Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group
Abuse is a general term for the treatment of someone that causes some kind of harm (to the abused person, to the abusers themselves, or to someone else) that is unlawful or wrongful. No one deserves abuse, period. Abuse can be emotional, physical, or sexual.
hey all
The last time I shared here i received too many responses telling me to quit my partner. Although I entirely support that decision or someone who much do that. I believe that in my case, we right now, neither am I ready to leave, nor do I think it is entirely hopeless as my partner is working on change and has shown progress.
I want to be on this forum to be able to face it and find ways to deal with it as I am presently still in it and its not the easiest thing or even my first option right now to leave my man, whom I do love and who loves me a lot.
W do as many abusers do, have had rocky childhood and past and are often unconscious of the effects of the damage we are creating on each other.
We haven't had big fights in a while, yet last night we did. We have worked very hard on our marriage and things have gotten much better now.
Seeing recognizing and refraining from pushing the buttons or triggers for our spouses have really helped us to stay in love and calm to keep the understanding clear. Often we email each other about our concerns instead of talking as often non-verbal cues during talks (raised voice) and others often lead to escalation and a big fight and the issue gets too sensitive to touch or doe not get resolved effectively. I am reading literature about abuse and can see that both me and my partner can be very abusive and not intentionally. Its because o our wounded emotional aspects and inner child issues.
So I am opening this thread to deal with some of the triggers and behaviours that escalate it for us. I realized last night that some of the horrible things he says during fights did not affect me at all! I actually felt thankful for letting me see how stronger I have gotten on the inside. Yet some of his behaviours which are 'crazy making' 'making fun-ridiculing psycho' type behaviours completely make me lose my control and I start yelling and raging and get highly agitated and feel like physically hurting him.
He also instinctively places blame on me and distorts everything to look like its my fault and aims to WIN the battle and destroy his opponent 9who is his loving wife) but an opponent in the moment to him and instead of helping resolve he goes into supercombat mode.
Some of his tactics have been failing although others get me like a needle in a rear and I jump up in pain and rage.
He certainly provokes and escalates and feels controlled afraid and cornered or slighted too easily. We have learnt to communicate better and it has helped.
When he feels victimized and supervictimized everything I do looks like abuse to him while HE IS THE ABUSER and brings out aspects of that in me as I am trying to defend myself. He constantly outs me down, dismisses my opinions thoughts of feelings, interrupts (or interject) as he calls it and my trying to face up to it by trying to talk face to face has led to bad combats where he provoked me too much and then has the cops on me because I was grabbing him and in pain about how he could treat me that way and ended up grabbing his face and shoulders and neck (inadvertently) this was about an year ago. Immediately I thought O-Oh he misunderstood. He did and cried that I am trying to strangulate him and called the cops on me!
Months later he was still trying to take revenge by stating he is choking me 9I never said any such thing when the previous incident happened as I didn't intend anything like that) and came over to grab at my neck and pressed it). Now he brings up that incident which is a sore spot for us and conveniently forgets that he made a deliberate act of course as a revenge) and also keeps insisting on his misunderstanding. It has traumatized me to have the cops called on me. And he often scared me to think I would be considered the abuser if I act out. But he emotionally abuses me. Now it does not work so much as I don't really believe him. Yet one can see just how manipulative and 'turning-the tables-on-me) kind of guy he is.
He has gotten better now and so have I.
We are facing our issues and healing and if it comes to leaving this marriage it might happen in a time when we are ready. Yet I believe we are also ready to see each others points of view set our bounderies, NOT believe lies from partner and all the justifications just crumble and abusive behaviours do reduce or come to an end sometimes for a long period of time. Yet I am open for help on dealing with this and resolving it. If you see my posts on the jealousy forum, one can tell that I have some issues as well and have hurt him with my severe jealousy that I am working on healing.
Thanks for listening and I am open to suggestions (anything but just leave him or he should leave you). I am open to suggestions about communicating understanding and healing. I believe that any body can be rehabilitated if they are willing to change.
