(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 ❤️

That would be such a good response!!!

I’m so sorry OP, he is such a textbook narcissist spoiling special occasions for you and the kids.

I bet he’s been (at best) snappy and short tempered with them too today?

Classic abuser behaviour.

Everything must revolve around them and their mood.

I could never speak to him like that.
Too scared to to be honest .

@shoppingred54 i will make a note in my phone, thank you

@throwawayimplantchat yep they’ve been on the receiving end of a few ‘shut ups’ as well :( but he will be all smiles when we get to the event.

It must be very confusing for the dc ( just like you) to see this switch in behaviour . Only difference is now you know his behavior is not normal however it’s common with what other women have experienced at the hands of abusive narcissists sociopaths.

😢

Did he leave you alone sexually at least yesterday/today?

I know you can’t. Even though you would just be drawing attention to his own language which he had no fear using to you. This is a textbook abusive relationship. You even know he’ll have no problem controlling himself when you’re out, playing the doting husband and father then.

Do you remember the other time he said thanks after one of his rapes, and you laughed because it was surreal and ridiculous? You need more of that, of stepping back and observing his behaviour and the patterns. To feel some contempt for him, some anger for how he has all the power to ruin a morning for you and the kids and you can’t even chide him for it (without a lot of conciliatory language).

Must be so confusing for them 😔

Please try to remember this when you’re in therapy or speaking to women’s aid. I know you say they love him so much but as mentioned previously he is priming them for a lifetime of abusive relationships themselves by doing the nastiness and ‘shut ups’ at them behind closed doors then smiling away at events when you’re all there together.

The cycle of abuse is being normalised to them. I’m not saying this to try to make you feel bad, I just feel it’s crucial to point it out when it happens so that you can continue to see the pattern that is emerging and understand how confusing and damaging it is for them x

I can definitely agree with this, as a child it was very confusing when my F could be a playful father to us, sometimes telling stories and playing games with us and at other times finding fault and shouting at us (as well as smacking us hard). I often didn’t even understand what I’d done wrong! And yes, he was charming in public, too. (Although less so later as his Parkinson’s Disease took hold.)

We were definitely walking on eggshells, and scared of him, despite also nevertheless loving him. Young children always love their parents, even abusive ones.

Nothing major , I told him my periods still heavy and he’s not a fan. I’m still waking up early morning to him groping me and being all over me but nothing out of the ordinary

I also think it’s calculated how he disturbs your sleep with all this Poet. He wants you exhausted as it keeps you confused and unable to make decisive steps in general. It’s all so calculated and manipulative x

Please remember this feeling when the urge to defend him to people comes again (and it will). He’s not a caring husband and father who dotes on you all, he’s swearing at you and telling the children to shut up on a special family day. Looking back through your texts helped you to remember some of the “wrong” stuff, remembering this behaviour in times of doubt will too. Hope you manage to give the children a nice day xx

I just feel so sad
but yes I am very good at grinning through it and they will have a nice day
No one will know

But I just feel like what have I/ we done to deserve this. I can cope with feeling sad for me but for them it’s harder. As far as I know he had no reason to be touchy from ‘stress’ today. He’s not working, I organised everything, nothing to prepare, no reason (that I know of). So why are we getting these shitty comments ?!

Because he’s a complete prick.

It’s hard to accept I just made a bad choice 15 years ago and this is the consequence. I’m always looking for meaning but yeah .. you’re probably right !

I'm glad it wasn't worse. Just bear in mind your 'nothing out of the ordinary' is still him committing sexual assault on you. That's how low your bar is, which is incredibly sad.

He treats you horrifically. This isn't love 😢

The stress on your body from playing this role cannot continue. At some point you will break, so that’s why you need to get selfish here. This isn’t the life you deserve or want. You’ve picked the wrong person and sometimes you just need to accept that you made a big mistake and move on. You have two thirds of your life still to go and it can be much, much better than this existence. You deserve better than this.

Because he’s an abusive bully who enjoys having total control of you and the children.

Thats not me guessing, it’s a known behaviour of abusers. Here’s something I found online.

