I've just woken up to the fact that my husband of 15 years has been covertly verbally abusing me from about 3 months after we got together!
It has been so sneaky and subtle.
I knew all along that something wasn't right, but I thought it was me just being too sensitive when he lost his temper/ shouted/ accused me/ ignored me/gave me the silent treatment/made me financially dependent on him/tried to control me.
It all sounds very obvious now in retrospect but it developed so gradually over the years I didn't know it.
Last week a minor disagreement blew up till he was screaming at me (with miss12 in the house at the time) and accusing me of being a selfish mum because I decided to go to work for a few hours on a Sunday without telling him.
This time I suddenly knew that this was abuse.
So I found a book online by an author called Patricia Evans, who has written a series of books on the subject of men who verbally abuse their partners.
In the first few years of our relationship he was physically violent towards me on about 5/6 occasions. But he stopped that after I started fighting back and hitting him back in self defence.
Reading PE's book has really woken me up to what has been going on. So many bells rang as I read it, I had so many flashbacks of occasions where he was being subtly abusive, and tears flowed as I realised what has been happening for all these years.
He is a good dad, a good provider and he is reliable and trustworthy.
Now I'm feeling grief (for the loss of what I thought was my future) and shock and I'm scared because I think this means I have to leave him.
That won't be easy as we have built a life together and are closely entwined both on a personal/family level but also in business.
Also I'm scared to tell him I want to leave because I fear his reaction. He is scary when he's mad and has a vicious toungue.
I've decided to leave in 11 month's time once our daughter is settle into her new senior school.
In the mean time I have to find a way to co-exist with him. I don't want to share a bed with him anymore but if I move to the spare room he will freak out.
He is very demanding sexually so if I don't put out he will know something is wrong. But I'm so sick of having sex with him because he is selfish in bed.
I have to say that sometimes our relationship is good. We do have or have had a lot of fun over the years and we have been through some extremely hard times together where we have supported each other too.
I'm not planning on telling him I am leaving him until the very last minute because I'm scared of how he will react.
So now I have to carry this secret around with me For the next 11 months and I dont know how I'm going to do it.
I'm terrified.
I want to tell my mum about this but she will freak out too.
Any advice or supportive comments would be very much appreciated.
Sorry for the long story and thank you for reading it.
Namaste x
3 Replies
Contact 1800 respect or another DV service in your area. They will be able to help you make your plan and get everything sorted for when you are ready to leave. They will also be able to organise counselling for you and give you tools to help you cope.
My ex was abusive, and 16 years later he still doesn’t understand why I left. I’m actually surprised he’s still with his current wife. After me, and before her, there was a new woman every year or two, sometimes every month. I suspect each of those women saw very quickly how he was still treating me, despite him telling them it was all my fault.
My advice to you, is to be single for at least a couple of years after you do leave. Take time to heal from all these years of abuse. Let your daughter see that it’s okay to be single, that you don’t need a man to support you. Then when you are ready to move on, take it slow. If they are worth it, they won’t have an issue with going slow to gain your trust.
You say he's a good dad but he acts this way in front of your child. That is not a good dad.
Sorry hun but you need to get out as soon as possible. Do not wait 11 months. Your daughter will settle just fine. It will actually better for her if she is not witnessing this anymore.
Leave now. I was with my verbally and physically abusive husband for 13 years. I decided to leave him around 8 years in, but I kept putting it off for 5 years. I wanted to wait until after one of the kid’s birthdays or after Christmas or until I’d saved some money, etc. Trust me when I say that you’ll keep finding excuses to stay. The decision was taken out of my hands when one of my husband’s meltdowns happened in front of our friends. Once he sobered up and cooled down he was mortified that people knew what he was like, after years of keeping up a particular image outside of our house, while terrorising everyone in our house in secret. It gave me the push and confidence I needed to ask him to move out and get some counselling. The shock of embarrassing himself in front of our friends made him agree. If that hadn’t happened I can’t imagine I’d have ever really left and, if I’d attempted to, I don’t think it would have went well. Even though he complied and moved out to start counselling, it had no effect and he very quickly started trying to manipulate his way back in. You need to be prepared to cut your husband off completely- physically and emotionally. He is likely going to threaten suicide- it’s one of the only things they have left once you take back control. That was something that almost made me cave and let him move back in. I started to feel sorry for him crying on the phone all the time and threatening to kill himself. I didn’t want it to happen and be my fault. Then a counsellor explained to me that he was just trying to get his control back and it would be very unlikely he would follow through with it, but even if he did it wouldn’t be my fault. I took this on board and started ignoring his threats, even going as far as to say- well, if that’s what you feel you have to do. He snapped out of it very quickly then, as he knew he’d lost me. Within weeks he had a new girlfriend to control and I was free. There was still a very long and difficult custody battle, as he suddenly wanted full custody just to spite me, even though he’d never really been involved with the kids. Having a diary and detailing everything you can, with dates, as others have suggested, definitely helps with court. The biggest reason I stayed so long was the kids, but I cannot stress enough how much they changed, for the better, once my toxic husband was out of the house. I really hope you manage to get out, and soon. Feel free to message me if you need help.