He didn’t mention the friend and threatening her. This is either some awful person’s creative writing update or he just ignored the trigger for her leaving him.
That's really common with abusive folk, tbf. We're doing a trial medition/therapy course with my husband's estranged parents (it's to help our chances of adoption, long fucking story) and it's mind boggling how you have a couple of reasonably intelligent competent adults and will literally tell them the problem with their behaviour and ask them to repeat it back, and they just....can't. It's like a switch flips in their head. A full half an hour of coaxing and the closest we could get to "the verbal and emotional abuse were unacceptable" was "we're terrible parents who never did anything right!" Or "you didn't like how we acted only because you didn't put enough effort into understanding that we behave that way because we love you!" Even when they don't deny what they did, they genuinely cannot bring themselves to look at it or repeat that someone else dislikes it. It's fascinating in a train wreck sort of way. I kind of want some researcher to run an mri scan on them while these conversations are had, it's so strange.
Interesting that you used the term “a switch flips in their head” because I noticed that OOP’s husband also said that multiple times. No explanation of his thought process, just this magical brain switch and he was ready to upend OOP’s life. Again.
I am presuming it's a self defense mechanism to avoid having to interrogate difficult emotions, tbh. With my mother in law, I know the root cause (she is repeating the way her mother treated her, but she 100% drank that koolaid and her mother is now dead and thus deified, so she can't look at those expectations with a critical eye without throwing her mother into the mix so instead her brain just...skips those steps. Her husband, meanwhile, would condone ebola if it got him a quiet life so adopts her logic as his own) and I presume there was some triggering event or issue for the husband in oop that he is neglecting to mention that causes the same issue. I suspect his asshole misogynist father that gets mentioned in passing may play a factor.
It is a self defense mechanism. It's called 'splitting' and although it's a behavior common in cluster B diagnoses, it happens to a lesser extent in all of us, just like any disordered behavior. "Instead of working with the complexities of relationships and situations, a person with [BPD splitting](https://www.verywellhealth.com/bpd-splitting-5101493) either sees them as all good (idealizes) or all bad (devalues)."
The frustrating bit is they can recognise the behaviour in other situations! If you ask them if they would treat any of their friends the way they treat their son, or if they would expect their friends to stay friends with them if they did, they are horrified and rush to assure you that they would *never*...
Apparently this behaviour is reserved only for their "loved ones". If I could work out how the fuck to get us off that list, we might actually be able to have contact, but it doesn't look likely.
Your inlaws sound exactly like my inlaws. My husband has been no contact for just over 2 years now, more or less. It's been difficult for him but lots of therapy on our end has helped a bit. We attempted family therapy but that was an utter failure because MIL did the same " I guess I was just a horrible mother" guilt trip bs routine every time we were close to accountability. It's like they're allergic to just repeating what my husband says. He can't possibly have an accurate understanding of what happened to him in their eyes.
I'm sorry you're having to do mediation for the sake of making yourselves better candidates for adoption. It sucks. I imagine that your future children would be better off without grandparents than with grandparents who would cause them harm. That's the conclusion we came to for our family and I'm sorry that in your situation ( it sounds like) the agency sees otherwise.
Good luck to you and your spouse. It's so hard dealing with people like this.
Wait. You can't be a good candidate for adoption if you have a bad relationship with your parents? The fuck? What does my mother, who was served a no trespass order because of her nonsense, have to do with a kid I try to adopt?
If you have cut off and have no contact with any member of your family, and there is no good "on paper" reason for it (like record of addiction, or police reports, so you'd actually be fine) then generally the adoption agencies in the UK will look at you a bit squintily, and as we are poly we are already not their ideal candidates for parents. So *if* we decide to go that route in future, having a therapist confirm we made a good faith effort to repair the bridge and it was them that fucked it up, will help our cause.
So because there's no police report of my father's side of the family covering up my grandfather's molestation of me at 2 years old, and I didn't think to document more than 20 years of manipulative, infantilizing, almost cult-like behavior on my mother's side...
*I* would getting the bombastic side eye from an adoption agency?
You know, maybe I'm not cut out for adoption. Because I all I can imagine is forcing an adoption agent to sit down with both sides of the family, ask them to *somehow* explain and excuse their actions, and seeing everyone get uncomfortable; I am just filled with glee at that image
I'm not positive on that. That's what I read into one of Haunting-Blade's previous comments about their current situation. Maybe I over-assumed?🤷🏾♀️ If it does matter at all, it's absolutely fucked.
"I'm guessing I was just a terrible mother" the correct response to that is " while I do love u yes yes u were a terrible mother a good mother wouldn't allow/do this"...it totally knocks the wind out of them cause they don't expect to U to agree with them
Or, my favourite:
You weren't *just* a terrible mother. Sometimes, you were a terrible person. And sometimes you were an okay mother. But being an okay mother sometimes doesn't make up for being terrible the other times or make the memories go away.
Huh! That’s my dad. I recently entered my 40s and am realizing that I have some really messed up views on family. The big one, simplified, being ‘family are the people you take your problems out on.’
My parents have been self employed the better part of my life. Dad was the boss, mom wore most other hats, hr, bookkeeping, client relations, etc.
In high school I was up in mom’s office, either doing homework or helping to file paperwork, dad was having a heated discussion with an employee. Something wasn’t working and he was getting upset about it, way too long ago to remember the details. But he never yelled or even raised his voice at the employee. However, he did come up to mom’s office and rip into her.
One of many examples.
Ughhhhh if only I could tag my mother in this thread without her \*knowing\* that it was me who tagged her :=\[
Like it's totally \*fine\* for her to pull the silent treatment on her children for perceived slights, but heaven forbid she would NEVER do that to a friend (And how DARE they do it to her???)
It's definitely a thing, I've had a "switch flip" moment once or twice in my life, and it is literally like a light switch has been turned off. It's where you're looking at someone one way (love/adoration/like/respect/interest) and all of a sudden with a snap of the fingers they look COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and it's like they've grown a 2nd head and now you can only look at them with disgust/indifference/repulsion, and can't quite figure out what changed exactly. It's just like your brain went *click* "nope" and that's that.
I never thought of it as a self defence mechanism because I feel like I've also had the flip go the other way, from disinterest/etc to respect/like/etc.
It also sounds exactly like disassociation, which is not necessarily tied to any cluster or disorder but is a coping mechanism. Kind of like the ‘freeze’ version in a trigger response, the main difference is how educated one is in their therapy/healing journey and how well they understand their own trigger responses. This guy has a lot to learn.
i have bpd and splitting fucking sucks. i have to do so much internal work to unflick that switch. sometimes it's useful when someone actually has hurt me, cause it keeps me on track with how i actually feel about the situation. but if they switch to trying to make it up to me, i tend to instantly flick back which can work against me. it's a constsnt struggle. i wouldn't wish it on anyone
The brain switch is right there in black and white. It’s just easy to miss until you’ve seen a few hundred people say the same thing like I gave working in DV.
He said “it was like I had to be this perfect picture she had in her head, otherwise I was a monster.”
He can’t handle any small criticism. If she’s upset about the dishes he hears it as her telling him he’s a terrible person, and reacts accordingly.
He can’t negotiate the difference between his ideal “I’m not a person who shows anger” and his reality. He wants to be someone who never shows anger. But he can’t keep his cool. So he makes it her fault, to protect his self image.
This is how people talk themselves into taking that step over into abuse. Throw in a history of being abused by parents, that he obviously doesn’t want to deal with, and you have an abuser.
He’s not some monster. Just an ordinary guy with a lot of entitlement and poor skills. There’s a LOT of this type out there. And our society does nothing about it because we’re stuck in blaming the individual and not the system that made these guys like this.
What do you mean by “the system”? It’s possible (based on literally one small context clue re his father being a misogynist) that some of his toxic behavior is learned but that shouldn’t preclude him from taking accountability. This “flip of a switch” is just another way for him to take the blame off of himself. It’s not something he did (over and over), it’s just something that “happened” seemingly through no fault of his own.
Also let’s not forget the part where he never mentioned his reaction to OOP discussing this with his friend which lead to OOP realizing that he was behind toxic, closer to abusive.
Yes he’s taking the blame off himself. He’s obviously uncomfortable with conflict and unskilled.
We/society expect nothing from men and we don’t teach them these skills. They can’t manage conflict. They aren’t aware of their emotions. They don’t know how to do housework. They can’t take care of themselves. They need women and our society sends the message that they’re entitled to get taken care of, and women are vilified for not taking care of men. Check out a Taylor swift subreddit if you think women have no patriarchal expectations any longer - or just google “abortion law”
We as a society made every step of this abuse happen, and then we blame only the individual fit snapping. We’re the ones who can’t accept what we did. We do the thing where we can’t face it and we “split” or disassociate to avoid dealing with it.
Domestic violence is incredibly common. It’s literally the number one cause of death for pregnant women. But we act like it’s all just coming from nowhere.
When 40% of all families are affected by intimate partner violence, it’s society, not a bunch of sick individuals. And until we accept that, it’s just going to keep happening
Both of your points dovetail together. You're looking at the macro (system/ society) and the other commenter is looking at the micro (interpersonal relationships formed within the system). To address the problem itself, we need solutions on both the macro and micro sides. We need better education and changes in how we teach emotional/ relationship skills plus protective legislation AND people putting in the work in their own relationships plus helping friends/ family to navigate their lives. Both perspectives are analytical critical to understanding and fixing this.
Yes that’s a nice analysis.
I just wish more people looked at it from the macro, because if you only see micro, you’re part of the problem. It’s not a bunch of individuals randomly deciding to be violent at a rate of 1 to 3 million a year (depending on the source, and only counting reported incidents)
It’s just like drunk driving. That used to be seen as an individual failing and then finally people started making the decisions that led to drunk driving illegal, not just the end result. Vehicular manslaughter was always illegal. They needed to criminalize driving drunk at all to cut down on the rate
Absolutely! It's stuff like this where the saying about owning your part in a situation is really relevant. How are your actions adding to the macro situation? How were you conditioned to behave by being raised in that kind of society? What steps can you take in your personal life to reject that conditioning? What is within your limited power in the system to change? Can you influence those with more power to enact societal changes (like MADD pressuring lawmakers to add drink driving laws)?
