Emotional Abuse - can we talk abou t it and what it entails?

[Janos]

If we already have a thread on this then I apologise for bringing it all up again. Perhaps someone can let me know and if so I'll let the thread die quietly!

I just thought it would be helpful to talk about it, and what constitutes it so people who are in an emotionally abusive relationship could recognise what is going on as it can be so insidious and nasty, and more difficult to identify.

This is not for one moment to denigrate or draw attention away from physical or sexual abuse btw.

vezzie, "shut down" is a really good way of putting it. TV/PC/Football. He will come home from work and load a game up. Weekends, he will do jobs round the house willingly, but in between times reverts to the PC in the day/TV at night. He does however spend a lot of time with my dc, cuddling on the sofa, drawing etc. We'll have conversations about the day, but that is that. If i want to discuss a forthcoming holiday, or weekend or something, he looks bored. Sex too is far and few between, and more functional than emotional.

"I would be so bored and depressed and lonely" is exactly how I feel a lot of the time. I drink a lot more now. He is more than happy for me to go out though. In fact I think he would have no problem with me going out a lot more than I do, as he would be left in peace. The last time we had a big argument, I asked him straight out if he just stayed with me for the sake of dc, because I was struggling to believe that he loved me at all. He denied this.

"And sex,, they dont have sex, they dont make love, they just do things to you."

That is so true, that it makes me want to cry.

God yes, that is my ex, not engaging, unless it was to talk about himself.

Once i wanted to show him something and he waved me away saying "Just tell me what it is in case it bores me"

Think that says it all dont you?

DD's birthday is coming up and he wants us to celebrate it together, also his youngest will be up for Easter.

I STILL want to give him a chance (WHY???) so I am going to ask him what he means by "Whatever it takes" (to be with me and DD)

However I expect him to backpedal and if he does my heart will just sink. Really if I could never see him again it would be so much easier.

I wish I didnt keep on with this cycle of hope and disappointment, it is soul-destroying.

Still identifying with a lot of this. H only really enjoys talking about himself, his ailments, his career, or how important he is at work. I took a good photo the other day while out on a family walk, and asked H if he wanted to see it. "No" he replied. Conversation over. He will actually say "bored now" if I talk about something which doesn't interest him, or leave the room.
It's got so bad that at a family do at the weekend, I sat in silence for much of it, feeling that I'm too dull to contribute to conversation. How on earth did I get to that state? H told MIL (who asked why I was so quiet) that I'd had too much wine and was drowsy!!

I'm realising unless we get urgent counselling help, there will soon be no relationship there at all and my self esteem will keep plummeting.

Hopefullandfree, you made me realise that my ex also used to accuse me of not being "with him" ie say that I spent most of the time in the kitchen (er, that would be doing silly frivolous things like cooking or cleaning )
Also a lot of the things he said just didnt make sense. Even recently he said that when we had a car (which I got rid of) he felt like he was a chauffeur just waiting to be summoned (we didnt live together) but another time he said that we never went anywhere and we had a car so we could have done but it just sat there.
It didnt - because he drove around in it! And if I had said I wanted to do something/go anywhere that would have been me "summoning" him.
Total bollocks, the lot of it.

I've just discovered this thread, not yet read all the posts but I will. It's brought up a lot of hidden feelings.
My ex used to call me fat, ugly & stupid. When I was a SAHM I had to ask for money and explain what I wanted it for....taking dc to play centre, birthday presents to buy for children's parties etc. If we were out with friends or family, he would make pig noises at me as I ate. (I was probably 2 stone overwieght at the time). When friends of mine had come to see new born ds, ex had taken dd to a playcentre, she'd vomitted & on his return as I was sat breastfeeding he threw dd's vomit soaked top into my face.
Writing it down has made me realise how glad I am to be rid of him.

Another thought do women ever treat men in the same way?

I think most people have covered it. But, one thing I'd like to add is that a lot of people don't realise the intensity of their suffering until they're well away from it. Then they are ever so aware of it, especially when they start to come to terms with life without the abuser. But, you get this feeling, along with an overwhelming sense of relief, and sometimes anger towards yourself for letting yourself go through it for so long (as is often the case it seems).

If you can get away from any abusive relationship, you will never regret it, if stay in it, it's a regret you can guarantee having(IMO).

Even if children are involved, you will not regret it. Why? because when you're being abused in any way, are you really giving your kids the best mum they can have? or are you giving them an emotionally weakened mother? Be the best you can for them I say, it's the least they deserve. Otherwise you're letting your partner punish the children too - they lose the mother they could have had, and get someone totally different!

This is why I finally walked away from my ex husband. I was fed up hearing my kids suggesting ways to cheer me up. They've not said that for two years now!

Why I let such an insignificant being make me feel as he did for, I don't know. I hope a lot of you on here will one day be saying the same thing - because it will mean you got away from it!

