Iwist-
You belong here.
My story has similarities and differences to everyone here. WE all experience life differently for a variety of reasons. Those who do abuse others also experience and live their lives differently. What may be similar is the way that people can be abused--I have read the phrase- "cookie cutter behaviors" Somewhere in what you have lived are the cookie cutter behaviors. They may have come at a different time, a different rate, a different .....
I should have seen from the start,
but someone else could say they should have seen....
It doesn' t matter.
We are here because we have been hurt by people who don't show true remorse, respect, care, love and support to us.
A month ago I was begging for people to define abuse for me.....
I kept hearing something about how I felt, my interpretation, my feelings, etc. I got frustrated and wanted someone tot tell me exactly what it is.
I still can't clearly define it (I think Ilene and a few others can also I can find definitions of it) but I know what it looks like in my life.
It makes me feel like I shouldn't live.
I don't want that any more.
I don't know where my strength is coming form today and I pray that it is in me tomorrow----and every day after (but that would be too easy) ....
I want to say that what you have posted indicates that you have similar feelings of how you have been treated.
I don't want to misguide---I want you to know that you are a beautiful person with talent, skill, knowledge, abilities, beautiy, compassion, love, excitement, and so much more -----you have the right to experience that....
find your way while you are here.

I perhaps got rambling---but I want you to know that trying to hold on to who you are when someone is making it difficult is reason to be here.....

Oh my, Yellow...you hit it on the nail...people who don't show us remorse, respect, love or care...that's it! Particularly when we need it the most. They won't give it to us. It really is as simple as that. OMG it is all starting to make clear sense. I am crying my eyes out. That's what it boils down to...I tried, I tried to find out what was wrong, why he was so angry and all I got was his meanness...no concern, no care, no respect and least of all no love. Several times. That's enough...he doesn't deserve to be in my presence, let alone my mind anymore. For some reasons, your words have really struck a cord for me.

Thank you so much, Yellow...you sound amazing...please keep that feeling...be strong tomorrow.

Itwist, often a narcissistic parent will pick one child as a target for whatever reason. I was my father's target. I am not abusive.

Regarding why abusers get worse after children. My exH 'wanted' children very much. We didn't have one until 8 years after we married. He got much worse after that for several reasons, but the main one, I feel, was that he felt he didn't have to be nice anymore. I was now bound to him physically and legally. I was financially dependent, especially after the third one in a 5 year period. I worked, but my whole salary went to pay daycare expenses, literally. He thought I was stuck and so didn't care at all if he true colors showed. Even when we were together, the children were his tools and accessories, though he didn't have to play that card until I decided to leave.

We were having a fight over his incredibly selfish behavior one day while we were on vacation. I simply said to him, weakly, hopelessly, "I can't live like this anymore." He looked me in the eye with his angry reptilian eyes and said, without missing a beat: "I'll take the kids from you!" (He tried, but failed.)

I was going to add to this, then felt it had really all been answered. But I came back to it anyway, just to reassure that you DO belong here.

Whether you are willing to call it abuse or not, what he did to you left you feeling damaged, confused, questioning etc - and in need of support, which is what we are here for.

That said, I'm willing to call it abuse. He dangled your dream in front of you, but never (it would seem) intended to let you actually have it. You were to continue to work your job, as well as "helping out" (ie working) for the dream he had usurped.

Also, there is no excuse for being "mean" as he was. Whether your depression triggered something or not makes no difference. It's not like you thought "ooooh, I know what will piss him off, I reckon I'll go grab myself a good ole dose of depression!" You were suffering and needed support. At the very VERY worst, he should have been "honest" with you and said he couldn't handle your depression because of his past, or something. But the truth is, I don't believe that would have been truly honest anyway - I think it was just his excuse.

