Husband said he wants to split up and I’ve been totally blindsided

[mummy917]

Just as it says in the title really.
Everything seemed fine until around 7 weeks ago. Then out of nowhere my husband accused me of being controlling, saying that over the course of our relationship, I had stopped him doing things he enjoyed and that I had said some hurtful things during arguments, which we were said in the heat of the
moment.
I held my hands up to saying hurtful things and said it came from a place where I felt as though there has been no consideration for me and as though my feelings aren’t worth anything. He often stays in bed on a morning while I sort out our kids who are all still young and I have said I have expectations that he helps out on a morning too. As for the controlling him, I have said to him over the years that sometimes it’d be nice if he would miss football for the odd weekend so we could do things as a family or have expressed my dislike at him coming in from a night out at 5am when we have children and other responsibilities.
He has mentioned occasions from 10+ years ago where I’ve asked him to forego football to spend the day with me after we’d been at work all week and I honestly don’t know how he can even remember specifics from that far back.
We both work full time and I work nights predominantly due to childcare.
Around 6 weeks ago he said he had hit his limit and wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue with our relationship. This threw me into a very dark place and I said I would take a step back in terms of losing my temper when I feel like I’m not being heard, which I’ve done, although he said this isn’t enough. I’m now on antidepressants, signed off sick from work and have a therapy appointment booked.
He has said he is done and is now looking for somewhere else to live but refuses to leave our home (rented not bought) until he has found somewhere. He has turned so cold towards me and acts like he hates me. I go from feeling devastated to angry and at this point feel as though I’m stuck in some awful limbo.
I’ve been in touch with a solicitor but was just hoping others who have been in the same boat could give me words of wisdom that things will feel less dark in time?
Thank you

Honestly these are all things I’ve said to him myself and I just get nowhere. It’s turned back around to make me sound like the bad one and it’s exhausting.

Because he knows these things are true but he doesn’t want you to know he knows.

He wants you stuck on a merry go round of trying to explain to him why hurtful behaviour of hurtful until you drive yourself mad.

Don't waste your breath explaining to a lion that it is a lion. It knows it’s a lions. And in will never not be a lion.

Instead, explain to yourself what lions eat for breakfast. For clarity, that would be you.

And use your time and energy to escape before he consumes all that you are completely.

I was with a manipulative man for three and a half years (suspected covert narcissist), and by the time I managed to leave, I was a shell of myself. Exhausting is the word, and you end up doubting every thought you have, you’d doubt the colour of the sky. It erodes your sense of self and of reality. Keep referring back to this thread to keep in touch with reality 💐

This is great advice

This is so so true. I’m so sorry you went through that. I hope you’re in a much happier place now.

I honestly have doubted if what he is saying is actually true and I was controlling towards him. It was never my intention to control him or try and dictate to him what to do/not to do. He said to me that if I move on in the future, then I’ll do the same to someone else. All of it has really made me doubt what type of person I must come across as.

I’m much better now! And my daughter has a voice supporting her when he tries his nonsense on her, which helps to counter it.

If you like, outline a scenario where you criticised him and he says you were controlling. We can tell you if you were.

Okay, this is a more recent example. Back in November he booked a full day session for a new tattoo which cost £400. At the time we didn’t have that in disposable income and he’s since brought that up, saying I was trying to stop him from getting the tattoo when I’ve known he’s wanted it for years.

I’m also so glad you and your daughter are much better now and she sounds very lucky to have you!

And what £400 "treat" were you going to get?
Honestly, he sounds like a selfish child.

I was trying to stop him from getting the tattoo

well yes because you didn't have the money!
Exactly like the friend I mentioned, she was "controlling" because she didn't want husband drinking all night and risk getting fired, the selfish controlling cow

Op that’s not controlling that’s you being sensible because you didn’t have the money available I’m sure if you wanted to waste £400 he would have done the same as you. I have noticed on here a lot of men are using controlling behaviour as there get out clause I’m not sure they fully understand tbh.

I was "controlling" because I expected my exH to come home for bedtime occasionally rather than going out drinking and to take the kids to Breakfast Club twice a week...
They all say the same thing. It's like they're all in one massive WhatsApp group sharing tips!

It's classically misogynistic though isn't it?
It's up there with "my wife nags me"

Ah the “you’ll do the same to others” another version of “everyone else also thinks xyz about you”. Standard narcissist line to make you feel like everyone else thinks there’s something wrong with you too.

Well, we don’t.

And in future if you ask your feelings to be respected by a partner, I would hope that they would -shock, gasp- respect those feelings. And not treat you like shit. Becuase they aren’t a jackass like him.

Abusers are always trying to convince you you are bad/overreacting/weak/selfish/foolish etc…for simply wanting to be treated like a decent human being. It’s their whole MO.

It’s fucking obvious that if the family can’t afford you to spend four hundred quid on a tattoo, you don’t do it. And if you do, of course your partner is going to be mad at you for it. They have every right to be. Taking the food from their kids mouth for something completely selfish and unnecessary. Saying “No” to someone who is taking the piss out of your family unit, is not controlling. It’s simply having boundaries.

But narcissist hate your boundaries. So they try to convince you you aren’t allowed to have any. So they can treat you however they please and you’ll just put up and shut up.

