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I just wanted to share some of the things that happened to me. I wanted to tell you all what I was put through. During my first relationship which lasted over (detail removed by moderator) years, my ex walked in front of me for the entire time, every single time we went out. I was young very pretty nothing wrong with me. I tried to hurry to keep up with him. I used to trip up and my ankles hurt. I used to laugh it off in the early years I even took a photograph of the back of him once when we were on holiday. However, as the years went by and I developed an autoimmune disease which meant I couldn’t hurry I used to get very distressed because I couldn’t keep up with him. I kept begging for him to slow down even shouting his name in the street. He just denied he was walking fast. At the beginning of the relationship we were in town and he just walked off and left me. I thought I had done something wrong. I was bewildered. We were in a shop once and he just ran out and left me, a friend of his was coming in and I felt so embarrassed. Once I was in town and he did his usual trick of walking miles ahead. I met a friend’s parents and they said oh hello are you on your own I said no I am with him there is at the top of the street. It was so embarrassing and humiliating. They must have thought I was mad. Once at the start we had caught the local train after a night out. It stopped about half an hour’s walk away from his house. You had to walk past fields a road that led to the motor way, no houses. He was too mean to get a taxi like normal people. He set off to walk and as usual he was very fast a speck in the distance. I was on my own at midnight walking along a deserted road. A car pulled up beside me, the man may have been genuine and concerned but I started screaming and swearing and the car drove off. If that man was genuine, I feel so sorry for him, but I didn’t know. My ex never once turned around to see where I was or if I was alright. By the end of this relationship I was ill depressed and had piled on loads of weight so I really couldn’t keep up. I was just comfort eating sitting on the sofa trying to figure out what was the matter and why I couldn’t fix things. On holiday he would be terrible walking off and going in the huff if I didn’t like the meal I ordered. There is a photo of me looking distressed and confused just after he had shouted at me. One holiday I had been buying lots of things for both of us and I ran out of money. I asked if he would buy me a magazine and he wouldn’t and lectured me about money. Then random strangers came past and he was very cheery with them. (Detail removed by moderator). The more unreasonable his behaviour the more I comfort ate and the more he abused me for being overweight and not being able to walk fast. When we went on holiday we would get to a certain point at the airport and would start to be in a mood, I could never work out what triggered it. It seemed to be as we were passing a newsagent every single time. As I couldn’t walk very fast, I used to get panicky and want to set off to the boarding gate early so I could get there at my own speed. He wouldn’t and used to sit and make me wait until the last call and I would be stressed and breathless hurrying. He seemed to like this. I have cried all over the (detail removed by moderator) because of his moods and unreasonable behaviour. One time we went on a mini break, we had walked miles and I was struggling, I wanted to get a bus. He wouldn’t wait with me at the bus stop just walked off to the hotel. I was left there on my own and I realised that the buses had stopped running from this stop. I was hysterical. I fortunately had the number of a local taxi firm and I called them. Even though it was just up the road they came and rescued me. I got back to the hotel and he had bought drinks and was just sitting there as if nothing had happened nothing was wrong. Once I was having a bad episode with my illness, I was on crutches, my little dog was old ill, and I now know was dying. He looked at us both in disgust and said something nasty and walked on ahead. He used to make us both go on long route marches and would not pick her up when she was tired. He used to remove her food because he said she was too fat, the dog would be distressed and confused. It turns out she had gained weight because of a tumour. This is just the tip of the iceberg doesn’t even scratch the surface of what went on. All through the relationship his mother bullied tormented and abused me constantly as well. By the end of the relationship I had stopped going on holiday and I felt sick at the thought of meeting up with him in town or going anywhere with him. He would walk off at the cinema. I used to plan my route if we were going from a to b so I could find a short cut to get there at the same time as him because he wouldn’t wait. I would try to get a bus across town. We once had to go to a certain shop. There was a branch just a couple of minutes’ walk away from where we were. Instead of going to this branch he made me go right across town to another one. I know this was purely, so I had to have a long walk. If went to the supermarket he would park miles from the entrance and would not park in a disabled bay. Reading all this makes me now certain it was all punishing behaviour because I stood up to him argued and challenged him about his behaviour at the start of the relationship. I even used to laugh at some of it at first because it was so crazy. It must have been all about control. Because I wouldn’t toe the line, he became more unreasonable to pay me back until he broke me. I have only just realised this now literally. My second abusive man followed this same pattern. I challenged his behaviour at the start about his obsession with a married woman he wanted me to hang around with her, but she was snide towards me and I didn’t feel comfortable with her. She knew too much about our relationship and constantly phoned him up asking him to do jobs. (Detail removed by moderator). If we were together and she rang he would drop everything and dash off. I used to challenge his reasons and her behaviour. Because I wouldn’t accept the situation the nastiness started, and he would blame me for my reaction towards her. I will perhaps write some more about how he treated me another time. For now, I can’t get over this thing that I have just realised that the behaviour was a punishment a reaction to me not doing as I was told. It’s taken many years and a repeat situation for me to get this. Why did I not see this sooner?
