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Emotional Abuse

WantsPeace
Community Member
This is my first time writing on here, I came across your post!
Your post is from a couple of years back but I would love to hear where you are now?
I am too in a relationship with a man who is emotionally abusive and I love him so much.
My fiance cheated on me and broke up with me last New Years and this person who I am with now pounced on me as soon as I was single and gave me the attention i was craving to get over my fiance and his behaviour, little did i know i would be in a cycle of emotional abuse and being yelled at.
We have so much in common and we live in quite a small surf community where he knows a lot of people and I feel like he has so much power over me. I am 38 years old and am worried I will never have someone that loves me and that I have missed the opp to have a normal family which is what I have always wanted.
There is the normal push and pull of him acting bad and then making out its my fault, it has gotten worse and Im getting desperate.
I hold down a full time job and become exhausted by the drama, his father knows what he can be like and tried to support me but I dont think he understands how serious it is as he used to do the same thing to his mum when they were young.
We went to councilling for awhile and he said the lady didnt do anything for him and he said he would go to a man so I am trying to organise that. His behaviour is starting to leak and I look like and idiot, i am an eternal optimist and always see the good in people and I feel I am being taken for a ride as I not being respected or put first.
I am so scared to be without him because we have such a connection but I am scared im going to end up in a really bad place.

HELP!
1 Reply 1

Juliet_84
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor

Hi WantsPeace,

I’m so sorry that you are in this position and feel so isolated where you are. It does sound as though you are in an emotionally abusive relationship and you are exhibiting a lot of the signs that I recognize from when I was in one. I think that counseling would be really good for you. However, just be aware that couples counseling is often not recommended for relationships in which one person is abusive. Because couples counseling focuses on how “both parties contribute to problems and can improve”, an abusive person will often try and wield that against you later - certainly this was the case for me. If you do decide on couples counseling (better than nothing right!), just try and make sure that the counselor is at least experienced with domestic violence so that they can recognize the signs. Whatever happens with that, I think that individual counseling would be a good idea as they can help you find your strength again and provide you with a bit of insight. I also found “Why does he do that? inside the minds of angry and controlling men” to be a real eye opener for me and helped clear up a lot of the confusion that I had from being blamed for everything. It’s a free ebook written by an expert in domestic violence.

I hope you continue to hang around here, it sounds like you could do with some friends at the moment 😊