Emotional Abuse Support Group

Heu guys,i am having a major bout of "was he really abusive to me?" today.I am thinking of arguments that i would have started and wondering if they were any different to some of the situations i mention below.Really low today and also i have just discovered that his best friend has deleted me on Facebook.I am focusing on anything that i did bad in the relationship and wondering if i was as bad.I know that i have a temper and of course i would have started some arguments but were the following stories in the paragraphs below incidents of abuse or simpl normal relationship stuff?Please read guys,im low today.Thank you xxx.

Hi there.I am just looking to see if my ex-partner was been emotionally abusing me.

I was with my partner for 14 months and i noticed that he had trouble with his anger,anger which culminated last year in him getting very petty and emotionally aggressive and dumping me but then making my life hard after it.Anyway we subsequently got back together and he accepted that he had a problem and would get it sorted and his behaviour improved significantly.However,that behaviour had regressed over the past couple of weeks or so and he had put me through emotional hell.

There had been tension between us lately and i told him a few weeks ago that i had become afraid of his anger emotionally (not physically as he would never hit me) and he reacted badly to it.He wouldnt take my phone calls and was non contactable for a day or two.We were supposed to go away that weekend and he hadnt gotten back to me about arrangements so when he finally did it was to tell me that he was going by himself.I then asked him if we were over and he said yes.I told him that that was ok and that i wished him the best and i was getting petty texts back.anyway 5 mins later he rang saying that he didnt want us to finish.he also told that he had been taking anti-depresants fo self diagnosed depression that he had gotten from his mother and he demanded that i take partial responsibility for that which i would not do.i told him that i would consider taking him back if he was going to change and he said he would.

However after i sent him a text following morning clarifying a few things on me going back (which admittedly may have come across as abrupt) he rang and verbally attacked me again and eviscerated me for giving away a ticket that i had gotten him for a play after he dumped me.He also called me stupid in this conversation.He calmed down later and was easy to deal with but he started up again yesterday and it culminated with an abusive voicemail.

During the relationship i have been told to shut,f**k off,called a bully and an overreactor and he said things to me that he knows would undermine and hurt on numerous occasion in argumentative or dispute like situations.In situations like this he had a tendency to make seemingly banal comments like "you take too much of an interest in my family","you overcompensate with the amount of times you tell me that you love me" and "the way you slurp your coffee annoys me and my mother" (but later said that he was lying about his mother thinking that.All seemingly banal comments but all very clearly intended to undermine me in a situation he didn't like.

Over the weekend a few weeks ago another situation developed whereby he accused me of making paranoid (this may be to do with the fact that i asked that we only spend weeknds together for the foreseeable future until i get myself back on track after his abuse),he gave out to me for not wanting to go to a birthday party with him (i didnt want to go as there were friends of mine there who know whats going on and are concerned for me as i keep taking him back and also i wanted to ease my way back into the relationship and not be playing the happy couple)he told me that the present situation was about him,he asked me if i had told anybody about his behaviour (hie is very concerned with what people think of him) and he accused me of being not supportive enough of him despite me being incredibly supportive of him to which i very respectfully replied that if he felt unsupported the maybe he might have a decision to make and ended the conversation by ending the relationship with "we're done".I contacted him the night after to sort things (as i always do) and he accused me of playing mind games with him because i went out to the birthday party that he wanted me to go with him before he dumped me as i didnt want to be home alone yet again crying because of his behaviour.

A few nights later he rang crying and sounded very remorseful about his behaviour and was very honest with himself and things that he was feeling which seemed to have been causing the behaviour so i took him back.

Unfortunately a week after this i lost my grandmother suddenly.He was great that week,so good, but a week after i buried her he started up again when i tried having a conversation with him over the way i felt due to his behaviour.This continued on the next day and he was quite emotionally aggressive so i decided for the first time to end the relationship.I told him i wanted things to be amicable but he didnt want that and i asked him if he would contact me with results he would be getting for an STD test which he said he would be getting (he told me that he was getting this test when i took him back which i found strange as he had told me months before that he was fine as i am very cautious about these things but he said he knew that he was fine but he was just getting it for peace of mind) to which he replied "i'll think about it".I was shocked that he would play off our sexual health like that purely to get at me.Bare in mind all of this a week or so after me burying a family member.

Anyway a few nights after i broke down crying and (unwisely) texted him asking why he would treat me like that and the conversation ended with him accusing me of various inaccurate and baseless things.

I am now feeling the extent of his treatment of me on being away from him and i do feel abused but i guess what im asking here is if he was abusive to me emotionally?I wasn't perfect of course (nobody is),i do have a tendency to go on about things and i have OCD which led to me being quite cranky and snappy with him at times (not a huge amount of times though and he wasn't abusive to me in these particular situations).And i am now asking myself if i was abusive to him in the OCD related situations that i have just mentioned even though i certainly never sought to hurt him.Or maybe i am overthinking wildly as i have been since the split possibly due to the trauma of realising the extent of his abuse and it's effect on me.Since the split i have realised the full effect of his behaviour on me and my OCD has gotten crazy in terms of overthinking in terms of was i partially to blame?,did i in some way drive to his treatment of me at times?,was i abusive?,did i fail him in some way etc. eg did my OCD play a part in some of the argumentative incidents us which led to some of the comments (though i know in my heart and soul that that wasnt the case,i recognised that there was something that needed to be spoken about and i was only trying to solve this with him).And even if OCD was related surely it was no excuse for his behaviour?I feel very robbed at the moment and decimated and have lost some of identity and self worth after him.Also,when i got angry with him or snapped at him as a knee jerk reaction to my OCD anxiety the times i did that did make me abusive to him?I certainly never sought to hurt,undermine,control or diminish him like i think he did to me.Even when i got angry in those OCD situations it was never to hurt him,it was just fear and anxiety re the OCD.I loved him very very dearly.Help please!

