Flashbacks

[Bananaboat]

This week I keep having flashbacks which are making me angry. Not at him, well yes at him but more at the people around me.

A couple of them have been in restaurants where he’d kick off, be threatening or intimidating me and/or the kids, others in tourist locations with crowds around where he’d again shout or threaten…and no one did anything. In one restaurant we (detail removed by moderator), he threatened to make a scene to see what they do and all within earshot of the waiter. Another was threatening to kill me and call me all names under the sun in our garden and neighbours would’ve heard!! One neighbour several doors away would say they could hear (detail removed by moderator) so 100% would’ve heard this.

I’m not sure what to do with this, but I keep wondering why didn’t anyone check in l, at least make eye contact – I get not putting themselves in danger but just an ‘you ok?’ I’d probably have said yes fine lol, we do don’t we but no wonder we become ultra independent! Anyone else got similar stories?

[Shaishai]

Hi Bananaboat, I totally get you on this. None of my neighbours ever checked on me yet I know they could hear my screams and his shouting. My sister knew he would hit me but she never did anything either. She didn’t know the full details and how bad it was but that’s not the point. He threw me in the (detail removed by moderator) once because I had gone for (detail removed by moderator). I couldn’t sleep at the time. He found me and we argued, I saw someone watching it all. They watched him throw me (detail removed by moderator) and I mouthed help as our eyes met. They did nothing.

I do understand at times that people don’t want to get involved. But if they hear something then even just phoning 999 anonymously would help, or if they know us then a quick check in wouldn’t hurt. I don’t understand why people would ignore someone else being hurt.

[Put the kettle on]

I understand the frustration too, our neighbours witnessed multiple things heard things and nothing got reported. It’s something that bothered me afterwards, we can’t change other people or even understand them at times. We can do things ourselves though so we can be the people who call for help for someone else, we can protect those that need it

[gettingtired]

People are worried of upsetting the apple cart and prefer to put it down to ‘relationship issues’ with all the nonsense of ‘it takes two to tango’ blah blah blah.
I suppose some people may genuinely be scared to get involved if he’s particularly angry/aggressive but like Shaishai said, they could call the police. Maybe neighbours would be worried that the abuser would know it’s them and then cause them trouble, I don’t really know. I don’t understand how people could hear or witness something so terrible and turn a blind eye to it though.
I remember being in a pub/restaurant years ago with mine and he started getting quite nasty without raising his voice or anything but ended up storming off. A man working there obviously noticed and actually asked me if I was ok (obviously I smiled and said I was). Having said that, believe it or not, partner himself has intervened with domestic abuse situations where men are bullying women in public and even called the police on a few occasions!!! No wonder I was so confused and in denial (and still am to some extent) xx

[tiredofitall]

I did have a neighbour knock on the door once during a big attack. He was shouting at me and smashing up furniture in the house and the neighbour could hear me and the baby crying. It just made it worse because forever after that, he’d go on and on about this neighbour sticking his nose in and how I’d somehow given him the idea I was being abused when quite obviously, he was only angry because of me!! So tough to know what the right thing to do is.

[longjourneylife]

I remember the same with councilling and the doctor, they told me to leave him ( like it was the obvious thing to do next) but I was still in “fix it” mode I think there are tips for people to reach out to those that think might be abuse, But I had a family member who said they’d call the police and I shut them down for fear of his retaliation. Turned out he went on the attack of them, so it’s really tricky. Main thing is to focus on moving forward, we utimately help ourselves( just do what’s right for you, which you probably not used to thinking of, be ‘selfish’ yourself and you’ll suddenly see how much you’re doing that doesn’t make you happy ) but it has to be when we are ready, no one else can answer that.

[Bananaboat]

Thanks everyone I guess no one knows what they’d do until faced with a situation, I don’t blame them. I think police are removed from our lives these days that ringing 999 seems a big deal. I hope if I ever see the signs in someone else experiencing what we have I’d help in some way as abusers feed on that ‘no one will care about you’ mentality but there’s people out there who do x

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