Shocking realisation that I'm an abuser

[shockedandashamed]

OK this is going to be a tough one. I fully expect and deserve to get a lot of flak on this thread.

Basically I've been having a lot of relationship difficulties. I knew a lot of it stemmed from the fact that I'd lost respect for my OH and felt that as a result I was very critical of him. I was never proud of the way I treated him but put a lot of the onus on him for not fighting back. Yesterday I was reading about emotional abuse on the web, and so much of it fitted with the way I've been. It shocked me to read in black and white that I'm an abuser. Examples of my behaviour have been:

• Criticising everything he does
• Asking his opinions then manipulating him into agreeing with me
• Belittling him at home and in front of other people
• Telling him he shouldn't feel certain ways and is being overdramatic.

Not surprisingly his self esteem has plummetted. He is now starting counselling (which I persuaded him to do after convincing him that he was the cause of our relationship problems).

Now all of a sudden I realise that it's totally my fault. I have told OH how sorry I am and that I was wrong for blaming everything on him. I honestly feel, and I hope I'm right in this, that now I've recognised what I am, my behaviour will change. I don't feel disrespectful towards OH anymore, therefore I don't feel the need to belittle him. Of course, none of this makes up for what I've done to him in the past, and I'm truly ashamed of myself.

I told him about my realisation and he made excuses for me and said I was being hard on myself.

My question out of all this is, does anyone have any experience of abusive relationships that have been turned around? Or do you believe that an abuser can't really love the victim if they're able to treat them that way?

Wouldn't blame you all for just wanting to have a go at me, but hopefully there'll be some advice too?

yes, you can turn this around, but you have to really want to. because it's easy for the first few days, weeks even. but when you're under stress, maybe not had enough sleep, it's very easy to fall back to old patterns.

just take each day as it comes, and LISTEN to yourself, what you're saying and the way you're saying it. remind yourself that you must have had some respect for him when you got together.

the thing i find is the most important factor to loss of respect and the other things you're talking about, is lack of communication. make a real effort to find out about his day and what he's up to. talk about your day. and most of all, try not to change what he's doing using criticism. just don't criticize and you'll see that the world doesn't come to an end.

Wow, what a realisation to come to! Very brave post, I hope you can really change your behaviour, alhough I imagine it will be difficult as some things are habit.

Sounds like your DP really loves you and is willing to move on.

Good luck, and well done for facing up to this problem.

My parents also behave this way, and your post has made me wonder if I do this to DH. I do criticise him sometimes - but not all the time and I make sure I say positive thigns all the time so he knows I appreciate him. I wonder if I sometimes try to manipulate him round to my point of view, but I don't think I succeed.

In fact, in re-reading, I dont' think I am, but then he might have a different take on that. I might ask him, as I am re-examining my whole life at the moment.

Brave post, I'm sure you recognising it is half the battle.

I don't want to sound negative here and would rather not get a flaming from anyone...but I agree with your DH that you are possibly being a little hard on yourself. Obviously none uf us know the exact circumstances so none of us has any right to make any judgements. But my ExH treated me like this for years and I think I'd be being a bit over dramatic if I went round telling people he abused me (emotionally or otherwise)! Certainly he wasn't very nice to me and we definitely didn't get on very well (note the EX ). This is obviously different to your situation because you love each other, and if it's helpful to you in making you change your attictude to him fair enough, but to label yourself an abuser and your relationship abusive seems very harsh to me I think you should realise that you may need to treat him differently and then cut yourself some slack

Hi the first step is realising that you were wrong, you say you don't feel disrespectful towards your man anymore, so you have a good basis for change. I really hope you can keep it up, as I agree bad habits can come back when you are under stress. I'm in an abusive relationship, and sometimes feel like I'm walking on eggshells, it's awful, really. Let your man talk to you whenever he wants about the effect it has on him, without getting defensive or diminishing his feelings, and that should help build the trust back up.

Thanks everyone for your responses. The problem is that I'm not sure I do love my OH. I think maybe this has been part of the reason I've been treating him this way. I believe that if I really loved him deeply then I couldn't bear to hurt him in this way.

When I think of past relationships and friendships, it depends on the personality of the other person as to how I behave. If they are submissive and easy to please then I tend to try to take control. But if they're very sure of themselves I'm completely different and become the less dominant one or their equal. The latter kind have been far more successful.

