Struggling with the reality

[ClearWaters]

Hi, this is my first time posting, don’t know if I belong here so please bear with me!

My husband and I have been together for (detail removed by Moderator) years, the relationship started out rocky.. it took us about (detail removed by Moderator) years to realise that him and alcohol were not a good mix at all. He was abusive and nasty and forced himself on me. I loved him though so I always forgave him and picked myself up, dusted myself off and carried on. When things were good, they were great! He’d buy me expensive gifts and shower me with love and affection, but my husband likes to play mind games though.. snide comments here and there. He’d walk into the room, I’d ask if he was ok.. to which he’d sometimes just reply with “don’t f***ing talk to me, f**k off” but he’d always run back in the room laughing and say he was only joking and that I was overreacting and being over sensitive. That was the running theme for (detail removed by Moderator) years.. He’d be nasty and then say it was all in my head and I was taking it the wrong way. He didn’t like me having any friends so I now only have 1 friend that he approves of. He never gave me any money, I always had to ask. To which he’d then just get angry and ask where all my money had gone. I went out and got a job and he hated it! He made every excuse under the sun for me not to work so I ended up quitting. I struggled with my mental health last year and he was constantly reminding me of everything that I put him through when I was poorly, he just enjoyed the free time off that work gave him in order for him to ‘look after’ me. (detail removed by Moderator) a close family member died, I was devastated.. He was so unsupportive. He couldn’t understand why I was so sad all the time. He was just concerned that he had to look after our children when I couldn’t even bring myself to look after myself. I know it was bad of me, I just couldn’t do it.

Anyway, recently I had a coffee with an old male friend.. I kept it secret because I knew what he would do and say. He’s been accusing me of cheating and running off with someone else for years so I should’ve known better than to actually have a male friend. But I got spotted and he got told.. after an incident in front of our children.. the police were called by a very concerned member of the public who witnessed the whole thing.

What I’m struggling with is being told that the last (detail removed by Moderator) years of my life/marriage has been domestic abuse. I just can’t seem to comprehend it all. I thought it was me, I was doing something wrong, that I had made him grumpy, I was the problem. I thought my marriage was normal it’s just that I was doing something wrong. For the police to tell me no, I’m struggling, really struggling.

Has anyone else been shocked by someone else calling it domestic abuse? It had never crossed my mind..

Sorry for the long post, I just don’t know where else to turn!

[maddog]

You are so not alone Clearwaters! I had flashes that I was in an abusive relationship early on but I swept them under the carpet and carried on. I’m so pleased you’ve realised. It’s a big thing, and as everyone says, baby steps.

I hope the police have been helpful and started putting you in touch with your local support network. I am still trying to get out. It took me about 15 years to post anything about my strange sex life on another forum, where I was told that I was being sexually assaulted by my husband. That was more than several years ago now.

There are lots of people out there to help and support you through this. It’s a horrible and terrifying situation to find yourself in. You will find lots of support here too – women at the same stage, women who understand.

[IrisAtwood]

I spent years explaining away and blaming myself for my ex’s abusive behaviour and many months later I am still dealing with the shock and the tendency to carry on justifying his behaviour.
Very recently I chose to see him again and he spent the several hours we were together blaming me for the relationship ending. Like your partner does he constantly reminded me of my mental health problems and even suggested that if I had apologised ‘properly’ then he would have renewed our relationship. He called my emails to him describing my heartbreak and despair in words that he would understand as ‘pathetic’.
It is very hard to accept that the man you are so attached to is abusive and wants to hurt you, especially after x number of years together, and many of those spent trying to be the woman he would love and treat properly. Don’t underestimate how long it will take you to recover from the trauma, but now that you are starting to see what is happening you can start to recover.
No one should ever ‘force themselves on you’ that is rape. No ifs, buts, maybes. If you say no and he carries on then he is raping you and can be convicted of sexual assault.
I am really pleased that you have found this forum and encourage you to stay around, keep posting and reading. There are lots of supportive and understanding women on here who can help ypu through this process.

[starryeyed]

Hi ClearWaters,

Welcome to the forum and it’s really good that you are posting on here, everyone is really supportive and it is a good place to come and be able to voice your concerns, get advice and support and be listened to without judgement.

Reading what you have written, it definitely sounds like abuse – emotional, financial and sexual. I’m really sorry that you have had to go through all of that, especially for such a long time.

I am relatively new to the forum too, and in my first post I wasn’t sure if I should be posting on here either – so that is normal to think, but I think you have really done the right thing with reaching out and you do need some support.

From what I have been told by the women here and professionals, alcohol is very often used as an excuse for abusive behaviour. My ex also blamed drinking. However, it is not alcohol that is to blame – he uses that as an excuse for him to treat you as he does.

