My Story

[Byzantium]

I thought I’d the take the time to share my story with you. I’ve posted several times before but I thought it would be good to sit down and write the whole story down.

It started (detail removed by moderator) ago. At the time I had lost my grandmother and grandfather to illness within (detail removed by moderator) of each other. In the years before this I had helped look after them both as much as I could. I was successful in my career at the time and had just been promoted. With my career and family commitments I had been single for several years at the time. I had worked hard and was financially secure and felt ok but with hindsight may have been a bit vulnerable.

I met a wonderful man in my partner and we clicked straight away. He was very thoughtful and caring and made me laugh. We talked every day when we couldn’t see each other, had very similar interests and had the same values and dreams for the future. He used to tell me how amazing I was, how attractive I wars and how I was so different from his exes whom he couldn’t stand.

He would often say he had plans with his family or friends and couldn’t see me and this happened more frequently after the first (detail removed by moderator). If I wanted to spend time with him I would usually have to go to his place and activities would often be with his friends and family. I wanted to spend some quality time together but his response was that I didn’t understand how much pressure he was under from friends and family to spend time with them.

During the (detail removed by moderator) we could go to sleep perfectly fine but he would ignore me or give me one word answers a reply. Sometimes silent treatment would last for days. In hindsight this ended up making me feel anxious about saying or doing anything to put him in a bad mood and I always felt anxious about him withdrawing or leaving me.

He spoke very highly of his friends and family but made comments about how weird my family were and did look down a little at my background. He did still say how amazing I was though and how he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me which made me feel so lucky to have him.

He proposed and I said yes. We were both really happy about it and we started making wedding plans and looking at a home together.

(Detail removed by moderator) after the engagement he sent me a text  (detail removed by moderator) saying he couldn’t marry me because his family would want an opinion on wedding arrangements and he didn’t want to deal with the stress. He went moody and mostly silent for days then suggested that we find a home first then plan a wedding without our families interfering. If we went too long without sex he would say that he did not feel loved and if I loved him I would give him sex regularly. If I were too tired he would accept it but be moody for a few days afterwards. He was so unhappy with the valentine’s gifts I got him that he binned them and gave me the silent treatment then anger that lasted weeks. He said they were cheap and nasty but he hadn’t bought me anything extravagant. To me the chance to spend quality time out together was the best part of valentines. He was so disgusted with my gifts that he refused to touch me and recoiled that night.

We looked at homes and he found a large home he liked which we could afford but only by using all of our money. He was adamant he wanted that one and rubbished alternatives as being rubbish or needing too much work.
We applied for a mortgage and eventually completed the purchase. Immediately afterwards he quit his job saying he hated it and the people he worked with and couldn’t go back. He said he wanted to take a few months off to de-stress before the house move. This was a surprise as I had been dealing with everything with the house so he wouldn’t have to deal with the stress of it. He becomes very moody and snappy when stressed. He made me put the house in 50/50 ownership even though I put in a lot more money. He said it didn’t matter because we would get married.

Before moving in he would disappear and give me the silent treatment because he didn’t want to deal with choosing furnishings and arranging work to be done in the house. He would threaten that he wouldn’t move in and criticise the way I was arranging for the house to be furnished. We had agreed to each contribute money for furnishings but he kept his money back as he wasn’t working and had credit card and other loans to pay.

We eventually moved in and things became really difficult. After (detail removed by moderator) he made me sleep downstairs on the floor for a few days until I could set up the spare room myself and I was made to stay in there. He would criticise and belittle things I did around the house like cooking and cleaning, complain that he was bored and I didn’t arrange stuff for us to do. If I tried to hug him he would shrug me off and scream at me not to touch him. If I tried to talk to him to find out if anything was upsetting him or if I was trying to support him in finding work he would swear at me and tell me that it was none of my business and why would he want to talk to me. He would use names to imply I was stupid, clumsy or scatter brained. I wouldn’t know how bad a mood he would be in when I came home from work. Some work needed to be done to the house during this time and I had been dealing with it because he didn’t want to. He would criticise the way I was doing things but did not want to do it himself.

He broke off our engagement in anger and pulled the ring off my finger saying he couldn’t never marry a useless idiot like me.

Having to deal with everything at home, working overtime and being responsible for all our financial obligations put a lot of stress on me and my mood and libido wasn’t great. It was also hard to be intimate from different rooms. He said he was hurt and angry that I wasn’t trying to have sex with him more often. We visited his family soon after and they sat me down explaining that it was all my fault and if I didn’t want to lose him I needed to do more and be a better partner. I have not been able to spend a holiday with my family in years.

He got work briefly and kept the money to pay his own loans. He quit, found another job then quit (detail removed by moderator). He started receiving benefits eventually but never offered to contribute even a token amount to our bills saying he wanted to have some money left over after paying his loans so he could save for things he wanted. Most months I have to use my overdraft just to pay all our bills. I haven’t bought anything for myself (even a pair of socks) in years.

He once turned around angrily which made me flinch and this upset him and he was nicer for a few days. I don’t know why I flinched and apologised because I know he has never done anything physical towards me.

