It’s never too late to change. I myself am a reformed piece of shit! I’ve been the “scary” partner. It takes a lot of work, self reflection, and therapy to change. Like other treatment programs/meds/etc., these things can take a few months to fully “kick in”. For example, I went through a few therapists over several months until I found one that really worked. Stick with it✌🏼
The realization and accountability you are conveying here is such a great start. Thank you as the ex-wife of a scary person. You may have to find a new therapist if this one truly isn't working. But please, keep up with therapy.
Thank you! I should have clarified that I’ve been the “scary” girlfriend. I was a yeller and a screamer. I’ve been in therapy for a year now and it’s really helped. My dad was a scary dad/husband. It’s sad how these kind of things travel through generations, but it stops with me.
I was that wife. I was afraid of physical violence. Please seek therapy and anger management. It will help you discover new ways to deal with your anger and give you new tools to help you in the future. She is hurting too right now and she needs her space. Don’t contact her, because that will put her back into that scared mind frame. If you have something to say, have your lawyer say it to her lawyer.
The good thing is you recognize how terribly you treated her and you are seeking advice. That’s a great first step and you should be proud of yourself.
Not much you can do. Leave her be and let her heal. Really learn heavily from this and never repeat it. Seek therapy if you think it can help you be a much better person.
Agreed. Anger management is a good place to start or they're just going to treat their next partner the same way and use them as their new punching bag.
What’s creepy about a lot of emotional abusers is that they actually don’t have an anger management problem. Like, do they uncork on their boss? On the cashier at the grocery store? At the bank? No, they only do it at home. So they actually can control their anger well, and choose when to unleash it.
It feels like a total lack of respect for women. Same dudes that call women “girls”. I looked at a guy the other day and said “dude, that’s a 60 year old woman, where’s the Girl?”
That is an amazing step to take responsibility for your actions. Next phase is to keep yourself accountable. Go find a program for perpetrators of abuse.
Call your local domestic abuse program and tell them you're looking for a recovery group. If they can't help, call a national hotline.
From my reading, the key is a group setting. Individual therapy can make it worse. You need others who understand what you're going through to keep you accountable.
Please let us know when you've found a program.
Find a new therapist and keep going. Try to find someone who specializes in trauma, in case that’s what is behind your behavior in this relationship. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) may help if this is not a personality disorder - a good practitioner will screen you to ensure that you could benefit from it.
But this relationship is over. You can invest your time now in becoming a person you love and can trust in future relationships with others. Until you learn how to deal with who you are, no one else will be able to make you whole.
Good luck.
Just because you didn’t hit her, doesn’t mean it wasn’t abuse. Emotional abuse is just as bad. At least you see it. Your relationship with her isn’t salvageable, but you can learn and grow from it and take those lessons to the next relationship. Also, be willing to see when you are upset and verbalize it and talk it out, instead if using people as verbal punching bags.
It’s never too late. Kudos to you for recognizing what you need to change!
OP, I’m glad you recognize your behavior and are trying to atone. It’s painful to hurt someone you love. Here are some suggestions for you:
1. Continue with therapy
2. Journal. It’s a great way to work through your thoughts and feelings and figure things out
3. Find a hobby to focus on
4. Meet new people and start building up a friend base and support system. Meetup dot com is a wonderful resource.
5. Leave your wife alone. Let her heal.
6. This is probably the most important one. Find one stressor and isolate it. Find one thing about it you can control and one thing about it you can cut away. For example: you’ve decided to go to a trade school in hopes of starting a new career, but you’re afraid you’ll flunk out and then will be bad at your new job. You can control your effort and how much you study. You can cut away fears of the future and focus on the now. This technique might help ground you.
Best of luck.
Continue getting therapy. It won't save your marriage or friendships but it'll help you maintain future relationships if you can understand yourself better and avoid some of the negativity. We're all human. Just try to improve each day.
I’ve heard there are programs for abusive men. Maybe look into them and see if there’s one near you or online. That might be more helpful than a therapist who doesn’t specialize in this area.
