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It’s been the longest time No contact… I don’t think I have ever gone this long. Every other time hes come back after only a few days… On one occasion I went after him. But all times there were texts, emails or phone calls strait after he left. This time he was arrested, his bail conditions say he can’t contact me… Immidiatly after him being arrested I blocked his numbers. I know he won’t be daft enough to contact me and in a way I am so glad because I know that I am so weak when he does. I know I ALWAYS go back to him when he says sorry… And maybe next time (not that there will be one) he could seriously hurt me… Everything was superficial this time…. But traumatic enough. Anyway,
I’m finally seeing a psychologist.. Psychiatrist.. I don’t know which.. This is threw the cmht and she really knows nothing about domestic abuse. I googled the cycle for her whilst in the session… She’s not there to council me over what’s happened. I’m not sure what she is there for as I’ve only had two sessions. In a way I felt like I was defending myself to her too. I told her how id ended up falling for him again, how he’d convinced me that he’d seen the error of his ways when he left me whilst I was pregnant, threw the miscarriage etc… She asked what convinced me he’d changed.. I said he always gives examples- so he’s really proving he knows where he’s gone wrong. She said ‘so he is capable of reflecting on things and seeing he’s made a mistake?’. I said ‘well yes I suppose so… But what drives him to do something so horrible in the first place, like why does he think it’s ok? And I’m not by any means saying the way I do things is rite but I know I can say things I don’t mean in the heat of the moment and have strops or times when I’m stubborn but on those occasions I’ll walk away, reflect on things and usually once I’m a little more calm- I’m able to see if I was in the wrong and to go back and resolve the situation. I don’t let myself get so angry that I’m physically hurting another person or walking away from them and saying things are over during times that they need me…
I thought this was a rational conclusion and I was surprised it was me saying it to her rather than her saying it to me. I mean I need serious validation as a person… To Nellie that my thought proses and way of dealing with things isn’t wrong (as he’s made me feel it is wrong for so long)… But she’s had me questioning it now, thinking if he can reflect and realize he was wrong then maybe it wasn’t all so bad… But they it is once it’s become so catastrophic. The situation becomes huge once he’s left and said we are over, once he’s packed his bags and gone for over a week or once he’s physically hurt me.
He would say to me that it I wasn’t relentless that he wouldn’t ever say it was over and he wouldn’t hurt me. But then that was a chicken and egg. I don’t know if me trying to stop him from leaving came before he would end it and hurt me or if it came afterwards. I just know that some times I did beg him not to go because I’d never be sure which time would be the last time… He’d say that if I hadn’t begged him to stay, that he’d only walk out for 10 minutes and come back…. But actually no. I remember the first time he left me. I didn’t beg him back then it started over something so so tiny and he walked out packing a bag on the way. What was I supposed to think at that stage.
I think I’ve gone off track… Sorry for waffling it’s just that it’s sent my head spinning today -
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Hi Starmoon,
You are clearly dealing with a very difficult situation. Sometimes we send ourselves into a spin because we have a lot to deal with and everything is whirring around our minds with no real outlet. This place has become my outlet and sometimes it helps to put all those jumbled up thoughts down in a post just to get them out.
My situation is different as mine is my son but I have the same issue as you, the moment he says sorry no matter what he has done no matter how scary or vile or evil he has come across I back down, I give in. I think when they are being horrible it is easy to say no to them but when they are being nice and apologetic there is apart of us that wants to think it’s genuine that maybe this time they have learnt.
The reality is though that they probably haven’t and you will be right back there shortly after. You did the right thing reporting him and the police did the right thing not allowing him to contact you. It will give you some breathing space to think about what is happening and maybe realise that life is better without him?