Emotional abuse quite simply is something that zaps you of happiness, self-worth, feeling of being valued and loved, feeling you deserve any of these things. You can become paranoid that you're no longer good company for your friends, so become less sociable, you can feel less confident, and you can even start to see yourself physically different. And so on! Bascially you feel emotionally rubbish. It can result in physical scars, because you look more drained, you might present yourself differently - not put effort into the way you look or dress, not smile as much, and so on. Emotional abuse is generally down to someone else's continual poor attitude towards you. But, you must take responsibity too for letting it continue to happen, and stop it asap.

Sorry, am I lecturing!! I guess I'm one of the lucky ones who managed to escape. I want others to too.

ive been reading this thread and so much of what is said rings true for me.

i am a regular but i suspect H knows my nickname.

i am confused thinking is it me or him that is doing the emotional abuse.

we,ve been married for 8 years,have DC, we have split 3 times in the last 18 months,he is very controlling and im talking down to not wanting me to go to the shop for a paper,wanting me to stay in all the time with him,him not talking to me but just wanting me there.
he is a very jealous man and doesnt like friends visiting,he gets angry over silly things like if im wrapping up presents he has to sit next to me and do it as well or he sulks, he never initiates sex,its always been me that has to do it,its a miracle our DC were born.
he acts like a baby and he disables himself,he,ll say oh i forgot and pretend he doesnt know how to do things so that ill do it for him,eg today he couldnt ask the man on the till for some carrier bags,he waits till i ask.
i can be very nagging,and i always thought it was me who was the angry person,but now reading these threads i see so much how he fits the profile of an emotional abuser.

he is currently out of work,he got made redundant and its driving me mad,he is staying at home to "help me with the kids" but the thing is i manage fine with the kids when hes not here, i dont want to say too much about the DC as i may out myself but they are both very challenging,but i manage fine on my own,they seem to be more challenging when hes around.

all i can say is its like living with a little boy trapped in a mans body,he wont even open his own bank account,he likes me to give him money each week,its like his spends,what man in his 30s would want that?

sorry for the long rant,well done for getting to the end

I dont think I am of much use on this thread. I just keep wanting to spill my guts about what happened to me. I am still finding it so hard to come to terms with that I cant seem to offer any advice to anyone. I feel angrier and angrier the more I read this thread. More things are being mentioned and I realise that stuff I just thought was irritating and upsetting was actually abusive.

I remember going for a meal with him and dc and dd started to have a tantrum because she wanted to stand with h while he ordered meal. He sent her back to me and she was going nuts but to help him out I kept her with me so he could concentrate on what he was doing. When he got back to the table he said "everyone is looking at you because you cant control dd, I have never seen anyone so deficient in maternal instinct, can't even remember to bring a dummy out for her". In the end I left my full plate of food and took her home because she wouldn't calm down. He never said a word while I put her in the buggy, just carried on eating. He did not give a f*ck that I wouldnt eat. When he got home I got another rant about how deficient I was maternally.

I realise now that he was my enemy, never my friend. Ds has suspected autism - give Fleur some shit, DS with autism having problems at school - give Fleur some shit, Dd had tantrum in the restaurant - give Fleur some shit. All these difficult things I was having to deal with especially in relation to ds and his special needs were just being made worse by him and his reactions. Every phone call from school, I knew that when I told him he would just go off, ranting about how "your way isnt fu*king working, now were doing it my way" ie my way was to be working closely with school to help ds stay in mainstream education. There was no problem he would not make worse with his negative reactions and ideas about it.

In spite of all this, there are still so many of you that have it worse than I did. Some of the men on here sound so relentlessly nit picking I would have gone crazy. At least H left me alone a lot of the time, he just didn't really care enough to engage with me, just liked to dive in and give me a good slagging off when things got tough.

Actually Fleur I find it really helps me to read what's happened to other people. Particularly those who have come out of the other side and can compare it to what relationships are meant to look like.

When I'm reading someone else's story, I spend the whole time wondering why they've put up with that sort of treatment. I know the answer though because I've still putting up with it!! actually could you remind again what that answer is?

Anyway, my problem is that 75% of the time H is ok, we do fun things together and he has stopped the really blatant, outright EA. Now he just keeps up with the subtle stuff thats harder to pin point, and when I point it out to him he claims that I do the same (and worse) to him. Which is what tells me its still not a healthy relationship. I probably do do some of the things he claims, but I do then as a defence, and if I was really being me, then I wouldn't be doing them.

Thats exactly how it was for me Ditzzy. In the end I was doing things and making comments like him to show him what it was like, how soul destroying etc and as a defence but he did the same, just said that I did it to him too so we were both equally guilty within the relationship. Couldn't seem to take on board that it was in reaction to and learned from him.