Also if I attracted this behaviour, unless I change my response to it I might attract it again.
PS: I am clearly not condoning staying with an abusive partner. Please by all means thats fine and even necessary.
I am asking for help in situations where the partners want to stay together and heal. Thanks
The last time I shared here i received too many responses telling me to quit my partner. Although I entirely support that decision or someone who much do that. I believe that in my case, we right now, neither am I ready to leave, nor do I think it is entirely hopeless as my partner is working on change and has shown progress.
I want to be on this forum to be able to face it and find ways to deal with it as I am presently still in it and its not the easiest thing or even my first option right now to leave my man, whom I do love and who loves me a lot.
W do as many abusers do, have had rocky childhood and past and are often unconscious of the effects of the damage we are creating on each other.
We haven't had big fights in a while, yet last night we did. We have worked very hard on our marriage and things have gotten much better now.
Seeing recognizing and refraining from pushing the buttons or triggers for our spouses have really helped us to stay in love and calm to keep the understanding clear. Often we email each other about our concerns instead of talking as often non-verbal cues during talks (raised voice) and others often lead to escalation and a big fight and the issue gets too sensitive to touch or doe not get resolved effectively. I am reading literature about abuse and can see that both me and my partner can be very abusive and not intentionally. Its because o our wounded emotional aspects and inner child issues.
So I am opening this thread to deal with some of the triggers and behaviours that escalate it for us. I realized last night that some of the horrible things he says during fights did not affect me at all! I actually felt thankful for letting me see how stronger I have gotten on the inside. Yet some of his behaviours which are 'crazy making' 'making fun-ridiculing psycho' type behaviours completely make me lose my control and I start yelling and raging and get highly agitated and feel like physically hurting him.
He also instinctively places blame on me and distorts everything to look like its my fault and aims to WIN the battle and destroy his opponent 9who is his loving wife) but an opponent in the moment to him and instead of helping resolve he goes into supercombat mode.
Some of his tactics have been failing although others get me like a needle in a rear and I jump up in pain and rage.
He certainly provokes and escalates and feels controlled afraid and cornered or slighted too easily. We have learnt to communicate better and it has helped.
When he feels victimized and supervictimized everything I do looks like abuse to him while HE IS THE ABUSER and brings out aspects of that in me as I am trying to defend myself. He constantly outs me down, dismisses my opinions thoughts of feelings, interrupts (or interject) as he calls it and my trying to face up to it by trying to talk face to face has led to bad combats where he provoked me too much and then has the cops on me because I was grabbing him and in pain about how he could treat me that way and ended up grabbing his face and shoulders and neck (inadvertently) this was about an year ago. Immediately I thought O-Oh he misunderstood. He did and cried that I am trying to strangulate him and called the cops on me!
Months later he was still trying to take revenge by stating he is choking me 9I never said any such thing when the previous incident happened as I didn't intend anything like that) and came over to grab at my neck and pressed it). Now he brings up that incident which is a sore spot for us and conveniently forgets that he made a deliberate act of course as a revenge) and also keeps insisting on his misunderstanding. It has traumatized me to have the cops called on me. And he often scared me to think I would be considered the abuser if I act out. But he emotionally abuses me. Now it does not work so much as I don't really believe him. Yet one can see just how manipulative and 'turning-the tables-on-me) kind of guy he is.
He has gotten better now and so have I.
We are facing our issues and healing and if it comes to leaving this marriage it might happen in a time when we are ready. Yet I believe we are also ready to see each others points of view set our bounderies, NOT believe lies from partner and all the justifications just crumble and abusive behaviours do reduce or come to an end sometimes for a long period of time. Yet I am open for help on dealing with this and resolving it. If you see my posts on the jealousy forum, one can tell that I have some issues as well and have hurt him with my severe jealousy that I am working on healing.
Thanks for listening and I am open to suggestions (anything but just leave him or he should leave you). I am open to suggestions about communicating understanding and healing. I believe that any body can be rehabilitated if they are willing to change.