I’d love a new tattoo but I haven’t got the money to pay for it as well as paying for my obligations. Sucks to be me, the obligations I have to my family come first and I must wait until I have a spare £400 quid to get the tattoo I’ve been thinking about for months. If I said to my husband “I want this tattoo” he’d say, “work away, as long as you can afford it”. If I said “actually I can, but I won’t be able to put my share into the joint account this month” he would say “no, you can’t do that, it’s unfair on me.”

That’s not controlling, that’s reminding me that we’re a partnership and he isn’t there just to pay for things for me. Your ex is being an absolute knob trying to make you feel guilty for just being a normal non-piss-taking person.

I’m glad I’m not going mad and others think I was also being reasonable.

Yes, the “you’ll do the same to the next partner” really knocked me. Firstly, it’s not even in my head to think of another relationship and secondly, all I’ve ever wanted is consideration and mutual respect, yet I feel at the moment like I’ve behaved like the nastiest and slyest person about.

All your support since I posted this has been so so helpful and reassuring xx

Yeah it’s essentially a “you’d never do better than me” bs line to make you feel like he is somehow the one tolerating you. Which is laughable. It’s designed to make you feel like you’re perfectly rational reactions are irrational or unwarranted and he’s some sort of saint for putting up with it.

It’s so insidious and it’s not the sort of thing normal people would ever think to say to their partners. It’s the domain of the abuser.

Ask yourself, is this the behaviour of someone who loves you and means good things for you? Or is it the behaviour of someone who has contempt for you and means you ill? And in fact, if you ask that of his other behaviours, I’m sure you’ll spot the pattern in that a lot of his behaviours, fall into the later category.

And then you have to ask yourself, why you are keeping someone like that anywhere friggin near you. Let alone as a partner. Because he isn’t one, he’s an enemy.

And of course we naturally think, “oh but it can’t be that he hates me, because why would he stay?”. He does not stay out of love. He stays because you are his victim.
And if a new victim is presenting herself then he ramps up the nastiness’s towards you in order to feed on the last bit of joy and soul you have left in you. So that he won’t feel bad about casting a broken toy asside.

Christ, what a nasty abusive wanker he is. Everything he is saying seems to be a perfect projection of his own flaws. I can guarantee that whoever the 'lucky' lady is, he won't be happy in a new relationship because he's a massive man-child who thinks the sun shines out of his own fundament, and no woman could ever fulfil his bottomless need to be worshipped.

Op, you are a good person - it shines through from your messages - and you deserve so much more than this. Honestly, you are going to look back in the not too far future and be so glad you don't have this fucker dragging you down. Stop talking to him as much as possible. Give him the old grey rock treatment, and do NOT even slightly entertain that there might be any truth in his toddler tantrums.

He sounds like a complete scrotum.

Feeling like you’re going mad is a classic feeling when you’re with this type of person. I remember asking my mum, asking a friend, in tears, if I was really as awful and unreasonable as he said I was, and their concerned, horrified faces when they heard what was happening. The thing is, normal people assume that the abuser is playing by the same rules, and that he’d never say such things if there wasn’t some justification for them. That makes us (and our friends and family) vulnerable to them and think there must be something in these accusations- because they are NOT playing by the same rules as we are, and they know that but we don’t.

Both of you know your onions, along with so many clued up posters on here.

Unfortunately much of what op will learn and understand takes so much time to process and there will be a time in the future when it 'clicks', you can feel how brow beaten she is by his bullying presence.

One day op your mind is going to experience freedom, his discarding of you without mercy shows me how abusive he is, and he is, no matter what fights you had trying to get him to understand the unequalness in your marriage.
He has given you nothing in this discard, no respect, no knkindness, no sympathy, no mercy, just an asault of hatred and blame for him being a selfish father, husband and human being, he really is horrible.

I promise one day you will understand how unfair he has been and will never again apologise for not crawling on the floor for a bully.

One day freedom will come in your mind as currently he still holds you a prisoner.

Do you fear him op ?

One hundred percent. You wouldn't believe the things my covert narc exH said about me. He told me that living with me "was killing me and might have done so literally" all because I gained weight during our marriage. And I've lived with plenty of other people in my life and they're all in good health. My presence in their living quarters did not make them take their own lives, as he was implying he might if he had to live with me any longer. His view of me was relentlessly negative, to a grotesquely twisted degree. No one I've ever met in my entire life has ever had such a view of me. Even now, everything I say and do is met with a negative interpretation. To be fair, he views the entire worldlike this, but when we were living together, I was the fount of all evil.

It's not you, OP. It's SO not you.

This is awful, I’m so sorry. I’m glad you’re away from him now, he sounds deeply insecure within himself if he felt the need to be so horrible to you.

I hope you are building your self-esteem back up now you are free of him.

It is definitely hard not to question if the things they say are true when you’re still in the thick of it. I’m hoping in time that my self-esteem rebuilds xx

The thing is, normal people assume that the abuser is playing by the same rules, and that he’d never say such things if there wasn’t some justification for them

Yes, that! I was in one of those relationships where for some reason, I just couldn't do anything right. I was just not a good partner, my boyfriend was always unhappy because of something I did or didn't, said or said not or said wrong. Because surely that's how he felt, why would he say so otherwise?
Because he was abusive and wanted to destroy me, that's why.

When the fog lifted, I looked back at some of those things and thought WTF.

Yes this is where I am at the minute, thinking that surely he wouldn’t say those things if it’s not what he really thought/how he really feels/how I’ve made him feel.

It’s really hard to think that someone who seemed to love me so much, could all of a sudden see me as this horrible person and it’s a struggle to get my head around.