Hello. I think I’m in the trenches of emotional abuse, but it’s been building up for a couple of years, so I just want to clarify this scenario to get other people’s thoughts.
I have been with my DP for almost three years. We don’t live together. I’m a completely solo mum to my 7 year old DS. He has two DC whom he has 50% of the time.
I run my own business working from home, I have my son 100% of the time (thankfully, with support from family members who adore DS), but I still get very little me / downtime. Very little time with friends. I moved 300 miles to a new village a few years ago and I’m just now making solid friendships with the mums from school.
I feel like every time someone invites me to do something / go out, my DP tries to spoil it. The most recent, this week, I think is the final straw, and I want to end the relationship, but over thinking that maybe I’m being too harsh.
Invited out for dinner / drinks with some friends from school. I tell my DP. It means my DS will stay overnight with my parents and I’ll come home to an empty house/ lie in etc (bliss!). DP’s mood instantly changes. We didn’t have anything planned together because he has his DC that night. He suddenly tells me that he has an opportunity to go out that evening too, he will get a babysitter and we can ‘meet up’ on the night out and go back to his together. I tell him that’s ok, it’s a girls night and no one is meeting up with their partners. I’m quite happy to spend the night with them and all go home together as we live in another village 15 mins away so will share a cab. I let him know that I’m extremely tired with work and will really relish a child-free morning where I can have a lie in and sort the house / potter / get some ‘me time’ in. I also know I’d spend the evening a nervous wreck because he’d be clock watching waiting for me to meet him / arrive at his and I wouldn’t relax. I’m also 100% sure he has fabricated his ‘night out’ in order to insert himself into mine.
He flies off the handle, calling me ‘selfish’, ‘a hypocrite’ (?), ‘ohh look at you getting a child free night and coming home at whatever hour’ etc. ‘Look at you palming your kid off’, ‘fuck you, fuck this’ and so on. Let me remind you that he has 50% of his time child free and does as he pleases in that time, usually a combo of football / pub / gym. He had been in the pub for four hours on this particular evening whilst I bought, cooked and made dinner for us at my home whilst hosting a (very noisy/stressful) play date for my son. He started to reel off the many things he had done for me lately (all of which I didn’t ask for) and finally I asked him to leave because his ranting and raving might wake my son.
ive realised this has been a pattern and relates to most things I do. From buying a new pair of trainers to having to go to a work conference a couple of years ago which he said I ‘could have gotten out of’ but apparently I just wanted to get pissed (?).
Can anyone explain / relate to this behaviour? For me, it’s over, but I know he’ll be back with flowers and I need to stay strong.