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I’m married, with no children. My husband has been my rock for years, I always felt like he made me a better person, but since we got married (and I subsequently got injured myself at work) he has been prone to these awful outbursts.
He has never hit me, but he intimates me, speaking to the helpline has helped me see that he doesn’t have “anger management issues” as I had thought, he is extremely controlled in what he does. After an aggressive outburst months ago I told him I wanted to leave him, so he took medication from my drawer and proceeded to say ” well, I’m going to kill myself then” he shut himself in our bathroom and didnt take any of the pills, he just did that to control me.
The difficult thing for me is that 99% of the time he is the man I married, I love him, but even so, I realise how much I’ve lost of myself, there are so many red flags I can’t keep count.
I feel like I’m going crazy, he makes me feel like I misremembered what he’s done “no I didn’t scream in your face, I was talking to you calmly” i feel the only logical decision is to leave, but I feel i am waiting for something awful to happen again to give me permission to go.
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Please don’t. Please don’t wait for something ‘awful enough’ to happen. Please don’t waste any more time with him. It will get worse. I was in a fog of mistreatment for decades; thought it was me, believed all his criticisms.
It only took the ‘something awful’ to snap me out of it. To realise I had been in abusive relationship from the begining! I would give anything to go back in time to wake myself from the abuse stupor and get out before ‘the something awful’. My ex husband was so Jekyll & Hyde, so subtle, so manipulative, so ‘reasonable’ but when his mask dropped it felt like a complete switch. ‘He had flipped’ I told myself – in reality this monster was always there. He never hit me.
Take care and keep posting
Iwillbeok x
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Being unhappy in a relationship is all the permission you should need to leave. I was consistently unhappy for years in my relationship with my abuser. I too was waiting for him to do something utterly awful so I would be justified in leaving. But even after the physical violence began I still didn’t leave. The thing is, if the relationship wasn’t abusive then you wouldn’t feel the level of guilt you do about leaving. And the fact that the relationship is abusive is precisely why you should leave. It’s pretty messed up. I started my escape with a mantra “it’s ok to do what’s best for you”, which became “it’s ok to leave a relationship if it’s making you unhappy”. There really doesn’t have to be another reason. I didn’t manage to prove (in my own head) that my partner was abusive until after I left and my brain was no longer under his influence. It sounds like you are further ahead than I was when I left, in that you are recognising the abuse. But please don’t wait for something worse to happen before you leave. Start planning. Keep it secret. Leave without discussion. Don’t tell him.it is over until you are safely out and away. It’s impossible to have a rational discussion with an abuser about leaving. They don’t want what is best for you and will manipulate you in any way they can to get what the think is best for them. Stay safe.
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I felt a lot of the things you’re feeling. I was unhappy and wanted to leave but was almost waiting for an event that would give me “permission” to go. My partner would never, ever discuss us separating. He used various tactics, such as “if you still feel like that in 5 days I’ll go” or making me think he’d killed himself while I was at work, prompting me to rush home terrified. Sometimes he would become violent when I tried to talk about us separating. Anything but have a rational discussion.
I didn’t want him to end up homeless and tried to work with him to find somewhere for him to go while he slept in my spare room. He wouldn’t even allow that, he made me continue sleeping in the same bed as him.
There really is no reasoning with men like these, they will use every tactic they can think of to get what they want. Well, apart from fixing the behaviour that makes us want to leave.-
Poodlepower – that is exactly my situation. We’re due to move to a very isolated part of the country in a few months time, and I have said I won’t be going with him if he hasn’t made significant progress, his response to that is that I can have a “runaway fund”. Anything but actually work to fix the behaviour. Its horrible living like this, when things are good hes my best friend, it really is difficult to even think of how things could get bad again. Thats why I say I feel like i need something awful to happen, so that I “snap out of it”
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Unfortunately when something awful does happen we don’t tend to react how we thing we will. I am a smart well educated woman, and always said I would leave if a man hit me. My abuser hit me multiple times across the course of many months and I just went into denial about it. He denied it and rather than leaving I ended up questioning my sanity and my memory.
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Mine denied, misrepresented, blamed me, tried to make me misremember-anything but “I’m sorry I hurt you Love, I need help for my mental illness.” That might have kept us together.
I would get angry at myself for staying, I “was not the kind of woman” who puts up with abuse! But I was. I made excuses for him “he’s not well, he loves me so much he can’t stand to lose me, he’s too ill to control himself…” and so on. Bit of course he could control himself. Otherwise he’d be abusive to me out in public. (Although there were occasions when he even went there, causing passers by to intervene)It takes some time to absorb the fact that – no matter why it happens, it CANT happen. We must not stay. We must not sacrifice our mental and physical wellbeing for them. Because that’s what it boils down to.
We love them and it hurts to lose the “nice” side of our partners. But the “nice” and “nasty” is all them. It hurts emotionally but we’ll get over it. Physical and mental damage may not heal so well.
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