If there was a tantrum going on with one of the kids he would come in and pointedly ask the child what was going on totally ignoring me the ADULT in the situation, again just to let me know how unimportant I was. I tried that with him a few times and he went off like a rocket telling me how I was attacking his parenting etc, HELLO welcome to my world!

ditzzy - i so recognise what you are saying, I love looking after my dcs, the house and working part time and wouldn't naturally moan about anything but end up moaning about it as a defence to counteract my dh's moaning about how hard it is to work, live with me etc and how I have things so easy!

My dh has gone off on one this morning because he couldn't find the particular socks he wanted (there were others in the drawer) which I haven't sorted out yet as I am lazy.

Actually I stayed in hospital with dd all last week and then she has been at home with me all this week. I did point out that he could have sorted out the clean washing while he was at home but he snarled that he "had to work" as well as look after other dd.

Great way to start the day! The bizarre thing is he will be fine this evening.

brightwell - you ask: do women ever treat their partners the same way?

I think they can, and some do. But (and this is all just guessing): I think that men are more likely to be educated to see their value to the family or the relationship in externals and practical things, and may not be emotionally literate enough to see that they might be paying the mortgage and not beating anyone up, but are still horribly letting their partner down, or abusing her.

My ex I have talked about on this thread had very low emotional expectations of life, living constantly with low grade misery and stress in his mind. He did not sleep well or feel comfortable alone, even for a few minutes. He found new experiences - even supposedly fun things like holidays - very stressful and difficult. He avoided a lot of social events at which he was not sure exactly what would take place (especially if he was not sure if there would be an opportunity to drink a lot) out of fear. He drank and ate a lot to numb the pain. He inflicted a lot of pain on me and did not understand why I thought that this was unacceptable (eventually); which is that (although hard times are inevitable) I think you and your partner should be with each other to make each other happier than you would otherwise have been. Your partner should be lovely to come home to at the end of the day, even while the world is throwing shite at you there is a safe place where you can have love. (I am so lucky with my DP!)

Anyway sorry to ramble on but what I am saying is that I think some men who have had very harsh upbringings see life in terms of a series of obligations and pressures and not in terms of a potentially positive emotional component. It is for this reason that I think feminism, a more feminist culture at large, would be as much to the advantage of men as women in that:
a. children would suffer less abuse if their mothers were more financially and emotionally secure and able to protect them and nurture them properly;
b. relationships could be seen as warm enriching emotional partnerships instead of horrible cold battlegrounds in which to expiate past humiliations
c. two equal adults can share the pressures of life and support each other instead of being locked into their own private worlds of accusation, each feeling abandoned by the other

I think men do suffer EA. I think it is more difficult from the point of view of not being understood though. The tip of the ice-berg is in the 'hen-pecked' and 'we know who wears the trousers in that house' comments.

I don't understand why if a woman behaves badly it can be blamed on how the man has treated her, but the reverse does not seem to be true. And obviously there are some painful exceptions to that statement.

I know three men who are victims of EA. It is not spoken of in any case. And strangely overall my H is not very sympathetic.

'PMT' is to blame in two of the cases, but these are grown women, if they are aware of how deeply it affects their moods, there are steps to be taken to reduce the impact. One of them tries so so hard to please his wife, and his daughters treat him much the same because of the example they have been set.

But if he left her he would be judged for abandoning a woman with emotional problems.

There are times when all of us behave out of character due to stress, or worry or circumstances, but eventually as adults, we are all beholden (unless there are mental health issues) to check our own behaviour and its impact on those around us.

So if my H promised to 'protect' and 'cherish' me, where do the vile words and acccusations come in? not just once or twice, but on and off for 13 years or so.

And now he is heart broken and I feel as if I am lost and spinning around the universe.

But I can say this much.

If the future ever brings me a different relationship. I will neither be treated that way again, nor treat the guy with that kind of disrespect as a result of my emotions being previously warped by a bad experience. If my head isn't straight enough to conduct mysdelf with dignity, I will wait until it is.

I've just ordered the Lundy Bancroft book.

Thanks to the guys who replied to me. You know I don't think that I'm matching his behaviour to try to get back at him, or to make him understand how it feels to be me. I think I'm doing it because that's my 'normal'. Its how I thought people treat and think of each other. All I know is that I didn't used to be like it, I just started building walls and defences and now I want to get out of them.

Ordering the book feels like part of planning the escape! Although I walked out last year, I really don't know how to do it again and make it permanent.

Just bumping so this stays near the top.

I agree that women can inflict EA as well. You only have to glance at the stately homes thread to see that's the case.

My lovely step dad has also had this from his mother for years and years.

Hi, all, I've just read through most of the posts.