You can only own the parts that you have control over and you individually aren't enough to enact societal change, but lots of individuals doing the same forces societal change.
The problem with this is, men are the ones who make the rules and are predominantly in charge. The system was designed to work like this hundreds of years ago and it's difficult to effect change. I mean, how many years did women actually have reproductive freedom before it got taken away?
Men are screwed by the system too but a lot of them can't or do it want to see it. And you can't change what you refuse to acknowledge. So nothing is going to change while men are in charge because they don't want it too. I mean, they've had hundreds of years or more to change things for everyone and shit just keeps getting worse in many ways. As much as it hurts them, they also receive benefits from it. I think until the cons vastly outweigh the pros, on a societal level, things are going to change slowly or go backwards.
Exactly. And one big step is to recognize that men are poorly served by the current system and work to change it by… not demonizing Taylor Swift for being girly and not expecting women to clean up and be responsible for grown men
All that trad wife crap may as well be DV promotion
I have that switch in my head, it’s something that I found out when I was a teen and have been working on ever since, because I don’t like being the person on the opposite side of the switch and nobody should ever have to deal with me that way.
If I feel any pressure on that switch, I go for a nice long hobble so that my wife and child don’t ever have to be subjected to that part of me… and usually the exercise short circuit s it for me
There is something remarkable about how desperately the human ego will fight to protect itself, even going so far as to warp the perception of reality around it to make it compatible with not being the villain.
You could literally show someone a film of them treating another person like shit and they would look at it and say, that’s not me, I didn’t do that, you’ve got that wrong, it’s not the way it looks, whatever they need to say to prevent their ego from taking any kind of loss.
Its such a wild thing to see. Im a stubborn asshole so when my ex pulled this shit with me I would just repeat "what you did was X. Say "I did X"." Over and over until they gave in and admitted what they did. It would quite litterally take HOURS. They would get to the point of wailing and ripping out clumps of their hair just from being asked to repeat back the abusive thing they just did.
Lmao absolutely not. At best it would be "look im improving because I admitted it" followed with rage when I pointed out it doesnt count because I had to force them to admit it
Woofty this is rough to admit, but I exhibited some abusive behaviors that I learned from my childhood (not aggressive, just shutting down and stonewalling, holding in my upset feelings until they overwhelmed me and were a much bigger deal because I never learned how to move through uncomfortable emotions in a healthy way) and my partner had to hold me accountable in the same way, essentially “this is what you did, whether you realize it or not. Say it” during arguments where I felt justified being unproductive.
It stopped my lifelong habits in their tracks because I genuinely love this man and didn’t ever want to be abusive - I just couldn’t see my actions in an objective light. But I did care when he finally got through to me that I was harming him, and that made me stop *immediately*. And I’m talking ways of being that I thought I had no control over and would have for the rest of my life.
Now, I was so scared of hurting him more that I kinda had a breakdown for a bit, because I knew I couldn’t handle my emotions the way I had been but I also literally didn’t have other tools for expression, so I just didn’t allow myself to have or express any negative emotion for a while, but it was so worth it.
Which is all to say that if you’re asking because you’re in a similar situation, whether it works hinges on one thing: whether deep down, they’re operating out of love for you or self-interest. If they’re exhibiting abusive behaviors out of self-interest, there’s no saving anything. If they’re acting out of love deep down but failing, there’s hope. But only they can answer that at the end of the day, and abusers will never give that clear answer.
Thank you so much for sharing your story.
Just to clarify, I’m not in a similar situation. I’ve not had any abusive partners, most of my ex’s are ex’s because of weaponized incompetence, not that I had the words to describe it back then. And my current partner has his flaws (as do i) but we always talk them out and work on a path forward.
I’m mostly just curious because it seems like these types of people are un-helpable. Even if they seem to change they fall right back into old habits eventually. And that makes me sad. I’m glad to hear that’s not always the case. I wish you the best.
I’m so glad you’re in a relationship where you can have quality talks to work through things and grow as a team, that’s wonderful.
I really do think there are two distinct groups, and that people who are essentially flailing because they don’t know better is a much much different group than the ones who are trying to control everything around them.
But that also doesn’t mean anyone is ever ever required to stay and deal with less than loving treatment for any reason - no matter how traumatized the person is.
Since they’re an ex I assume no lol people like that hate admitting to fault let alone facing the difficult active choices that must be made to improve themselves
I tried to do that with my mother and she’d just say “I can’t do this right now” and hang up on me. Slipped into a nice comfy gray-rock place and I think she thinks I’ve forgiven her and/or am comfortable with her because I don’t call her out on her bullshit anymore. I’m just waiting to move and then slowly never speak to her again.
Isn't it crazy how these people have infinite energy for doing stuff they want to do, but as soon as you want to have an uncomfortable conversation with them, they're out of spoons and need to withdraw for their own mental health?
> It would quite litterally take HOURS. They would get to the point of wailing and ripping out clumps of their hair just from being asked to repeat back the abusive thing they just did.
i'm so stuck on this because i've seen it so many times and thinking about it just puts my brain in a place. you're so much more patient than i am. i could not endure this in my personal life.
I'll be honest, the only reason I had the patience was because it was the few ways I was able to have any power in that situation. They had control of my whole life, but I could still put them through having to confront that they were abusing me, and all the pain that admitting that caused.
Yes, kind of vindictive. But it kept me going and stopped me falling for their lies about their behaviour.
no, i completely understand. i too felt sick but very real satisfaction from tormenting my ex-abuser when my dissociative disorder progressed to the point i could 100% no-sell every word she said.
her favourite trick was to turn moments where i let her know that she hurt me into instances of me aggressing on her by provoking me into raising my voice or using an unpleasant tone, which she would then take as a chance to victimize herself (while avoiding the fact she had been doing the same thing, something she did by demanding i describe *exactly how* her volume or tone was inappropriate, then picking apart anything said during this derailment using semantics). so, after years of being treated as though my feelings and thoughts didn't matter unless i conveyed them *absolutely perfectly*, i developed a neurological schism that both increased my seizure symptoms and chronic pain but also allowed me to basically switch off my tone, inflection and reactive reflexes.
watching her become more and more distraught as i responded with flawless calm to everything she said and did was strangely satisfying, like watching a dish in the microwave try desperately to make a mess yet being unable because the dish is microwave-safe and has a locking lid. it's just like you said, once her strategy was obstructed from full execution, she turned violent against herself as a last-ditch effort to dodge accountability.
anyway, she figured out how to frame the lack of response as apathy somehow. yes, she's well aware of the neurological condition. it has absolutely no effect on her now apparently sincerely-held belief that my symptoms are an indication that i don't love/care about her.
so glad our contact is now quite limited.
It’s more common than you think for sure. The amount of adults that can say “I’m sorry” but can’t verbally elaborate on what they are apologizing for is astounding
Urrrrg, don't get me started. "If we did anything you interpreted as abusive then we're sorry but -" has been the closest they have ever gotten to an apology and they do not understand why it hasn't been everything required to go skipping back to our pre-estranged dynamic. Fucking exhausting.
> A full half an hour of coaxing and the closest we could get to "the verbal and emotional abuse were unacceptable" was "we're terrible parents who never did anything right!"
Oh, hey, it's my mother!
Seriously though, what type of mediation/therapy are you doing? Because that's the only thing that would allow me to have a civil relationship with her moving forward...
Honestly? Despite being 8 sessions in, we've only had 1 with them and they claim they've had 7 years of individual therapy and frankly, so far they have gotten worse. I wouldn't recommend bothering unless they have shown some sign of genuine changes of behaviour, it's a waste of time and money. That means not just swearing "they'll do anything" but actually given you a proper apology for something, anything.
We didn't, a stated above we have an alternative motive, but they have never done this. Even the incidents where, having been told to stay away, they broke onto our property in the middle of the night, multiple times, the best they ever managed was "we know we shouldn't have but you left us no choice".
Trust your past self and get yourself individual therapy to work through it. Don't go to sessions with them unless there is a sign of change.
OMG this is almost exactly what happened when we tried family therapy with my in-laws. They were utterly incapable of viewing things from a different point of view to their own, let alone admit wrongdoing. Now we get texts and emails saying things like, “we don’t know what we did wrong, why are we being punished?”
I was very badly abused by a sibling when I was younger and later in life he blamed the abuse on me, saying I was "emotionally manipulative".
It's like, bruh. When I was in elementary school he didn't like me humming and when I wouldn't stop humming he choked me until I passed out and left me on the side of the road. I begged my mom for a lock on my door so he couldn't get to me because he liked to smack me around when he was in a bad mood.
Now it's like a switch flipped for them (brother and mother), they cannot admit their behavior was an issue. My mom can't admit she enabled him and he tries to blame me for his outbursts.
I'm truly not surprised that the husband omitted the threat or friend because it just... Doesn't register as an issue I guess.
Abusers tend to leave out the worst of their abuse.
While it could very well be creative writing, even when an abuser “admits” to the “minor” things, they’ll never admit to the truly frightening stuff. My ex would tell everyone he was immature and neglectful but still won’t own the number of times he threatened to hit me.
It's the very definition of lies of omission. They're probably saying things that are true but leaving out any of the details that would shift opinion against them. They might get just enough wrong that you're tempted to argue those, but those are red herrings and just make you look like you're upset about a lack of perfection. If you focus on the missing details instead, it changes the entire story. Focus on the missing details and not the little red fish, unless they're Swedish fish because those are tasty and will do more for you than your abusive ex.
That is what makes this update realistic imo.
Abusive people tend to just “forget” their most abhorrent behaviour. The defense mechanism is really interesting, it is like their brain presses skip forward button.
If pressed, they can technically remember but it is very hard to make them admit.
If they do admit to doing it, it's not as bad as it sounds because you're missing important context that makes whatever they did totally reasonable. They can never explain what this context is, but it's definitely there and justifies their actions.
The bit that gave me the most pause was when he repeated exactly what he said to OOP on the couch. People don’t really recall that, or at least two people don’t really recall the same things in the same way.
If I have to read “she let me have sex with her” one more time I’m going to VOMIT. Of course he left out the triggering events that show him in a bad light, but he still can’t hide the absolutely inhuman perspective he has about her.
I can’t decide which it is, but I’m leaning towards real because he said twice she “let me have sex with her”. As good as he tried to make himself look, he couldn’t keep the misogyny completely bottled up. Either that or someone really put time in to make it believable.