Many narcissistic abusers want to be the centre of attention, even the covert ones.They may not seem to be trying to draw attention to themselves, but they do so by ruining special occasions for others using tactics such as:

Start an argument on the morning of the special occasion (he’s done this already today.)

Creating an atmosphere so you walk on eggshells for the whole day, perhaps defaulting to the fawn trauma response to placate them (he’s done this already today and you’ve already had to resort to placating him or the day would be completely ruined for the kids, which he knows.)

Being at events feigning cheer and warmth serves to manipulate others into believing they are a fantastic person which leaves you wondering if the problem is actually you. (You are already predicting he will do this being all smiley at the event to keep up the facade)

Those in abusive relationships find special occasions, including Christmas highly stressful, leaving them exhausted. (You said he always does this at Christmas)

Special occasions are a great way for narcissistic abusers to manipulate everyone around them and further control you. This raises your stress and anxiety levels, erodes your self-worth and makes you doubt your reality.

To sum up, narcissistic abusers see special occasions as another way to manipulate and control you. They can show the world their mask and know that you are not enjoying yourself because you know what the fallout will be.

This ^

It is who he is, an abuser, and a classic abuser at that x

So you’ve had 15 years of this. You could either have no more years of it by leaving him or you could stay with him and have potentially 40 + more years of being raped and abused.

And in the process potentially lose a beautiful relationship with your children who when they become adults may get into abusive relationships themselves OR see him for what he is and then have very limited contact with you both.

Being groomed by an abuser 15 years ago doesn’t mean you have to be abused for the rest of your life. It’s YOUR life, not his. You deserve peace not abuse x

👏👏

Ah so another day of your precious lives walking on eggshells to keep the man happy, while he thinks it's perfectly fine to tell you to shut up and fuck off.

Totally irrelevant OP, but from your first thread I somehow had the idea (early on) that he was generally charming, loving and "just" had this horrible tendency to sexual abuse, it was a sex thing - obviously that's bad enough to walk away forever but I had assumed ok he's a charmer, he doesn't need to be outwardly awful because he's got you trained to like him how he is and just ignore the rape thing.

You said "In most ways he is kind and respectful and lovely to me" and "When my friends complain to me about their cheating or lazy or rude husbands I sometimes think wow I’m so lucky to have mine" - he's a fun dad who sets up egg hunts and bike rides. So I think I kind of took you at your word.

But so many of your other posts since then have shown that he's not that at all! He tells you to shut up and fuck off, he drives dangerously on purpose to teach you all how to act, he gets easily annoyed by kids noise, mess, things not working out according to plan, he prevents you from accessing family money and having a view of the finances (totally unforgivable in itself), he's gropey and whines about it, he literally used a misogynist manipulative pick-up textbook to establish your relationship and presumably treated other vulnerable women in that way, stomps off and swears when your baby's needs prevents him from having sex, he uses your past trauma against you. I'm sure there was more that made me gasp too.

All that is before he's had sex with you knowing you didn't consent then told you you liked it.

I've never been in a relationship where a man has even told me to shut up, so I can't really comment from experience but as a pp said in a previous thread, being nice 75% of the time is pretty standard for abusers.

Even the 'fun dad' stuff seems to be wholly conditional on you and kids anticipating his every need and behaving perfectly.

I do get, completely, that it seems very complex and everything is interwoven. Lots of threads to pull and unravel. But I don't think there's any thread you can pull at that results in this being how you genuinely want to live your life.

I hope you understand that, in addition to everything else, Poet, him telling you to 'shut up and fuck off' is abusive in itself. I'm sorry he's doing that. It feels like his behaviour is just relentless.

Jesus Christ. That in itself is sexual abuse :(

Yeah it's a testament to how ground down and eggshell walking PP is because those of us who haven't been in a relationship like this probably would shut it and fuck off (or tell him to get out) whereas she is probably carrying on trying to make the day perfect and doing the eggshell walk with the kids.

The verbal abuse this morning, and PP saying that he hasn't really bothered her sexually for a couple of days and then saying that actually he's been groping and pawing at her every morning, seems to be something that barely registers with her or seems minor. There doesn't seem to be any anger or red lines yet which worries me a lot. Maybe it will come. I hope so.