He left me back into the (detail removed by moderator) bedroom eventually but said I was only there because he allowed it.

He recently said he didn’t want to settle for a life with me and I was a rubbish partner.

Shortly afterwards he said that he actually did want to marry me and wanted a baby.
He wanted me to propose to him this time and wanted a baby straight away.

I was reluctant to start a family when things had been so difficult in the relationship and we couldn’t really afford it. He changed a lot in the following months and I started to want a baby again.

He then dropped a surprise on me when he said that one of his close relatives had been to prison for a crime against children and wanted to tell me because I was about to find out another way. I was shocked because this person would have regular contact with our child and he would never have told me if he hadn’t been forced to.

He kept pressuring me to have more sex to try for a baby. I had a bit of a health scare which meant I couldn’t have sex at the time and he was furious and said that other people were always getting in the way of what he wanted. My father has also been ill lately which has been a worry to me.

I feel like he doesn’t care how much pressure he puts me under financially, emotionally etc and can only see what he wants. He feels I should be taking the lead and showing him that I want these things too which I did but am always so exhausted.

 

[Anonymous]

Wow! That is a nightmare story of abuse if I ever read one… recoiling a bit from the words because it’s just so horrific. First word that comes to mind is Run! Don’t stop to think anymore about it, just get this man out of your life, his little flying monkey friends and family, too. Omg. What a user among many other names I could use here….I have quite the list. But you absolutely are his victim to be tortured here at the moment. Please don’t marry this man, have a baby with this man. Please get him out of your life, get untangled with him in any aspect of your life.

I don’t know what else to say because you have to know what all this is. He is pure poison and evil comes to mind. I would drive him out of my life with the fury of ten wild horses. Actually it would only take me and one horse but….he’d be gone so fast it would make his head spin around like Linda Blair. Disgusting excuse for a human being.

I really hope that you writing all this out was cathartic in the sense of popping your eyes wide open here. Life is so short and you have already wasted so much of it on this man, so much energy, money, time, so much of your heart. I don’t care what kind of lovely or nice he can be when he wants to manipulate/charm you about something, he is an abuser of the highest form. I really don’t want to know how far that rabbit hole goes either because once you start sniffing around a person like this and who they might know, might be involved with, might have done that you know nothing about – would probably scare you like you have never been scared before. Having a family like this, friends too that support him?? Uh, something very very wrong with that picture. Sounds like a horror movie.

It’s here in what you wrote, many many reasons for you to get away from him and stay away from him. I wouldn’t even speak to him unless you absolutely had to in order to tell him get your things and get out. Speaking of viruses, he is one. Actually saying he’s a parasite works better.

I am very very worried about you……I know it took alot for you to write this out and I’m sorry if I’m a bit blunt but you are on fire here so I’m not going to sugarcoat much. You need to get your life back, you really do. You need to get angry! Enough of this already, right? He’s a predator. And he enjoys what he does in the way of pain and harm and that’s very very disturbing, isn’t it? What would you tell a friend if you read something like this from them? I hope the word “run” comes to mind. Much love to you, I am so very sorry and I know just how good these people are at what they do. But at some point you have to stop the madness and the only person who can do that is – you. You have to fight for yourself and unfortunately that’s in spite of how exhausted you are. Please stop engaging with him altogether, get your boundaries up and running and do what you have to do in order to take control of your own life back because right now – he is bent on destroying it and I mean that one oh so sincerely. He’s a monster.

[Balloons]

<I feel like he doesn’t care how much pressure he puts me under financially, emotionally etc and can only see what he wants. He feels I should be taking the lead and showing him that I want these things too which I did but am always so exhausted.>

There is lots of your post that I recognise in my own life, but this last paragraph really stood out to me. Now I’m out the otherside it’s easy to forget the crazy amounts of pressure they lay on, and how freeing it is to be away from it. This really helped me see that I have made the right choice, although I sometimes doubt it. Also big thanks to @Braelynn for her response, I hope it helped you as much as it helps me! It really helps to have a loud confident voice behind you. And I totally agree, try and get out as soon as possible, trust me I know how hard that is, but you really deserve so much better xx

[Wants To Help]

@byzantium – that is horrendous abuse that you have been subjected to and I have to agree with everything that Braelynn has written. Please take steps to leave this man as soon as you can and get your life back on track to where it was before. Take every bit of advice and support that is offered to you to help you do so. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it may be that this man has set out to abuse your good nature and financial security to further his own needs and you were just a stepping stone to better his own life, making yours hell in the process. This is not a man that loves you or respects you.

DO NOT, absolutely, DO NOT have a baby and tie yourself to this man for the rest of your life by children. Having a baby with an abuser is not a way to ‘better’ a relationship, and I speak from experience because I am one of those women who made that mistake and learned from it big time. Don’t get me wrong here, I do not regret having my son at all, but there were times during my pregnancy that I seriously considered a termination because I knew the further the pregnancy developed the more I was going to be bringing a child in to an abusive relationship. By the time my son was a very young toddler I knew that I had to get away from my abuser to protect my son from a life of abuse. It was a hard journey, but it was worth it. I now have my career again, my own house and I am more financially stable than I was before I met my abuser.

[Author]

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