I'm not trying to blame it on my OH's personality at all, I'm just wondering if certain kinds of personalities are just better for me and that this relationship can never be a healthy one.

You're also human and we can all be guilty of at least some of this behaviour. Well done for being honest with yourself and him.
Good luck for the future

'I'm just wondering if certain kinds of personalities are just better for me and that this relationship can never be a healthy one.'

shockedandashamed, definitely certain personality are better than others.

I also behaved appaling with some exes because I disliked them and did not respect them. It didn;t matter that they were trying the hardest to please me they were just not right. Everything they did or say would annoy me, grate on me etc. I criticised them constantly, never happy etc.

With my DH instead is very healthy. mind you we do fight, have up and down I nag and criticise, and try to manipulate him into doing what I want but I respect him 100%, I'm always ready to look at my crappy behaviour, I value what he says and who he is and I never in 5 years wished I was with someone else or ever looked at anybody else and thought ' I bet he's nicer..'.

Although it is great you ahve realised that you should also look honestly at the relationship because I can assure you if you behane like this because you might not love him, or you do not think he is the one, you will keep treating him like this.

Brave post indeed and a good work on yourself. well done.

sounds like you're probably both to blame for the current state of your relationship.

why don't you let him take responsibility for his part and you take responsibility for yours? it's all a bit co-dependent sounding.

it seems like my now hogging the blame, you're only serving to make him seem less of an adult. to be honest, it's a tad patrionising.

i'm all for being truthful about your flaws but if you really want to stay together, you need to find a balance. you also need to focus on getting to know each other and discovering whether you two can get beyond the analysing of your relationship 'issues'. try to focus less on the flaws of the relationship and trying to 'fix it'.

why don't you have counselling too?

it seems like BY now hogging the blame

btw I hope I didn't come across all patronising or showing off .

It's just that your last post hit a cord as I often sit and think how some people unwillingly bring out the worse in you and others the best. That's all I was trying to say.

(PS my rel with dh is full of downs and crappy times, we are not walking hand in hand along the beach everyday ).

OP, I think it's admirable that you've admitted this to yourself and your OH. It is so important that you tacklel this, not only for your relationship with him but also for (1) your relationship with your children; (2) your OH's relationship with the children; and (3) the way your children view you. Coming from a home with an emotionally abusive father I understand this well. I never had any respect for him from when I was still at primary school, and now he's passed away so sadly that will never change. Also I had huge problems loving my father until I was in my late 20s because of the way he behaved towards us all. Then of course those things have a consequent effect on the children's own relationship with themselves and with others...so you see what a huge deal this is.

I think you need to get support in changing your attitudes and behaviour. Perhaps you should go to the same counsellor as your OH? Some organisations will offer a range of services such as both individual and joint counselling for the same couple at the same time.

Best of luck.

shocked - what is it that you read on the web that made you realise this?

Most websites that I looked at related to emotional abuse listed all the ways that I treat my husband, such as this one www.howtoguides365.com/how-to/emotional-abuse/ .

It's not so much that I now label myself as an abuser, it's just seeing it all written down identified my behaviour for me and made me see that I'd been trying to shift the blame onto my OH when actually I was the root of our problems. Although I do appreciate that he has let me treat him this way to a certain extent, so he's not totally blameless.

I just want to try and undo some of the damage I've done to his self esteem over the years.

I think respect is key here. Do you respect your DP at all? It doesn't sound like it at the moment. You have come to the realisation that you need to change your behaviour, which is a great first step. Perhaps you both need to think about what he needs to do to engage you and for you to respect him.

Whenever I have behaved like this with partners in the past it is because I have lost respect for them: without that it is very hard to treat someone appropriately>

notyummy, I totally agree about the respect thing. That is the whole issue for me. I know I wouldn't treat him like that if I had respect for him (I know this because of how I've been in other relationships).

Have you managed to get back respect for your previous partners? With my OH I think I've come to see him as a child because he has a fairly immature way of talking, has trouble controlling his anger, and gets stressed at the smallest of things. Also I don't feel he has a lot of depth or ambition so I find it hard to have 'adult' conversations with him. These are all part of him, and don't make him a bad person, so I don't want to ask him to change such fundamental things in order for me to respect him. He shouldn't have to earn my respect when he's done nothing wrong - that's how I feel anyway?

"Also I don't feel he has a lot of depth or ambition so I find it hard to have 'adult' conversations with him".