And (scuse French) a piss-poor excuse at that. You were suffering and therefore deserved to suffer more? Hardly. But that is the nature of abuse. They see when we are more vulnerable - for example, after we have got engaged or moved in together, when we fall pregnant, if we lose our job, are grieving the loss of someone close, or suffer an illness or injury. In short, any time we are vulnerable, they feel they have a greater right or greater excuse to abuse.

You deserve to be here.

My ex was nice to me for 6-7 years. We were the best of friends, I just couldn't help but feel like we were soul mates. But there were odd times that be was angry and had tantrums, and would always suggest it was stress and work, then rhe next day hed be fine. One day he started saying strange things, started talking about this invisible thing that had come between us and we wasn't on the same wave length anymore. I didn't know what he meant but this was the start of it.

During my healing I too have questioned "what did I do to trigger him?" Just like your questioning what did u do. Then I realised that I didn't trigger him or do anything to deserve that treatment. That no one deserves that treatment, no one who is respected. I realised that he had little respect for me from the start but what little respect he had he had lost it completely. Why? Because of something within him and not because of something within me!

At times of abuse my ex would outright say "you remind me of people from my past, all women are the same, they all say and do the same stuff and have similar characteristics. They all say "I'm not like the others" but they are"
The stories he told of past relationships including the one he was secretly still having with what I thought was his ex, were all horrible. He painted himself a victim and those women treated him badly. I fully believed that he had a hard time with them!

So when he was comparing me to them it hurt, really hurt and it was so confusin because I wasn't treating him like the women in his stories, in fact I was being nicer to him the more nasty he became!

I would even say "I don't know what it is that I've done but whatever it is I am TRULY sorry for it from the bottom of my heart, I just want my allan back I miss you!"

He'd get angry again, nothing worked, NOTHING!

Fast forward!! I eventually find out that his ex isn't his ex. I also find out that he has abuses her for years. Punching her hitting her, u name it he's done it (he never hit or punched me) so in fact it was HIM that was the monster, him that was the abuser. If I reminded him of is gf (fake ex) then surly it would have been because she too was a victim, was afraid of him and was trying to manage his anger and outburst just like I was!

He once told me a story of his (fake ex) who was actually his gf. He said that she used to be alright and fun when they first got together but then he pulled his face when he told me that she had a nervous break down. Then one day, out of the blue, as things were piling up on top of me, I had a breakdown, right in front of him and it was bad! I didn't lash out, I cried and completely lost all sense of who I was and where I was, what day it was and the awareness of time didn't exist! I just kept begging him "please don't do this to me anymore, please don't do it again" he pretended to not fully understand what I meant but he knew! I was asking him to not build my hopes up of us living together again but then sabotaging a deal on a house or just plain lying about a house he was buying or renting for us both to move into.

So did his ex (actual gf) actually so horribly have a nervous break down where he suffered? Nope!! She would have suffered and her mind just would have said "I'm out of here I can't handle this"

He put me through so much that mine too went "see ya I'm vacating this body" and it shut down!

Fast forward even more, looking back I can see that all those stories were of women who had enough of him. Became depressed, broke down, even one woman tried to strangle him in his sleep because she was involved in a cult and her leader had brainwashed her to do it apparently). My bet is that he wasn't asleep and she wasn't in a cult and it was more like self defence!

So all those years that he was nice to me, those 6/7 years, all that time he was hitting his gf, beating her up, having an affair behind her back with me but also dragging me into an affair that I didn't know I was in!

Was he nice? No!!! He was just nice to me because I was a novelty for a while, did I do something to trigger him? No!! The novelty wore off eventually!

U may not be able to fit him into much on that website or in bancrofts book but I can bet you any money that if you'd have stayed long enough, eventually he would have fitted into those boxes, you left in time, u left before he changed tactics, he had much worse to give given the chance and time!

Like others have said, abuse is abuse and the reasons for it doesn't make it credible or discredit it, if your being mistreated and disrespected, if your being played by a puppet master (the one in control) and if you are hurt because of their treatment towards you, ignored and strung along, then it's abuse!