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

I'm glad you’ve come back to post PP, I’ve been worried about you. When you say you used to argue and hit back, this is called reactive abuse. I did the same, you take so much then you lash out.

over time he has worn you down so much that you try and appease him to avoid confrontation. I was the same when my exh used to shout for me, I was terrified of what would come next. You learn to predict his tone of voice. You said a while back you was not scared of him, but when your ‘blood turns cold’ that’s an indication that you are scared of him.

When my son was son was in primary school he became upset one day and told his teacher about the arguments in the house. The teacher phoned me at home to ask things were alright. Your children may reach out to one of their teachers in the future. My son has since mentioned he felt like he was taking on some of my exh’s misogynistic views, even though he didn’t want to and I would always teach him the opposite views. He had to work really hard to get out of this mindset, luckily he was successful. When your husband threw the apple that hit your son, I’m pretty sure your son’s first reaction was fear, children do learn how to fawn as a protective mechanism. Once you’re out of the relationship you begin to realise how much damage has been caused to the children as they hide their emotions so well. It’s a good idea to reach out to your overseas friend for support. You have come so far in such a short time ❤️

@ThisIsPinkPoet i am really glad to see you contacted women’s aid.
We all need to come to terms with the fact your journey will not be linear , it will be a few steps forward then one step back.
I think you need to be open to change eventually and I hope that will come.

Is it possible because of your ankle you could go with your dc to your parents this weekend to mitigate any escalation?

You probably slapped him when you were very angry, that's not an excuse but it's more proportional a reaction than throwing things at one's injured wife because of children behaving normally or raping one's pregnant wife to relieve stress.

Do you maybe started thinking you owe him never being angry because he got sober? Sobriety generally only "sticks" when the addict is doing it for himself - you don't owe him anything.

Undoubtedly this is extremely hard and painful but acceptance will stop hurting once you realize you are your own person in control of your own fate separate from him and you do not need to manage and placate him.

The reason why you think you have to manage and placate him is important. Either you fear what happens if you don't or (am speculating here) you need to feel useful or needed, and neither is healthy.

I get that you feel there are things between you that makes enduring this worth it, but talking to your mom, that was triangulation - he's extremely calculating and dishonest. You said you know he's capable of turning others against you if you leave - that's coercive control and abuse.

People like him are simply unsafe to be around - they do physical and emotional harm even as they're skillfully selling you their controlling you as protectiveness.

You're perfectly capable of protecting yourself, and the first step to realize that you are might be to protect yourself and the kids from him. The nightmares and the pain are from having repressed parts of yourself to make the relationship work. Unlike you, he has sacrificed nothing. You never were on an equal footing because he made sure of that from the start. Obviously that makes getting out very hard, but that's why WA exists.

This is all very true. I remember that my siblings and I used to laugh a lot at my abusive F’s games and stories. And a lot of the time it was genuine. But at the same time we would be walking on eggshells as his mood could change very quickly. I remember that I had no idea when he might bring up something that he was angry about.

I’d never heard of the ‘fawning’ response before these threads, but it does explain a lot to me about how my siblings and I responded to him as children. And it also explains why my DM was conned into thinking that my F was such a ‘loving husband and father’.

Posted too soon, sorry. I just wanted to add a plea, Poet, that you don’t assume that all is well with your DC because they look like they share the ‘joke’. Apart from anything else, children are desperate to please their parents, even more so when they don’t know when their father might lash out at them.

Thank you for your lovely messages.
yes the more I think about that ‘chat’ behind my back with my mum the more I feel like it was calculated and a bit weird. At the time I felt it was sweet but our relationship was at its worse in terms of fighting /upset at the start so I guess he was trying to convince her and my dad that he was a good guy. He also said something to her like ‘she won’t want me to tell you but she’s been through something awaful’ referencing the assault and why I was taking Valium. She was worried about that and she asked me a lot but I denied it and never told. I don’t know why?! I never felt I could. As I said I did pull away and create a bit of distance with my parents during our dating days but they seemed happy when we got engaged and then when we had the first baby we became close again because my mum was such a help /support and they did childcare for us for the first two.