Regarding the therapy I would give it time to make an impact it sounds like you are quite early on and I think it will probably take a while to work through the issues that you are there for xx
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Hi Starmoon, I’m actually quite concerned that this could have a really negative effect on you if she has no training or experience of dv. There are so many professionals who are really lacking in this area, even those who have training! I work with them every day and constantly hear things that infuriate me and totally invalidate my own experiences. I’d say the same about complex PTSD following childhood abuse. I’m wondering if it is possible to get WA counselling where you are? It makes so much difference. I realise that getting to the point of seeing a therapist through NHS routes is so difficult and slow, and I don’t know how your emotional health is, so maybe don’t stop straightaway, but just remember that being either a psychiatrist or a psychologist doesn’t make them understand dv or give them the power to invalidate you. Also if your need for mental health services is entirely as a result of the abuse then you need dv services to help you understand what has happened.
It’s not you, it’s them! Guaranteed:-) xx -
Regarding forcing him to stay with you, hitting you is wrong period. But if someone is giving mixed signals about whether they want to be with you or not it is easy to feel confused. My ex was cooling off and treating me like s**t, at the same time telling me i was his soulmate & that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. It was only when he clearly said to me that it is over he does not want to see me again that I believed him. The aftereffects months later are huge doubt and constant over thinking but at that point it was very clear. If i were you I would say ask him yes or no, do you still want to be with me or not? Or, you tell him the same. Once you have a clear answer then go from there. Avoid all the yes buts, yes or no. And then 100% no contact.
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Hi Starmoon. Regarding the counselling – I would give her a little more time. My experience of it has been overall very positive but that’s as a whole – individual sessions have left me feeling frustrated, even angry. As a counsellor they are not trained to ‘tell’ you what is right or wrong or validate your feelings. They are trained to help you accept what is right and wrong, and validate your own feelings, so that by the time you get to that point you truly believe it. I think back to when I was in my abusive relationship and people were trying to tell me it was abuse but I wouldn’t listen to them. I had to make that decision myself before I got out of it. If you went to a counselling session and she just ‘told’ you what she thought was what…then they would be her thoughts, not yours and you would not have spent any time processing what had happened and making sense of it in your own head. Even when I told her I thought I was to blame for the abuse (this went on for many sessions) she would not do what I expected, and just tell me I wasn’t. She would led me through a thought process, exploring what had actually happened and the facts, until I had truly come to the conclusion myself, that I wasn’t to blame.
I hope this is making sense.
Take care xxxx -
Therapy
Having been in several I think there is a big expectation the first person we get is the right person for us. If a therapist is worth their salt and sees you are not compatible or they are not the best person for your situation then they will say. Some will not. I have a 3 session rule, if I am unsure of someone I see how it goes for 3 sessions.
From there if I think I need someone else then I will say towards the end of the session. The therapist should take this with good grace and offer you support and another avenue to go.
If they done’t you know you really made the right choice in leaving.
I have had some great therapist and some not so great. Walking away from a therapist who doesn’t work for you isn’t a sign of weakness, it is they just weren’t right for you.
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I suppose that’s very true. My now ex was a ball of contradiction. If I truly didn’t want to be with someone then I wouldn’t be and that would be the end of it. For me to love someone but not be with them they would have to have done something really awful. I mean now- I love him and I still want to be with him but I can’t be with him. It doesn’t work between us but saying it just doesn’t work is like a stab to my heart. I don’t want to believe he’s this evil horrible person who mentally bullies me and physically hurts me for no reason. I can’t believe that he does all of that and that it’s an actual choice to do so. He would say that I was the problem, that I made him unhappy, so I would do all I could to make him happy and to not set him off… But that in its self just resulted in making him unhappy too. him leaving me on the many occasions that he did, would literally come from nothing. When he first came back from working abroad, we were both temporarily unemployed. I’d had to claim some housing benefits for a short time so when he moved in with me- we had to make it a joint claim, we’d gone to find out what we needed to do and they informed me they’d have to put a stop my my claim until he’d gotten proof of any benefit he may be getting.. We knew his claim could take up to a month to be approved.. So as soon as we left I was extremely stressed at the thought of not being able to pay the rent. I didn’t lose my temper or shout, I just attempted to talk to him about how we’d manage for the next month and he instantly got angry at me saying why the f**k was I stressing and that he’d already said he’d sort it all out… He’d said he’d sort it but I needed to know how. I just wanted and needed reassurance of where and how we’d get the money to pay the rent. I tried in a number of ways to explain this believing I wasn’t being unreasonable. I was desperately trying to plicate him and calm him down and I really couldn’t see what was making him so angry. After only a few minutes he stormed off in the middle of the town center and switched his phone off.(detail removed by moderator). It felt like it was aimed at me and like he was saying I was responsible. It’s not the first time these things had happened but it’s just one of many where I’d not understand how things could escalate. Maybe I should’ve said ok leave but I tried to reason with him that what had happened shouldn’t have gotten so out of hand. Maybe i should’ve realized in the ‘discussion’ earlier that he wasn’t going to reassure me and I should’ve accepted his non rescript response strait away… Perhaps that’s what always made him so angry.
