Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group

Planning things with my exH was always fraught with difficulty. If we were packing to go somewhere, he would suddenly have some work that he 'needed to finish up'. And it would take hours. I would meanwhile keep myself occupied cleaning the house, doing laundry, in some cases, preparing meals for the kids and putting them down for their naps. Later on, sometimes preparing yet another meal while we waited for Daddy. And then very late in the evening, he would be done and announce that we could go. Kid in their jammies, past bedtime, and we're just getting in the car to drive to where we will spend the night, when we should have spent the whole day there already. And if I would complain, he would blame it on me, saying that I spent too much time working in the kitchen instead of getting ready to go (when I had already done 100% of the packing). This kind of thing happened all the time, no exceptions, no matter what I would try to do ahead of time to avoid it. I SOOOOOOOO don't miss that. It was so stressful.

Yeah, I get this all the time too.

Only the other week, he promised to take me to the cinema to see this film I said I liked. I wasn't holding my breath that it would all go flawlessly ... and so it proved.

He started working in the garden an hour before we were supposed to leave the house. Then, when I've got myself ready and tell him time is ticking by, he comes in and says 'Well, my hands are really dirty and I haven't taken a shower yet, so ...'

We missed the showing he said we could go to. Typical. Then we had a date with some friends in the afternoon, so he said we could catch the 'evening' show to make up for it. Yeah, whatever...

We go to our friends, have a nice time, then after we leave I say, 'Shall we go straight to the cinema or eat dinner first?' He doesn't answer, but starts talking about how neat our friends' house is compared to ours.

In the end, he punished me for not keeping our house as tidy as theirs by refusing to go with me to the film. Can you believe it? Not only that, but he completely crapped all over his previous nice gesture of saying he wanted to take me t the pictures by yelling, 'I've been telling you to go and see that sodding film on your own for the past two weeks! Why didn't you go then and I wouldn't have to think about taking you now?'

Honestly, words fail me...

One of the reasons my partner has abandoned me is because we don't do anything together. For five years he has made all the arrangements for our leisure time. At the very beginning we did things that we both wanted to do then slowly whenever I had made the choice of what to do, he would cause an argument beforehand so we couldn't go.

He would then fire questions at me asking what I wanted to do. Then when I told him, he'd always do something to make sure we couldn't do it. Or he'd twist it around so we'd end up doing what he wanted.

So I stopped asking for things I wanted to do completely and since then, for years, we have always followed his plans. He would still shout at me occasionally for having no get up and go and for leaving all the plans up to me.

Then he stopped making plans. Apart from once or twice over the last year we haven't really done anything together.

Now he's dumped me, he's shouting at me that we never do anything together.

NewStart -----

Your profile says, (and I quote):

It's slowly sinking in and i'm
accepting it


Are you?


What you've described in
just a few paragraphs is
textbook emotional abuse.

(As long as you're with an
abuser, you'll be abused.)

There are two reasons
for an abuser's inconsistancy:

One is to make sure their own
whims are always met. For us,
sometimes we do things we've
promised to do, even though
we may not feel like doing it
at that moment. An abuser
doesn't feel that obligation.

The second is to ensure that
their victim is kept OFF-BALANCE.
Consistancy inspires trust. Inconsistency
results in uncertainty. Keeping a victim
off-balance and uncertain is an abuser's
bread and butter strategy.

Sending you wishes and prayers
for all good thing.

Take good care!