I recognise so much of what people have said not in relation to myself but in relation to my parents. My dad was very emotionally abusive towards my mother (and me and my sisters). My mother definately became a nervous wreck, completely lacking in self confidence and self esteem. They are still together but I have chosen to cut them out of my life as my dad's abuse towards me was too much and was affecting me and my DH and DC's.

monkelaine's post prompted me to post on here. Because i wish with all my heart that my mother had had the guts to leave my dad or kick him out. Because his abuse has left me with so much psychological cr*p and it has affected me hugely in the way i parent my DC's.

If you are being emotionally abused and you have DC's, please please please find the courage somehow to get out of the relationship. EA causes so much long term damage, not just to you but to your DC's, even if your DH is not always overtly abusive towards them. Even when my dad was not actually being abusive towards me me and my sisters knew my parents hated each other and had no respect for each other and it was HORRIBLE.

I don't mean to make you feel worse than you already do, but please for the sake of your children, get out of the relationship. There is help out there if you look for it, financial and otherwise.

My (not so) DH constantly tells me that he wishes he had never met me, that I ruined his life, life is so shit with me... that sort of crap. If that's true why doesn't he leave?

I feel so angry with him today and then I came across this thread and it made me wonder if it IS him and not me.

Today he pulled another of his usual tricks. Whenever we talk about going somewhere/buying something/visiting someone he will talk about it as if it's a fact it will be happening but wait a week or even more until I'm all excited and happy about whatever it is, then on the day when I'm all bright and happy about it chatting to the DC's about what we will be doing that day he will say, "We aren't doing/buying that/going there. What the fuck are you on about? [turning to the dc's] What the fuck is your mum talking about? She just wants to waste our money and leave us with nothing until payday. [turning back to me] I never said that would be happening, you're talking shite. We'll have no money if we do that - you're so selfish."

I'll be left feeling like a bloody idiot, utterly humiliated. He waits until I'm at the happiest he thinks I'll get then whip the carpet our from under me.

HadEnough (great name btw!)

Yes, that is emotional abuse. He's the idiot, not you. And what a vile way to talk to your DCs.

Yes was on a 'romantic' weekend in Paris with my then h (now exh) and he turned round and said if it weren't for DS1 we would not be together!! We actually went on to have DS2.

Then later on I put some music on in the hotel room and started to dance around and he just gave me a withering look and said 'oh don't be so stupid' in really world weary voice.

Just two examples of many in 15 years. I still find it hard to believe that he was emotionally abusive, though he was of course and now we are split am trying to stop him controlling me via the DCs.

Same here in some ways it is worse now we are split as he is worse as his only control is the DD's and I am so much more aware of what he is doing - the Lundy book does help me see it and know how to deal with it, and thank god for my wonderful new DP (yeyeyeyey thats the 1st time Ive called him DP instead of NM but he is now after 4 months and getting to know the DD's properly) !

He tells me every time we speak how wonderful, kind caring and sexy I am, he promsies things and actually does them, he talks to me with respect and doesnt insult me all the time, he never undermines me and apologises when he thinks he has (he doesnt though), he shows genuine interest in me and my DD's, he wants to socialise with my friends as a couple, my god it is so long since I have been with someone who treats me like this it is somewhat unnerving

Macdoodle you give me hope. How great that you met a nice decent man
I have had a great few days in respect of distancing myself. I am finally at the point where I can see that he has absolutely nothing to offer me, that his charming persona was just an act, and that he is without doubt a toxic and unhealthy person to be around.

He can't be trusted so I am sidelining him once and for all. He has tried to make me feel devalued, undermined and rejected by banging on about how little time he has to spare to see DD, but all I can think of now is how well that will work for me because the less I see of him the quicker I will be able to move on. I can already feel "me" coming back and it feels bloody brilliant.

Have had a weekend of thinking and chatting with lovely BIL and his DP about all of this (they came to stay). They recalled incidents from years back where they were concerned that H had behaved disresepctfully and more recently, undermined my parenting.

Had an unnerving incident with H this morning where I'd jokingly hidden some of his fleecey socks because they shed fluff throughout the house and always mean I end up hoovering after every wear. He demanded I give them back otherwise "corporal" punishment would be given. He's never ever been violent towards me (other than in supposed jest, ie the cushion throwing, poking etc) but there was something in his tone which made me really uneasy as we're not really joking with each other right now and it seemed deeply inappropriate.

Later I made tea for everyone (8 of us) and forgot to do him a cup, as he's only recently started drinking it. I apologised and got straight up to get him one as soon as he mentioned it but he snarled at me as if I'd done something really awful and was really sulky and nasty about it.

He was away all week last week and is going away again tomorrow. He's barely spent any time with the dc's this weekend and couldn't even be bothered to read them a story tonight, I had to shame him into going back upstairs to do that.

Have phoned a counsellor and am hoping for an appointment this week to get my head straight. I feel so sad, as I can't understand how my husband and best friend has seemed to change and lost all respect for me so recently. It's so hard to reconcile this man with the one I married.