My horrible, emotionally abusive ex used to think this way about me. Maybe he doesn't WANT to talk to you about things because you have belittled and disrespected him so many times. That is certainly how I felt about my x.

How sad! Why did you marry him if you felt he had 'no ambition or depth'? That doesn't mean he doesn't have any feelings.

I'm glad you're getting some help.

I know, I've created the situation by treating him with little respect, which in turn has made him lose his confidence, which meant I respected him less.

I don't for one second think he doesn't have any feelings. It eats me up to know how much I've hurt him. He's a far better person than me, and in that sense I have immense respect for him.

I think perhaps you need to spend some time focussing on what he is good at....you have said that he is a better person than you, which implies that he must have skills and qualities worth respecting.

Also, do you feel stressed because of the way he behaves? By that I mean does his lack of ambition mean that your family struggle to make ends meet and you feel compelled to make up the shortfall? Sometimes when we feel pushed into a corner we lash out in hurtful ways.

Your OH may well benefit from some support and counselling to help him to regain his sense of self-worth and to help him to understand that your abuse wasn't his fault.

If you really are willing to be open and honest to both him and yourself about your behaviour, maybe suggest to him that he could contact the Men's Advice Line. His GP could also refer him to counselling. Having been in a similar position to your OH, I really do strongly recommend he gets some support and advice for himself.

Well I'm not really thinking of lack of ambition in a career sense - more that he doesn't really have any dreams or personal goals to make his life richer. I shouldn't disrespect him for this though - we just have different ideas as to what makes us happy. But I think it upsets me because I want to make the most of life and feel that I've experienced things and learnt things and want to be able to bounce ideas off someone who has ideas too. So I guess I get frustrated.

His qualities are that he is loyal, loving, has very high moral standards, is completely unselfish and devoted to his family. What could be more important than these things? I guess I wish he would put himself first every so often as I don't believe someone can have no personal needs at all. He gives me 'me' time, but when I ask if he wants to have some 'him' time, he says there's nothing he wants to do except be with us.

Has he always been like that or is it something that's happened over time?

The reason I ask is that my ex used to say that I lacked ambition and also I used to get stressed out by very minor things. Those weren't true when I first met her, but a few years down the line I did lack ambition and I did get stressed out very easily.

The lack of ambition was because I knew that if I said I wanted to do something and it didn't match what she wanted, she'd make me feel like shit for being so "stupid", "selfish" and a crap partner / parent / person.

I also got stressed out over minor things as I was frantic about trying to keep everything under control so as to not give her an excuse to kick off at me.

We split up a couple of years ago, and I've now got personal ambitions again plus a general sense of ease to the extent that I can barely recognise the person I was when I was with her. Emotional abuse really can affect the victim quite substantially.

Snorbs, thank you, it's very helpful to hear it from your point of view. He's always been a very laid back person without much need for stimulation from e.g. hobbies or trips to make him happy. But I can also see that I've probably made him too paranoid to actually ask for what he wants. It's going to take a long time for his mindset to change I'd imagine.

Did you end your relationship or did she? I obviously want to make amends for what I've done but is it better for me to leave now so that maybe he could build up some self-esteem faster? Or do I stay and try to help him feel better about himself? Not something that anyone can tell me I know, but it's just what I'm thinking at the moment.

By the way, my OH is about to start counselling so I'm hoping this will really help him.

I ended it with my ex. It was a different situation to you, though, in that she had a drink problem that got worse over the years. She would be more-or-less ok when she wasn't drinking, but she'd treat me like utter crap when she was drunk - mostly emotional abuse but some violence, too. As her drinking got worse over the years, so did her abuse.

The end came when she had repeatedly promised to stop drinking, and repeatedly drunk again and then lied to my face about it. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, as I knew that with the booze came the abuse.

Since we've split up, and with the help of counselling and Al-Anon (the friends-and-family wing of Alcoholics Anonymous) I've come to understand much more about the dynamics of that relationship. As relationships are 50:50 things, I do bear some responsibility. As I see it, she holds primary responsibility for the abuse. I hold primary responsibility for allowing that abusive relationship to continue for so long.

Whether I could have regained my sense of self-worth while still in a relationship with her, I honestly don't know. Certainly not while she was still drinking. If she'd sobered up, stopped the lies and taken responsibility for her choices then maybe. But I have no way of knowing what a sober, honest and responsible her would look like because I've never seen it. And that's one of the key differences between you and my ex - you're starting to take responsibility for your actions. That's hugely important.