Physical abuse and plausible deniability

[SunshineRainflower]

Hi everyone,

Apart from some health problems I feel like things have been better and after over a year I do feel a lot more over him. I still sometimes get sort of flashbacks or he is on my thoughts for a few days at a time making me feel sick.

I just had a flashback now which made me cry. It was a incident that I hadn’t yet assimilated into my post domestic abuse frame of understanding.

Once in bed when we were chatting he was sort of leaning on top of me. At first it seemed fine but suddenly I had a really bad pain in my arm. I immediately cried out asking him to move and distinctly remember he stayed leaning on my arm for several seconds after before moving. A few days later I had a very large painful bruise all on the underside of my arm which took a week to go. I initially thought he had a slow reaction time or hadn’t realised but it makes me sick to realise I’m now almost certain he did it on purpose.

I have a lot of memories of him hurting me physically in a way that totally seemed accidental. At one point I had a lot of bruises all over me that were all caused by him ‘being too rough’ or ‘having slow reflexes'(excuses I made up for him in my mind whilst in the fog). It makes me feel so sick thinking all that time I was involved with someone who was actively trying to hurt me physically and mentally and even more sinisterly, always did it in a deniable way (plausible deniability). It also makes me feel v upset knowing I went through that and he got away with treating me like this.
I think he was probably testing my boundaries to see what I would and wouldn’t accept as later on he tried to put his hand around my neck in bed, another memory that makes me feel really angry now, what an absolute P.O.S he was.

It’s helped to get this out so thanks for reading. And if anyone is currently going through this then you’re not crazy, he is doing it on purpose and life gets a million times better once you get them out of your life.

[KIP.]

Thanks for sharing. Plausible deniability, cognitive dissonance, has lighting and trauma bonding are the terms I most associate with their abuse. I remember there was a family of feral cats we always saw on a regular journey and it made me really happy to see them. One day when I said excitedly oh look there’s one. He turned the steering wheel crossed the road and ran it over and killed it. I was hysterical and he starts shouting back at me that it was an accident. At that time I pushed it to the back of my mind and told myself that it was an accident. Looking back it was totally deliberate because often when I was in a happy mood it was like he couldn’t stand it and had to pull the rug from under me. Drag me back down. They are all pre meditated acts when no one is around so they know exactly what they’re doing. Things do get better with time. We will recover but they will always be false dysfunctional human beings. Onwards and upwards. You can choose how you feel today and today I choose to feel proud and happy to have survived. Sending you good vibes and positive thoughts x

[Tiffany]

My ex almost always hit me when I was asleep – then told me that I had imagined it, or that he had been asleep too and couldn’t be blamed for what had happened. He was clever enough never to leave bruises too, so he was already half way to convincing me that I was mad.

[SunshineRainflower]

Thank you KIP and Tiffany. It’s sickening isn’t it the amount of subtle abuse they do that you can only see much later. This past year my brain seems to have reprocessed the relationship in light of my understanding that it was abusive. The process seems to have slowed down as most of the memories now make sense in my head but I’d forgotten about this one.

I never want to see or speak to him again but sometimes my brain wishes it could go back, a bit like Columbo or Miss Marple or the detective in Scooby Doo and get him to fess up to all of his tactics explaining how he did it and his motives! I do feel a lot better about it these days and it doesn’t constantly replay in my mind like the early days. Just some days he returns to my thoughts making me feel sick.

KIP that is so horrible what your ex did, what evil s**m they are. I would have been so happy to see the cats too. Are you able to adopt a cat now It could be away to heal the pain of his cruelty towards that poor cat. My cat has got me through the darkest times so I definitely recommend adopting one from a shelter.
My ex once scowled at me angrily in the car for singing because I was joyful so I know what you mean about their need to kill our joy. My ex was a complete joyless sod but he hid it very well for the first few months. So glad to be well rid!

Tiffany that’s awful that he physically hurt you whilst you were sleeping, really evil stuff. It must have made you so confused waking up to pain and him feigning innocence. My ex once tricked me into doing this massive countryside hike in the wrong shoes all alone in winter fog. I was trapped by a body of water and had to walk around it and of course at the end he turned up to ‘rescue me’ saying how worried I’d been but I can see now he was probably getting off on knowing I was alone, trapped and scared. He underestimated my fitness though as I go back in record time by running, something that makes me smile now as I think he was hoping I’d have got lost in the dark and be crying etc. I love how we all out smarted them in the end and rose above their c**p like phoenixes rising from the ashes.☺

[Clockwatcher]

My ex used to slap me really hard on the bottom… hard enough to leave handprints and when I would ask him to stop and tell him he’d really hurt me he used to tell me he was just being flirtatious and I was rejecting his advances and did I know how much that hurt him.

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