My history, and how my abuser's changing, for the better

Hello all,

I've been a member here for a couple weeks now, I think I might hang around. I'm going to give my history here, but break it down into readable chunks. I hate huge long posts, I find them hard to read and most often just don't bother. People should use punctuation, and paragraphs: it's only polite

I came here looking for help for my own situation, and in the meantime I've read a long list of hugely helpful books via Am@z0n (some are not helpful, and I discard those pretty quick).

I'll introduce myself, in a nutshell, but some details have been changed to protect my identity, should anyone connected to me somehow stumble across this forum (abusers, being controllers, are very good at spying on their victims: internet browsing history must be cleared, caches cleared, emails sent very carefully, etc. You leave footprints everywhere you go on the Net, remember that, and clean up behind you).

I'm female, in my 50s. I've been verbally abused all my life (I now recognise). I'm not a "victim", I'm actually a very assertive, forthright, upfront, confident person, with a BA. I'm educated, I'm upper middle class.

I've still been subjected to lifelong abuse. It can happen to anyone, and if you don't realise it's happening, it will continue all your life.

It started, of course, in childhood. My mother is not a nice person: she is the most selfish, aggressive, unpleasant person I think I've ever met. She emotionally & verbally abused her 3 daughters, and is now abusing her grandchildren. I protect them as much as I can, but I can't get my sisters to see what's happening. They are "indoctrinated", if you will, as I was. Because this way of mothering was all I'd ever known, and I had no other role models, and I was isolated from other children and their healthy families, I never realised what was going on was so very very wrong.

It's not as simple as "just leave". If you're a child, you have nowhere else to go.


A lot of forums are very cliquey, very unfriendly if you don't follow their exact rules, their way of doing things. I don't hold with that kind of behaviour. Forum means "public meeting place", not "private club for clones"

I think I feel at home here. It's been a lifeline, to be honest, to find other people who're experiencing what I am

Thanks again. I'll continue below ...

-- Mon Mar 04, 2013 10:06 am --

I left home as soon as I could, which meant NOT going to university (we had no money for me to do that, and I was never encouraged to be clever: quite the opposite), but getting a job. I found a room in a guy's house.

It wasn't a life though. I failed to make good relationships, because I always ended up with abusers. My bosses were abusers too!

I thought it was me, and in a way it was. My mother had trained me how to cope with abuse, and to stick with it. Whereas normal healthy people would take off at the first sign, the first nasty comments, me I knew how to take it, how to let it flow over me.
I also believed, deep down, that I deserved it.
If I wasn't a bad person, this abuse wouldn't happen to me. It must be my fault. I'd never heard of verbal abuse until 3 months ago, half a century after it started. What a waste of my life.

I wanted a steady career, I wanted never to live back home, so I stayed with my abusive bosses (it was company culture to be "bossy" and it was considered appropriate in business to be aggressive) for 6 years, until I was made redundant. At the same time, I got cancer, and then depression. I was in my mid 20s.

So now I had no supportive family, no job, and my health was ruined. Because I lost my job, I also lost my home, and my partner (I realised he would be unsupportive through my illness, so I dumped him). He was selfish, had affairs, and ridiculed me personally and sexually. He made me ashamed of myself. At this time I recognised that people were mistreating me, but I had come to believe I deserved no better: why didn't a good man pick me up? Why did I always hook up with men who turned into abusers? It must be something I was doing, something I was.

Over the next few years, through my 20s and 30s and 40s, I bounced from one bad relationship to another, from one temporary unfulfilling job to another. I was now disabled by my cancer, so I had an even slimmer job pickings.

I'd never had a safety net, never had anyone to show me what life SHOULD be like. I knew mine was bad, but didn't know how to fix it.
I'd never had parents, I'd never been parented. My mother was an alcoholic and she abused her kids, and she hooked up with men who treated us the same. Thankfully we were never sexually abused, but we got everything else: punches, slaps, hair pulled, spat at, called disgusting names, ridiculed if we read books, made to feel ashamed of our bodies. I went through life feeling ugly and fat, because my mother constantly referred to my big nose, big forehead, big butt (they're not, actually!). I look back on photos of the young me, and I was pretty hot, actually. I can now see she felt jealous of, and threatened by, me.