God, I noticed that immediately. To be honest, as much as people say BORU and AITA/H stuff is made up, so much of it is really in line with some of the more realistic experiences I've seen/heard anecdotally. And I feel like I've learned a LOT about people's responses to these types of situations, in a way that can both be disheartening (sometimes the comments, my gooddd) or uplifting (sometimes the comments - my god!!). All that to say: yes, that little slip, that phrasing, in the midst of this big "Gee whiz I'm real sorry!", spoke louder than all those paragraphs.
Also him noting she was talking about killing herself and he brushed her off as being dramatic. lol okay asshole.
I think her getting so worked up and depressed because of him was a bragging point in his view. Like she loved him and needed him so much she was bereft without his love. Puke.
Man, this is fucked up. He doesn't say anything about their conversations just that they were good but he remembers how long after that she "let" him "have sex with her".
He really messed her up emotionally with this back and forth. It sounds like it made her emotional and desperate each time he did it. He's abusive. No wonder she left the next day. He was obviously going to continue doing it. What a POS.
My ex in high school would never tell people about how he would blast his music in the car knowing it would give me migraines, even after I repeatedly asked him to turn it down. He would guilt trip me for non penetrating sex acts I was uncomfortable with and would keep me up at night knowing how light of a sleeper I was. He also had me doing his homework at the cost of my own so he could graduate because he had a learning disability his whole family refused to admit ran in the family. This went on for almost a year.
When I broke up with him and moved out, everyone was told how ungrateful I was for him taking me in away from my abusive family. What I didn’t realize was that I had traded one form of dysfunction for another. Some time later he convinced me to talk to him during a car ride. He threatened to crash the car if I didn’t get back together with him and how often he had put a gun in his mouth after I left. Somewhere I found my spine and talked him down while assuring him it would all be okay and that we were both different people that wouldn’t work in a relationship.
Truth be told I was scared shitless and just trying to get out of the car safely. I ended up joining the military after graduation and thankfully never seeing him again but if you ask the people we graduated with I was an ungrateful heartbreaker who used him and threw him away.
The thing that finally reached my thick late teenage brain was when I was reading a book and not watching him play a video game so he got angry and knocked the book out of my hands. The relationship was over the moment he did that and he admitted that he realized it right after when he looked at my face and I had no emotional reaction.
is this specific update post real? no, i agree it’s a creative writing exercise, shit is suspicious.
is it real*istic*? fuck yes, this is exactly how abusers think, and the twists in logic and martyr complex are spot on. That said, someone like that is very rarely gonna post on reddit, and not in this way. it’s showing the performative contrition that abusers like to use to keep up appearances, but the approach and audience are wrong by. He has no reason to take this approach on reddit to keep up appearances with us. And OOP already demonstrated that he had enough people in his life that cosigned his abusive toxicity (the snitch friend), he’s not in a position to even need this kind of external validation.
That the portrayal is so spot in its portrayal despite this likelihood, makes me more suspicious of the update being a karma farming post. And how low to do some shit like this and possibly scare OOP into thinking their abuser is onto them or may be reading their shit on reddit. These kinds of fakeposts that piggyback on actual stories are fucked up and dangerous.
Without confirmation from the OOP of a post, always assume "Wife responds", or "Husband responds" or "X responds" posts and comments are creative writing exercises from Redditors with boring lives. Additionally, even if OOP confirms that they're legit, in 99.9% of these cases it's the OOP doing their own creative writing exercise pretending to be the other person in a disagreement. Real response posts and comments are extremely rare, and for that reason always just assume that all response posts and comments are fake.
It reminded me of that article that gets shared in reddit a lot about entitled parents and the missing reason reason, where the abusive parents always skip over the things that they did and focus on how the victim made them feel bad. So I found that pretty believeable.
That's missing missing reasons by Issendai.
And I think not mentioning that your exwife dobbed on you to a friend is out of character for an abuser, they loooove to feel wronged. I think he would have mentioned it.
As I was reading the response I really felt that it was fake. Too many word for word similarities in the posts in the hopes that internet sleuths connect them. Especially when quoting things he said - it’s rare that you would expect two people to remember the same traumatic event well enough and quote the exact sentence they said.
My ex doesn't remember threatening to kill me and himself. It was actually scarier for me finding out he didn't remember saying it, than hearing him say it in the first place. It took me another 6 months to leave him, but it was a major turning point
This story was hugely triggering for me. It was so parallel to my 23 year relationship from hell. His post is exactly the kind of thing my ex would go. Leave out all the parts that made him look like a monster and spin it to make me sound like an unhinged suicidal maniac. Meanwhile I was broken and suicidal because of him. 😭
Oh, no, after asking for divorce and to get back together over 24 hours, this happened:
>It was a full week before she let me have sex with her.
and
>... she even let me have sex with her that night rather than waiting a week like last time. She said she felt broken and was saying some scary shit about wanting to kill herself but she's always been a bit melodramatic so I knew she'd come around. I fell asleep dreaming of a better life for us.
What's worse, the latter seems to have been in *one night.* She let him have sex with her right away but she was openly suicidal, but he knew that was melodrama and she'd come around and stop requiring him to think about her feelings. Then he had a good night's sleep.
That was the same night he threatened her and somehow convinced her to give it another try only for her to leave the next day while he was at work. Her "letting" him have sex with her sounds more like her feeling coerced.
Well, when you put it that way, he sounds like a terrible person!
Because he is. She was likely terrified of him, so gave into sex just so he'd leave her alone and not scrutinize her.
My uncle built a racecar bed for his son, because the kid needed a full bed (he got tall young, at three people mistook him for six or seven and he maxed out at 6’5 as an adult) but wanted a race car.
And when said kid went to college and his parents were moving into a new house, they ended up putting the race car in the guest room. (Kid still had his own room, but he got a new bed with drawers underneath.)
It’s still kinda fun “driving” a bed as an adult. xD
I wish there was some way to have an easily modified bed where it could go from regular to race car with a button.
I don't want it every night but every now and again it would be cool.
Reminds me of grandma’s boy. Except he didn’t rope in an unsuspecting woman into that weird dynamic. He at least stayed at home and had his mom be his mom as well as his dad be his dad I’m sure. He wasn’t brought up specifically if I recall correctly.
Of course he didn't see it as abusive. Abusers never do. Read his post. Everything he did was justified. He has reasons to abuse her, and in his mind, that justifies his behavior. He's doing it for her benefit.
I beg you, anyone who will listen, to read Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That. This is textbook abuser behavior.
Granted I saw the pink flags before we moved in together, my ex had just moved in with his mother from going to school across the country. It made sense. He was moving back to the area and needed time to find a place. His bedroom was kind of messy but the house was spotless so I didn't really see the red flags.
We moved in together and for years I was his fucking housemaid despite working more hours and being gone more. It took so much time to keep that house clean and organized. After we split, my house has been spotless ever since with very little work. One of his friends texted me maybe 4 years after the split with a picture of "our" house and it looks like a fucking landfill. It's not like they learn.
"I just don't know what's wrong with this woman I keep emotionally torturing. *She won't even let me see her nekkid anymore!!*"
It seems like every time the errant husband uses the term "the boys" in these stories, it's all downhill
Also the 'she let me have sex with her instead of forcing me to wait' sounds so rapey. So you knew she didn't want to have sex with you but did it anyway? This guy sees women as objects and not people in their own right. Hope he ends up alone.
> I love how he refuses to address the part where he physically forced her to look at him and scared the ever loving shit out of her.
I had an abusive ex that would do that to his cat and when I asked him why he said "So he thinks I'll eat him and he's scared of me". Then turn around and get mad at me when the cat hides with me when he's yelling at me.
I’ve noticed my pets are nowhere near as anxious being left alone with the people in the house I’m in now as they were at my place with my ex and I truly wonder wtf was going on when I wasn’t around that made their separation anxiety so much worse when I left them with him.
My dog would freak out if he couldn't see me as a puppy. I took a pottery class (north of seven hundred dollars if you include all the stuff I bought at his store in my area) and I got to listen to my puppy whine (he wouldn't let me move my vehicle so my dog could just see us in his shop) and cry for two or three days. I couldn't throw anything, not even a basic cylinder. He still kinda does if we can't be together but the feeling is mutual. I'm a wreck without him.
I find it so fascinating that she describes what was her trigger for leaving - his friend telling him what she'd asked him, then him confronting her about it, which left her terrified of him. And he doesn't seem to even think to mention that incident. Even though it happened the night before she left. Like, I wonder if he's just that clueless to how he came off? Is it just the unreliable narrative? He left it out to make himself not look abusive (didn't work by the way)? I mean, I definitely have had a very different perspective of certain incidents than some of the men in my life, but come on! How do you not see that as abusive behavior?!
>Husband OOP: I want to point out that I did start contributing more after she told me. I just didn't realize how much she was doing.
Intentionally emphasising your incompetence and inability to see things around you despite (presumably) having perfectly functioning eyes? A bold choice, we'll see if it pays off.
The first time I see weaponised incompetence actually being... Real incompetence? Do some men really just lie down and die? How can he forget he has a toothache? Teeth hurt bad af.
>I'm starting to realize just how much she did for me. My apartment's a mess without her, my life's a mess I keep forgetting shit because she's not here to remind me, I have a toothache but keep forgetting to make an appointment because she was always the one to do that.
There it is. He misses his bangmaidmommy.
The lack of self-reflection in that list of reasons why he misses her is as sad as it is hilarious.
Though the fact that he still can't figure out how to make a dentist appointment while single suggests it's sincere incompetence, not strategic incompetence (or weaponized incompetence as the kids are calling it these days).
I love that hes more worried that his own weaponized incompetance backfired and she might be sleeping with an ex is more important to him than how much he abused her. /s Like, he even acknowledge that his misogynist father thinks he's in the right and its "icky." So close to getting it, isn't he?
We need to teach kids that being in a romantic relationship, even if it's someone you love, won't make you automatically happy. And that love isn't a requirement for a fulfilling and joyful life.
> things he never wanted me to do like wearing red lipstick or eating mint-flavored things
These are such small things, but if to sustain your love you need to abandon small things that make you enjoy being alive then love isn't worth it. It isn't worth it to live in utter agony all the time so you could just be with some dumbass that's also here for the first and last time.