Things will have been good with your partner – I was, and still am, in love with my ex and I really believed I had found my soulmate. If things weren’t good at times then we wouldn’t have become involved with them. They give us intermittent affection and abuse, backwards and forwards – like a carrot on a stick. The good times are so good! But they aren’t consistent and they make the bad times feel surreal, like it can’t really be happening. You say he buys you expensive presents – that was the same with my ex – actually the good times were materialistic! The good times were rarely actually us both connecting, it always came in the form of a gift or something material. If you can, google trauma bonding.

When you describe your husband telling you to f**k off .etc. and then coming back into the room and telling you he is joking – he is gaslighting you. My ex did the same – he told me I had done things which I knew I hadn’t and make me feel incredibly guilty – so I apologised for something I hadn’t done and began to feel I couldn’t put a foot right…I started to not believe my own thoughts, feelings and mind. I felt – and still feel – like I am going crazy. It is a horrid feeling not having faith in your own mind and sanity.

Your husband is isolating you – keeping you financially dependant on him, making it hard for you to be independent, not allowing you to have friends. All huge abusive factors. He isn’t supportive of your needs, he isn’t there for you when you really need it – a bereavement is a huge thing to go through and he hasn’t been supportive. It isn’t bad of you for struggling to take care of your children when you are struggling to look after yourself – and you are struggling even more because he is making you feel bad for it! It is no wonder you are struggling with your mental health when you are living for (detail removed by Moderator) years in an abusive environment, and also have had a bereavement.

I also lied about things to my ex – which I feel terrible about – for example I messaged a friend about my concerns about our relationship and he saw and he absolutely flipped out at me, accused me of lying to him and not being able to trust me and accusing me of cheating on him .etc. He didn’t think it was normal to speak to anyone aside from him about our relationship and I shouldn’t do it. In hindsight, I denied about speaking to my friend because I feared he would do something or be angry at me if he knew and I think he didn’t want me speaking to anyone about our relationship, because he knew they would tell me it was far from healthy. In hindsight again, we shouldn’t have to worry about meeting a friend for coffee or for raising concerns to our friends. These are normal things to do. The reaction from our partners is abusive. And we fear telling them because we knew there will be consequences.

My ex told me men and women can’t be friends. I don’t believe this as I have male friends (I lost contact with many of my friends when I was with my ex too) but I did at the time think maybe he was right. He could have female friends though, but he wouldn’t want me having male friends. He had many double standards like this.

I have been totally shocked to have been told my relationship was abusive. Even though I have left, I am still in denial and still feel I overreacted, was oversensitive, maybe I was too soft. I struggle to believe it I think because my relationship was emotional (and potentially sexual) abuse and it wasn’t physical, he hadn’t hit me. Every day is a struggle with trying to come to terms that the man I love has been abusive towards me, and it is a struggle to know that he was in control of this – it wasn’t his mental health or his drinking. I feel like the man I love is two people – the guy I fell in love with and the guy who scared me, controlled me and manipulated me – and I am struggling to see them as the same person.

Have the police offered you any support? Are you safe? I’d recommend calling the Women’s Aid helpline if you can – they are usually very busy so do leave a voicemail and a safe number and time to call you back on. Or call your local Women’s Aid, I found mine were quick to get in touch with and supportive to chat on the phone about your concerns and I went in to meet for a cup of a tea and a face to face chat. I did find reaching out near impossible when I was in the relationship so I did this after I had left (very quickly and not intentionally after an incident where I called the police on him).

Keep post on here for support too – don’t worry about the length of your posts! It’s good to talk.

Stay safe x*x

[Serenity]

Hi There,

My ex had gaslighted and brainwashed me to the optimum, so that even though I was actually the victim of all kinds of abuse, I never named it as abuse until I was out.

Whether it was because I was too fearful to face the truth, scared of his reaction and the fallout, or whether he’d made me believe I somehow deserved it I don’t know.

I could see clearly hot he was dreadful to the children, but found it harder to see it clearly regarding myself.

My body was becoming sick, I had illnesses forming due to the abuse- yet I couldn’t name it as abuse objectively. I got to the point where I couldn’t bear to even look at him. He sensed my loyalty had died, and he left, threatening abandonment.

Whether he meant it or not, somehow that face mr the space to reflect and see things for what they were. But it was helped along by the fact that I rang Women’s Aid. I remember saying to them ‘I don’t know if it is abuse or not..’ yet I was told that yes, my partner’s behaviour was typical perpetrator behaviour.

Having my experience validated empowered me to get away. xx

[Iwon]

I have been reading thus forum and it shocks me how utterly abusive my previous marriage.

