Was this emotional abuse?

[LucyLou96]

I broke up with my ex of many years 3 months ago. Logically I know the answer is yes, but what I'm struggling to comprehend is the severity of it and keep downplaying it to myself. Here are some instances:

I was lying on his bedroom floor crying and he became more concerned with his parents hearing it and was fed up with me being upset and not telling him why, and even though I told him not to touch me he grabbed me and picked me up aggressively and put me onto the bed to try and make me calm down.

When my depression was bad he'd tell me my moping around was making him miserable. One time he said me wanting to end my life made him want to end his too. Another time he said that me being suicidal was me saying I wanted to leave him.

Sometimes when I expressed a desire to self harm he would threaten to take away things like days out to make me not do it.

He told me that he was worried me being so shy (I'm neurodiverse) would cause his friends and family to dislike me.

He once said that he doesn't know if he should stick around in this relationship if I just end up killing myself.

One time we had an argument late at night and he said he was fed up with me acting how I was (miserable due to being in chronic discomfort/pain) and made me feel guilty for crying, but wouldn't let me go downstairs so he could sleep. Instead he lay in bed listening to music to block out the sound of my crying

Another time I was keeping him awake by crying, he kicked and pushed me in bed and grabbed me and shouted at me to just stop.

He had a go at me to 'find a solution' for being shy around his family, and got mad when I said there may not be one because I'm autistic and can't help it, then we had a huge argument which lasted two days and he told me that I was making it all about myself instead of how he feels by having to think of reasons to his friends & family why I'm shy (I refused to let him tell them I was autistic at the time)

When I was crying late at night he said if I kept him up by crying and he had to drive home on only 4 hours sleep he'd be very pissed off with me, but then went on his phone and did not respond to me when I told him why I was crying

One time when I was overwhelmed and had been scratching to self harm, then tried to stop myself by holding onto the bed to give my hands something to do, and he got angry with me for keeping him awake. He didn't comfort me when I cried, then when I tried to seek comfort from him by snuggling up to him he kept pushing my head away

When WFH, during a work call I had an anxiety attack and was crying on the floor as I got so worked up about my part during a weekly meeting. He shouted at me how I should just quit if I can’t handle the job and get a lower paying less stressful job. I felt even worse so I crawled into the spare room so he couldn’t see me crying anymore as I didn’t want to make him more pissed off with me

When we were struggling to put a piece of furniture together, whilst I had covid, he got annoyed with me. He called me useless, but wouldn’t let me help, then told me I should at least do something useful. He said things like: "Get out of the way, Shut the fuck up, Whatever princess wants, Do something useful for once, Useless, You’re not helping"

I think everything has become so normalised to me that I struggle to see my own situation, so I'd really appreciate some outsider's opinions on what I've described. Thanks in advance

You need to be single and work on yourself. Don't be in a relationship until you have sorted out your depression.

@LucyLou96 I think as the PP has mentioned you have some significant mental health issues you need to deal with. Your ex partners behaviour is difficult to judge, he was probably in many cases just trying to manage your behaviour as best he could. You don't need a partner, you need a therapist. If your behaviour was more reasonable I suspect his may have been. Good luck.

He’s not been great, but to be honest neither have you in the sense that you’re not recognising the emotional strain and pressure your behaviours cause him. Yes, you have reasons that you can’t help, but he’s also a human with feelings, emotions, needs. I work with many neurodiverse people and it is quite common for those with ASD to have little to no understanding of their impact on others. Depression can magnify that in my experience You can love a person 100% but still find them challenging. That applies whether you’re/they’re neurodiverse or not.

I think the previous poster is right, perhaps being single and working on your own health would be better for you just now. Being in a relationship means supporting and understanding someone else, and that is extra challenging when your mental health is low as yours seems to be.

Wishing you all the best OP.

It sounds like you were both overwhelmed. I think the main thing is that you address your mental health.

With respect OP you refer to lying on the floor crying as though it's completely everyday behaviour and that your partner is somehow abusive because he doesn't know how to address it or help you. Being unable to understand or help someone in such distress is not emotional abuse it's human.

I don't see how pushing me and kicking me whilst I was crying in bed counts as trying to manage my behaviour as best he could.