Also if I attracted this behaviour, unless I change my response to it I might attract it again.
PS: I am clearly not condoning staying with an abusive partner. Please by all means thats fine and even necessary.
I am asking for help in situations where the partners want to stay together and heal. Thanks
And the only other option if that if he or she doesn't treat the children well then contacting social services (it's what we have in UK don't know what you have in US) and reporting the parent is the only option you have.
I will tell u a story.
My ex before he was my ex once said whilst I was rubbing nappy rash cream into my daughter
"Is that nice"
Which didn't seem odd because it must have felt nice and soothing as it cold down her rash but then after this he then said
"Can daddy have a go?"
I looked at home and repeated what he said in a tone of voice as if to say "what did u just say", all he did was laugh it off, I didn't.
So I went and bought a hidden camera. At the time he was regularly baby sitting our daughter (we didn't live together) and I was so afraid that he would do something to her like potentially sexually abuse her or something like that and I needed to make sure she was ok.
I didn't have the confidence nor the proof that he was or would do something so I didn't feel justified in myself to bring it to attention and confront him or change the fact that he spent time alone with her as I was accusing almost in my mind that he was abusing her or planned to.
I filmed him three times and never caught him doing anything but if I would have I would have gone to the police for sure!
Anyway as it turns out I've noticed (via hearing and seeing things) that he say perverted things to his two teenage daughters, making references to their bums and breath and calling them names in a "it's only a joke way" like fat and sluts etc.... The are 17 and 15 and this has been going in from what I've found out for a long time!
So yes it's scary and you just never know but I am
So glad my daughter isn't in the position as his other two are who live with him and are there 24/7.
Every abuser is different, but if during visitation an ex abused a child/children and something can be done about it, we are no longer powerless in this day and age!
My feeling is that you are both adults with your own choices, and if you both know what you are gettiing into, then any advice you get here or elsewhere may not mean anything. It may be difficult for you to get much supportive advice here, especially since you have stated there is a physical abuse component. Please understand that any physical abuse of hitting, punching, or choking could very likely escalate into murder, and none of us wants to hear about that, and that is why most people will tell you to break it off. To most people on this board, what you are asking sounds like "How do I go to war and not get killed?" You need to make sure you are comfortable with the idea that this is very serious, and healing yourselves or this relationship will be extremely diffiuclt.
Since you already state you to want to work on this relationship, here is my advice:
1) THERAPY. I am sensing that both your husband and youself have very serious issues from childhood, with serious ramifications such as personality disorders, PTSD, or mental illness. There is no shame in that, but you MUST (I cannot stress that enough) seek therapy from a trained professional. The therapy will be intense and difficult at times. And the therapy is not something you can do for just a few weeks and be "better"; this is something that both you and your husband will need for years, if not the rest of your lives. I am not trying to be negative - just realistic here. Think of an addict - they have to constantly work on being sober otherwise they fall back into the same addictive traps.
2) Even if you say you don't want people to tell you to leave, I will tell you to always remember that leaving is always an option to protect yourself. leaving does not mean you don't love him, or that you don't want to heal things between you two. It simply means you have to get away to protect your life. Often, the healing has to take place when you are apart, and you can revisit the realtionship sometime in the future.
3) Make sure you have your own resources and life outside of him. Your own friends, interests, etc. Maintain your own identity. This will be important for the times when things get rough (and they will get rough again). You may need something to fall back on, but also even when things are going okay you need your own identity to keep the stress low and keep from focusing on what he is doing to piss you off. And remember, he is an individual who is just like you, and needs his own life, too.
I'm in a similar confusing situation myself right now in which half of me just wishes was 100% over, and the other half recognizes the desire within my partner to heal herself, and I want to be there to support her. You can send me a private message if you want to discuss it further.
I pretty much still think this it's a ridiculous request to ask for support/advice on staying in an abusive relationship!
I was under the impression that this group was to get support/advice with leaving abuse.
I think your post is actually preposterous!