We were supposed to be getting married and he I was meant to be the love of his life, so when he was saying he was leaving me over something so tiny… I thought it was natural to try and resolve things. Eventually he was convinced to stay and later on he would say something like ‘I do love you and I never want to leave, I just wish you would act like a normal person’… I suppose from things I’ve read that his threats to leave were snippets of him trying to gain control over me. He knew saying he was going to leave would shock me into behaving in a certain way. He even openly admitted this once. On a day out once, I was heavily pregnant, hot, tired and snappy. I can easily admit that I wasn’t being the easiest person to be around that day. (detail removed by moderator) He then stormed out and when I followed him he told me it was over and he was done with me. I beat myself up something rotten for being so moody that day. Wondered if I must be a moody snappy person all the time and that I’m impossible and horrible to be with. But that wasn’t my memory of things. I mean I know I have off days but in general I thought of myself as a person who can enjoy herself and isn’t always unhappy. The following day he told me he only says it’s over with me to make me realize how I’m behaving. Is it me or does that seem a controlling statement. On reflection there were plenty of days that he was snappy and moody. Some days I would take his moodiness personally but on others I would pander to him.. Because I think people do need to be pandered to sometimes.. We can all wake up on the wrong side of the bed days can’t we? Where every little thing gets under our skin. But when I could see he was in one of those moods I would cuddle him, tickle him, cook his favorite food.. And sometimes I’d just leave him to it and ignore any stupid comments. But I wouldn’t have ever dumped him for it.
I’m not saying I expected him to pander to me. I’d have been happy if he’d let me be in a mood and then told me later that I’d been an a*s. I’d have said sorry and that I was tired.
And by total contrast he would tell
Me I was the love of his life, that he wanted to marry me and that he’d die without me. Twine he told me he’d tried to take his own life when we’d broken up and he’d realized he couldn’t live without me. So if that was true… Why did he end it the minute I put a foot out of line -
Personally I would not go near anyone who was not fully trained and conversant in DV, I had community mental health team phyciatrist out and the phyciatrist said that the service had nothing to offer me , she gave me a number of a local DV place that does councelling.
The NHS are NOT usually trained in the concepts of DV and it will really damage you if you see someone who is not trained to see it for what it is.
You are already very mixed up and blaming yourself, this untrained person will only make it worse for you, I would not go again if it were me, im so concerned (detail removed by moderator).
Do you have a local Womens aid or phone the helpline to see if they have any numbers in your area for trained DV councelling, my WA workers told em NEVER to have counclling off anyone but trained DV councellors
My Daughter saw and NHS phycologist many years ago and he told her that my husbands abuse was due to my disabilites , she still beleives that now and it has played a bit part in our relationship being damaged.
You need full validation f the abuse and his tactics which im afraid you will not get on the NHS, they are trained in a certain way and its not for DV xxxx -
Sorry I’ve waffled on again. I had a huge brake down last year when I was (detail removed by moderator) months pregnant. He’d left me for some reason and despite telling me I made his life hell and it was all my fault, he still came back bombarding me with emails and text. Some would say how much he adored me and others would totally contradict it. I couldn’t keep up and I didn’t know what to think, I couldn’t think at all and in the end I moved in with my mum for a month where she basically did everything for me. Other than coming on here, and talking to my gp I didn’t speak to anyone. I referred myself to cmht because I believed I must be really messed up in the head and that all our problems were my fault.