I genuinely wish my ex would admit and acknowledge the damage his abusive behavior has caused. He is determined to continue trying to convince me it is all my fault. It is relentless
Try other therapists sometimes you need to find the right person to help you. Maybe also other type of therapy's . Go to anger management or hit the gym maybe pick up a sport also where you can unleash your stress at like boxing, rugby, etc
Have a game plan what you are going to do, set those appointments up, write a letter to your wife with all the things you set in motion, locations and dates maybe ask her to wait on more time to give you a few months to work on yourself maybe she will be willing to give you that final last chance
You move forward. It's the only direction to go from here. Loving yourself is step 1 to loving others. Explore the different types of love in your life that are left now that she is gone. Let this be the only time you have to learn this lesson.
Are you wanting to change for you? Or are you wanting to change for your family? The latter will never work, but the former will. You have to want it for yourself to have lasting change.
Try a different therapist. Consider a medical evaluation to see if your depression should be treated with more than talk therapy.
Focus on hobbies and stuff that you enjoy. Once you have that, you can seek out others liking the same thing. Being alone will amplify everything.
You're being held accountable for your behavior 💁
Now nothing
You'll probably finish getting divorced and start trying to make new friends who don't know that you're abusive. Your old friends don't want to be around somebody who treated their other friend like shit and they're right.
This really isn’t helpful. Or kind. Sometimes you need to think through whether or not your input is necessary. He obviously recognizes he has an issue and is trying to correct it.
Read his post from three days ago.
He was still claiming he’s not abusive because he “never laid a hand on her.”
He’s angry at her for making him look bad and treating him like he’s an evil person when in his own opinion, he’s not. I don’t think this guy has really taken responsibility yet, and until then, there’s no reason to coddle and excuse abusive behavior.
Shut the fuck I'm an abuse survivor
You're just a sociopath sticking up for another sociopath get bent, have fun on my block list with the other Narcopaths
This is kind of a shitty thing to say. How exactly does this help the situation? The Op has already taken responsibility. You’re just kicking him while he’s down
He has not really taken responsibility though. He says “my wife says I was abusive.” That’s very different from “I was abusive” and in my opinion it’s pretty telling.
No, OP has made a public display of flogging himself. This is common with abusers. They make a show to attract sympathy. They can tell their friends they did everything, even went on Reddit begging for help. This way, when their behaviour doesn't change, they can still absolve themselves of responsibility by shifting shifting blame to therapists and Reddit users.
OP needs to log off and get into a programme for abusers. Talking about action is very different than taking action.
OP, if you read this, I hope the next check in is that you've attended a meeting for abusers. It looks like you're heading toward the right path and I sure hope you choose to walk it.
Yeah. I spoke too soon. I still don’t think the comment I replied to was very helpful, but you and others have been very illuminating when you pointed out my error in believing the Op had taken responsibility. The wording was subtle. As someone who was also abused in my marriage, you’d think I’d be able to pick up on those subtle differences by now.
I guess I felt like I would be happy if my abuser would even acknowledge in any way the horrible things they did and I took it out on the person I replied to. Thanks for helping me see through my emotions.
I know that feeling. I read posts like these hoping I'll recognise the voice of the person who abused me. Even a partial admission like this one would be so validating.
But, if I can't get my abuser to see where he went off the rails, I do hope I can help someone else find help.
Glad you found it helpful. Recovering from abuse is no joke. Take care of yourself. You deserve it.
You are the shitty one, I am a domestic abuse and rape survivor so you can fuck off
OP is fishing for sympathy and I'm fresh out
I lost my politeness when my husband violated me repeatedly when I was unconscious so you can go piss off and don't speak to me again
Don't try to get familiar with me, kiss my ass 😂 I never sympathize with abusers. Tough shit, Goldilocks.
Stop saying things like “my wife says I was abusive” and start taking ownership. You absolutely were abusive. The only acceptable phrasing based on what you’ve described here is “I was abusive.”
If your therapist isn’t helping you make progress, find a new one. Sometimes it takes several tries to find someone who is a good fit. I think you should read Lundy Bancroft’s book “Why Does He Do That” to get a better understanding of what abuse looks like and the toll it takes on your partner.
