Please leave abusive relationships

[Essie66]

Divorcing abusive husband but this involves working through trauma. Found this in a diary:
‘DS has been screaming in pain for hours: husband doesn’t want to help as I’m off on maternity. He says women at work laugh at me because I ask him for help. I should be able to cope.’ I was a FTM with a very colicky baby and was completely drowning but I couldn’t see the above for what it was. Abuse. I thought I was the problem, useless. I have no pictures of me with my darling son in the newborn stage as my ex husband spent the whole time off on paternity playing football with his mates. But yet my family were laughing it off saying well he could be doing worse. Unsurprisingly he was. Multiple affairs with other married women. Anyway, I suppose I’m just wondering if others were so blind? I remember crying to my GP in the grip of anxiety postpartum and her asking is your husband supportive and me answering yes, when in fact two days post delivery he had berated me for not being confident enough and wanting to go Christmas city shopping as that was what everyone else was doing 🙄 xxx

I was 17 years in a relationship that was abusive. Subtle emotional abuse. Lying. Financially controlling. I didn’t get it at the time. There were even some big things that I didn’t see for what they were. I had no experience of abuse and it was all done with a facade of generous spirit, so I kept questioning myself. I think partly I didn’t want to see it for what it was, because by the time I’d gotten the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’d made a horrible mistake marrying him, I’d got kids and was financially dependent. I left 6 years ago. He behaved terribly towards me before and after I left. Changed the locks the day I left whilst simultaneously telling my mum that he would do anything to get me back. Made my life a financial misery until I accepted a rubbish deal to walk away. I had a terrible solicitor which added to the stress. He played the divorce system beautifully of course. A total web of financial deceit designed to give me as little as possible of ‘his’ money to restart my life. I can’t get away from him until kids are 18. Only 5 years left. Kids think he’s great. He puts on a great show of being ‘nice’. I don’t lie to them if they ask questions about him, but they don’t like hearing anything negative and I cannot expect them to understand the complexities of his behaviours and manipulations. I didn’t get it myself for years. My mum didn’t either. I have great friends around me, who were supportive, but unless you’ve experienced it, you cannot understand the lasting trauma. I came to understand that this type of abuse is seen, in professional circles, as being the worst type for it’s lasting emotional effect. I have forgiven myself (almost)for being so trusting and easy to manipulate.

That is absolutely awful to hear @Essie66 and my heart goes out to you. Yes I was blind to the level of abuse I suffered until I removed myself from the relationship after discovering my husbands affair. How did you find out about the multiple affairs? How did your family react when you told them? He sounds like a highly narcissistic individual with 0 empathy or remorse. Hindsight is 20/20 but in these abusive relationships you're running on survival mode. You don't realise the depths of someone' depravity until you're away from it and have time to reflect.