I was not trying to manipulate anyone. The incident where I was on the floor I just wanted to be left alone. I told him not to touch me and he aggressively grabbed me and put me on the bed because he wanted me to shut up so his parents did not hear me crying

I am not saying his behaviour was right or wrong. He was placed in a highly stressful situation he probably had no idea how to handle. It is not justification for his behaviour, but you were clearly creating the situation. Stop focusing on the past and blaming others. Focus on how you better manage yourself going forwards.

I was lying on the floor crying as we had had another argument and it felt safer being on the floor than on the bed with him. We were together from our early 20s until late 20s

I understand I had significant mental health issues, many of the instances I described were in the beginning of our relationship around 6 years ago. I wanted an opinion on just the emotional aspects of our relationship to see what red flags I missed before moving in. The reason I wanted opinions was to see if it could help me understand what happened later on in the relationship.

Once we lived together, this man would throw objects, scream at me, break objects, give me the silent treatment, dragged me towards him, gaslight me multiple times to hide his online cheating and sexually coerced me.

You know the red flags. You highlighted them all to us. But going into another relationship is not wise for you, not till you are in a good place, otherwise you may make an otherwise reasonable person show all the red flags too.

He shouldn't be physically aggressive towards you.

Equally, though, I think throwing yourself on the floor to cry, and lying next to him in bed crying during the night instead of taking yourself out of the room so he can at least get some sleep suggests that you are either looking for some sort of reaction/attention from him or simply do not care about the obvious negative impacts of your behaviours on other people.

You obviously have some considerable mental health issues and I sympathise with you on that score, but I think your behaviour would be extremely difficult and stressful for a partner to handle. Your mental illness does seem to present itself in ways that are very attention-seeking and dramatic and I suspect your ex was simply absolutely exhausted and frustrated by all the constant emotional outbursts, crying on the floor, threats of self-harm and suicide etc. Everything revolves around you and your heightened emotions and his feelings are basically nowhere in all this.

The stuff about being shy around his family - my guess is that your idea of 'shy' might come across as rude and difficult to his family, and yes, I can see why he'd be embarrassed by that.

You are not in the right mental state for any kind of relationship right now. Get the treatment you need and focus on getting better rather than dwelling on your relationship with your former boyfriend.

Well, that's quite the drip-feed, isn't it?

With the benefit of the full story, I would still say that the things you described in your first post do not sound like emotional abuse in the context of your own behaviours at the time.

Clearly, though, the things you chose not to mention but have now revealed (throwing/breaking things, sexual coercion and cheating) are indeed seriously abusive. But that doesn't mean that every single thing he ever did was abusive.

He wouldn't let me leave the room as he didn't want his parents to know I was crying. He would put headphones in to block out my crying.

I understand the impact I had, I regularly apologized for being the way I was. I got therapy on two separate instances during the relationship to try and work through my problems. I will add that he would also threaten to hurt himself, jump off the roof, crash his car etc and I would beg him not to.

Regardless of how it comes across, I'm literally autistic and couldn't help my behaviour. He told me he was okay with my neurodiversity, but later down the line said he was worried people thought he was abusing me because I was so quiet at family parties.

Are you suggesting it was my behaviour that caused my ex to ultimately abuse me?

Being autistic isn't an excuse for your behaviour either. Self harming, threatening suicide and crying on the floor then trying to cuddle into him when he didn't want you to touch him, is behaviour you can control. If not, you don't drag someone else down with you. There is so much more help available now, you were only with him a few years. Your behaviour was abusive too.

You also prevented him from getting support from his family as you refused to let him tell them.

His behaviour, name calling and demeaning you was abusive. He should have gotten support too. There are plenty of groups. Or he should have left you.

I think he sounds like someone who was struggling to deal with his partners behaviour. I don't think either of you sound abusive, just two people struggling to cope with the given situation. I'm not saying that all of his reactions and the way he dealt with it was ok but honestly if you are going to say he was emotionally abusive then it sounds as though you were equally emotionally abusive. I really do sympathise and hope you are in a better place mentally now but I don't think it was fair on your ex to have to deal
with a lot of that behaviour. I think the best thing you can do is accept that it was a difficult situation all round and focus on your own mental health now rather than dwell on something you can't change.