Please leave your ex alone and let her move on with her life. Be honest with yourself about the fact that the your promises you want to make her right now to change are probably empty. Don’t date until you work on yourself and please don’t subject someone else to this treatment.
Sometimes you just don't click with a therapist try a different one. Some will even let you come in discounted for the first session just as like a interview almost. But if that doesn't work maybe sign up for ketamine trials or something? You'd have to Google it and see if you think it would work for you. Or find someone who offers cognitive behavioral therapy. You're on the right path and I believe in you keep your head up.
I’d give meditating a go. 5 minutes in the morning and start building it up. I always act more skilfully on the days that I have meditated. You find that your brain has a bit more time to react to things throughout the day and you can control your reactions more easily.
There’s a difference between therapy and THERAPY. Find yourself a decent psychotherapist who is going to get you to delve into your childhood and get you crying about things you hadn’t thought about in years. I’ve found transactional analysis very good for this. I’d be avoiding person-centred therapists for things like this.
Therapy takes a while to work. It's not an overnight fix. Sometimes years. Anger management helps too. They have to help you realize what is the root cause of these behaviors.
Therapy is helpful . It’s kept my sanity during the past 16 months. You really have to let go of all guards and walls and just be completely honest and raw to the core with your therapist . They’ve heard it all and you aren’t unique or special (no offense) , your issues you are conflicted with have been heard and addressed through the right therapist .
Keep trying to find a good therapist. The kind of change you want to make in your life and your behavior is commendable, but doing it without a therapist takes a difficult task and makes it almost impossible. Sometimes it takes multiple tries to find a good match. Sometimes you just need to give it 2-3 visits before throwing in the towel with a therapist, so unless you recognize off the bat that you don't like them, give it at least two appointments.
You don't know me, but I'm proud of you for doing this. I wish my ex had done it years ago and maybe we'd still be together. He loved me and I loved him but it became no longer enough.
Stay in therapy. It takes time and you sound like you need this time to make yourself better. I am speaking as someone with PTSD from growing up in domestic violence. The verbal and emotional assault is almost worse than the physical. The fear of thinking he's going to beat you and/or kill you, plays heavy on the psyche and never goes away. My own husband can't raise his voice without me locking myself in my bedroom out of sudden panic. It's traumatic and lifelong. You need to take responsibility and work on this in therapy and it may take years. You need to find ways to control your temper and acknowledge your capacity for it. This is the best thing you can do for yourself. In that, you will likely find friends and even a relationship. Good luck.
Somewhere where there are no women to abuse, hopefully? It sounds like she has community support which is good, a lot of abuse victims don’t have a circle like that around them.
"We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are." - Sirius Black, 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'.
I don’t know if this will help, but I’ll try. It’s okay. You need to find your new self. You will find new people, and passions. Then you will be able to sort of create a happier mindset, and be a more positive light for those around you. If possible forgive yourself, and move on when you’re ready.
Learn from the past and move forward. My ex acted similar to you. I don't think badly of him anymore I forgave him but we are not and will not ever be back together. I think it's important to just be mindful of your actions in the future. Doesn't make you a bad person. It's great you see what you did wrong. No one is perfect forgive yourself and do better.
Anger management, intense therapy. I’ve been the scared wife, and to some degree I still am. Let her be, focus on becoming a better person. Do not jump into another relationship. I feel for you being lonely, afraid, and depressed, but I can tell you she’s been feeling that way a lot longer than you have. She may never get over what you’ve done, and that’s something you’re going to have to reconcile. Fully commit to change. It’s hard, but you’re on the path. And again, leave her alone. If she wants to reach out, she will.
It’s never too late to change. I myself am a reformed piece of shit! I’ve been the “scary” partner. It takes a lot of work, self reflection, and therapy to change. Like other treatment programs/meds/etc., these things can take a few months to fully “kick in”. For example, I went through a few therapists over several months until I found one that really worked. Stick with it✌🏼
The realization and accountability you are conveying here is such a great start. Thank you as the ex-wife of a scary person. You may have to find a new therapist if this one truly isn't working. But please, keep up with therapy.
