Abusive…by accident?

[NotYourMaid]

So I recently looked up economic/financial abuse in my husband’s native language. And while the description of it is the same as in English… it said that abusers can also be abusive… by accident. That they might not realize that they’re being abusive…

…I don’t know how I feel about that…

Like, sometimes I think… that he’s the way he is because he works too much. And because he grow up without being able to express his emotions safely at home.

So he hurts me without realizing it. And not actually on purpose.

But after so much pain, even if it’s by accident… it doesn’t change the fact that he cause me pain and fear.

But if he is abusive by accident… I kind of want to tell him. Just to give him the option to change.

I don’t mean now. That would be too risky.

After I get a job, after I feel comfortable with the language, after I have enough money to spend the night away from home… then I’ll tell him. That way, if it backfires, and turns out he already knew and was doing it on purpose, I’ll still be safe.

[NotYourMaid]

Is it possible for abuse to happen by accident?

Recently, he gave me money, and even asked me how much I needed, and how much I wanted.

And it was weird. In a good way. Because the interaction felt natural. That time, I hadn’t even tried to make him happy, and he had brought it up almost all by himself. (I had asked him previously to buy a household product. I was too scared to buy it, even though I had the money, because I never know when he’s going to give me money or how much).

And it made me wonder if the article was right. Maybe he is abusive by accident. Maybe he doesn’t realize what he’s doing. Maybe these past few months have just been one painful, fearful misunderstand on my part, caused by his lack of communication.

But I don’t actually want to explain it him. Because the past few times that I’ve tried to explain anything about my emotions or our relationship, he gets mad and accuses me of being inconsiderate towards him.

It’s just sort of confusing right now… maybe I exaggerated all my emotions because I have no one to talk to, and everything about our relationship seems sort of weird, and everyone thinks he’s a wonderful person, but, I just don’t feel comfortable talking to him anymore. And I’m an edge when he’s home…

So it’s just… it’s just confusing right now…

Because these past few days (but very recent few days) are slowly going back to how they used to be…

So it just makes me wonder if the article was right (yeah, I know I said that twice, it’s just stuck in my head). Maybe all this happened by accident?

[NotYourMaid]

But see, he and I used to argue a lot. Like every month. So I would ask friends and family for advice, and they all said the same thing. They all told me that men don’t really communicate. They all said that I just need to try to communicate more with him. And a lot of them said that I have mental health problems, and that that’s probably causing most of the problems in the relationship.

So it was like it was all my fault. I wasn’t trying hard enough to understand him. I wasn’t trying hard enough to communicate with him. I wasn’t trying hard enough to control my mental health. But no one ever said that he was the one that had to change and make more effort. They said he was nice, sweet person, and a saint for putting up with my moods.

But after all that’s happened… I just don’t want to hear that anymore.

I am not a perfect person. I do have strong moods, and they do change rather quickly.

But…if he really was abusive by accident… I don’t want to make an effort to communicate with him. I don’t want to try harder in the relationship.

Even if all this has just been a big misunderstanding… even if it just was an accident on his part…

It still really hurt. It was still frightening. And I NEVER want to experience anything like this ever again!

[Eyesopening]

Friends and family will never give you the right advice I find, they do not understand abuse, it is very rare to get the right kind of advice that we need, I only really listen to Womens aid, and my local abuse outreach. They understand abuse. Be it on purpose or not, it doesn’t matter, he is abusing  you, he is taking your life from you and driving you mad. Looking back I don’t really know how I left, it was a leap of faith, I put my trust in women on this forum, my local abuse outreach worker, and I trusted what they told me, and left with their help.  Keeping a journal to keep the facts in writing also helps, it is actually the biggest thing that helped me leave. Your brain tries to protect you, your heart and brain are in conflict and there is a whole thing called cognitive dissonance, you don’t remember things correctly. Now reflecting on my past, the confusion is the biggest sign of abuse. Reach out for real life hands on support from professionals. Friends and family are there for a different kind of support.

[NotYourMaid]

Thanks for answering. Yeah, the confusion is… strong. But the confusion feels weird to me. Because one day, I feel like I have perfect clarity of the situation, my relationship with my husband, and what I need to do to keep myself safe. Then another day, confusion plus severe depression will join hands and my brain feels like a fog. Other times, the confusion feels more like a cluttered room, like I’m tripping over objects in my brain.

Does that make sense?

But before I got in a relationship with my husband, it wasn’t like this. It didn’t feel like my brain was so cluttered that I can’t make sense of things. That only happened… I don’t actually know when exactly it started. It didn’t happen right into the relationship… maybe after we moved in together?…

[EvenSerpentsShine]

You have picked up on something that can be so hard to wrangle with, think about or talk about.
I do think that we need to get some clarity in our own minds about this before we can really separate from abuse.

Its clear, there’s no doubt, that most people who work with abusers, understand their personality styles or are in criminal justice take the view that anyone who isn’t mentally ill (and I think when they talk about this they don’t mean depressed or anxious, but psychotic) believe that, yes they do know what they’re doing, and, yes they need to take full responsibility for that.
If the documents that you’ve read in your husbands country are saying something other than that, it would certainly be a departure from what most official lines would be.

But for us, there’s a lot and a lot of empathy and consideration and leeway that we show towards our partners or ex partners.

Its a really strange phenomena how a few days away from the abuse and it almost disappears like a plume of smoke and we’re left wondering what it was all about.

It must be an effect of the abuse because further on down the road it seems easy to see clearly how awful the situation was.

[EvenSerpentsShine]

Eyesopening, yes, your post is spot on.

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