(TW SA) Continuing support & sharing things…

[PinkPoetAgaiin]

Hi again everyone,

Making a new thread as some of the lovely ladies who have been supporting me for over a month now suggested I can continue to share my thoughts & feelings dealing with sexual & financial abuse (& other things) from my husband who I’ve been with since I was 18 (15 years).

Will be on and off for a bit as young DC is unwell at the moment and that’s taking all my energy.

I am not yet at the point of leaving - please don’t shout at me for being a bad mum. I did get a lot of criticism on my last thread for not getting them out immediately and I just can’t for reasons I explained.

Life feels heavy, but I’m focusing on DC at the moment ❤️

I’m so proud of you waiting on hold poet, you can do this x

Well done, Poet. You are doing amazingly! We will wait with you 💐

@PinkPoetAgaiin you are showing immense bravery. We are all here with you 💐🫂

I’m sure there are lots of us on here wishing we could do more to support @PinkPoetAgaiin

Here’s the link to donate to women’s aid if anyone is able to https://donate.womensaid.org.uk I wish they had better resources so that more women can be helped. I’m donating now x

I’ve followed your lead. Thank you!

Ok I did get through and speak to someone.
I felt a huge sense of relief talking to someone out loud . I did manage to tell them
eveeything so thank you for the bullet points!!

They did a risk assessment and talked me through safety planning. They did express some concerns about safety , but obviously they did not pressure me to leave immediately.

They can offer specialist trauma based therapy too, but there is quite a lengthy wait for that too. I get the feeling the services are quite stretched. But I said I would like to speak to someone.

They encouraged me to speak to someone close to me so they know. Like a family member. I’m still not sure who that might be though.

They were very lovely and I did feel listened to. They definitely really care .

There is a service local to me who i can contact if I need assistance.

Thanks everyone
means so much that you are all supporting me x

Huge well done. This a massive first step to a life free of this piece of shit.
Please do contact the local service now while you are motivated.
Seriously consider taking the advice and confiding in a family member- you may find that they are not surprised and will step up to offer you RL support and advocacy which you desperately need.
💐

Well done! That's very brave and I'm glad they were supportive

Well done OP! Proud of you! I’m sitting here WFH smiling.
HUGE step. Validating your experience.
if not family member yet, your close friend will do.
just someone in real life.
🌺

Headache is unbearable. May have to take the meds tonight but I won’t say

but yes proud of myself !

I’m not sure about talking to my mum. We are close but I worry this would ruin her life.

if any of you have grown up daughters how would you take it if they told you this? How would you react?

You should be proud. That must have been very stressful. What a way you’ve come in a few weeks. Make sure you delete your phone records from today. Get out for a walk and get some air.

My dd is only a couple of years younger than you.

If my dd told me that her husband raped her on a regular basis I would be so sad for her and ask her what she wants to do next.

I would of course believe her.

If you were my daughter, I'd want you to tell me and I'd want to help you out of the situation.

Of course I'd have big feelings about it, but I wouldn't want you to protect me from your reality. I would want to be a safe place for you and someone to confide in.

You should be so proud of yourself for calling, OP, and I'm so glad it wasn't as overwhelming as you worried it might be! You might find a lot of these steps feel less scary than they looked before you took them.

I have a teenage daughter and was also a victim of abuses, as I've said on the thread previously, so I can see it from both sides. At the time, when I was young, I did hide a lot from my mum in an effort to protect her - but we had a very complicated relationship, where she wasn't entirely supportive, so possibly different to your relationship with your mum. Looking back I still do wish I'd been brave enough to go to her more often though - her support was imperfect, but better than isolation.

As a mother, however, I would absolutely, always, 100% want to know what my daughter was going through, so I could love and support her. It would be so much more devastating to know that she felt she couldn't tell me when she needed to, and so suffered alone. My job as a mum is to support her when she needs it, and it doesn't stop just because she's grown up. I would rather be devastated with her than be blissfully ignorant and her be alone.

If you think your mum would react supportively, and not steam-roller over you in unwanted ways regarding your choices, then I think it might be good to seriously think about telling her at this point - even if that's through a slow drip feed.

I would be deeply upset if my daughter had been going through this and hadn’t told me 🥺
You need RL support OP - trust the process xx

Well done for calling. If you feel you have to stay in the house with him, Can you find a way of sleeping in a different room and ideally adding a lock? The bare minimum in a relationship should be feeling safe to sleep.

You've done amazingly PinkPoet. You did it!!

Poet, if you take the meds now and sleep might you feel better before bedtime?

Also, I used to suffer from migraines. Now that my life is less stressful, I am kinder to myself and happier, they mostly went away. I have one maybe every 6 months now, if that.

Could you ask your GP for Voltarol suppositories? Realise it's not the nicest but they work SO well and NO drowsiness. I used to take them when my migraines were super bad. Its the equivalent of getting the painkiller intravenously without having to. You can get them in tablet form too but they are very effective as a suppository. I also have Frovatriptan which work for the first sign but didn't help if I woke up with one. It also made me drowsy.

I am so sad for you that your first thought, when you're in pain, is weighing up whether to risk being raped so you aren't in physical pain from your migraine... that's awful PinkPoet.

When I have a migraine PinkPoet my husband takes over everything, he collects the kids, makes dinner, cleans. He goes out and buys the foods he knows I want to eat, even if that's stopping at multiple supermarkets, he puts the blinds down around the house so if I get up to have a wee, I won't be faced with sunlight. He makes sure my headphones and my phone are fully charged so that he can put my white noise on for me and I can text him if I need anything. He fills up my water bottle every hour with my favourite squash or cordial. Once it's got better he runs me a bath and sets up candles with no scent, Then he tucks me in bed after helping me get into my PJs and he gives me a kiss if I want one. He lays out medication for me on my bedside table in case I wake up in the night. There is not one single time he has tried to have sex with me. I never have to worry about it.

