice given here has been helpful and given you some answers.

Very common. Abusive people often have haloes in the outside world. They are very overtly kind to strangers or people in the community - neighbours, fellow parishioners etc, so they build a reputation for being 'wonderful'. Whenever I meet a 'wonderful' pillar of the community type man I always take a good look at his wife. If she seems gloomy, downtrodden, ailing, then I suspect him.

Hilter and Stalin could be charming when they needed to be...

If abusers were consistent nasty and abusive, they'd never find anyone to abuse!

Abusers hide in plain sight. [quoted from @Downunderduchess ]

This. Absolutely this. And it doesn't just apply to partners either. I've gone NC with a family member; took me years to see the abuse and distance myself from it. Still have trouble getting my head around everything now and learning to trust myself and my instincts. And no, no one else believed me... everyone else fell for the nice side she showed other people... that almost hurts more

This

As others have said, this is literally the description of an abusive relationship, my ex-dh could make an effort and be amazingly fun and kind but the miserable, insecure controlling side was never far away. It’s hard to get out of but you can do it! Xxx

Thanks and I'm grateful to all the posters here.

I guess that recently I've been feeling very down about my marriage and my mood is low. I've lost hope in improving things, because he can be so hard to reason with.

Quite often he is loving and kind, and then I think about what I'd be losing if I felt. So I feel in a constant state of frustration and confusion.

Read my post again, @Sebantha , and do some research on the cycle of abuse.

Your frustration and confusion will melt away once you have freed yourself from your abuser.

The easy test? For the nice front?

Just say no to them. Or push it.

Thr mask drops straight away.

The arsehole you usually get is the real man.

Believe him.

Op, I am so sorry. Of course he is loving and kind - no man can c9ntrol and abuse you if they are mean 100% of the time.

Its not easy to decide to leave a marriage so it's not strange that you are struggling with this.

But you need to look at all your posts in combination. Dh drives me crazy at times... just today I came home and was annoyed as him and ds had left all their shit on the side instead of in the dishwasher. But you know what? Dh also made a point of driving me and dd all over the place to make life easier, unpacked the shopping, spent time with his sister who is going through a v tough time and is currently watching a movie with dd. That one little irritation was so minor it wasn't even a blip. It didn't come near the point of thinking about posting on MN or ranting to a friend. And yet you have posted multiple times about your dh. And in every case you have been told that his behaviour is terrible. Go loom at your "threads I started" and remind yourself of that....

Good luck. I worry about you I don't even know you ans you are just a faceless person on the Internet but actually, I think of you often. If I could convince you of one thing, I would beg you to talk to your parents.

UnMN hugs and kisses.

I know how you feel. I think we just have to accept that some people's traits are not very aligned and they don't have a cohesive personality that most people would understand. They may even confuse the person themselves.

This confusion keeps people in unhealthy relationships for years as they can never really go - yes they really WERE a bad person, and I was right to leave them or let go. They never get that closure, so you just have to trust yourself, and that's the hard part in this situation.

I've lost hope in improving things

Good. You cannot fix it. You cannot change him. Nothing you do or say will ever pause him on ‘nice’ mode.
Stop hoping completely. Give up on him. That’s the only way you will ever get peace.

I don’t think it’s a tactic. I don’t think most abusive people even realise they are. People aren’t bad or good. They are just people. No one is a abusive all of the time. I was horribly abused. Nasty child sexual exploitation yet the abuser could be lovely to me. He often was.
Its very confusing but it’s never he’s bad or he’s good. He just is.
Any abuse is too much abuse.

I'm in exactly the same place, @Sebantha. I feel like a pendulum swinging backwards and forwards, leave or stay, leave or stay. Like you, so much upheaval and pain if I go, so I inevitably swing back to wondering if I can just take the rough with the smooth.