Pinkpoet support thread (TW for SA)

[PinkPoetAgain1]

Just starting a new thread for those who are following/supporting

I’m all over the place mentally at the moment as I said in my last thread but I’m still listening xx

Dear poet, gently, we have all told you before that he is a danger to the dc. Underneath it all he has a temper that cannot be controlled.
on a practical level can you pre prepare the lunch boxes slowly tonight and maybe set the table for breakfast too? It might help to avoid this morning, as I have said before, the kids are passengers in this awful story that you think is a great love story.

Some thoughts on the DC here to consider…

I say this with love and support, but when he says you are too sensitive, consider that you live with your rapist who continues to assault you. I don’t think anyone could say you are too sensitive in that situation. It’s just a tactic to absolve himself of responsibility for your legitimate (if anything muted) response to his aggression.

It makes you jump firstly because it’s unusual and unnecessary behaviour from him (his anger and resentment at ‘helping’ aka stepping up as you’re incapacitated currently is bubbling up) AND because your body is constantly in fight or flight around him as it remembers he has controlled, sexually assaulted and raped you. It will not improve while you live with him, your brain and body can’t forget or erase his abuse.

For comparison, if my husband shouted down the stairs to ask me something, my brain and body wouldn’t be frightened as I’d just assume he was shouting as I couldn’t hear him otherwise.

If your husband did the same, you would get that panic feeling / stomach dropping feeling as you have been trained to be afraid of his reactions and base your own behaviour on reducing the risk of him being angry / sulky / nasty.

Does any of that ring true?

None of this is normal Poet. None of this is because you’re ’too sensitive’. Your husband is still abusing you and by extension, your children, who are growing up in an environment where the happiness of their mothers and their household wraps entirely around whether their dad is happy. All of it is damaging, to you and them. It’s incredibly damaging for everyone involved except your husband who has a wife who ties herself up in knots to try to keep his sexual appetite at bay so he won’t rape her and his children and wife who walk on eggshells around him.

Ask yourself, as I’m sure we’ve discussed before, would he act like this at work? In front of mutual friends? Of course he wouldn’t, that would break his happy chappy family facade. He can control it he just doesn’t want to.

You are being punished for not being sexually available and for stopping him using your body non-consensually a few nights ago.

I understand that. But outside of that do you think I am being too sensitive to this behaviour eg this morning ?

Im aware that the house CAN be noisy and the kids really can be tricky and it’s all overstimulating . And sometimes I lose it and raise my voice at them. So I second guess my reactions and he says I nitpick his parenting

If he shouts from somewhere in the house and I can’t hear him properly my blood runs cold to be honest . I don’t know why exactly . As I said before he’s never physically hurt me.

If he shouts something he won’t ever come and find me he just continues to shout louder until I go and see what’s up. I find that brings an atmosphere to the house

You are not being too sensitive.
There is a difference between you raising your voice and trying to herd kids into getting ready and a man who is bigger and stronger than all of you shouting and throwing things harshly.
Also the difference is you are a decent human being and he is an abuser and a rapist. I’m sorry to be so stark but these are the facts. You know in your heart it’s not right or you wouldn’t jump.
If you felt happy and safe he wouldn’t jump.

I want to say that I don’t think of this as a great love story. I understand why it comes across like that as I know I’ve talked about how I love him and there are definitely some toxic elements to our relationship.
however I know he’s being a dickhead and I’m under no elusion that he’s some sort of prince.
i guess in the back of my head im just wondering is he that much of a standout dickhead , is it that bad, arnt all men a bit like this. I know I’ve met a few and certainly a few of my friends have partners who are angry/rude on occasion

The self doubt effects me a lot , which is why I’m always asking for advice here I guess

If he shouts from somewhere in the house and I can’t hear him properly my blood runs cold to be honest . I don’t know why exactly . As I said before he’s never physically hurt me.

Of course he has physically hurt you. He has raped you multiple times. He has held you down to assault you multiple times.

You only don't get (more) physically injured than you do (and you do, you've spoken about being in pain after some of the assaults) because you (completely understandably) don't try to fight him off. You don't try to fight him off because you know that if you do he will overpower you and continue to sexually assault you anyway. So you pick the lesser of two evils - sexual assault with less severe physical injuries versus sexual assault with more severe physical injuries.

When you say "he’s never physically hurt me" do you mean he has never hit you when not sexually assaulting you? The reason your blood runs cold when he shouts is because your brain (correctly) interprets that shouting as a sign of rising aggression and becomes desperate to stop any further escalation because you know that if you do not placate him he will physically hurt you or the children.