Sadly there isn’t any dv counciling available where I live -
Hello Starmoon,
I also will start therapy soon, I had my assessment yesterday (no one knows) and it is my DV lady who booked me. They are going to get me a counsellor who specialises in domestic abuse. I am not sure if your own counsellor is specialised as knowing what I know now I would find it totally inappropriate to speak to someone who has no knowledge in this type of situation.
You sound pretty strong to me from what I read from your posts, I believe however that the whole situation has done to you what mine did to me which is confuse you. All these situations when you have tried right down to your birthday celebration and the way it all turned into chaos…My own situation is exactly the same except for taking on a different form, a different appearance and different reactions which are however ever so so so similar.
It leaves you fully lost, you just don’t know what to think any more.
But you are strong and despite the confusion I can read some clear understanding and you don’t need to get validation from the counsellor you saw. She may well be the wrong person for you indeed. Your situation is one of domestic abuse and violence, end of!
What all of us are left with is a feeling of failure which we often take on as our own responsibility, we start questioning ourselves. And it is the questioning, the constant doubting of what WE may have done which leads to repetition, confusion and dead ends.
When you say you know you may not do things right at times, I too feel like this but it is because the abuse leads you to behave in ways you would not think of doing in normal circumstances, it almost become delusional borderline ridicule. I have said things that sounded strange, abnormal, sometimes the flow of things make you behave in strange ways or you become nasty yourself, verbally or physically and you forget about your very own boundaries. You become transformed and people may think wrong of you.
Try going again and see if your conversation with the counsellor (or psychiatrist…) starts leading somewhere. Yesterday the assessment proved useful as the lady who interviewed me concluded with a sad look on her face that my life had been full of trauma, from childhood to adulthood. Lots of abuse and witnessing strange behaviours I should not have witnessed or experienced. Lots to tell.
There is a lot to learn and the learning road is ever so long. It has taken me a year to understand the very basic, lots of reading and thinking. The final part is to think if I am safe to stay, or safer to move on. You may be at that stage among all the turmoil in your head and heart. It is a painful road, trying to understand, but one thing I know is that normal couples would not go through half what we all have gone through, the message is clear in each and every post. It is abuse, and its consequences on people like us.
Be patient and things will make sense. Don’t dishearten until you can see clearly.
Hugs xx BJ -
I know I’m not thinking clearly now. But I always used think the way in which I thought and handled things was not normal… I’d thought as I said above that his actions were controlling and abusive but perhaps you’re rite. Maybe my thought process was wrong all along and now it’s sent his head spinning too 🙁
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Taken from your post Starmoon – it helped me in the past to break it all down like this and try and look at each incident and analyse it a bit. While its going on in our lives our heads are so full of it that its hard to make sense. This is what I see as an outsider.
He’d left me for some reason and despite telling me I made his life hell and it was all my fault, he still came back bombarding me with emails and text.
Classic abuser behaviour – cycle of abuse – love – abuse.Some would say how much he adored me and others would totally contradict it.
Classic abuser behaviour – cycle of abuse – love – abuse.so I would do all I could to make him happy and to not set him off… But that in its self just resulted in making him unhappy too.
Recognise this – we can never get it right, however hard we try…I didn’t lose my temper or shout, I just attempted to talk to him about how we’d manage for the next month and he instantly got angry at me saying why the f**k was I stressing and that he’d already said he’d sort it all out… He’d said he’d sort it but I needed to know how. I just wanted and needed reassurance of where and how we’d get the money to pay the rent.
Not unreasonable of you to seek some reassurance but abusive of him to react angrily when you ask.Maybe i should’ve realized in the ‘discussion’ earlier that he wasn’t going to reassure me and I should’ve accepted his non rescript response strait away… Perhaps that’s what always made him so angry.