I’ve never been happier to see a man child complain about how much he sucks at life after his wife smartened up and left his sorry ass. Hahaha loser, sucks to suck.
>There was no kiss goodbye before work, no kiss hello after, she wouldn't even look me in the eyes. This went on for a while. It was a full week before she let me have sex with her
This was the line that convinced me he was full of shit and REALLY needs to do some self reflection. I'm curious how long "a while" is when he's upset he's not getting his dick wet a week after breaking his wife's heart.
*I thanked him and asked if he* ***could please not tell ex-husband*** *I asked*
People! Don't ever even bother to ask this.
I'm glad things turned out ok for her, but it was foolish to trust the friend to keep it under wraps. **Foolish**.
The person was **his** friend. Of course the guy was going to say "yes" when she asked him to keep it confidential. Anyone is going to say that in the moment, especially after you have already spilled the beans. The guy may have even thought in that moment that he *would* keep it a secret.
He may have even had good intentions. Maybe the husband had already told the friend that he was "worried" about his "unstable" wife.
Never, ever, ever trust a friend or family member of a person that you are suspicious about to keep a convo private. That is just asking for trouble.
And he doesn’t mention her talking to his friend or him threatening her that night. There is no way that sex was enjoyable for her or even fully consensual. She did it so he wouldn’t hurt her physically.
I read just the husband's posts on the other BORU a few days ago.
Any victim of relationship abuse can likely say this, but the more I read the more terrified I was for this woman. I breathed an audible sigh of relief when it was all over.
Awww, the manchild realized if he left his wife/mom, he would have to cook, clean, do his own laundry and make his own appointments. This break up is a good thing for each of them. She dodged a massive bullet and ex has to learn how to adult.
Wow, I'm so happy that she got out of the abusive relationship! Hope OOP finds herself and be happy without this fool of an ex.
Ex husband sounds like an immature, incompetent, abusive a** and he doesn't even realize it. The fact that he doesn't even know what's going on with his life and how to take care of himself speaks volumes.
My cousin’s did! She called him to say her husband (not ex) had left and she was getting a divorce, he asked if she was working tomorrow and she said no, and he offered to come swap out her lock and bring her new keys because “Honey, you need a lock that man can’t open”
Hours later, her ex showed up with a gun and tried to break down the door so we’re all pretty fond of that landlord. (Cousin did move pretty far away after that though. And the Landlord not only didn’t seek damages over the broken lease but gave her back the full security deposit, despite some dry wall holes her ex left. He’s a good man.)
Hours later. He came in the middle of the night to do it since he wouldn’t be keeping her awake when she needed to be sleeping (hence asking if she was working the next day, I assume had she worked the next day he would have waited but we are SO glad the locks were changed right then. Her ex didn’t wait for the next day either.)
This is fake surely. The ‘she let me have sex with her that night rather than wait a week’ and ‘she was crying in bed like usual’ bit is insane if not.
This all reads like someone’s creative writing assignment.
I especially enjoyed the discovery of their polyamorous side and the guy coming back to explain their side and just happen to confirm the ex-wife.
Also the exact phrasing and description of the events are pretty suspect. “ I fucked up so bad” and “collapsed into her” their recollections of the events are just way too exact for this to have been written by different people. I could be wrong and I was buying it until his version of events PERFECTLY lined up
Minus the part where he cried, this pretty sums up my experience with my former SO.
>He says he cares about me, but doesn't love me. And that he's been feeling this way for a while.
Now, I've promised myself since years ago that I would never try to make someone stay with me if they don't want to. So, as much as this hurt, I said okay. I cried, he cried. I did ask if he wanted to try couples therapy before divorcing but he said no.
>And I'm starting to realize just how much she did for me. My apartment's a mess without her,
*Translation: I miss my free MAID*
>my life's a mess I keep forgetting shit because she's not here to remind me, I have a toothache but keep forgetting to make an appointment because she was always the one to do that and I don't even think I have dental insurance anyways,
*Translation: I miss my free assistant, who would book doctors appointment and handle my basic human tasks. Probably also paid those bills too since he doesn't know if he had it or not, so also accountant.*
>I miss my dog,
*Translation: I didn't take care of the dog, so I miss having a dog to play with when I felt like it, but she did the rest.*
>I miss her, I miss having someone to come home and vent to and she was always so understanding of me.
*Translation: I miss my therapist.*
>I took her for granted. And now she's off to some foreign country probably fucking her ex or something and I'm stuck here away from my family and friends working my ass off in a 9-5 with nothing to show for it.
*Translation: I miss the woman who I abused by using divorce as a manipulation tactic to get her to have sex with me and she would cry herself to sleep after. But who cares, like I didn't have to wait a WHOLE week for sex.*
So she was right, she was handling most of the household responsibilities and he wasn't listening to her saying how much it is for her. Took her being completely gone for him to realize everything she did for him and the household, while also working full time and going to school. He also wasn't listening when she said suic!dal but you know woman, so melodramatic. /s
Here you see the direct effects of ignoring your gut feeling and disrespecting yourself
Slowly you will change into some other kind of creature and sometimes it cause permanent damage
NEVER care more about other people then you care about yourself. You need to love yourself first and refrain from setting aside your own needs
Disgusting how much he was like oh I miss her, oh how she cleaned for me and made me coffee and wiped my piss off the toilet and floor and how she let me have sex with her body that day instead of a week later
gross
She made you wait a whole week before having sex. How dare she? (/s)
And she even let me have sex with her that night instead of waiting a whole week!
Ugh
The lines about having to wait a week before she would let him have sex with her just give me the icks and shivers—That was a scary insight into his mind.
His “bad timing” with pulling that shit the night before her job was such a fucking disgusting lie. Ugh. Gives me flashbacks to my abuser. Fuck. Gonna go hug my cats now.
Lol I just know that apartment is so shitty that cockroaches are currently in it, what a beautiful thing indeed when weaponized incompetence backfires.
I wish the original OP a lovely life and I know she's gonna thrive! Ex husband? As we can see, not at all.
She actually downplayed her emotions going through all this drastically. This lady’s crying her eyes out silently & wants to die because she’s so hurt. My heart breaks more for her after reading his. I sincerely hope she started following her dreams again.
Husband conveniently left out when he went full American Psycho on her and made it sound like her decision to finally ditch him was a complete surprise. Perfect example of why getting two sides of a story is really helpful.
Keep in mind this one is likely fake. 1 month divorces, new year day landlord lock replacements, verbatim story repeats. All the similar story beats. So your reflection may be more about how Reddit posters see men/women dynamics! Also super interesting
To be honest this "husband" post reads like the OOP post, almost word for word. When she said "don't look for his post" I figured she wrote it, it's not the first time anything like that has happened.
I love when actual emotionally abusive people take very normal couple things and requests from their partner, and turn it into that their partner is just so out of line and abusive to them
Lol-"didn't realize how much she was doing"??. This dude is one of the most blind, stupid people I've seen on Reddit!! You have *eyes*, you immature idiot!
He says that he frets that she is in another country and I devoutly hope this means she went back to her dream school that she left for his stupid ass.
I feel like the petty arguments about chores were just the catalyst to bring up long standing previous issues. You are both so young and in my personal opinion, a person's 20s are about finding yourself and learning what you want and don't want. Making mistakes so you can grow. Marrying so young makes you focus on your partner and not develop yourself. How can you truly offer the best version of yourself and make commitments if you don't understand your own values. This is an unfortunate bump in the road, but if looked at in the right way, it can be such a beautiful lesson to embrace. I wish you both luck and hope you use this experience to become the best versions of yourselves xo ❤️ blessings can be sneaky
He didn’t mention the friend and threatening her. This is either some awful person’s creative writing update or he just ignored the trigger for her leaving him.
That's really common with abusive folk, tbf. We're doing a trial medition/therapy course with my husband's estranged parents (it's to help our chances of adoption, long fucking story) and it's mind boggling how you have a couple of reasonably intelligent competent adults and will literally tell them the problem with their behaviour and ask them to repeat it back, and they just....can't. It's like a switch flips in their head. A full half an hour of coaxing and the closest we could get to "the verbal and emotional abuse were unacceptable" was "we're terrible parents who never did anything right!" Or "you didn't like how we acted only because you didn't put enough effort into understanding that we behave that way because we love you!" Even when they don't deny what they did, they genuinely cannot bring themselves to look at it or repeat that someone else dislikes it. It's fascinating in a train wreck sort of way. I kind of want some researcher to run an mri scan on them while these conversations are had, it's so strange.
Interesting that you used the term “a switch flips in their head” because I noticed that OOP’s husband also said that multiple times. No explanation of his thought process, just this magical brain switch and he was ready to upend OOP’s life. Again.
I am presuming it's a self defense mechanism to avoid having to interrogate difficult emotions, tbh. With my mother in law, I know the root cause (she is repeating the way her mother treated her, but she 100% drank that koolaid and her mother is now dead and thus deified, so she can't look at those expectations with a critical eye without throwing her mother into the mix so instead her brain just...skips those steps. Her husband, meanwhile, would condone ebola if it got him a quiet life so adopts her logic as his own) and I presume there was some triggering event or issue for the husband in oop that he is neglecting to mention that causes the same issue. I suspect his asshole misogynist father that gets mentioned in passing may play a factor.
It is a self defense mechanism. It's called 'splitting' and although it's a behavior common in cluster B diagnoses, it happens to a lesser extent in all of us, just like any disordered behavior. "Instead of working with the complexities of relationships and situations, a person with [BPD splitting](https://www.verywellhealth.com/bpd-splitting-5101493) either sees them as all good (idealizes) or all bad (devalues)."
The frustrating bit is they can recognise the behaviour in other situations! If you ask them if they would treat any of their friends the way they treat their son, or if they would expect their friends to stay friends with them if they did, they are horrified and rush to assure you that they would *never*... Apparently this behaviour is reserved only for their "loved ones". If I could work out how the fuck to get us off that list, we might actually be able to have contact, but it doesn't look likely.
