I’m putting myself out there and it’s not a nice topic. But I need some advice.
my marriage ended last year because I had an affair. We have two children and were married for 10 years at the time.
It will never ever be something that I will try and justify or talk my way out of but I need to be honest to get the answers and advice I’m looking for…..
my ex-husband was and is a very controlling man. I never knew anything whatsoever about our finances, from the amount my phone bill cost to how much our credit card bill was.
I moved around the country a lot of times at the decision of my ex-husband and proceeded to start my career over each time, in order for him to progress in his own.
There were multiple situations during our relationship that caused me trauma however if I could turn back time I would NEVER even contemplate doing what I done or leaving as the can of worms that’s now opened is worse than I ever could have imagined.
For the past 18 months, the abuse I have endured and still ongoing is enough to make me want to not be here anymore. In fact, he tells me all the time that I should do exactly that.
Stuff he says:
how worthless I am.
how he will continue to destroy me.
how nobody wants me alive.
how his sister is a better mum to our kids than I ever was (she lives in a diff country and I have our children 30 days a month, he currently sees them 1 day a month)
how my children will one day hate me so much and he’s going to make sure of it
how I’m a worse mum than my own mum was (my mum suffered at the hands of my alcoholic dad for years and worked multiple jobs to provide for us but we didn’t have an extravagant childhood)
he takes pictures of our children when they are on FaceTime to him if they are upset/missing him and then sends them to me to ‘remind’ me what an evil c**t I am for doing this to them.
he has told our daughter why our marriage broke down and proceeded to tell her so much stuff about how I am basically a bad person and mum (in his own clever way) and questioned her everytime he seen her about my whereabouts until she didn’t want to answer the phone to him anymore.
he only stopped when I told him she spoke to me in confidence about it.
he asked her multiple times on the phone to check if my car was in the garden and if I went out what type of make-up I was wearing.
my car is in his name and he continually messages me telling me I’m not permitted to drive it knowing that I have to use it to drive our children to school and clubs and get to work. I pay for the car every month but he tells me he’ll call the police if I attempt to get in it. He’s 5 hours away so he isn’t around doing any school runs etc so he knows this would leave me unable to do this.
he called social services and told them he was worried for my mental health looking after the kids after he told me he would make sure I was destroyed.
I had a lump in my breast that was getting checked for cancer and he told me it was my ‘karma’
my Nan died in January (I was extremely close to her) and the night before her funeral he was messaging me until 2am calling me every name under the sun, and again the morning of.
I could go on and on and on…..
I can’t believe I’m saying this but right now I’m considering relocating and moving closer to him to ease the abuse and attempt to calm him down.
along side all this he frequently tells me he still loves me and misses me. Then he switches back to abuse whenever I don’t respond correctly.
Do I deserve this? He tells me everytime that he’s only speaking the truth. Everything he’s saying is true so therefore it’s not abuse.
I know I hurt him. Badly. And I’ll forever regret not doing things differently.
I really don’t know how to get out of this cycle.
My question is, is his behaviour justified??