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Does anyone constantly doubt themselves and their reality? I know my husband has definitely been abusive towards me via name calling, threats to hurt me and control etc however as our relationship is not as turbulent and his behaviour has “improved” I worry that I have built up this monsterous image of my husband in my mind. I go over and over in my head the terrible, horrible things he’s said to me in the past and I’m trapped reliving what he’s said to me.
I feel like it’s so complicated and confusing. It’s not like he’s terrorising our whole family from morning til night and he tells me to grow up and get over it. He can be so normal and reasonable and I’m still holding onto so much resentment and anger towards him.
I’ll be asking for a divorce soon but I’m so scared and I feel so unreasonable as most abuse happened a few years ago, things are okay now. How do I know I’ve not built him up to be a monster in my head?
Thank you for reading.
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Sympathise with how you feel. I get the same doubts. I’ve been out a while now, and I can start to see what was happening in my own relationship. I am at the stage now where he still doesn’t see anything at all as his problem. I’m the whole problem and he is fine. When someone absolutely denies everything it is very difficult for us to stand our ground and trust our observations and feelings about what’s happening. Mine always spoke with such absolute certainty and force about how right he was and how wrong I was. I believed him for many years. We are slightly trained in society to believe the person with the loudest voice and the most confident demeanor.
He won’t and maybe can’t see himself as any part of the problem.
He was monstrous and I knew that. I was lucky enough to have had a life full of mainly healthy relationships and so I know that he is a monster. Why I doubted my own knowing about that, for so long, is another question. Sometimes towards the end, I would wonder how my Dad would feel if he could see how I was being talked to and insulted. Then I could see how this abuser has nothing to do with me.
He’s just trying to hijack my life. He was a monster in person clothes. But he had created an amazingly convincing false persona, which he had perfected and practiced by trial and error over many decades. It’s the monster that’s real. But the nice guy false persona is what they present every time they need to interact with the world. It’s really convincing. Very convincing indeed.
It wasn’t that he was a nice guy who has a bad side. He was a bad guy who had a nice ‘false’ side. He could switch between then in a flash. That’s how you know it’s calculated. He can change the minute someone he doesn’t want to see ‘him’ walks in the room. -
However I felt about this monstrous side of him though. I just kept that to myself.
We don’t have to justify by convincing everyone that he’s a monster.
It’s enough just to stick with the pared down and simple facts.
I don’t like being called insulting names in a regular basis, is enough reason to walk away. -
I can relate to what you are both saying.
I had a bit of a moment recently. I had been remembering how a group of my friends and I used to meet up for coffee. He would show up and be so nice, it was like a date and the high point of my week. I thought, what a nice man. My marriage must be fine.
Just the last time I thought about it I realised what he was doing. He was playing up to my friends so that, if I ever told them how trapped and hopeless I really felt, none of them would believe me and none of them would offer to help me. It worked too.
When I told him I was through, I watched his persona shift. He went from Lord of the Manor to Sauron The Destroyer in about 48 hours. Later he went through Haughty Privileged Guy and seems now to be in Abandoned and Confused 10 Year Old Looking For His Mum mode. I don’t think he knows who he really is.
Very few people are willing to believe my account of what he was like behind closed doors. Some might look at the bewildered guy not dealing with stuff and wonder.
Stay strong and put your self first xx
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I know exactly how you feel. I brought this up with my Sister last weekend in fact. I said maybe that because I am so used to the way he acts that maybe now I see everything that he does as being monstrous and it’s now me over-reacting with everything he says and does. He has told me so many times that I’m not right in the head, usually when I’ve caught him out in a lie or stuck up for myself, that I think maybe now I believe it is me and maybe it’s me with the problem. Here comes big Sis to tell me that no, that is how he wants me to think and all his training and skills has worked big time on me. He IS the monstrous man that I know or should know him to be and my head and heart know exactly that, how he treats me and walking on eggshells all the time is not normal.
Once they have treated you a certain way for so long, I think it is so hard to see any good in them any more, even when they turn on the charm. My partner is great at being what he thinks is the big charmer in front of everyone and anyone that will see him and think how lovely he is.
Never feel bad about the way you see him now. This is down to his actions. I wish you luck and a great escape. Well done for being so strong. You’ve got this x x
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This really resonates with me. For a long time, my ex was literally a monster in my head, and still sometimes that comes back, and I was terrified I would run into him near a gym we used to both go to, and even though rationally I knew he would never lay a finger on me (I was emotionally abused), it was like my body was filled with terror at the thought, and I felt like I was totally just overplaying what he did to me (walking on eggshells resonates too from what Loopy2 said). I think for me, emotional abuse literally distorted my sense of what I felt to be true, and it was so dismantling because it made me doubt every thing I feel. But now over time, I think now I try to go with what my body feels because I want to trust that actually unlike what my ex thought, my feelings are telling me something important, and I was frightened and that terror is real! Now I am in a healthier relationship, my body shows me that I feel safe, and I feel the differences and that helps ground me to know that my fear was real before.
Hope this helps, thinking of you and sending you my best xxxx
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Dear LavenderLilly
Horrible headmess isn’t it, that’s the result of him and his headmessing behaviour.
I hope you can find some ways best for you to give yourself a break regularly from all the circling that goes on in your head as a result. Listen to your gut instincts always, rather than your head trying to make sense of it, it’s nonsensical stuff of gaslighting madness!
At the end of the day, can you ever trust this man again? Regardless of any feelings and attachment you could still have with him, is he a trustworthy person with your feelings and if the answer is no then get your divorce…no need to ask, as the saying goes, just do it!
warmest wishes
ts
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