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Abuse slowly creeps up on us. Before we know it the abuse becomes normal to us. It’s all very confusing. Our headspace is totally taken up trying to predict his next outburst and trying to stay one step ahead of the abuse. While we are distracted trying to work out what the hell we have done wrong and how to prevent it happening again, they simply change the goal posts. If you were an Olympic athlete, he would choose something else to abuse you over. If you were perfect, he would simply invent something. It’s all about them getting the satisfaction from making you feel c**p and making them feel big. Nasty selfish people who get their pleasure from dragging us down x
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Dear PURPLEHAIR
I was so sad to read all the suffering and distress he put you through.
An abuser does what works, if it stops working, he’ll kick off more, or do something else to torment and upset.
If he, on first meeting you, told you all that he was going to do, i.e.everything you have written above and the impact it would have on you, you would think, that’s vile and certainly doesn’t sound like love, so why would I ?
You didn’t know this would happen at the outset, and you called him on his behaviour initially.
Then you said it, it made you feel crazy.
It really is mind-blowing that someone could be so cruel, being hit is shocking and very very confusing, so is his behaviour. It’s truly hard to believe this is actually the person we keep seeing, that no, he can’t really be doing this to be cruel, to torment, and actually quite hates me?!
The thing we learn is to listen to our gut instincts, that if we don’t like it, that’s all that matters!
Please don’t blame yourself. Even if you had never picked up on it, its still him being abusive and his responsibility,but he continually blames you. So you wonder, is it me, as that blame is so convincing!
Take care of yourself and keep posting out your story as much as you want as long as you find it helps.
Warmest wishes
TS
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Hi there Purple Hair,
Thank you for sharing part of your story with us. That’s what’s so amazing about this forum, sometimes when we write out what happened to us, a lightbulb comes on and we can finally see it in the right context. We rarely could while we were in it, we were too busy loving and caring for them and lookingn to ourselves first, just as they wanted us to. You never deserved those punishments, sweetheart. You are not at fault or to blame for them happening, he chose to punish you for the simple fact that he enjoyed it. He might have been like my ex and given long speeches about his rationalisations and justifications for abusing me, but those apologies are not true apologies. Mine would say something like “sorry shouldn’t have done that but you did/said XYZ” and then it was just about him finding something to blame it on, often something that had happened after the initial punishment – so yes, I’ve been told I was at fault for an assault because of how I reacted AFTER the assault. He said he knew I’d cry and that somehow meant that because I did start to cry it was justified. Logic simply doesn’t work with these men and if you try and find out directly from them why they punished you, I think it’s likely you would have ended up just as confused wondering indeed what you did to deserve that so that you could avoid it in the future. But they would really just keep making up reasons.
I have a (detail removed by moderator) illness, not serious but does make it difficult for me to sometimes walk and talk. I was also shorter than him which funnily enough made my legs shorter and therefor my steps shorter. There were so many rules, one of them was that I had to hold his hand whenever we weren’t at home. I was allowed to eat my food at a restaurant when it was on the table without holding his hand, but while waiting = hold his hand. He would yank in me if I walked too slow for his liking. He would deliberately slow down yanking me backwards if I was in a rush to get somewhere, like catching a train or just excited to go out or go to an event, anything I really wanted to do, he would slow it down deliberately. If I argued or asked why he was doing this and let’s just get going, he would stop me completely, stand in front of me and give me a telling off similar to that you may give to a disobedient child. (Detail removed by moderator) I sound soo pathetic, but I was terrified of him and he utterly and completely controlled me. I think like yours, mine found the walking together as something he could use just to get his little power trips even when we were perfectly well behaved. Mine would also use dog like commands like snapping his fingers and pointing to where I should be if on a rare occasion we weren’t holding hands – I couldn’t possibly be allowed to walk a slight step ahead of him. It never ceases to amaze me how similar their tools of control are.
Keep writing it out, I think it’s good for us to come to these realisations of what was really going on. And remember, you never deserved these punishments, it was never your fault x
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