(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 have at a different time told him not to do it though. But he still thinks I ‘like it’ in the moment .

I promise you he absolutely DO NOT think that you like it when it's happening. Now that you've realised what he really thinks about women, can you see that he simply doesn't care whether you like it or not? (I would go even further and say that he prefers it when you don't like it, he likes knowing that you don't consent and then doing it anyway - and he has told you this, that your distress turns him on.)

He’s so clever about it though. Majority of the time he gets consent from me , just it’s been years of me being a bit submissive I feel like it’s getting out of hand now and I can’t ask for any boundaries at all. He doesn’t listen/care . He pretends to care when I bring it up doesn’t take it on board.

If he actually thought that you like it in the moment but you kept telling him that you don't then he would clarify. He would say, "You say that you don't like it but when we start you seem to. Am I reading you wrongly in the moment? If so, I apologise and will stop thinking that, because you have told me that it's not true and I respect you. Of course what you say to me about yourself carries more weight than what I think, as we are talking about you."

I find it really striking that you think what the book says is concerning - you seem more freaked out by the book than how your husband behaves. I think this is because you have been trying to rationalise, defend and excuse his behaviour (he is highly sexed, he thinks I like it really, all men are like this, he just doesn't understand that I'm serious, maybe he didn't hear me crying - even though you know he did) and seeing his behaviours described in black and white in the book makes it very, very plain that actually he is behaves like this on purpose, his behaviours are calculatedly designed to manipulate you, it is not that he doesn't understand what he's doing. It's that he DOES understand.

I really don’t mean to appear unsupportive- really I don’t. This is a hideous situation ….What is it going to take to leave this manipulative serial rapist? I just don’t get it.
I might do this …
I’ll think about that …
Thanking everyone for all of their advice and comments that make perfect sense …. And still doing nothing.
Meanwhile he is continuing to rape you..,, because he thinks you No means Yes and you like it really?!
You are managing his moods and anticipate it happening and it does.

I just don’t get what could be worse that makes staying a better option?
This is vile and stomach churning. He is sick and doesn’t love or respect you. He deserves nothing in return.
My anger is FOR OP not against.
Nothing is worth putting up with this.
“For the kids” doesn’t cut it in this situation

Please pull the plaster off and out him to anyone and everyone. Nothing can be as bad as this 🥺

@Greenaeonium You don’t get it because you’ve never been in that situation- neither have I thankfully. But this is years and years of grooming, you don’t just wake up one day and run. I remember one poster on an earlier thread said it takes on average 17 attempts to leave an abuser. She thought all this was normal just a few short weeks ago. I think as posters on this thread we need to just accept that she isn’t going to leave him any time soon, if ever. All we can hope it to offer support and help stop her being gaslit by offering outside perspectives.

You’re absolutely right 👌🏻
I’m enraged on her behalf not at her.
Attempt 1 and outing him would be an accomplishment.
He’s a predator of the worst kind and should be behind bars.

@RS1987 the average is 7 times to finally leave, according to Women’s Aid statistics.

I think PP had been hoping that this was a blip, misunderstanding, something she could forgive and forget with enough therapy.

Maybe these latest revelations will make her realise this is a pattern of toxic beliefs,grooming, manipulation and predatory behaviour that started even before they met and now he is escalating - she can't put this back in the box.

Yes, I agree that up until now OP has been trying to make her brain believe that her husband is a good man who sometimes does bad things, whereas reading his chosen instruction manual makes it abundantly clear that he is actually a very bad man who sometimes does good/normal things as a manipulative tactic to keep OP under his control.

This is why none of us who have prior experience of this sort of man were really surprised to hear about things like the financial abuse or the violence that he has demonstrated in front of you and your children. Abuse never occurs in a vacuum; inevitably where one type of abuse is present you will find other types of abuse too (because abuse is about control and abusers will use any avenue to try to achieve control).

In defence of the book (a limited defence!) from memory when I read it about 15 years ago it's actually an autobiographical account in the form of an exposé by a journo who gets sucked into this world (a precursor of the manosphere) and starts to have success with manipulating women into sleeping with him, but eventually has a revelation meeting his eventual long term partner that the manipulative techniques the whole culture he was part of lived by were actually just manipulative and not really conducive to giving him the meaningful relationship he wanted. Hence he left the culture and wrote the exposé.

