"I'm Not Sure I Am An Abused Woman..."

 Dear Annie,

I hope you don't mind me e-mailing in, like this.  I have been reading your web site and articles and I think they are excellent.

I may or may not be in a situation like the people in the articles. I may not be an abused woman.  My problem is that I am a very selfish, self-centered person and I have ruined my husband's life by being selfish and having no empathy towards him or anyone else. He is always very angry with me on this account and he even says I have a personality disorder, which I have heard is incurable.

I even feel selfish writing this, but we have three children who might be affected by my behavior and I'd like to know how to minimise the effects of it and how to be empathetic. I try so hard never to think of myself and to monitor everything I say, do, feel and think in case it's horrible (the word he used was narcissism) but it is only effective up to a point.  

Do you have any advice for this situation?  

Yours in hope 

Allie 

  

Dear Allie, 

Yes, I do have advice for you.  That advice is to stop listening to your husband right away. 

Your husband tells you that you are selfish, self-centred, and you have ruined your his life.  

What a poor hard done by victim he is! 

But, also, what a negative, critical, fault-finding, punitive, blaming partner he is.  

If he’s that unhappy, why hasn't he left you long ago? 

Unless, the reason he stays with you is because, actually, he enjoys blaming you for ‘ruining his life’… 

I’m guessing he gets a real high out of telling you how awful you are.            

Now, in my book, that is selfish, and destructive. It is the hallmark of an abusive man.  You don’t have to be an Einstein to know that it points to a complete lack of empathy… on his part.  

What proof do I have for saying that? 

All the proof I need. 

Let me explain: 

If there were ANY truth in what your abusive husband was saying, you would not feel selfish writing to me. 

In fact, you wouldn't even bother to write to me. 

You know why? 

Because you wouldn't care less about what you had 'done to him'. 

In reality, you care very deeply.  And that is one of the hallmarks of an abused woman.  You care far more about other people's feelings than you do about your own.

The truth is, your abusive partner is saying some very cruel - and UNTRUE - things about you, which are hurting you very much. And he doesn't care in the slightest how much he hurts you.

Which is one of the unmistakable features of emotionally abusive relationships.

My advice to you is find out what is really going on, and stop letting him hurt you like this. 

My program "It's Emotional Abuse.  Don't Try To Fix It" may be just what you need to understand what is really going on in your marriage.   

Warm wishes, 

Annie

 

 

Comments

[Victoria]

Dear Annie
I have been with my partner for almost 5 years now and the abuse has been largely emotional with some physical on occasions. He will call me names on a daily basis.the one I hate the most is the "c" word, so that is the one he most frequently uses. I am 32 years old and apart from the first month of our relationship he had had no sex drive and had always said he doesn't want to have sex with a gobby woman, I have lived unhappy with this and the general meanness he has shown towards me for a long time. He is from wales so we left Australia at the beginning of this year for 3 months as he missed his family. He didn't want me to go with him in the first place but I wanted to go and see family in the uk also, he stipulated that I had to spend 2 of the 3 months away from him before we left. 2 weeks after we arrived he made my life unbearable. The abuse got worse he told me I was in his back garden now and he treat me like an animal, told me how to dress and was so nasty to me, I played into his hands and had a go at him one night in front of his parents after he had left me in a pub alone with a friend of his I had met only hours earlier, I knew he wanted rid of me from wales so he wore me down deliberately knowing he would eventually make me come undone when I could no longer bear anymore. He succeeded in getting rid of me, and after one of his best friends and her husband (who I had just met) saw the way he had treated me took me in for 2 nights before I left for six weeks to go to my family in northern uk. I had a lot of support from this couple who had known him for many years, the lady gave me the strength and affirmation that my partner really is a hard man (and apparently always has been). I have never ever been disloyal to anyone and he is my 3rd serious relationship, during my time away from him I met a man who showered me with compliments and made me feel good about myself again, I slept with him twice and met him 3 times. I was flattered by the attention and the man is a bit of a celebrity and has women throwing themselves at him yet he made a beeline for me as soon as he saw me, it has been 9 months and my partner read my emails and found out about us after we had been back in Australia a month, his initial reaction was strange as he seemed to change and he was nicer and more attentive to me for the first couple of months but ever since the abuse has gone back to how it was before we left for the uk. I am ashamed of myself for going against all my own values and morals, though I am also thankful for a flash of how a man should treat a woman as I had seriously forgotten. I am confused now as he is putting the daily abuse I am now suffering down to my infidelity when it is the exact same treatment I have experienced the whole relationship from him when I hadn't done anything wrong. I am now at the point where I really can't take anymore and although getting him to leave my house will be hard and I will be lonely, all I crave now is peace and to not feel so worn out all the time, i feel like he drains all traces of my personality from me, I want children and he says I can't even look after myself even though I built my own home before I even met him and have ran my own business (which has begun to suffer now as I can't focus) for the past 3 years. I just need the shouting to stop now
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell some of my experience. As I am nervous about giving up on him though feel its time

[Clar]

I can totally understand the email from Allie. I spent years being told that I was abusive, that I was ruining his life, that I was selfish, uncaring, never put my children or him first.

I was told that until I snapped, until I hated myself so much I didn't want to continue. For the sake of my children and to ensure they always had a mum, I left him. I didn't know at the time why I was leaving or if I thought I was selfish even more so as I was leaving.

14 months on I don't feel that anymore. He continues his verbal abuse not just at me but via the children too. I'm learning not listen to it. Its' taken me all this time since leaving to realise he was emotionally abusive. I've questioned over and over was I the emotionally abusive one was I so cruel. Experts, counselors, mediators all said: "it's not you; it was him."

Here's the turning point: emotionally abusive people don't care! You wouldn't even write that email if you were capable of abuse. So it's not you.... you know the truth deep down. Please please learn to love yourself again, listen to your instincts they are there somewhere.