zdt's Journal

how sad it is that a dear friend recommended this site to me for support.  we both have bi polar and originally met through that.  i say met, we have been online friends for a couple of years now, speak on the phone and swap photos and of course mail each other many times every single day and one day she is going to come visit me when she can find the time and the money to travel over here (she is in the US i am in the UK).  but she has been my absolute rock, without her support i would have gone under many many times.  not due to the bp, due to the abusive/controlling husband i have or both (who knows).

anyway she has joined this site for bp support and suggested i join it for emotional and verbal abuse support.  which i did.

but the sad part is that i started reading some of the topics posted and felt just dreadful.

i have been there, seen it and got the t shirt and instead of being inspired to help others like i would normally do i just wanted to get away and crawl into a hole.

so instead i am journalling.

i write for myself alot anyway, have done for years.

you see its sad because i have already done everything i can do.

i bought the books, Evans in particular was good.  and Ellis.

not just on abuse but on controlling and even on metamessages in communication.

loads of books.

i read them all, made notes and alsorts.

i was stunned as here i was reading my life it seemed.  how could that be?  i always knew my husband was hard work but i didnt realise he was this named thing, an abuser and a controller and that there were others like him out there - so much so that you could get books on it.

i wanted to know more, so i surfed the net.

i found lots of resources to help.  whole sites.  how to cope with an abuser, how to manage it, how to deal with it... and sites on improving communication, your relationship everything.

i shared all of this with him of course and asked he read the books too...

i think it took perhaps 6 months for it to sink in he was never going to do that.

no matter how many promises, he didnt.  the most he did was flip through a few and then claim he knew it all.

in the end, after the abuse escalated (oddly enough this happened after i named it, identified and started using the strategies to stop it in its tracks) i got to the point of finally going to a solicitor.

this at last brought a reaction from him in a positive way.

all sorts of new promises were made and to begin with it seemed he was indeed this time going to honour them.  he even signed up for a 40 week 'perpertrators' course... but he only went 3 times.

but here i am, 3 months later, within a fortnight of him hurting our son, and letting me down big time on one particular occasion.  and of course no book has been seen lately, much less followed.

he is away on holiday with his mates at the moment.

it has taken me 3 days to calm down.  the children have relaxed alot quicker than me, knowing he is not about to walk through the door.

they have not asked about him once.

i have been biting my tongue trying to get to this time, when i knew he would be away, so i could go back to the solicitor and make it all happen, file those papers in court please, the ones you have on file because he convinced me he could change 3 months ago...

and now it is here, i am not ok.

i am not empowered.

i fear for the future.

my friends all tell me i will cope, i will manage.

even one of my children said for goodness sake just divorce him mum why are you so upset about it he makes you so unhappy...

i said before, years before, that i didnt care about my personal happiness, i could put up with all the crap, as long as my children had the best of everything i could give them in terms of hobbies and clubs and sports which they compete in and everything.  he pays for it all of course since i gave up work a few years back with his push to do so.

i used to be a professional working mother.

now its a job to get myself to tescos of a week.

but thats another story - the 'whatever happened to the self esteem' story

but over the past year they have started copying what they see and worse still they have started treating me like the doormat he does.

they are horrid to each other and i hear his words out of their mouths

and like i said, he hurt my boy for the second time and i said after the first time it would never ever happen again, i would not allow it.  i didnt catch him at it either time, quite frankly its just as well as i dont know what i would have done but it would i am quite sure have ended up with me being arrested.

i have read enough to know that unless they change, the abuse and control escalates, it might become less overt, they might find more subtle ways to do it, and he certainly has, but they still show their colours when it matters and he has certainly done that.

he has not changed.

i need to do something for my childrens sake.

so why on earth cant i just do it?

ugh

we have been together for over 17 years, married for 13 of them.

and i can honestly say i cannot remember when we were ever actually happy.