And he isn't some special, rare type of man. He is just a good man and there are so many of them PinkPoet. You should never ever have to weigh up whether it's worth taking your tablets, knowing he may rape you, because you are in pain.

I have been watching this thread and not commenting. I also wish I knew you and would give you a big hug and all the support I need.

I have a younger sister. We all know what he's like. I even tried to talk to her about it once some time ago and she got very arsey with me and said everything is fine. We're all standing by, ready for when she needs us. Hoping she'll decide she's had enough.

In real life, I helped my friend. I would say we were good friends and I did not like her husband but absolutely no idea what was happening behind closed doors. She reminds me of you a bit.

During some conversations with friends, she started to realise her sex life was not usual. I didn't know about this. I was in the hairdresser one day and she walked in with her child and said she needed some help. She needed me to keep an eye on the child. Suprising and very out of character but ok. She said she needed the key to my house to make a private phone call. She had never had the key to my house before but she was kind of strangely calm and I was also in the middle of getting my hair cut. She took my house key and I took care of her LO until she called me to say I could come home. Best afternoon ever for LO we got ice-cream and all sorts. then she called to ask me to drop her LO off at a friends house for a play date. When I came home, she explained what was going on.

It was months at least and lots of small chats to get there. The phone call was one small step as you know. And I was happy to help because she is my friend. She lives with her children now. She is much happier. It took time and small steps.

I hope you can pick the right person too.

I am also really proud of you and wish you all the best.

I wouldn’t worry about ruining her life. If it is life-ruining to know about it, what is it to experience it?! Are you worried to tell her in case it’s another area of pressure on you to leave? Remember no one can make you do that, and you can tell her what you need from her at this point.

I think at the moment all you can see are obstacles, but you told your friend and you called Women’s Aid (both you were worried to do) so a huge well done. You can have total control of the conversation with your mum. For instance, tell her you aren’t ready to do anything - and you are not asking her to do anything either - but you want her to know not everything in your relationship is as perfect as it looks on the outside. Then tell her what has been happening (keep detail to a minimum if you need to, but don’t minimise).

There are various barriers at the moment, one is that your family think he’s great. He’s not though, so let’s shatter than illusion now so the weight of keeping up appearances is off your shoulders, and let a little light in. All of this might one day make the decision to leave, if you make that decision, less impossible.

@PinkPoetAgaiin I have been thinking out the position with your mother. I am sure at 18 with you taking a grown man home she most have been very concerned. However instead of creating a wedge and saying no I don’t approve, she knew you were too far gone. So as a parent she embraced it so she could stay close from you and for you not to be isolated? Because that would be far worse. This could be a possibility.

My older dd is 19. It would kill me to know she never told me if she was going through the cycle of abuse. The thing is, us mothers become warriors when our dc need us. Please consider telling her.

Well done for today, I am so thankful you were listened to and treated with the dignity and help you deserve. Try rest before the dc come home, and eat, drink even if it’s only a little, you’ve been through a lot x

I’m sure your mum loves you and wants the best for you and the children. If you’re able to tell her about the abuse, she’ll believe you. I know you don’t want to upset her but all she will care about is keeping you safe. And you need her help right now.

Most people do pick up on signs. My friend was in an abusive relationship but didn't tell anyone. I had my suspicions because she could not be away from him for more than an hour without her phone going off. And he would often just walk off and leave her to deal with things when she was struggling.

She also had four children in quick succession with him. Eventually she got away from him. He had a weapon in the house so one day she informed the police and they took him into custody. That was her chance. She left.

To everyone else, the man was lovely. He was fun, loved the children, worked hard, put on parties and BBQs and things like that. We all spent a lot of time together as our children were friends.

My DH couldn't believe that this man, his friend, was an abuser until I pointed out that no woman escapes in the middle of the night with four children and just the clothes on their backs unless she really has to. He got it straight away. He didn't need to be persuaded, it was obvious.

Tell your mum. Give her the details and let her know that yes, he is the man that she sees and likes but he is also a sexual predator who regularly rapes you and has told you that you cannot say no to him.

Everyone knows that abuse goes on behind closed doors. Even your mum.

When I confided in my mum I was in an abusive relationship (I was a bit older than you), she took me in immediately. It was just me, no kids at that point, so it was probably easier in that sense.

Of course she was devastated, and angry, angry at him but also angry at herself, because she had been the parent in an abusive relationship who thought me and my sister were protected because she took all the abuse. She was wrong, unfortunately, so she'll always have some guilt around that (though we don't blame her). I think she felt that me ending up in an abusive relationshio happened because that's what was modelled to me as a young child, and yes, that definitely played a part, but of course it's more nuanced than that.

I put off telling her for so long because I felt guilty and didn't want to put it on her, but she was wonderful.

Well done Poet, I am so proud of you and I am so pleased that YOU are proud of yourself!

It's fantastic that you have begun to take small steps to get more help and support for yourself and your children, that's wonderful. (Note also that it has gone alright when you have disclosed what is really going on to people in real life; your worst fears have not been realised about what might happen when you started telling people 🙂)

Like a PP I would also advise that you contact the local service, because this was one of the things that my colleague found most helpful. They have been able to help her with accessing counselling, getting her specialist support from an IDSVA (Independent Domestic and Sexual Violence Advocate), help with housing etc.