OK... Not sure where to start with sharing my experience because it's only now, 6 months on and with a new partner that I'm starting to realise how unhappy I was.
So, perhaps if I share a few incidents that I remember and then people can say what they see?
I had a general feeling of not being "good enough" after DD was born I tried to hold everything together so that when the ex came back from work there would be tea, he used to huff if he had to make it, sulked, or would just watch TV until I did it. Even if that meant 9pm at night - because cooking was "my job".
I said I thought I might use my savings to get a new car when I went back to work and was earnign money for it - he turned round and said "no" and later when I brought it up again he denied the conversation. He denied a lot of our conversations.
He would push me into an argument becaus ehe knew I didn't like confrontation but he thought shouting and arguing was healthy. He made me cry over several arguments like that, stuff that I didn't even really care about. It made me very nervous.
If I wanted to cuddle on the sofa he would complain about being uncomfortable and move to the other sofa.
Hw would go to bed without saying goodnight and I would just realise that I was by myself, when I told him it upset me he told me I was being daft and carried on.
He made me feel like I had issues.
He copmplained about food I cooked if I made something he didn't like he would sulk.
On holiday he told me we were the fattest people there, another time he told me I just thought I had a flat stomach but that was only when i was lying down becuase it went to the sides. He used to give me advice on how to lose weight and comment on what I ate if it wasn;t what he thought I should be eating. I wanted to take up running, he would come with me and run faster and tell me to hurry up. When pregnant we went walking for the weekend, he would race on ahead and say "hurry up fatty" even though he knew it upset me. (I'm in tears now) The thing is that he knew I was having counselling for an eating disorder. And I look back at photos now and think how healthy I was
He would moan about my friends coming round and if they did would hide away and say things like "oh have they finally gone?" when they left - it made me not want to invite them again. He did that to my family too. We went to spend Christmas with my parents, he sulked and was generally miserable until we left. I never arranged to do it again.
He would complain if I was late leaving work (even by 5 minutes) because he had to wait for me. And then would sulk about it.
He used to make lists of chores and tell me we couldn't do a social thing (we'd have an invite for visiting my friends) because we had so much to do and then he would watch TV all weekend and we wouldn't do anything.
He didn't want to go out anywhere (even just for a walk) and eventually I stopped asking.
Do you know, I'm not sure if it was emotional abuse or not, or if I care because I'm not going to mediation with him. It's nothing or the soliciotrs after the ranting email he sent the other day, even my approach to our break up "wasn't normal" and I'm a cold hearted b apparently. His ranting emails make me feel defective. But a couple of close friends have read them and are shocked at how horrible he is being 6 months later when I've met him to talk things through 4 times since I left and he still tells me I've never explained why I left or what he's done wrong, he provokes me to say horrible things and then tells me how hurt he is. Gosh I feel awful, like I'm the one bullying him when all I've said is that I didn't want to be with him anymore because he made me unhappy and I no longer loved him.
That was quite therapeutic. I felt liberated at lunch to go shopping and buy food he didn't like even though it's taken me 6 months to shake that out of my system.
New partner is making me realise how bad some things were, he looks absolutely shocked at some of my responses to things and then realises why...