P.S. apologies for the length of the post.Just want to present the situation as accurately as i can.Would love some feedback.

It's normal to question if something was abuse or not. It is easier sometimes to think that it was all in our heads (or our fault) than to think that someone we loved did not love us back and treated us so poorly. I am sorry that this is such a hard time for you right now and you are questioning everything (happens to the best of us). From all of your posts I have seen you posting, I can see that you are really being hard on yourself. You keep looking for reasons to put the blame back on yourself. No one here thinks you are responsible or to blame for the way he treated you. Look at it this way... Even if you were partly responsible (which I do not believe you were) why are you analyzing every aspect of your relationship looking for what YOU did wrong? Do you want to get back together with him? If so, you need to ask yourself why you would want to be with someone who obviously makes you so unhappy and is hurtful to you... even if it is not labeled as abuse. Don't you deserve more than that? If you feel like you have a problem and were abusive to him, then seek out help for yourself. I know I am not an abusive person, but that doesn't mean that there are not things about myself that I would like to work on. Take this time to work on yourself so you will be in a better place for your next relationship. Don't beat yourself up over things you have no control over changing now (the past). Learn from this experience and decide what you are going to do going forward. I mean really, who cares at this point who's fault it was? It doesn't change the fact that it happened and you were hurt and now are coping with the after effects of a very unhealthy relationship. I recommend you get into some counseling (if you are not already). Hopefully they can give you some tools to help you deal with all of this and you can feel like you have a little more control of your thoughts and feelings.

I hope tomorrow is a better day... Hugs out to you!

Thank you Go2Girl.No i wasn't abusive to him,i have my shortcomings like everybody else but i wasn't abusive.He was at times (who knows,maybe even more times than i realise).Going through so much at the moment.Found out yesterday that he was talking to a friend of mine and that he was crying and my friend said that my ex still loves me.But that could just be another manipulation on my ex's part.Plus i saw him out last night and i got really upset and still am.

It's much easier for an abuser to lie and manipulate to get you back than to start a whole new game of finding and reeling in another victim. You're already groomed, trained, and he already knows all of your weak spots to poke to get his way.

Those tears he cried were tears for himself. He cried because he's going to have to start all over again with someone else. They weren't for you. If my abuser loved me so much then he wouldn't have disrespected me, ignored my needs, shut me down when I talked, used my vulernabilities against me, kept me from a career, and kept me from growing as a person.

I second LifeAwaits points....and I bet my abuser has cried to others about my ending our relationship....I remember when this one colleague of his called me to pet sit for his dogs back in the neighborhood of where my abuser officially resides and where I used to live sort of temporarely for over a year and so I had my flyers and business cards out there...yet this colleague of my abuser called me to another telephone number that my abuser had and so it is my believe that my abuser must have cried to this co worker (realtors) and this person called me with the excuse to talk with me and to convince me that my abuser did love me?.....and since I was well armed with the resources and knowledge from this board, Bankroft, dv hotline....I knew what to anticipate, those innocent moves that abusers will get you off guard....and so I called back this person inquiring about my pet sitting services.....and right off I mentioned that I appologized for not getting back with you right away (I think a couple of days had gone by since hie had left me his message) I mentioned he had called me at a number I dont use very often and that unfortunatelly I am not available at the moment to pet sit however, I can recommend this colleague pet sitter I know and here is her number.....I think I got this person off guard and he just did as I said, I did not make any other statement....that he had no opportunity to make any other conversation...and got him off the phone...I could hear there were spaces where if I allowed he would have made more conversation but I knew my target before I called him back so the temptation to talk about my abuser in any form was not an option, period......I find it soooo important to go by your gut instinct and to continue to arm myself with knowledge as these will prepare me for ANY incident as innocent as it may seem and reject every abuser in my life...specially my abuser who still has powers over me...and who knows me better than I know myself....acknowledging my weaknesses allows me to make them my strengths...and utilize them to my advantage.....hope this helps you too Diemcarpe.....hope you have received your Bankroft book, it is filled with knowledge, you will find your abuser in his lines, I find my abuser also in the support groups and how all this abuse subject functions so that I am one step ahead of the game......

Post edited by: p92868, at: 04/29/2012 12:10 PM

When I left my abusive boyfriend he LITERALLY curled up into a ball on the floor of my room and cried. I can hardly believe it now. When I think about how he would write out declarations of how ugly and unlovable I have become, and yet he would cry and scream for me to stay... it's crazy!