I know I should never have slapped him and I felt guilty about that for a long time. More recently with the busyness of our lives I’ve sort of forgotten about all the stuff but it’s coming back to me now I’m giving it time to think. I was so angry because it was his birthday and I’d put a lot of effort into making a nice dinner (for an 18 yo!) and he stayed at work late and drank afterwards so came home pissed and missed the dinner. When I cried him told me I was pathetic and immature and he thought i would just make beans on toast as that’s all knew how to do. I shouted at him and he shouted that I was acting like a selfish c**t who just wanted attention. So I hit him in the chest and he laughed and went to bed.

It’s so sad thinking back on that now. What a way to start a marriage

When he quit drinking I really thought I’d ‘changed’ him as all this behaviour stopped. But maybe it’s just bubbling under the surface now

You were 18 and how old was he Poet? You’ve been on the back foot since the start :(

Almost 19 yes . He’s 12 years older

You amended your behaviour to feel more comfortable around him, it’s all such a facade.
I hope WA are helpful when you finally speak to them.

You were practically a child compared to him, Poet.

That story makes me so sad for you - you went to so much trouble for him, trying to do something grown-up and lovely, playing the role of a loving partner, and he treated you like shit. I'm disgusted that he belittled you, degraded you, and then had the temerity to call you immature - not that you were (he was!), but well, what did he think he was going to get, dating a literal teenager while in his thirties?? Maturity?

No, he thought he'd get someone easy to control and coerce into fawning for him, whose lack of experience he could use against them, and sadly that wasn't wrong. You didn't stand a chance against him, Poet.

He behaved like an abusive arse and then as the cherry on top, made you feel guilty for reacting with understandable upset, made you feel small and worthless, and invalidated your reasonable feelings, and made you doubt yourself. He positioned himself as right, and you as unreasonable and incapable, despite it being the other way around! And it seems that pattern has continued throughout your relationship, both covertly and more overtly.

I'm glad that you can see his meeting with your mum was probably a calculated, manipulative move. It's upsetting that he did something he knew you wouldn't want him to do, and chose to partially disclose that something 'awful' had happened to you.

That was a power move on his part too, imo - he knew that you wouldn't want your parents to know, and he showed you that he had that leverage over you and could disclose it and make you vulnerable and exposed at any point. It also had the effect of creating stress between you and your mum, and making you draw away from her. He was talking himself up to them, while simultaneously subtly isolating you from them.

Do your parents / your mother know you are having therapy ?

as you recalling this ' chat ' he had with your parent many years ago could be an opening for you to tell your mother about the sexual assault you suffered as a teenager.

Something along the lines of
' mum, do you remember finding xyz in my handbag and dh had a chat with you one day whilst I was at Uni/work/wherever
well I was on xyz because I was sexually abused as a teenager at uni by abc and it's taken me years to come to terms with it and that's one of the reasons why I am having therapy.

It could be a start to you telling her the truth one day.

oh love, this is so sad. I had assumed that he and you got together when you finished university, but I see now that it was likely in your first year, so - what? straight out of halls and in with him? You have never lived independantly? this makes alot of sense as to your fears around leaving and how you will cope, but believe me you will flourish, after the initial inevitable wobbles.

And it shows his disregard that he chose to go out drinking with his mates instead of spend his birthday with you.

Also, I wonder too, if the first couple of children you say your parents were quite involved with childcare - so he possibly HAD to behave, and resented all 3 of you for that. And when you stayed with them, again we have explored a little about his 'one over on your dad' attitude, but he probably hated having to behave there too - although he still did the critical rape whilst under their roof.

Do your parents come to this new house very often?