If my memory serves it's a probably somewhat telling the conclusion is not what Poet's husband took from the book, simply the techniques written about within.

@PinkPoetAgaiin I saw something online today which made me think of you. I thought it explained your situation well. It was on a psychology group and was referencing the film “Sleeping with the enemy”.

Control disguised as care is still control. If you grow up with control disguised as care, your nervous system will mistake it for safety. It becomes your version of love.

”Let me handle it” - because you were never allowed to trust yourself.
“I just want you to be safe” - because love was always tied to fear.
“I know what’s best for you” - because you were never given a choice.

Toxic love feels familiar. Because when you’ve been conditioned to keep the peace, to adjust yourself to avoid conflict, control doesn’t feel wrong, it feels normal.

You’ve talked about how your husband keeps you safe from other men whom you fear. But you’re not safe with him. You have a deep love for him but that version of love is all you’ve ever known.

Yes sorry meant 7 not 17!!

I think it's probably a real shock to absorb that her dh has been deliberately employing these PUA techniques on her from the beginning.

Especially as he was a fully grown adult man using the PUA techniques on a ‘target’ (as the book describes them) who was barely older than a child.

Legally an adult too, yes, but actually an age where they could still have been a sixth former.

And he is still using those very same rape tactics on her now in their marriage. So it's not like he grew up and got over a nasty phase like the author supposedly did.

Yes it is a bit of a shock
I don’t know why , as someone asked, I find the book part particularly shocking, as opposed to the other things. I think it’s just shocking to see the blatant pickup techniques I remember him using to actually get me to like him, sleep with him, and enter into an on/off and tumultuous relationship with him (while living together after a few months). And it all worked on me of course!!

Then although he’s not ‘picking up girls’ anymore some of the themes still seem to inform his thinking especially around sex and that resistance is just an obstacle to be overcome. And it’s overcome easily.

It happened again tonight, when we went to bed and i was asleep (just). I became aware he was touching me (over clothes) and asked me if I wanted to have sex. I said no I’m tired and want to sleep. He stopped for less than a minute, then started touching again, said he just can’t keep his hands off me, climbed on top of me (from behind) and said ‘are you sure’. I didn’t reply so he went ahead and had sex with me, same position, same hands on the back/neck/holding my hair. At one point i said can you be careful and he did said ‘sorry’ and seem like he was more aware about his hands after that.

Then he falls asleep cuddling me and stroking my hair like it’s so romantic

Next time , because this seems to be happening a lot at the moment, what can I do to make myself more confident to stick to
my guns and say no and mean it? Like why did I just say nothing?! I’m so
annoyed with myself . I was thinking if I initiate sex next time at least I’ll be in control of it and the position and it might break this cycle. And I would like it a bit more if I was leading it I think.

Next time, because this seems to be happening a lot at the moment, what can I do to make myself more confident to stick to my guns and say no and mean it?

I think you'll actually have to get out of bed and go and sleep on the sofa.

@Greenaeonium
thank you - I know it seems very silly why I would stay in this relationship

But it’s very complicated for me
such a cliche I know
There are many reasons, some are practical /financial/ I’m a bit scared of his reaction and how he would handle a split
I also have a lot of love (trauma bond it has been suggested) and a kind of dopamine connection with him and how he makes me feel when he love bombs the family
When it’s good it’s really good and it makes the bad fade in my mind and I struggle to thinks it’s ‘bad enough’ to split the family and
destroy the ruin everything

A lot of people on here disagree with this mindset and this is why im
having therapy . I am trying !!

Just get out of bed if you can, take your phone in the bathroom with you and lock yourself in there.

I am really sorry it’s happened again tonight.

Tell him no means no. Repeat that to him very clearly so he knows he is crossing a boundary if he carries on.

Also re you initiating sex, do you really feel you even want to have sex with him? What he is doing to your neck and back is awful. You poor thing.

I don’t think there’s anything you can do to stop your husband raping you Pink. If you got up; he’d do it when you were asleep later on, like he has before. If you slept on the sofa he’d rape you there.

You could go to bed wearing a bodysuit and a onesie to make it harder for him to rape you but rapists will still find a way.