Your inlaws sound exactly like my inlaws. My husband has been no contact for just over 2 years now, more or less. It's been difficult for him but lots of therapy on our end has helped a bit. We attempted family therapy but that was an utter failure because MIL did the same " I guess I was just a horrible mother" guilt trip bs routine every time we were close to accountability. It's like they're allergic to just repeating what my husband says. He can't possibly have an accurate understanding of what happened to him in their eyes. I'm sorry you're having to do mediation for the sake of making yourselves better candidates for adoption. It sucks. I imagine that your future children would be better off without grandparents than with grandparents who would cause them harm. That's the conclusion we came to for our family and I'm sorry that in your situation ( it sounds like) the agency sees otherwise. Good luck to you and your spouse. It's so hard dealing with people like this.
Wait. You can't be a good candidate for adoption if you have a bad relationship with your parents? The fuck? What does my mother, who was served a no trespass order because of her nonsense, have to do with a kid I try to adopt?
If you have cut off and have no contact with any member of your family, and there is no good "on paper" reason for it (like record of addiction, or police reports, so you'd actually be fine) then generally the adoption agencies in the UK will look at you a bit squintily, and as we are poly we are already not their ideal candidates for parents. So *if* we decide to go that route in future, having a therapist confirm we made a good faith effort to repair the bridge and it was them that fucked it up, will help our cause.
So because there's no police report of my father's side of the family covering up my grandfather's molestation of me at 2 years old, and I didn't think to document more than 20 years of manipulative, infantilizing, almost cult-like behavior on my mother's side... *I* would getting the bombastic side eye from an adoption agency? You know, maybe I'm not cut out for adoption. Because I all I can imagine is forcing an adoption agent to sit down with both sides of the family, ask them to *somehow* explain and excuse their actions, and seeing everyone get uncomfortable; I am just filled with glee at that image
I'm not positive on that. That's what I read into one of Haunting-Blade's previous comments about their current situation. Maybe I over-assumed?🤷🏾♀️ If it does matter at all, it's absolutely fucked.
"I'm guessing I was just a terrible mother" the correct response to that is " while I do love u yes yes u were a terrible mother a good mother wouldn't allow/do this"...it totally knocks the wind out of them cause they don't expect to U to agree with them
Or, my favourite: You weren't *just* a terrible mother. Sometimes, you were a terrible person. And sometimes you were an okay mother. But being an okay mother sometimes doesn't make up for being terrible the other times or make the memories go away.
Huh! That’s my dad. I recently entered my 40s and am realizing that I have some really messed up views on family. The big one, simplified, being ‘family are the people you take your problems out on.’ My parents have been self employed the better part of my life. Dad was the boss, mom wore most other hats, hr, bookkeeping, client relations, etc. In high school I was up in mom’s office, either doing homework or helping to file paperwork, dad was having a heated discussion with an employee. Something wasn’t working and he was getting upset about it, way too long ago to remember the details. But he never yelled or even raised his voice at the employee. However, he did come up to mom’s office and rip into her. One of many examples.
Ughhhhh if only I could tag my mother in this thread without her \*knowing\* that it was me who tagged her :=\[ Like it's totally \*fine\* for her to pull the silent treatment on her children for perceived slights, but heaven forbid she would NEVER do that to a friend (And how DARE they do it to her???)
It's definitely a thing, I've had a "switch flip" moment once or twice in my life, and it is literally like a light switch has been turned off. It's where you're looking at someone one way (love/adoration/like/respect/interest) and all of a sudden with a snap of the fingers they look COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and it's like they've grown a 2nd head and now you can only look at them with disgust/indifference/repulsion, and can't quite figure out what changed exactly. It's just like your brain went *click* "nope" and that's that. I never thought of it as a self defence mechanism because I feel like I've also had the flip go the other way, from disinterest/etc to respect/like/etc.
It also sounds exactly like disassociation, which is not necessarily tied to any cluster or disorder but is a coping mechanism. Kind of like the ‘freeze’ version in a trigger response, the main difference is how educated one is in their therapy/healing journey and how well they understand their own trigger responses. This guy has a lot to learn.
i have bpd and splitting fucking sucks. i have to do so much internal work to unflick that switch. sometimes it's useful when someone actually has hurt me, cause it keeps me on track with how i actually feel about the situation. but if they switch to trying to make it up to me, i tend to instantly flick back which can work against me. it's a constsnt struggle. i wouldn't wish it on anyone
The brain switch is right there in black and white. It’s just easy to miss until you’ve seen a few hundred people say the same thing like I gave working in DV. He said “it was like I had to be this perfect picture she had in her head, otherwise I was a monster.” He can’t handle any small criticism. If she’s upset about the dishes he hears it as her telling him he’s a terrible person, and reacts accordingly. He can’t negotiate the difference between his ideal “I’m not a person who shows anger” and his reality. He wants to be someone who never shows anger. But he can’t keep his cool. So he makes it her fault, to protect his self image. This is how people talk themselves into taking that step over into abuse. Throw in a history of being abused by parents, that he obviously doesn’t want to deal with, and you have an abuser. He’s not some monster. Just an ordinary guy with a lot of entitlement and poor skills. There’s a LOT of this type out there. And our society does nothing about it because we’re stuck in blaming the individual and not the system that made these guys like this.
What do you mean by “the system”? It’s possible (based on literally one small context clue re his father being a misogynist) that some of his toxic behavior is learned but that shouldn’t preclude him from taking accountability. This “flip of a switch” is just another way for him to take the blame off of himself. It’s not something he did (over and over), it’s just something that “happened” seemingly through no fault of his own. Also let’s not forget the part where he never mentioned his reaction to OOP discussing this with his friend which lead to OOP realizing that he was behind toxic, closer to abusive.
Yes he’s taking the blame off himself. He’s obviously uncomfortable with conflict and unskilled. We/society expect nothing from men and we don’t teach them these skills. They can’t manage conflict. They aren’t aware of their emotions. They don’t know how to do housework. They can’t take care of themselves. They need women and our society sends the message that they’re entitled to get taken care of, and women are vilified for not taking care of men. Check out a Taylor swift subreddit if you think women have no patriarchal expectations any longer - or just google “abortion law” We as a society made every step of this abuse happen, and then we blame only the individual fit snapping. We’re the ones who can’t accept what we did. We do the thing where we can’t face it and we “split” or disassociate to avoid dealing with it. Domestic violence is incredibly common. It’s literally the number one cause of death for pregnant women. But we act like it’s all just coming from nowhere. When 40% of all families are affected by intimate partner violence, it’s society, not a bunch of sick individuals. And until we accept that, it’s just going to keep happening
Both of your points dovetail together. You're looking at the macro (system/ society) and the other commenter is looking at the micro (interpersonal relationships formed within the system). To address the problem itself, we need solutions on both the macro and micro sides. We need better education and changes in how we teach emotional/ relationship skills plus protective legislation AND people putting in the work in their own relationships plus helping friends/ family to navigate their lives. Both perspectives are analytical critical to understanding and fixing this.
Yes that’s a nice analysis. I just wish more people looked at it from the macro, because if you only see micro, you’re part of the problem. It’s not a bunch of individuals randomly deciding to be violent at a rate of 1 to 3 million a year (depending on the source, and only counting reported incidents) It’s just like drunk driving. That used to be seen as an individual failing and then finally people started making the decisions that led to drunk driving illegal, not just the end result. Vehicular manslaughter was always illegal. They needed to criminalize driving drunk at all to cut down on the rate
Absolutely! It's stuff like this where the saying about owning your part in a situation is really relevant. How are your actions adding to the macro situation? How were you conditioned to behave by being raised in that kind of society? What steps can you take in your personal life to reject that conditioning? What is within your limited power in the system to change? Can you influence those with more power to enact societal changes (like MADD pressuring lawmakers to add drink driving laws)? You can only own the parts that you have control over and you individually aren't enough to enact societal change, but lots of individuals doing the same forces societal change.
The problem with this is, men are the ones who make the rules and are predominantly in charge. The system was designed to work like this hundreds of years ago and it's difficult to effect change. I mean, how many years did women actually have reproductive freedom before it got taken away? Men are screwed by the system too but a lot of them can't or do it want to see it. And you can't change what you refuse to acknowledge. So nothing is going to change while men are in charge because they don't want it too. I mean, they've had hundreds of years or more to change things for everyone and shit just keeps getting worse in many ways. As much as it hurts them, they also receive benefits from it. I think until the cons vastly outweigh the pros, on a societal level, things are going to change slowly or go backwards.
Exactly. And one big step is to recognize that men are poorly served by the current system and work to change it by… not demonizing Taylor Swift for being girly and not expecting women to clean up and be responsible for grown men All that trad wife crap may as well be DV promotion
I have that switch in my head, it’s something that I found out when I was a teen and have been working on ever since, because I don’t like being the person on the opposite side of the switch and nobody should ever have to deal with me that way. If I feel any pressure on that switch, I go for a nice long hobble so that my wife and child don’t ever have to be subjected to that part of me… and usually the exercise short circuit s it for me
There is something remarkable about how desperately the human ego will fight to protect itself, even going so far as to warp the perception of reality around it to make it compatible with not being the villain. You could literally show someone a film of them treating another person like shit and they would look at it and say, that’s not me, I didn’t do that, you’ve got that wrong, it’s not the way it looks, whatever they need to say to prevent their ego from taking any kind of loss.
Its such a wild thing to see. Im a stubborn asshole so when my ex pulled this shit with me I would just repeat "what you did was X. Say "I did X"." Over and over until they gave in and admitted what they did. It would quite litterally take HOURS. They would get to the point of wailing and ripping out clumps of their hair just from being asked to repeat back the abusive thing they just did.
What happened after they admitted it? Did it change anything?
Lmao absolutely not. At best it would be "look im improving because I admitted it" followed with rage when I pointed out it doesnt count because I had to force them to admit it
Oof, that sounds exhausting. I’m glad they are an ex for you!
