Is he abusing me?

[Petal81]

This is long, so I thank anyone In advance who takes the time to read and respond.
I ended my relationship with my ex DP several months ago due to his alcoholism.
We have a DD who is almost 3yo.
He doesn’t drink every day, but when he does drink (which is at least once a fortnight and goes on for days at a time) he can’t stop and he becomes very chaotic.
He has lost numerous jobs due to his drinking, which left me with the responsibility of providing for us all on my own.
He never had any money, yet always managed to get drunk regularly.
I tried to end out relationship so many times, but was always sucked back in with promises of how he will change etc.
Five days after his latest promise, I finished work and collected our DD from crèche, came home to find him extremely drunk (again).
He hid his bottle of vodka under the bed, and I found it. Confronted him and he said (slurred) it wasn’t his, he wasn’t drinking and I must of put it there.
Our DD has been going though a sleep regression phase, and he told her that if she doesn’t sleep tonight, I would hit her. I told him to leave. He did. (the house is rented in my name only).
Since then, Every day, he is bombarding me with messages begging for a reconciliation. Claiming to have ‘seen the light’ and is now sober, while very obviously intoxicated.
When drunk, he is very verbally & emotionally abusive - calls me names, swears at me, makes false accusations, threatens suicide if I refuse to give him money for more alcohol etc. He does this in the presence of our DD also.
He has never been physically violent but he has threatened me on more than one occasion.
I have told him I am no longer in love with him and don’t want to be with him, several times.
His response is “you do love me, I need you and you need me”.
Because he has managed to talk me around so many times before, he expected it to be the same this time. I have only ever taken him back because he won’t give me any peace until he gets what he wants, and I felt so worn down it just seemed like the easiest option.
I haven’t given in this time. I won’t even allow him to to the house because if I do, he will expect to stay (this has happened many times too).
He starts off with love bombing (telling me I’m the love of his life and best friend etc, and that if I gave him another chance he wouldn’t it up - but he always does, usually within a week).
I remind him I don’t trust him, don’t want to be with him, and aside from the drinking I am no longer in love with him, too much damage has been done.
Then he becomes nasty with name calling etc again.
I have asked him to stop contacting me, blocked him on all messaging platforms other than email so that we can communicate with regards to our DD. But he does the same thing there, and in person when I take our DD to see him.
He will ask me to hold his hand, try to kiss me etc then become verbally aggressive when I refuse. Not on every occasion.
There is no court order at the moment. I have been supervising his contact with DD in a public place, so that if he is drunk, I can take her and leave.
But it has reached the point now where I feel uncomfortable being around him.
I worry about applying for a court order because of the way he minimises his drinking. I’m afraid he will convince the judge I’m exaggerating and he isn’t an alcoholic because he does go a week or two without drinking - usually when I’m around, but when I’m not, he takes the opportunity.
DD adores him, so I don’t want to refuse her a relationship with her father as long as it’s safe and sober. But I don’t feel comfortable supervising it anymore. His parents did it for a while at their house, but they are currently not speaking to him due to another drunken incident.

My ex used to tell me it was my fault he hit me because I was the one who made him angry.

Anyone who uses a DARVO tactic like that is a manipulative abuser.

You definitely need to call Women’s Aid, they will advise you of a local service/ family solicitor that can help with a Non Mol. You have very good reasons to stop child contact and can evidence this- keep all the texts/ emails and write down dated descriptions of the other abuse at contact. IF he ever goes to court for contact you can show that you tried to keep up the contact but it was not safe for you or your child. Tell nursery, health visitor/ children’s centre what you are doing and why so they also have a record. This will all help guard you against accusations of alienation. You could also tell him that you’d like him to have safe contact with his daughter and a supervised contact centre could support this if he would like to find one and fund it.

When I say tell him, only use email, and I would wait until after you have a non mol, that specifies how you will communicate about child contact.

