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.
As I read through many posts here and try and figure out my situation and what I want to do in regards to my marriage, I see advice given to not let on to your abuser that you realize now, that they are abusing you.
Can someone explain why?
Yesterday, I posted my first post with an overview of my situation. Im learning that for the past 10+ years my husband has become increasing verbally abusive to me. It's been so subtle and gradual I barely noticed it until about 2 years ago - I saw patters of passive / aggressive behavior. He's treated me with accusations, judging, criticizing, discredits me feelings, he has tantrums and storms off if I say something that he doesn't agree with, he finds faults with my friends and family and little by little I barely see them, he tells me I overanalyze everything, asks for examples of times he's made me mad or hurt and when I give examples, he tells me thats old and in the past and why cant I just let things go....etc. After our "discussions" I ed up feeling so confused and mixed up. I realize i've become very checked out of our marriage at this point.. I just don't see our relationship going through so much transformation that it becomes one I can be happy in.
However, I am willing to keep trying, because he makes me feel guilty about breaking up our family, if I say I don't think things will work out. But no matter how many times I try and explain myself, it ends up in an argument and then a few days later the cycle begins again.
Wouldn't it help for me to show him how his behavior is abusive? Then he would know what he's working with and may agree to IC? As of now, he said he'll read books, after much prodding, but he said he doesn't feel he needs IC. Said it's ok if I want to go if I need it. He said he'll do MC again - but that didn't help the root of our problems.
I'm torn because when we got married it was for better or worse. this is definitely the worst. I know I contributed to our marriage failing because I little by little held my tongue and feelings in to avoid an argument. So I was not being up front with my feelings.
I just fee lost. I have no more feelings for him and I'm not sure I can get that back.
Can someone explain why?
Yesterday, I posted my first post with an overview of my situation. Im learning that for the past 10+ years my husband has become increasing verbally abusive to me. It's been so subtle and gradual I barely noticed it until about 2 years ago - I saw patters of passive / aggressive behavior. He's treated me with accusations, judging, criticizing, discredits me feelings, he has tantrums and storms off if I say something that he doesn't agree with, he finds faults with my friends and family and little by little I barely see them, he tells me I overanalyze everything, asks for examples of times he's made me mad or hurt and when I give examples, he tells me thats old and in the past and why cant I just let things go....etc. After our "discussions" I ed up feeling so confused and mixed up. I realize i've become very checked out of our marriage at this point.. I just don't see our relationship going through so much transformation that it becomes one I can be happy in.
However, I am willing to keep trying, because he makes me feel guilty about breaking up our family, if I say I don't think things will work out. But no matter how many times I try and explain myself, it ends up in an argument and then a few days later the cycle begins again.
Wouldn't it help for me to show him how his behavior is abusive? Then he would know what he's working with and may agree to IC? As of now, he said he'll read books, after much prodding, but he said he doesn't feel he needs IC. Said it's ok if I want to go if I need it. He said he'll do MC again - but that didn't help the root of our problems.
I'm torn because when we got married it was for better or worse. this is definitely the worst. I know I contributed to our marriage failing because I little by little held my tongue and feelings in to avoid an argument. So I was not being up front with my feelings.
I just fee lost. I have no more feelings for him and I'm not sure I can get that back.
To try and answer your original question, it's because it almost certainly won't do any good and will usually just provoke a big fight. In the book you just got, Lundy Bancroft writes that saying the word "abuse" to an abusive person is like lighting a tinderbox.
I too have some verbally abusive people in my life and have fantasized about telling them how their behavior is abusive. But I know in my heart it wouldn't do any good. Abusers don't see anything they don't want to see...and the LAST thing an abuser wants is to be accountable for his actions. And he ESPECIALLY doesn't want to be accountable to the person he is victimizing. That's like Kryptonite to an abuser.
When you're done with the Bancroft book, another book that might help you is "The Verbally Abusive Relationship" by Patricia Evans.
The more you learn about abuse, the less his awful words will be able to hurt you. You can't change him or force him to see things he doesn't want to see, so please just take good care of yourself, whatever you decide.
I moved out 8 months ago, but am doing regular contact with her and the kids, weekly marriage counselling (DO NOT DO IT), and I've been very clear about her abusive behavior. I point it out whenever I spot it, and I've gotten pretty good at spotting it.
I will say, it's hell. In many respects, worse than the years of abuse was.
Im sorry to hear what you're going through. I too have an 8 and 2 year old :) Thats what makes this so hard. The struggle between not breaking up the family and yet not having them live in this environment.
You suggest not doing what - try marriage counseling again?
Hugs to you,
Also, you mentioned earlier that you felt partly responsible because you didn't speak up earlier. But isn't that because you knew if you spoke up, it would just provoke a fight? I'm assuming you've learned through painful, first-hand experience how angry he can get when you try to stand up for yourself. So under those circumstances, it's understandable if you didn't want to speak up. You were put in an impossible position.
Our circumstances were so very different than yours. We were married for 37 years. We didn't have kids for 10 years because he didn't want kids till then. Those first 10, actually 15 years, because of all the stuff I got to do and places I went were terrific.