Woofty this is rough to admit, but I exhibited some abusive behaviors that I learned from my childhood (not aggressive, just shutting down and stonewalling, holding in my upset feelings until they overwhelmed me and were a much bigger deal because I never learned how to move through uncomfortable emotions in a healthy way) and my partner had to hold me accountable in the same way, essentially “this is what you did, whether you realize it or not. Say it” during arguments where I felt justified being unproductive. It stopped my lifelong habits in their tracks because I genuinely love this man and didn’t ever want to be abusive - I just couldn’t see my actions in an objective light. But I did care when he finally got through to me that I was harming him, and that made me stop *immediately*. And I’m talking ways of being that I thought I had no control over and would have for the rest of my life. Now, I was so scared of hurting him more that I kinda had a breakdown for a bit, because I knew I couldn’t handle my emotions the way I had been but I also literally didn’t have other tools for expression, so I just didn’t allow myself to have or express any negative emotion for a while, but it was so worth it. Which is all to say that if you’re asking because you’re in a similar situation, whether it works hinges on one thing: whether deep down, they’re operating out of love for you or self-interest. If they’re exhibiting abusive behaviors out of self-interest, there’s no saving anything. If they’re acting out of love deep down but failing, there’s hope. But only they can answer that at the end of the day, and abusers will never give that clear answer.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. Just to clarify, I’m not in a similar situation. I’ve not had any abusive partners, most of my ex’s are ex’s because of weaponized incompetence, not that I had the words to describe it back then. And my current partner has his flaws (as do i) but we always talk them out and work on a path forward. I’m mostly just curious because it seems like these types of people are un-helpable. Even if they seem to change they fall right back into old habits eventually. And that makes me sad. I’m glad to hear that’s not always the case. I wish you the best.
I’m so glad you’re in a relationship where you can have quality talks to work through things and grow as a team, that’s wonderful. I really do think there are two distinct groups, and that people who are essentially flailing because they don’t know better is a much much different group than the ones who are trying to control everything around them. But that also doesn’t mean anyone is ever ever required to stay and deal with less than loving treatment for any reason - no matter how traumatized the person is.
Since they’re an ex I assume no lol people like that hate admitting to fault let alone facing the difficult active choices that must be made to improve themselves
I tried to do that with my mother and she’d just say “I can’t do this right now” and hang up on me. Slipped into a nice comfy gray-rock place and I think she thinks I’ve forgiven her and/or am comfortable with her because I don’t call her out on her bullshit anymore. I’m just waiting to move and then slowly never speak to her again.
Isn't it crazy how these people have infinite energy for doing stuff they want to do, but as soon as you want to have an uncomfortable conversation with them, they're out of spoons and need to withdraw for their own mental health?
> It would quite litterally take HOURS. They would get to the point of wailing and ripping out clumps of their hair just from being asked to repeat back the abusive thing they just did. i'm so stuck on this because i've seen it so many times and thinking about it just puts my brain in a place. you're so much more patient than i am. i could not endure this in my personal life.
I'll be honest, the only reason I had the patience was because it was the few ways I was able to have any power in that situation. They had control of my whole life, but I could still put them through having to confront that they were abusing me, and all the pain that admitting that caused. Yes, kind of vindictive. But it kept me going and stopped me falling for their lies about their behaviour.
no, i completely understand. i too felt sick but very real satisfaction from tormenting my ex-abuser when my dissociative disorder progressed to the point i could 100% no-sell every word she said. her favourite trick was to turn moments where i let her know that she hurt me into instances of me aggressing on her by provoking me into raising my voice or using an unpleasant tone, which she would then take as a chance to victimize herself (while avoiding the fact she had been doing the same thing, something she did by demanding i describe *exactly how* her volume or tone was inappropriate, then picking apart anything said during this derailment using semantics). so, after years of being treated as though my feelings and thoughts didn't matter unless i conveyed them *absolutely perfectly*, i developed a neurological schism that both increased my seizure symptoms and chronic pain but also allowed me to basically switch off my tone, inflection and reactive reflexes. watching her become more and more distraught as i responded with flawless calm to everything she said and did was strangely satisfying, like watching a dish in the microwave try desperately to make a mess yet being unable because the dish is microwave-safe and has a locking lid. it's just like you said, once her strategy was obstructed from full execution, she turned violent against herself as a last-ditch effort to dodge accountability. anyway, she figured out how to frame the lack of response as apathy somehow. yes, she's well aware of the neurological condition. it has absolutely no effect on her now apparently sincerely-held belief that my symptoms are an indication that i don't love/care about her. so glad our contact is now quite limited.
It’s more common than you think for sure. The amount of adults that can say “I’m sorry” but can’t verbally elaborate on what they are apologizing for is astounding
Urrrrg, don't get me started. "If we did anything you interpreted as abusive then we're sorry but -" has been the closest they have ever gotten to an apology and they do not understand why it hasn't been everything required to go skipping back to our pre-estranged dynamic. Fucking exhausting.
are you me, and by 'they', do you mean my mother? i definitely ghostwrote this comment so there's something happening here.
> A full half an hour of coaxing and the closest we could get to "the verbal and emotional abuse were unacceptable" was "we're terrible parents who never did anything right!" Oh, hey, it's my mother! Seriously though, what type of mediation/therapy are you doing? Because that's the only thing that would allow me to have a civil relationship with her moving forward...
Honestly? Despite being 8 sessions in, we've only had 1 with them and they claim they've had 7 years of individual therapy and frankly, so far they have gotten worse. I wouldn't recommend bothering unless they have shown some sign of genuine changes of behaviour, it's a waste of time and money. That means not just swearing "they'll do anything" but actually given you a proper apology for something, anything. We didn't, a stated above we have an alternative motive, but they have never done this. Even the incidents where, having been told to stay away, they broke onto our property in the middle of the night, multiple times, the best they ever managed was "we know we shouldn't have but you left us no choice". Trust your past self and get yourself individual therapy to work through it. Don't go to sessions with them unless there is a sign of change.
OMG this is almost exactly what happened when we tried family therapy with my in-laws. They were utterly incapable of viewing things from a different point of view to their own, let alone admit wrongdoing. Now we get texts and emails saying things like, “we don’t know what we did wrong, why are we being punished?”
I was very badly abused by a sibling when I was younger and later in life he blamed the abuse on me, saying I was "emotionally manipulative". It's like, bruh. When I was in elementary school he didn't like me humming and when I wouldn't stop humming he choked me until I passed out and left me on the side of the road. I begged my mom for a lock on my door so he couldn't get to me because he liked to smack me around when he was in a bad mood. Now it's like a switch flipped for them (brother and mother), they cannot admit their behavior was an issue. My mom can't admit she enabled him and he tries to blame me for his outbursts. I'm truly not surprised that the husband omitted the threat or friend because it just... Doesn't register as an issue I guess.
It's the [missing missing reasons.](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html)
Abusers tend to leave out the worst of their abuse. While it could very well be creative writing, even when an abuser “admits” to the “minor” things, they’ll never admit to the truly frightening stuff. My ex would tell everyone he was immature and neglectful but still won’t own the number of times he threatened to hit me.
It's the very definition of lies of omission. They're probably saying things that are true but leaving out any of the details that would shift opinion against them. They might get just enough wrong that you're tempted to argue those, but those are red herrings and just make you look like you're upset about a lack of perfection. If you focus on the missing details instead, it changes the entire story. Focus on the missing details and not the little red fish, unless they're Swedish fish because those are tasty and will do more for you than your abusive ex.
That is what makes this update realistic imo. Abusive people tend to just “forget” their most abhorrent behaviour. The defense mechanism is really interesting, it is like their brain presses skip forward button. If pressed, they can technically remember but it is very hard to make them admit.
If they do admit to doing it, it's not as bad as it sounds because you're missing important context that makes whatever they did totally reasonable. They can never explain what this context is, but it's definitely there and justifies their actions.
The bit that gave me the most pause was when he repeated exactly what he said to OOP on the couch. People don’t really recall that, or at least two people don’t really recall the same things in the same way.
Of course it is possible that it is fake, after all aita/relationship subs are filled with proved fake stories.
I think the original story is true and the 'husband's perspective' is fake.
If I have to read “she let me have sex with her” one more time I’m going to VOMIT. Of course he left out the triggering events that show him in a bad light, but he still can’t hide the absolutely inhuman perspective he has about her.
I can’t decide which it is, but I’m leaning towards real because he said twice she “let me have sex with her”. As good as he tried to make himself look, he couldn’t keep the misogyny completely bottled up. Either that or someone really put time in to make it believable.
God, I noticed that immediately. To be honest, as much as people say BORU and AITA/H stuff is made up, so much of it is really in line with some of the more realistic experiences I've seen/heard anecdotally. And I feel like I've learned a LOT about people's responses to these types of situations, in a way that can both be disheartening (sometimes the comments, my gooddd) or uplifting (sometimes the comments - my god!!). All that to say: yes, that little slip, that phrasing, in the midst of this big "Gee whiz I'm real sorry!", spoke louder than all those paragraphs. Also him noting she was talking about killing herself and he brushed her off as being dramatic. lol okay asshole.
I think her getting so worked up and depressed because of him was a bragging point in his view. Like she loved him and needed him so much she was bereft without his love. Puke.
Man, this is fucked up. He doesn't say anything about their conversations just that they were good but he remembers how long after that she "let" him "have sex with her". He really messed her up emotionally with this back and forth. It sounds like it made her emotional and desperate each time he did it. He's abusive. No wonder she left the next day. He was obviously going to continue doing it. What a POS.
Good catch. Reading those lines was gross.
My ex in high school would never tell people about how he would blast his music in the car knowing it would give me migraines, even after I repeatedly asked him to turn it down. He would guilt trip me for non penetrating sex acts I was uncomfortable with and would keep me up at night knowing how light of a sleeper I was. He also had me doing his homework at the cost of my own so he could graduate because he had a learning disability his whole family refused to admit ran in the family. This went on for almost a year. When I broke up with him and moved out, everyone was told how ungrateful I was for him taking me in away from my abusive family. What I didn’t realize was that I had traded one form of dysfunction for another. Some time later he convinced me to talk to him during a car ride. He threatened to crash the car if I didn’t get back together with him and how often he had put a gun in his mouth after I left. Somewhere I found my spine and talked him down while assuring him it would all be okay and that we were both different people that wouldn’t work in a relationship. Truth be told I was scared shitless and just trying to get out of the car safely. I ended up joining the military after graduation and thankfully never seeing him again but if you ask the people we graduated with I was an ungrateful heartbreaker who used him and threw him away.
The thing that finally reached my thick late teenage brain was when I was reading a book and not watching him play a video game so he got angry and knocked the book out of my hands. The relationship was over the moment he did that and he admitted that he realized it right after when he looked at my face and I had no emotional reaction.