-- Mon Mar 04, 2013 10:23 am --

From reading books about abuse (I'll list my favourites in a minute), I can now recognise how I came to be repeatedly targeted by abusive men (and a few women, my bosses).

I am a very fair, forgiving person. I always give to others before myself. I am charitable, generous. I grew up believing the fairytale "if you are good, good will come to you".
I was a soft target for abuse. I took it, and took it, and took it. I never retaliated and I didn't feel I had the resources to fight back.

I needed my job, so I didn't argue. I took the abusive comments, the unfair shifts, the personal insults. I took it all, and it continued. Because everyone I met treated me badly, I felt I must deserve it. Nobody told me that I didn't (because I didn't have a supportive network, no supportive family, no money to get me out of bad situations).

I've been poor all my life. If I'd at least been financially independent, I wouldn't have had to put up with this much sh!t.
Being badly disabled at 25, I've never had the pick of the jobs, I've had to take the scraps left behind.

We were poor at home, despite having two parents working, because they drank every penny that came in the house. They didn't save money, they didn't spend a penny on us kids. It all went on alcohol. We didn't have friends, as kids, because we had no money to join clubs, no money to socialise with friends who were going bowling, or the cinema, or to concerts. We went nowhere. We had to stay indoors and be closely supervised by alcoholic controlling "parents".

We had no friends, to speak of. Our clothes were old-fashioned, cast offs, and we stank of cigarette smoke. Our hair didn't get washed or combed, and we had no toys to share. Other children rejected us, their parents didn't want them mixing with us smelly kids whose parents were drunks. No friends ever came to our house and we weren't invited to anyone else's house.

So now, when I'm told by those who don't understand, "just leave", it makes me furious.

If I could have left, I would. But I have always, through poverty, been reliant on myself and only myself, and whatever work I could scrape up. I've never been able to own my own home, because I have no money. I'm always having to rent in the poorest places, and live amongst the "low life": alcoholics, junkies, other people who've been let down by everyone around them.

I took myself off to college and got my degree, in my forties. It wasn't a good college, and the degree is pretty worthless, now that you need a college degree simply to work in McDonalds.

My only way out of poverty, it seemed, was to marry a rich man. How was that going to happen? I'd dated dozens of men, all of them selfish or feckless, none of them cared about me, just what they could get out of me.
I stayed with them because I didn't think I could do any better.

I left them, because I wanted to do better. None of my relationships lasted more than a year, because I'd take and take the abuse, then bail out, only to fall for another man who turned out to be an abuser.
Why?

because abuse and selfishness was all I'd ever known, and because deep down I felt I deserved no better. Nobody in my life had ever told me I was worth more.

For the last decade, I've stuck with the same man. He has a good job (I don't, mine is very low paid). I decided I could be poor and lonely and abused, or I could have financial security (and heating!) and be lonely & abused.

I've stuck with it, for ten years now, determined to make this relationship better, to make it work. I'm running out of time: I'm nearly 60.

I've tried everything to make this relationship better: I've tried being more submissive, more feminine, more housewifey. Nothing works, I still get called "useless f*cking c*nt" and "b!tch" from time to time. I still have no money of my own, to get out and live alone, it's impossible. Welfare has been cut off, there is literally nowhere for me to go. Government will not pay me to live on welfare, and my job is so low paid that I couldn't support myself. Shelters are full, and I'd have to give up my beloved pets if I left this relationship. They are the only real friends I have, I could not leave them.

So, what?
I'm not being passive, I'm still working on "making it work". I've read a huge amount, and this year the lightbulb went on for me.
I realised I was being chronically abused; I realised I didn't deserve it. I wasn't worthless.

I've made myself a long-term plan: it may come to nothing, but I have hope.