Still not reasonable behaviour from him…paying rent is important!I was desperately trying to plicate him and calm him down and I really couldn’t see what was making him so angry.
but he wouldn’t calm down right?
After only a few minutes he stormed off in the middle of the town center and switched his phone off.(detail removed by moderator). It felt like it was aimed at me and like he was saying I was responsible.
It was aimed at you and designed to make you feel responsibleIt’s not the first time these things had happened but it’s just one of many where I’d not understand how things could escalate.
That’s because you are at heart a resonable person and his behaviour is unreasonableOn a day out once, I was heavily pregnant, hot, tired and snappy. I can easily admit that I wasn’t being the easiest person to be around that day. (detail removed by moderator) He then stormed out and when I followed him he told me it was over and he was done with me.
A man who was not abusive would not do this, particulary to his pregnant partnerI beat myself up something rotten for being so moody that day. Wondered if I must be a moody snappy person all the time and that I’m impossible and horrible to be with. But that wasn’t my memory of things. I mean I know I have off days but in general I thought of myself as a person who can enjoy herself and isn’t always unhappy.
I spent years thinking I was a miserable old cow….but I wasn’t and I am not!The following day he told me he only says it’s over with me to make me realize how I’m behaving.
Abuser cycle again – abuse – love – abuseTo quote Lundy ‘absue is not caused by bad relationship dynamics. You can’t manage your partners abusiveness by changing your behaviour. But he wants you to think you can’..
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Thank you her in doors. And gods child as ever. I would be lost with out such feedback. I think really I know I tried for so very hard. My mum said today that i blame myself so much because I can’t make sense of so much that he did and being so low on myself… It’s easier to blame myself. One the the therapist said when I told her how fuzzy my memories had been and how I even doubted them was the trauma and also because he’s told me for so long that I’m not normal.
I keep breaking down so many situations as you say and wondering was it normal?! The more I ask people I know, the more they are shocked at what a put up with. One weekend he went out to a friends and didn’t get back until the morning. He then lay in bed throwing up until the afternoon… He often did that and on the whole I didn’t mind. I hoped that because he so often did this he wouldn’t mind so much if I ever asked him to have the children… That never was the case.. Once he had the baby while I had a bath and then bought her up after 10 minutes because she was crying and on another occasion I asked him to have them and he told me I had my priorities wrong and asking him to have the children on an evening he’d had work the next day was totally out of order and taking advantage. I didn’t see how… I said I’d put them to bed and the baby usually slept threw now anyway… And I was only going to be gone a few hours, he wouldn’t have had to do anything different to normal unless the baby woke up… But he would always say to me and his family that he believed in being equal… I told him I didn’t think I was asking anything so bad. I always have the children and obviously always have to be up early. I always do all the night feeds and never ask him to. But he was just so mad and kept saying I was selfish and I’d never understand. Anyway I’ve gone off track… (detail removed by moderator)So when we were in the car i said I didn’t want it being a late night. He hit the roof saying I had an in ability to communicate and I should’ve said there and then if I didn’t want his family to come over… And I said that wasn’t the case and I wouldn’t have been so rude. He carried on so when We got home I went for a drive but he called me up swearing his head off that I’d left him with the kids and saying I clearly planned the whole thing so I could go out with my friends. I had done no such thing and I instantly went home. He carried on and on at me all night and said I was clearly causing a fuss because I was clearly p****d off he’d been out. I really wasn’t annoyed (although I don’t know why) I hadn’t been annoyed about anything at all until how he’d spoken to me in the car when I’d felt I had done things properly. But as usual he threatened to leave me and said he could not be doing with how I bahaved.
My mum said that my dad never makes plans with others before seeing if it’s fine with her also. And if by some chance he ever did then she’d have done the same as me which would’ve been fine
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Well said herindoors, totally agree with what you have said to starmoon, it is all classic abuse to make her feel responsible, I have had all of this for decades.
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