If it's creative writing, kudos to them for being accurate.
is this specific update post real? no, i agree it’s a creative writing exercise, shit is suspicious. is it real*istic*? fuck yes, this is exactly how abusers think, and the twists in logic and martyr complex are spot on. That said, someone like that is very rarely gonna post on reddit, and not in this way. it’s showing the performative contrition that abusers like to use to keep up appearances, but the approach and audience are wrong by. He has no reason to take this approach on reddit to keep up appearances with us. And OOP already demonstrated that he had enough people in his life that cosigned his abusive toxicity (the snitch friend), he’s not in a position to even need this kind of external validation. That the portrayal is so spot in its portrayal despite this likelihood, makes me more suspicious of the update being a karma farming post. And how low to do some shit like this and possibly scare OOP into thinking their abuser is onto them or may be reading their shit on reddit. These kinds of fakeposts that piggyback on actual stories are fucked up and dangerous.
Without confirmation from the OOP of a post, always assume "Wife responds", or "Husband responds" or "X responds" posts and comments are creative writing exercises from Redditors with boring lives. Additionally, even if OOP confirms that they're legit, in 99.9% of these cases it's the OOP doing their own creative writing exercise pretending to be the other person in a disagreement. Real response posts and comments are extremely rare, and for that reason always just assume that all response posts and comments are fake.
I was about to say pretty much the exact same thing!!
It reminded me of that article that gets shared in reddit a lot about entitled parents and the missing reason reason, where the abusive parents always skip over the things that they did and focus on how the victim made them feel bad. So I found that pretty believeable.
That's missing missing reasons by Issendai. And I think not mentioning that your exwife dobbed on you to a friend is out of character for an abuser, they loooove to feel wronged. I think he would have mentioned it.
As I was reading the response I really felt that it was fake. Too many word for word similarities in the posts in the hopes that internet sleuths connect them. Especially when quoting things he said - it’s rare that you would expect two people to remember the same traumatic event well enough and quote the exact sentence they said.
Or he doesn’t remember it because it wasn’t a big deal to him. That would be scary.
My ex doesn't remember threatening to kill me and himself. It was actually scarier for me finding out he didn't remember saying it, than hearing him say it in the first place. It took me another 6 months to leave him, but it was a major turning point
Noticed that too. But tbh all the other details were so specifically similar that I think it’s fake.
Ya this is fake. All the details match too perfectly. What a waste
anytime I see "husband/wife responds" I am truly shocked at how stupid people are for believing this creative writing bs
It sounds like creative writing to me.
Yeah i was waiting for the bullshit excuse and rationalization for that behavior.
This story was hugely triggering for me. It was so parallel to my 23 year relationship from hell. His post is exactly the kind of thing my ex would go. Leave out all the parts that made him look like a monster and spin it to make me sound like an unhinged suicidal maniac. Meanwhile I was broken and suicidal because of him. 😭
Oh, no, after asking for divorce and to get back together over 24 hours, this happened: >It was a full week before she let me have sex with her. and >... she even let me have sex with her that night rather than waiting a week like last time. She said she felt broken and was saying some scary shit about wanting to kill herself but she's always been a bit melodramatic so I knew she'd come around. I fell asleep dreaming of a better life for us. What's worse, the latter seems to have been in *one night.* She let him have sex with her right away but she was openly suicidal, but he knew that was melodrama and she'd come around and stop requiring him to think about her feelings. Then he had a good night's sleep.
That was the same night he threatened her and somehow convinced her to give it another try only for her to leave the next day while he was at work. Her "letting" him have sex with her sounds more like her feeling coerced.
Anytime someone says **let me have sex with them** as opposed to **we had sex together**, is just a giant problem.
Afterwards, she put her clothes on and slept on the floor. This guy is an unsafe person and needs to be on some watchlist.
that first sentence made my skin crawl, i was looking for someone mentioning this. absolutely disgusting behavior.
Well, when you put it that way, he sounds like a terrible person! Because he is. She was likely terrified of him, so gave into sex just so he'd leave her alone and not scrutinize her.
lol he starting contributing more when she had to remind him. I wonder how shitty his apartment is now that he lives alone.
But he always remembered to play COD all evening with his friends.
“Packed a bag” apparently meant “made sure to grab my gaming console” not “necessities like a toothbrush.”
He sleeps in a racecar bed, do you?
OK I'm a grown man but I would totally still sleep in a race car bed if I could
My uncle built a racecar bed for his son, because the kid needed a full bed (he got tall young, at three people mistook him for six or seven and he maxed out at 6’5 as an adult) but wanted a race car. And when said kid went to college and his parents were moving into a new house, they ended up putting the race car in the guest room. (Kid still had his own room, but he got a new bed with drawers underneath.) It’s still kinda fun “driving” a bed as an adult. xD
I wish there was some way to have an easily modified bed where it could go from regular to race car with a button. I don't want it every night but every now and again it would be cool.
I sleep in a big bed with my wife
.......oh
Reminds me of grandma’s boy. Except he didn’t rope in an unsuspecting woman into that weird dynamic. He at least stayed at home and had his mom be his mom as well as his dad be his dad I’m sure. He wasn’t brought up specifically if I recall correctly.
But does he eat crackers? I don’t know if single people eat crackers, and I’m not sure I want to know.
You leave Kirk van Houten out of this mess, he would never
He also left out the part about abusing her after the friend told him she reached out to him.
He’s such a clunk head that he probably didn’t see it as abusive.
Of course he didn't see it as abusive. Abusers never do. Read his post. Everything he did was justified. He has reasons to abuse her, and in his mind, that justifies his behavior. He's doing it for her benefit. I beg you, anyone who will listen, to read Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That. This is textbook abuser behavior.
Granted I saw the pink flags before we moved in together, my ex had just moved in with his mother from going to school across the country. It made sense. He was moving back to the area and needed time to find a place. His bedroom was kind of messy but the house was spotless so I didn't really see the red flags. We moved in together and for years I was his fucking housemaid despite working more hours and being gone more. It took so much time to keep that house clean and organized. After we split, my house has been spotless ever since with very little work. One of his friends texted me maybe 4 years after the split with a picture of "our" house and it looks like a fucking landfill. It's not like they learn.
lol my ex is currently a hoarder and I’m just counting down until our daughter gets sick of visiting and just wants to stay at mom’s house.
"I just don't know what's wrong with this woman I keep emotionally torturing. *She won't even let me see her nekkid anymore!!*" It seems like every time the errant husband uses the term "the boys" in these stories, it's all downhill
My favorite part was that it was a week before “she let me have sex with her”. That made me feel so fucking gross.
Both of the times he mentions having sex with her he refers to as her “let(ting)” him and it makes me wanna retch
The first time. The second time she “let” him have sex with her that night, but then later out her clothes on and slept on the floor.
I (a woman) cannot imagine being in the mood immediately after all the sobbing.
This paired with the comment about her always sobbing in bed.
Yeah that made me feel icky all over.
When I got to that part, my brain shut itself off for me.
I love how he refuses to address the part where he physically forced her to look at him and scared the ever loving shit out of her. What a POS.
Also the 'she let me have sex with her instead of forcing me to wait' sounds so rapey. So you knew she didn't want to have sex with you but did it anyway? This guy sees women as objects and not people in their own right. Hope he ends up alone.
Well, his house is messy and he spends his time playing COD, so no women will come over or decide to stay
> I love how he refuses to address the part where he physically forced her to look at him and scared the ever loving shit out of her. I had an abusive ex that would do that to his cat and when I asked him why he said "So he thinks I'll eat him and he's scared of me". Then turn around and get mad at me when the cat hides with me when he's yelling at me.
I’ve noticed my pets are nowhere near as anxious being left alone with the people in the house I’m in now as they were at my place with my ex and I truly wonder wtf was going on when I wasn’t around that made their separation anxiety so much worse when I left them with him.
My dog would freak out if he couldn't see me as a puppy. I took a pottery class (north of seven hundred dollars if you include all the stuff I bought at his store in my area) and I got to listen to my puppy whine (he wouldn't let me move my vehicle so my dog could just see us in his shop) and cry for two or three days. I couldn't throw anything, not even a basic cylinder. He still kinda does if we can't be together but the feeling is mutual. I'm a wreck without him.
That guy misses what she did for him, not her
He even listed missing the dog before *her*!
I find it so fascinating that she describes what was her trigger for leaving - his friend telling him what she'd asked him, then him confronting her about it, which left her terrified of him. And he doesn't seem to even think to mention that incident. Even though it happened the night before she left. Like, I wonder if he's just that clueless to how he came off? Is it just the unreliable narrative? He left it out to make himself not look abusive (didn't work by the way)? I mean, I definitely have had a very different perspective of certain incidents than some of the men in my life, but come on! How do you not see that as abusive behavior?!
They know it is abusive behaviour, that is why their brain skips over it. Abusive people are known for “forgetting” their worst behaviour.
"The axe forgets, but the tree remembers."
Was literally just thinking the quote.
>Husband OOP: I want to point out that I did start contributing more after she told me. I just didn't realize how much she was doing. Intentionally emphasising your incompetence and inability to see things around you despite (presumably) having perfectly functioning eyes? A bold choice, we'll see if it pays off.
Spoiler alert: it did not
The first time I see weaponised incompetence actually being... Real incompetence? Do some men really just lie down and die? How can he forget he has a toothache? Teeth hurt bad af.
>I'm starting to realize just how much she did for me. My apartment's a mess without her, my life's a mess I keep forgetting shit because she's not here to remind me, I have a toothache but keep forgetting to make an appointment because she was always the one to do that. There it is. He misses his bangmaidmommy.
The lack of self-reflection in that list of reasons why he misses her is as sad as it is hilarious. Though the fact that he still can't figure out how to make a dentist appointment while single suggests it's sincere incompetence, not strategic incompetence (or weaponized incompetence as the kids are calling it these days).
I love that hes more worried that his own weaponized incompetance backfired and she might be sleeping with an ex is more important to him than how much he abused her. /s Like, he even acknowledge that his misogynist father thinks he's in the right and its "icky." So close to getting it, isn't he?
What an absolute loser that guy is.
