Referring to Stuart Hogg and the abusive relationship with his wife. I work in a mostly female environment and we were talking about domestic abuse and this story. I divorced a man who (I’m told) was controlling and emotionally manipulative. I failed to recognise this. My understanding of abusive control is when your partner (male or female) restricts your freedom, tells you what to wear, calls you endlessly on a night out “checking” on you. Today, this was the consensus.
My ex was a loving and generous man. Never restricted me in terms of how I looked what I wore etc. he liked to be seen with me, as an attractive partner. What he did was threaten to divorce me because I was on Facebook making “friends”; he’d ignore me for days on end if we had a disagreement, even a small one. He’d move into the spare room/talk to everyone and his friend but not me. I’d try, by any means, to calm the situation and “retrieve” the doomed marriage. And I did, each year (sometimes more) I’d manage to smooth things over and we’d move forward. Until the next time. If (rarely) I answered back, he called me unreasonable and a bully and… tell me to go away, think about what I’d done, and he’d think seriously about whether he’d divorce me. Or not. He knew every painful thing I’d experienced in my life and then used them to threaten me with my worst nightmare, abandonment .