Poet it's extraordinary that you say he has never physically hurt you. When he has raped you and sexually assaulted you many times and you have talked about being in physical pain and discomfort after some of these attacks. Sexual abuse is still physical abuse. He has hurt you, many times.

He raped you from behind while you were heavily pregnant. He has made you sore and tender inside from sexually assaulting and raping you. He has physically hurt you on all of those occasions.

What you actually mean is that he hasn’t ever punched or slapped you.

Frankly, I would rather my husband punched me
than sexually assaulted or raped me. The relationship would be over regardless of which of those things he did, but sexual assault or rape would leave a lasting trauma on another level.

Your blood runs cold when he raises his voice because you’re frightened of him, rightly so. He is a frightening man because he is capable of coercive control, sexual assault, rape, driving erratically to punish and scare the children, throwing things and breaking them (the bauble) to punish and scare them… you aren’t over reacting when you fear him. If anything, you’re under reacting.

Your husband is not a dickhead who is angry or rude on occasion. He is a rapist who uses multiple forms of abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, mental, financial) to exert almost total control on his family.

No, not all men behave like this. Do you really, in your heart of hearts, think that they do?

If you were truly convinced by your husband's assessment of your reaction, would you be posting about it here?

You know that this isn't right. It might be a tentative voice in the back of your mind but it's there. Please listen to it (and us!)

I honestly feel like nothing will make you see him for who and what he is. You always say you wouldn't let him hurt the children and thats your line but here he is again, crossing that line and you are minimising it. I genuinely think if he were hitting them you would find a way to justify it. You say he hasnt hurt you like rape and sexual assault dont count, like shouting at your children isnt abuse nor is throwing things at them. If you wont protect yourself, you really need to protect them and stop minimising this for their sake.

There has to come a point where surely everyone telling you this over and over either helps or it doesnt but this has been months of minimising this behaviour to such a degree that im genuinely not sure its helpful at all.

The maximum sentence for what your husband does is life imprisonment. I know you see rape as lesser than a beating, but the law doesn’t. I’m not sure your friends’ husbands are doing things that could land them in prison, and whether they are or aren’t those could still be bad relationships. Are these friends partners of his friends? Because birds of a feather…

What were the children’s reactions to breakfast time this morning?

so in a nutshell,

he threw an object at you and it hit one of the children

it doesn't matter that it was an apple and it doesn't matter it bounced off the child

the incident still happened no matter how much you minimise his temper / anger as ' stress '

It's funny that he's the one losing it due to children being noisy and hectic, as children often are, yet he's accusing you of being too sensitive. He's the sensitive and fragile flower in this situation, unable to maintain his self-control in the face of some ordinary morning noise and stress, to the point that he throws something and hits his own child!

It's the classic DARVO isn't it? He’s accusing you of his own faults.

Wasn't his ' stress ' / anger the initial reason you managed to be allowed to stay at your parents for a weekend, tho I think from your more recent replies it didn't end up being a ' weekend ' but ' the night '

' I just framed it as like you’ve got a lot on I can take them away for a night and you can have the house to yourself.'

clearly you didn't think he was going to be a very nice person to live with that weekend, if he ' had a lot on '

other men / husbands manage with ' a lot on '

Can I just point out the difference between this and, say, my relationship. If this happened my blood wouldn’t run cold. This is a thing that happens, it’s not hypothetical. I would shout back ‘I can’t hear you’ and if the shouting continued then actually the outcome would be that I would be the one expressing annoyance because ultimately if someone wants something from you they should have the courtesy to come to you - they are out of order! Your dynamic is not normal, there is such a power imbalance between you.

I second all of this! I'd end up mildly annoyed and huffy, because my husband is an ordinary, good, decent man – not an abusive, controlling rapist.

Your reaction says a lot about how much your husband frightens and intimidates you.

The children don’t seem to be too bothered by things like this, but I appreciate under the surface they probably feel the tense atmosphere

The one that the apple hit said ‘hey daddy’ and he started talking about the naughty apple flying out of his hand to get them laughing

I am going to call my therapist today and get booked in . I could also call WA today I’m thinking I might try and get through

and yes I’m really trying to see the SA as ‘as bad’ as being hit/physically threatened but in my mind I just struggle with that. I think because I’m so used to his ‘laddish’ ‘try his luck’ behaviour when it comes to sex and the amount of times he’s ‘just’ crossed boundaries I’m so used to it and it doesn’t even register.

@ThisIsPinkPoet

Do you have full access to view the bank account he is paid into by his work?

yes I do now
I don’t have a card for that one , he still wants all spending out of the spend account.
but yes I can see it

And from what you can see, and from what his salary is, was it reasonable that he told you only a month or so ago that you couldn’t as a family afford for you to have therapy?