Yes I went straight out of halls to his place, and I’ve not lived independently. Although the first few years I was alone in the apartment a lot as he was working in the bar. Unless I went down to see him (it was above the bar)

my parents do come round fairly regularly and sometimes do school pickup etc . They are pretty involved in the kids lives and I would class myself as close to my mum.

He's controlled and abused you since you were not long out of childhood. Poor you and your poor children 😣

He had that chat with your mum to try to deflect the fact that as a 30 year old man, he was pursuing a young impressionable 18 year old girl. What a creep.

I wonder what he would think of a 30 year old man pursuing his daughter when she is 18. I bet he wouldn’t be happy about it.

I don’t think any good parent would but I suppose the difference is the ‘why’. He took a thrill out of taking ‘another man’s property’ away (Pink from her father) when he slept with her while her Dad waited in a car outside, and to some extent when he raped her while pregnant under ‘his’ roof. It’s many things but it’s territorial behaviour too. He would view anyone through that lens of taking what is his, that’s the sort of ‘protective’ husband and father he is.

I completely agree.

To men like him, women and children are just extensions of their own ego in that they are tolerable if useful (women for sex, childcare, ego stroking etc, children for the facade of being a ‘good family man’, small easy to control people in the household to make them feel all important etc) but not cherished or genuinely cared for.

I think you’re absolutely right that the rape taking place in poor OP’s family home would have been an extra thrill for him as it is another level of depraved control.

He won’t have thought the men in the news recently for drugging and raping that poor woman were vile monsters. He’ll have thought they were just stupid for getting caught 😔

You still have the opportunity to disentangle your life from him, Poet. This man who has belittled you from the start and treated you like property.

I have to say though Pink, that although you are cycling through the push and pull emotions, each time you surface you do seem to be seeing him through increasingly less rose tinted glasses, and able to look back at things with a gaining wisdom of a slightly more healthy perspective.

I think, as well as him being horribly abusive, that you are outgrowing him as he fails to mature and you grow up. Honestly all his groping and pestering is like a teenage boy, and his level of self control is in the gutter - Id imagine that soon you will switch and get the ick that he is still behaving like a gutter school boy,and you have become a woman.

Remember he is depraved.
Giselle Pelicot's husband also took near naked photos of his sleeping adult daughter - at the very least.
In the daughter's book, she is extremely concerned it's much more than that.

He’s taken pictures of me while sleeping. He shows them to me though it’s not a secret, like as in look how sexy you looked this morning etc . I never explicitly said don’t do that but I guess that crosses a line too. He also has a video of us being intimate but I knew about that and consented to it at the time - don’t think I would now!!

He admitted recently he still has it even though he told me it was deleted .
He can’t ever release that though can he, that’s illegal? And would be easy to prove it was him

It's weird for it to be a Thing. It speaks to him finding you most attractive when you're helpless, I think.

When he admitted to lying about deleting the video, where did it go from there? Did he then actually delete it or is he just expecting you to accept he broke his word and let him keep it?

Releasing it if you split up would be "revenge porn" and illegal, yes.

I said no I really want it deleted - because he admitted he still has it and watches it occasionally I think he forgot he’d said he’d deleted it.

he said he did and showed me. Of course I can’t be 100% sure it’s not elsewhere too

Hmm I’m more suspicious now, given his pattern of behaviour, that there may be more on his phone that you have no idea about. Yes as per pp, images/videos of this nature would be illegal to share without your consent. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’s shared things already in whatever grubby part of the internet men share these things though. I’m listening to something about it on radio 2 news right now, by coincidence.

I know he’s shown you some pics, possibly for plausible deniability if you came across them, but given his proclivity for attacking you while asleep I think this is more evidence of his perversion. We already know he gets off on you being unconscious.

Why did he tell you he still has the video? I bet your reaction was muted wasn’t it, for most people that might be a big argument, but even when you have a right to be furious you aren’t allowed to be. Too risky.