I got moments of realization at others posts. Old memories come up of his screaming in my face and raging for hours over nothing….yet I never saw it was abuse.

Because it didn’t start like that.. It builds up slowly. Then one day you wake up and life is he’ll!

I look back now and it was a prison camp. Abuse. Screaming insults name calling, not allowed any if my own money, stolen off.

I worked like a dog to pay off his gambling debts. I genuinely can not believe someone treated there wife like that. His own son.

It’s only now with time I look back and am utterly shocked.

[itwillbeokay]

Starryeyed I could have written what you’ve written above myself, it’s exactly how I’m feeling having left almost (detail removed by moderator) months ago. It’s very very difficult questioning and analysing your thoughts and actions all day and night.

Xx

[cloudyday]

It is hard to come to terms with the fact that you have been the victim of abuse. I have found the posts on here on this subject so familiar and I can relate to most of what has been said and it does make me feel so much better and more positive when I read them. I am still in my living hell of an emotionally abusive relationship and I didnt know it was that until I went for counselling when my anxiety was at an all time high and I finally ended up going to the doctor. Emotional, financial, sexual are all forms of domestic abuse. Gaslighting was another term I had never heard of but I realised that is another form of abuse I am experiencing. He makes me doubt my concept of reality by twisting everything and when he behaves abusively he makes it that it is me that has done something wrong. when I try to tell him what has upset me he talks over me, shouts at me and turns it all around and says that he is the one that is hurt by my actions. So when you say he was reminding you of what you were putting him through when you were struggling with your own mental health that is because everything is about them. They have no empathy with anybody else’s need or compassion as a normal reaction would be. The trouble is we are hoping for them to show some compassion but we will never get it as they are incapable of these type of feelings for other people even the person they say they love. I dont live with him but every day is spent with him ignoring my phone calls, blocking me when we have an argument, constantly saying what he has got to say and then putting the phone down on me when I try to defend myself, sending horrible text messages as when I get really upset and try to end the relationship as I feel I cant go on like this he accuses me of cheating with someone else or I have someone else lined up. His sexual accusations make me feel low and degraded. Sometimes I feel so much hate towards him. He doesnt like me going out or meeting friends, He is jealous of everything. Even the next door neighbour cutting the grass I was accused of staring at him for too long. He threatens violence to my family as they all hate him because of the stuff hes done to me. His abusive actions over the years I have been with him are too numerous and too off the scale to be able to list here. Brain washing is the other thing they do so that you actually think that the way things are is some warped kind of normality. My family have a big event coming up shortly and he is not invited. He has made my life hell for months over this. I am really out of my depth with all this yet when I phone the help line I can never get through.

[Lisa]

Hi Cloudyday,

I am sorry to hear you are struggling to get through to the helpline. The 24hr National Domestic Violence Helpline (0808 2000 247) is a busy service but there is a voicemail to request a call back at a safe and convenient time if you are able to leave your details and a date/time to receive a call.

Keep posting to us when you can, it can help to offload here.

Best wishes,

Lisa

[cloudyday]

Hi Lisa

Thank you. I will try the help line again and request a call back. Yes off loading on here and reading other peoples experiences is really helpful and enables me to cope much better.

[Poodlepower]

My partner used to tell me I was the abuser…he called me a bully and told me I was mentally unstable, even rang the hospital once to tell them I needed sectioning. All I did was tell him he was too controlling and if we didn’t work on it together I would havecto leave the relationship. After this he began “pinning me down” whenever I mentioned splitting up. He once threw a full can of coke at my face, then immediately denied doing it, telling me he tossed it at the wall and it must have “bounced” back at me. Whenever he knocked me to the floor, it was because I was “in the way” and he’d needed to get past me. When I complained that he had smashed his fist into the pillow an inch from my face , he screamed that he “knew how to control his punches” so I wouldn’t get hurt then forced me to stand still while he threw punches inches from my body and head for several minutes, to show me how much “control” he had.
There was always a reason why what he was doing was not abuse and of course I didn’t want to believe I was in an abusive relationship either. He even bit me on the face then denied every doing it seconds after. If I hadn’t been bruised from his teeth I might have doubted my ien mind.

[Chickadee]

Hi Poodlepower.

What you have gone through and regardless of why he was that way, it definitely had abuse elements. And a common trait amongst us survivors is our desire to want to help someone, fix their situation, and save them (bring them into happiness). We are abuser targets. As such please keep this in mind. Seek to understand the red flags of an abuser to protect yourself from being subjected to that element of all this in the future.

Prayers and Hugs!

Chickadee

[Author]

Posts