Fighting everyday.

Hi goomba,

It's admirable that you are working hard on your mental health and doing cognitive therapy techniques despite the difficulties that you deal with everyday.

My question is, how much improvement are you getting accomplished towards yourself and your future when you are put down, insulted and made to feel inadequate by your SO? This relationship is not healthy.

Hi. I feel that verbal abuse slows my progress down and dampens my desire to continue self-improvement.

Goomba,

YOU SAID IT YOURSELF!!

I am in a verbally abusive marriage. I know for a fact, that if the man only once calls the woman names, he will do it again and again, no matter how much the woman tries to communicate to him or to change everything. I am a living example, I used to be confident and happy and had a career and seemed to have it all together BEFORE this verbal abuse. Before I married him.

But now, I lost a lot of myself. He says I'm crazy, I am starting to believe it, he says I am ugly, I am starting to see it. Even though to my loved ones, I still look the same. I feel trapped sometimes in the vicious cycle of this anger/verbal abuse pattern. Actually, I am trapped because I am married to him and we have children together plus other complications that keep me from leaving him.
I would die to be free like you with no legal stuff, no children. I would just leave and never look back.

You seem to still have a lot of hope or love for him. You are working on this relationship trying to get him to understand you , to respect you, but you say his response is "oh well". You say that both he and you are indifferent. Don't you think it's time to get out of this rut?

When you're free of someone putting you down and insulting you and disrespecting you, you can see better towards improving yourself and start making positive changes towards everything. You can't commit to working out because of his insults (I totally understand this because I am like that too, very sensitive). You stopped volunteering, you can't perform your job search because of him making you feel inadequate. What are you getting out of this relationship anyway? Doing all the chores and cleaning after his slob friends??

Think about how much more you will gain when you're out. You can go back to school if you're not happy with the career you have now, you can always get financial aide for education, you can get a job and even sign up to get into new things where you can meet people.

I can relate a lot to your situation. I have anxieties too, so i know that things are easier said than done. you have to be determined to change your situation and strive for something better. You can always PM me.

Do you think, "Once an abuser, always an abuser," or can someone learn cognitive behavioural therapy techniques from a therapist and sort out their issues enough so as to not abuse?

I don't know. I know some people change with cognitive behavioural therapy. But I don't know the success rate of it for someone who is an abuser.

Does anyone here have anything to say about this?