What you do is immaterial really: he didn’t rape you because YOU did something wrong or gave off the wrong signals. He did it because he wants to, he gets off on it. He loves the power and control and the submission from you.

If your marriage involves you having to plan how not to be raped, which yours does, it’s less of a marriage and more of a never-ending punishment cycle.

You deserve so much more Pink. If your daughter came to you and asked how she could make it less likely for her older husband to not rape her, what would you say? You’d never accept this for her. The little girl you were shouldn’t have to accept this future for herself either.

I think the book part is so shocking because it’s a bit of a Truman Show moment. There’s a lot of things about him and how he was then, how he is now, and you were seeing it as him and would have various explanations for things he did - but now you’ve found that there was a script all along.

I really hope you’re ok, because you have without question just been raped (and not just by coercion). Why are you blaming yourself for not saying no when you did? All you didn’t do was continue to fight him physically or by repeating it when already under attack. You managed to speak up too to minimise harm when his hand was on your neck, you did do that.

If you want to work out why you don’t repeatedly say no to someone who doesn’t take no for an answer you might have to work out if that’s just fear of that moment and what happens, or fear that you then need to do something tomorrow after there’s no hiding from what happened.

Yes sorry, you did say no. You don’t have to repeat it as in a normal world no does mean no. I imagine it will be hard for you to sleep after what’s just happened. Are you physically ok or hurt? It’s very very hard to stand up to someone like him. I get it. He’s conditioned you so hard. Let us know if there’s anything you we can do. You are not alone xx

Frankly, the only thing you can do is the sort of thing that, as parents, we teach our children to do when someone does something that they don’t like. Be loud, clear, and firm. “NO, I don’t want to have sex with you! Stop touching me! If you don’t stop, then it will be RAPE, and you will be RAPING me.”

I may have missed something, and if so this doesn’t apply, but it doesn’t seem like he’d hold you down if you actually fought him? He’s trying to use more coercive methods.

I think you need to name the behaviour in order to shame him into stopping. I’m not victim blaming, having been in a similar situation, but it seems like he might stop in the moment if you held a strong boundary instead of submitting – that’s not your fault, as he’s trained you into it, but you need to learn to overcome it. To find your voice, and be firm and strong.

Practice it in the mirror – finding your anger, and saying NO. I don’t WANT to. Get OFF me.

And personally, if he doesn’t stop, I’d fight him. Push him off, bite him, struggle. The worst thing that happens if you fight him and he does it anyway, is that he’ll rape you (which he’s already doing) but then it might give you another point of clarity – you’ll know then that he is literally just a rapist, not a ‘sex pest’, and not someone who ‘thinks you like it’.

That’s what made me realise with my boyfriend, when I was young. I fought him for the first time and he hit me, put his hand around my throat, and held me down and did it anyway – and I knew then in my bones that it was over. I couldn’t pretend anymore.

You did say no and you did mean it.

He ignored your no and raped you.

You aren’t saying no in the wrong way or giving mixed signals.

You are saying no and he is choosing to go ahead and rape you in your own bed. In a dehumanising and dangerous position.

I’m so sorry OP. I know you aren’t ready to leave but I am frightened for you and just wish we could rescue you.

Do not blame yourself. You are being perfectly clear when you don’t want to have sex. He is actively choosing to ignore your ‘no’ and rape you.

This is not love. It is years and years of conditioning and abuse. And it’s not a coincidence that it’s ramped up when you’ve started to question things in your own head.

He feels you are waking up to it and is showing you who is boss.

But he isn’t your boss OP. YOU are your boss.

He hasn’t broken you. You know this is wrong. You are starting to see that now x

When it’s good it’s really good and it makes the bad fade in my mind and I struggle to thinks it’s ‘bad enough’ to split the family and
destroy the ruin everything

I can empathise with this so strongly. But what you have to remember is, if this was happening to your child - if an adult in the family was abusing them, and they had the same mindset as you, what would you want your child to do? Would it be 'ruining everything' for them to seek help over the abuse, and tell someone who can help them? Or would it be taking the first, brave, very scary step to try to protect themselves?

He falls asleep cuddling you to convince himself that he didn’t do anything wrong.

I think you need to say no. Keep saying no. Name what he is doing to you. Even if it is just to yourself. Spell it out here to us. Do not censor yourself.