@barskits
He hasn’t ever hit me (he did threaten to break my nose once while drunk, when I took a bottle of vodka away from him and tipped it down the sink) but has never actually been physically violent.
With him it’s more emotional/psychological - guilt trips, suicide threats, lying about suicide attempts, blame.. accusing me of using our DD as a weapon when it’s him who threatens to “take her away from me” when I don’t give into his demands (like being available to supervise contact with 45 minutes notice.)
Telling me I’m the one who has treated him ‘disgusting’, suggesting I’m the one who needs professional help for my (non existent) mental health issues, gas lighting (telling me I must of put the vodka under the bed as it wasn’t his) - most recently I received another email from him yesterday (baring in mind I have already sent him an email a few days ago stating I wish to have no contact and haven’t responded to any of his since, and that if he wants to see DD he needs to arrange it via his parents and be sober - they have agreed to this).
Yesterdays email was him telling me he is going to knock on my door for contact tomorrow (which is now today) and will video it so that if I don’t answer he can show DD it’s me keeping him away from her.
I didn’t respond.
Later in the evening, he sent another email saying that 3 members of my family have told him I’m a drug addict (which I know is rubbish, I rarely even drink let alone take drugs, and my family can’t stand him, they don’t even speak to him) .. he then proceeded to call me a ‘smackhead c**t’.
I ignored again, an hour later he sent me another telling me how much he loves me like nothing had happened.

@TucanPlay
Thank you. I already spoke to the nursery a couple of months ago and showed them some of the messages he had been sending me at the time,(more suicide threats, admissions of being drunk around her, and name calling aimed at me), and they’ve agreed that although he has parental responsibility, not to release her to him because they have reason to believe she wouldn’t be safe in his sole care.
He wouldn’t be able to fund a contact centre, he can’t hold down a job for any longer than two weeks before he turns up to work drunk and loses the job, which has happened too many times to count).
I have always facilitated contact between them providing he was sober at the time - I have paid for him to join us on day trips, paid for him to take her for dinner with his other DD (16) while I sat at a different table, trips to the park, soft play etc and at one point was allowing him to come to the house (which stopped when he brought vodka with him disguised in a coke bottle, got drunk during visitation and refused to leave which resulted in me calling the police to have him removed).
But during the contact he will always make underhanded comments directed at me through our DD (“at least someone still loves me”, “tell mummy you want daddy to come home where he belongs” etc) which just makes me feel uncomfortable.
And he will always use it as an opportunity to try and convince me to take him back, tells me I do still love him despite what I say, trying to hold my hand, kiss me etc, it has just become a very uncomfortable experience for me. And when I refuse these things, he starts with the guilt trips and name calling. It doesn’t matter to him that our DD is present.
He asks for contact at very short notice, and if I’m busy and unable to accommodate it, that’s another excuse for him to then get drunk and accuse me of stopping him seeing his child.
It’s as if he just expects me to sit at home all day, every day to be available on the off chance he might ask to see DD.
I have suggested numerous times that we arrange set days/times, but he ignores this.
And he isn’t happy with the idea of his parents accommodating his time with DD, my assumption is because I won’t be there.

this behaviour reminds me of my exH. All of it right down to the demanding of my return the relationship, suicide threats, ongoing harassment, it ended with him getting arrested for drink driving with our daughter in the car late at night as he came to my house to flash the headlights & beep the horn to intimidate me. The police arrested him & referred it to social services. They actually said that if I didn’t keep him away from our DD then I’d be seen as negligent & they’d have to get fully involved. Social services said I had to go to court to get a emergency CAO and the police actually advised me to get a non mol after they’d read some of the messages he’d been sending me which were similar to yours. I think you have grounds for all of this. I did it all myself with no solicitor. I got the hearing for the CAO & non mol within a week as classed as an emergency (I had to pester the court a bit) and he was not allowed unsupervised access. The fact you have all these records of police attending when he’s drunk, all the abusive messages etc, I believe you’d be able to get a court order for your child & a non mol for yourself very easily. like you I’d been taking it on ye chin, absorbing the abuse & even when I’d said to him that I would report him for abuse & he replied ‘what for? A few txts?!’ I doubted myself & put up with it even longer. It surprised me when the police took it as seriously as they did reading just a snippet of what he’d sent. So take action to protect yourself & your child and stop access. Go to court for CAO & non-mol. It’s under £300 for court order for you child and non- mol is free if you do it yourself.

if I wasn’t there, it would be “another thing to add to his file to show DD when she’s older that he tried, but I denied him access”.

Oh sure, this loser is organised enough to have started such a file AND be maintaining it AND will still have it in the years to come. BS. He's just BS-ing you. How organised is he with anything else in his life? Did we all just come down in the last shower? Men like this are not the sort to do anything w.r.t. their kids except try and use them to control you.