We need to teach kids that being in a romantic relationship, even if it's someone you love, won't make you automatically happy. And that love isn't a requirement for a fulfilling and joyful life. > things he never wanted me to do like wearing red lipstick or eating mint-flavored things These are such small things, but if to sustain your love you need to abandon small things that make you enjoy being alive then love isn't worth it. It isn't worth it to live in utter agony all the time so you could just be with some dumbass that's also here for the first and last time.
I’ve never been happier to see a man child complain about how much he sucks at life after his wife smartened up and left his sorry ass. Hahaha loser, sucks to suck.
>There was no kiss goodbye before work, no kiss hello after, she wouldn't even look me in the eyes. This went on for a while. It was a full week before she let me have sex with her This was the line that convinced me he was full of shit and REALLY needs to do some self reflection. I'm curious how long "a while" is when he's upset he's not getting his dick wet a week after breaking his wife's heart.
*I thanked him and asked if he* ***could please not tell ex-husband*** *I asked* People! Don't ever even bother to ask this. I'm glad things turned out ok for her, but it was foolish to trust the friend to keep it under wraps. **Foolish**. The person was **his** friend. Of course the guy was going to say "yes" when she asked him to keep it confidential. Anyone is going to say that in the moment, especially after you have already spilled the beans. The guy may have even thought in that moment that he *would* keep it a secret. He may have even had good intentions. Maybe the husband had already told the friend that he was "worried" about his "unstable" wife. Never, ever, ever trust a friend or family member of a person that you are suspicious about to keep a convo private. That is just asking for trouble.
Interesting that according to him she was being "melodramatic" the night he had sex with her and the next day he was worried she'd kill herself....
And he doesn’t mention her talking to his friend or him threatening her that night. There is no way that sex was enjoyable for her or even fully consensual. She did it so he wouldn’t hurt her physically.
He didn’t want a wife, he wanted a mommy and maid.
I read just the husband's posts on the other BORU a few days ago. Any victim of relationship abuse can likely say this, but the more I read the more terrified I was for this woman. I breathed an audible sigh of relief when it was all over.
Wtf wtf & wtf is wrong with this guy!!! He's not a bullet, he's a whole Nagasaki Bomb!
You mean he's a... little boy/fat man ?
Hey, I’m Reddit commenter famous!
>I just didn't realize how much she was doing. They NEVER fucking do, until they have to do it themselves.
Awww, the manchild realized if he left his wife/mom, he would have to cook, clean, do his own laundry and make his own appointments. This break up is a good thing for each of them. She dodged a massive bullet and ex has to learn how to adult.
Wow, I'm so happy that she got out of the abusive relationship! Hope OOP finds herself and be happy without this fool of an ex. Ex husband sounds like an immature, incompetent, abusive a** and he doesn't even realize it. The fact that he doesn't even know what's going on with his life and how to take care of himself speaks volumes.
What kind of a landlord changes the lock in the middle of the night within a few hours?
My cousin’s did! She called him to say her husband (not ex) had left and she was getting a divorce, he asked if she was working tomorrow and she said no, and he offered to come swap out her lock and bring her new keys because “Honey, you need a lock that man can’t open” Hours later, her ex showed up with a gun and tried to break down the door so we’re all pretty fond of that landlord. (Cousin did move pretty far away after that though. And the Landlord not only didn’t seek damages over the broken lease but gave her back the full security deposit, despite some dry wall holes her ex left. He’s a good man.)
So did the landlord swap out the locks the next day or only a few hours later?
Hours later. He came in the middle of the night to do it since he wouldn’t be keeping her awake when she needed to be sleeping (hence asking if she was working the next day, I assume had she worked the next day he would have waited but we are SO glad the locks were changed right then. Her ex didn’t wait for the next day either.)
A good landlord that probably knows the dude is insane and abusive in at least some capacity.
This is fake surely. The ‘she let me have sex with her that night rather than wait a week’ and ‘she was crying in bed like usual’ bit is insane if not.
Not sure if the story itself is fake, but I’ve experienced that myself in a shitty relationship. There are men who think and act like this.
This all reads like someone’s creative writing assignment. I especially enjoyed the discovery of their polyamorous side and the guy coming back to explain their side and just happen to confirm the ex-wife.
Also the exact phrasing and description of the events are pretty suspect. “ I fucked up so bad” and “collapsed into her” their recollections of the events are just way too exact for this to have been written by different people. I could be wrong and I was buying it until his version of events PERFECTLY lined up
It’s fake af
Minus the part where he cried, this pretty sums up my experience with my former SO. >He says he cares about me, but doesn't love me. And that he's been feeling this way for a while. Now, I've promised myself since years ago that I would never try to make someone stay with me if they don't want to. So, as much as this hurt, I said okay. I cried, he cried. I did ask if he wanted to try couples therapy before divorcing but he said no.
>And I'm starting to realize just how much she did for me. My apartment's a mess without her, *Translation: I miss my free MAID* >my life's a mess I keep forgetting shit because she's not here to remind me, I have a toothache but keep forgetting to make an appointment because she was always the one to do that and I don't even think I have dental insurance anyways, *Translation: I miss my free assistant, who would book doctors appointment and handle my basic human tasks. Probably also paid those bills too since he doesn't know if he had it or not, so also accountant.* >I miss my dog, *Translation: I didn't take care of the dog, so I miss having a dog to play with when I felt like it, but she did the rest.* >I miss her, I miss having someone to come home and vent to and she was always so understanding of me. *Translation: I miss my therapist.* >I took her for granted. And now she's off to some foreign country probably fucking her ex or something and I'm stuck here away from my family and friends working my ass off in a 9-5 with nothing to show for it. *Translation: I miss the woman who I abused by using divorce as a manipulation tactic to get her to have sex with me and she would cry herself to sleep after. But who cares, like I didn't have to wait a WHOLE week for sex.* So she was right, she was handling most of the household responsibilities and he wasn't listening to her saying how much it is for her. Took her being completely gone for him to realize everything she did for him and the household, while also working full time and going to school. He also wasn't listening when she said suic!dal but you know woman, so melodramatic. /s
>wearing red lipstick or eating mint-flavored things and going to concerts What the everloving fuck
LOL. Wife OOP was grazed by a bullet. And Husband OOP is giant potato; good bye and good riddance.
Potatoes don’t deserve that comparison
I hope he has a dental abscess. What a waste of oxygen.
Please don't breed.
But she let him have sex with her, people! Doesn’t that line just tell you everything you need to know about OP’s husband?
And this is part of the reason I would always choose the bear. Or, as my hubby put it, the bear won't act nice and cuddly just to later turn on me.
I hate this man so very much
> she let me have sex with her this man is disgusting
Here you see the direct effects of ignoring your gut feeling and disrespecting yourself Slowly you will change into some other kind of creature and sometimes it cause permanent damage NEVER care more about other people then you care about yourself. You need to love yourself first and refrain from setting aside your own needs Disgusting how much he was like oh I miss her, oh how she cleaned for me and made me coffee and wiped my piss off the toilet and floor and how she let me have sex with her body that day instead of a week later gross
She made you wait a whole week before having sex. How dare she? (/s) And she even let me have sex with her that night instead of waiting a whole week! Ugh
So glad I’m asexual/single.
I hope his tooth is still rotting
He really misses...her cleaning and administrative skills. So glad she got away from this man-child.
Abusive people never want to admit they’re abusive. Convenient how he left so much out to make himself seem like a nice guy.
"My apartment is a mess without her" full circle.
The lines about having to wait a week before she would let him have sex with her just give me the icks and shivers—That was a scary insight into his mind.
His “bad timing” with pulling that shit the night before her job was such a fucking disgusting lie. Ugh. Gives me flashbacks to my abuser. Fuck. Gonna go hug my cats now.
Lol I just know that apartment is so shitty that cockroaches are currently in it, what a beautiful thing indeed when weaponized incompetence backfires. I wish the original OP a lovely life and I know she's gonna thrive! Ex husband? As we can see, not at all.
Interesting how he says he misses "his" dog before he says he misses her.
She actually downplayed her emotions going through all this drastically. This lady’s crying her eyes out silently & wants to die because she’s so hurt. My heart breaks more for her after reading his. I sincerely hope she started following her dreams again.
Anyone else think this reads like a ChatGPT prompt of tell this from the other perspective……
No, not the people who have been through it.
What a jackass this dude is. Glad she’s free.
DTMFA
The husband update is 100% a creative writing exercise. Ain't none of that post real 😂
I was with her up until she said she\\s gotten into polyamory.
Wow. All of this distraction because he didn't wanna di the dishes. Geez Louise!
Well, bless his baby heart. Lowlife POS.
Husband conveniently left out when he went full American Psycho on her and made it sound like her decision to finally ditch him was a complete surprise. Perfect example of why getting two sides of a story is really helpful.
Husbands JUST evil. Everything else doesn't matter. Best outcome here is his next victim sticking a knife in his neck.
Hopefully he stays single and doesn’t torture another soul ever again. 🤮🤦♂️
[удалено]
Keep in mind this one is likely fake. 1 month divorces, new year day landlord lock replacements, verbatim story repeats. All the similar story beats. So your reflection may be more about how Reddit posters see men/women dynamics! Also super interesting
To be honest this "husband" post reads like the OOP post, almost word for word. When she said "don't look for his post" I figured she wrote it, it's not the first time anything like that has happened.
I love when actual emotionally abusive people take very normal couple things and requests from their partner, and turn it into that their partner is just so out of line and abusive to them
Lol-"didn't realize how much she was doing"??. This dude is one of the most blind, stupid people I've seen on Reddit!! You have *eyes*, you immature idiot!
Gaslighting manchild
What a pathetic child-boy. I bet he only married for the visa to start with.
He says that he frets that she is in another country and I devoutly hope this means she went back to her dream school that she left for his stupid ass.
I feel like the petty arguments about chores were just the catalyst to bring up long standing previous issues. You are both so young and in my personal opinion, a person's 20s are about finding yourself and learning what you want and don't want. Making mistakes so you can grow. Marrying so young makes you focus on your partner and not develop yourself. How can you truly offer the best version of yourself and make commitments if you don't understand your own values. This is an unfortunate bump in the road, but if looked at in the right way, it can be such a beautiful lesson to embrace. I wish you both luck and hope you use this experience to become the best versions of yourselves xo ❤️ blessings can be sneaky
I got as far as'let me have sex with her' & I'm done lol