I've also learned some useful tools to deal with the abuse when it comes from my partner. Instead of taking it passively, crying, pleading, or begging, I now say "I'm not staying here to be shouted at", and I get my coat, my 2nd hand iPod and the dog, and I go for a long walk. When I get back, he's usually forgotten what he was irate about.

I can now recognise the warning signs of abuse, well before it kicks off: he will become sullen and his face will look like thunder, he'll ignore me or else be very short and snappy to me. I see the warning signs, and I go walk the dog, whatever the weather. If it's raining, we go read a book in the pub for an hour, nursing a black coffee.

It's not fair that I should have to go out in the cold when it's HIM that's being abusive: but I can't change him. I can only change my own response to him.

It doesn't always work, and I have been hit twice in the last month, but it wasn't hard. He instantly denies it happened, of course, or tells me I was exaggerating what happened. I don't get emotional about it now: I just tell him clearly and calmly that he DID hit me, and I won't forget it. He shouldn't forget it either (he is very conveniently forgetful when he behaves badly).

He is now having insight into his behaviour. He is now quick to calm himself down, and to apologise. Because I now won't get drawn into an argument (which is how he lets off steam), he has nobody to take it out on. I have left the house. He now has to think about his anger, and redirect or diffuse it.
He is now quick to apologise, and to understand what he did wrong. He now admits that the anger isn't usually at me, or about me, but that I am an easy target (because I take it and don't leave him, I have unwittingly given him permission to abuse me; because I don't call the police when he hits me, he knows how much he can dish out without getting into trouble).

I have, in a way, shut my emotions off. This is a sad thing, but emotions were just upsetting me even more. I am now quite calm & calculating: I can see what is happening (he's losing his rag) and I can detach my own emotions from it (it isn't fair! I'm crying! I'm begging! I love you! Why are you hating me!). I can now view the situation and detach from it, and deal with it calmly and unemotionally. I see the signs (temper) and I remove myself (go for a walk).

Now that he can see he's not able to draw me into an argument (which I can't win anyway), he is trying it on much less. We've now had a whole week without any shouting, which is a world record.

He's not trying to coerce me into things I don't want to do. I don't want to be joined at the hip to him, and go to his boring awful work functions, so I just don't go (there'd always be a row beforehand, and afterwards, and tears from me, because he was nervous about functions, and he didn't know how to deal with emotions. All he knows is anger. He is a MAN, men don't have emotions!) He is now realising that HE doesn't have to attend these things either, if he doesn't want to.

It's not fair, it's not ideal, but it's the best I can do. I'm still not getting my emotional needs met, but I'm not being passive, I am in fact taking control of the situation. I have nowhere to go, I can't "just leave". If I could, I would have, years ago.

I'm no longer always trying to please him, pacify him, I don't buy him small gifts, cook his favourite foods (he doesn't do that for me). I guess I am now "working to rule" ! I'm doing the basic housewife duties, keeping the house clean, but I'm no longer busting my balls to please him. I'm spending time on what I want to do. I will not go to his work functions, or out with his friends, I will go off and join a needlework club, or just walk round some lovely gardens.

One of my biggest faults, I now see, was always trying to please. I'd always go the extra mile, give away my last penny, give up my time for others. It didn't get returned to me: I was just taken advantage of. That has now stopped. It makes me sad for the human race, to realise that people really ARE that selfish, that they DO take advantage of, and abuse, other people, and that good people won't stand up to them and stop the abuse. People don't want to get involved, they don't want to interfere. I'm on my own.

-- Mon Mar 04, 2013 11:03 am --

- Control & Power, S.Horley
- Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out, P.Evans
- The Verbally Abusive Relationship, P.Evans
- Why Does He Do That?, Lundy Bancroft
- Living With the Dominator, P.Craven


I've read dozens & dozens of books, but these are the ones are the keepers

Hun, thanks for posting your story, which was very moving. I am inspired by your tenacity, your strength and your insight. It saddens me that there seems to be no way out of the situation at the moment. When people say "Just leave" they often don't realise that it isn't always that simple. Maybe by posting your thoughts and feelings in this thread you might find a sense of healing, knowing that you aren't so alone and that people are hearing and reading.