It seemed to be after the kids were born, even 5 years after that before he started getting abusive. I honestly believe it was the kids that triggered him. He had such a horrific childhood between his 2 parents. They used to involve him in their knock down drag out fights. He could have been way worse.
He was not as abusive as a lot of the people up here have been through.
I stayed with him till he died of cancer. It was quick , thank goodness. Honestly, right now, I am exactly where I want to be. My kids have good jobs and are happy. I love them to death, I am living where I want to live and I just would not change a thing. I like how things turned out. I just got lucky.
I wish you the very best. Think long and hard. I am 64, I'm sure you are way younger. That makes a huge difference also.
((((((((((((((((((((((((HUGS)))))))))))))))))))))
My ex was mr amazing for 6 years! SIX YEARS! That's how long he wore that mask! (We were together for 14 years)
Now I am away from him, he's no longer in my life and for the last 12 months I've not seen him or attempted to contact him (he has contacted me but not me contacting him) and with time, space and healing I've been able to review the early years and I can tell you, there were times his real self would show up and it was so unlike this lovely guy that I dismissed it as an off week etc etc! Because the man I feel in love with was totally the opposite of an abuser, he would even say so himself that he hated bullies etc etc!
All the morals I loved him for he turned out to break every single one of those morals, and they were his own (obviously not, he stole them from me!)
These people, they are con artists!
He conned you.
The trouble with abusers, once again, is that they are not like us. They will often wait until they have you firmly locked into the relationship before they take their mask off. For some it could be as much time as until after your wedding. For others, if they sense that they have a particularly easily-influenced victim, it could be less. Weeks or months.
Either way, there is next to no way you could have seen what was coming. Education helps, but abusers are such convincing actors, liars, and con artists, that even education is sometimes not enough to enable a person to detect an abuser when they are in the honeymoon 'entrapment' phase of luring a victim.
PLEASE do not feel bad. We all here have thought the best of someone, only to find that that same person heaped abusive treatment on us however long after they hooked us in. It is so important to realise that this is no amateur performance, and we didn't "fall for it". It was calculated and designed to work. The shame is the abuser's!!
If I had a dollar for every person besides myself who was taken in by my husband's act, I would be a rich woman - it worked on them too!
Hope it helps xx
Kaz and Rock - I appreciate your positive, encouraging words. Kaz-Im wondering if you guys had children? I ask because Im scared that if I divorce him, how will he treat our girls? Will he bad mouth me to them? Will he lose his patience when he's with them? I get sick at the thought of the times he'll have them alone and I wont be with them. That part I hate the most.
Hugs,
My husband is at a counseling appointment right now. He is reading about covert depression in me. He has finally come to understand and agree that his pot use is inhibiting his progress and has given it up. He wants to keep separate beds until we are both more secure so we don't bury the issues under sex again. That has been our pattern before, to fall back into honeymooning when facing the issues became uncomfortable. Neither of us is blaming the other for being where we are. It is just a big mess that needs to get cleaned up.
So I might be engaged in wishful thinking. He might be coming me. Or he might be growing, working and changing. What I do know is that I've spent the past year telling him when he's being abusive. It hasn't improved until recently, but it hasn't gotten worse by confronting him either.
Then again, he never engaged in those precursors to physical violence, throwing or breaking things, punching walls....those threatening behaviors. So that might be the dividing line.
But know this, even if he was in my child's life I would still have gone NC with him (or minimal contact). Still would have ended things because what children learn is the difference between a stable and healthy environment and an unstable one.
I will always provide healthy and stable and my child will have that to have her standards to go off. If my ex would have been in my child's life then he would have shown my child what was wrong by comparison to her other way of living!
Abusive people literally do become their own undoing eventually!
Live your life in honour and morals, be proud of them, if he chooses to not live like that then that's his choice but the kids, although will get to see it, will also see the other side that u can provide them and they'll instinctively know what the right way is to live!
My dad was most probably a narcisisst, and he thought it would be a good idea to bad mouth our mum to us both. I was young maybe 4-5 years old my sister older maybe 11-12 years old.
I can't remember what he said about her but both me and my sister came home in a right state, I remember crying as was my sister! We both said we didn't want to see him again. My mother was fuming with my dad, but she sat us down and told us that what my dad was doing was wrong and he shouldn't be upsetting us. I remember she said we wouldn't see him again and we said "no don't do that" because I think we felt we were telling on him to our mum but what actually happened was both of us never really did become close to our dad!
As the years went on we saw more of how bitter he was and negative. My mum on the other hand, positive, caring and loving, a good mum.
My dad killed himself eventually, not much of a narcisist thing to do but he did it in a selfish way I feel. Took out pictures of me and my sister that he had and ripped them up before he killed himself, things like that. It's sad that he had to be so bitter but he drive his family away all by himself. He probably felt alone (and sorry for himself) and blamed us (his kids) for that (hence why he ripped up our pictures) but the truth is that we would have happily been in his life more, been close to him if he had treated us like a father should have.
Like I said, abusive people end up loosing out in the end!
Just because they may say bad things doesn't mean heir children will always listen!