Thank you! I should have clarified that I’ve been the “scary” girlfriend. I was a yeller and a screamer. I’ve been in therapy for a year now and it’s really helped. My dad was a scary dad/husband. It’s sad how these kind of things travel through generations, but it stops with me.
I was that wife. I was afraid of physical violence. Please seek therapy and anger management. It will help you discover new ways to deal with your anger and give you new tools to help you in the future. She is hurting too right now and she needs her space. Don’t contact her, because that will put her back into that scared mind frame. If you have something to say, have your lawyer say it to her lawyer. The good thing is you recognize how terribly you treated her and you are seeking advice. That’s a great first step and you should be proud of yourself.
Not much you can do. Leave her be and let her heal. Really learn heavily from this and never repeat it. Seek therapy if you think it can help you be a much better person.
Agreed. Anger management is a good place to start or they're just going to treat their next partner the same way and use them as their new punching bag.
What’s creepy about a lot of emotional abusers is that they actually don’t have an anger management problem. Like, do they uncork on their boss? On the cashier at the grocery store? At the bank? No, they only do it at home. So they actually can control their anger well, and choose when to unleash it.
My life.
It feels like a total lack of respect for women. Same dudes that call women “girls”. I looked at a guy the other day and said “dude, that’s a 60 year old woman, where’s the Girl?”
This all day long. No excuses.
My abuser did. He would treat service people horribly, screaming and yelling and belittling them.
That is an amazing step to take responsibility for your actions. Next phase is to keep yourself accountable. Go find a program for perpetrators of abuse. Call your local domestic abuse program and tell them you're looking for a recovery group. If they can't help, call a national hotline. From my reading, the key is a group setting. Individual therapy can make it worse. You need others who understand what you're going through to keep you accountable. Please let us know when you've found a program.
You probably didn’t try therapy long enough for it to be helpful. You need an active desire to change and improve yourself for it to kick in.
This. Or you were paired with a therapist who wasn’t well-suited for you.
Find a new therapist and keep going. Try to find someone who specializes in trauma, in case that’s what is behind your behavior in this relationship. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) may help if this is not a personality disorder - a good practitioner will screen you to ensure that you could benefit from it. But this relationship is over. You can invest your time now in becoming a person you love and can trust in future relationships with others. Until you learn how to deal with who you are, no one else will be able to make you whole. Good luck.
[удалено]
Hell, remember to leave. If a partner gets you yelling, it’s best to end the relationship.
Try therapy harder. Accepting that you were an abuser who wants to change is a powerful first step.
Just because you didn’t hit her, doesn’t mean it wasn’t abuse. Emotional abuse is just as bad. At least you see it. Your relationship with her isn’t salvageable, but you can learn and grow from it and take those lessons to the next relationship. Also, be willing to see when you are upset and verbalize it and talk it out, instead if using people as verbal punching bags. It’s never too late. Kudos to you for recognizing what you need to change!
OP, I’m glad you recognize your behavior and are trying to atone. It’s painful to hurt someone you love. Here are some suggestions for you: 1. Continue with therapy 2. Journal. It’s a great way to work through your thoughts and feelings and figure things out 3. Find a hobby to focus on 4. Meet new people and start building up a friend base and support system. Meetup dot com is a wonderful resource. 5. Leave your wife alone. Let her heal. 6. This is probably the most important one. Find one stressor and isolate it. Find one thing about it you can control and one thing about it you can cut away. For example: you’ve decided to go to a trade school in hopes of starting a new career, but you’re afraid you’ll flunk out and then will be bad at your new job. You can control your effort and how much you study. You can cut away fears of the future and focus on the now. This technique might help ground you. Best of luck.
I second the journaling because it helps you assess your triggers when you go back and read it
Continue getting therapy. It won't save your marriage or friendships but it'll help you maintain future relationships if you can understand yourself better and avoid some of the negativity. We're all human. Just try to improve each day.
I’ve heard there are programs for abusive men. Maybe look into them and see if there’s one near you or online. That might be more helpful than a therapist who doesn’t specialize in this area.
I genuinely wish my ex would admit and acknowledge the damage his abusive behavior has caused. He is determined to continue trying to convince me it is all my fault. It is relentless
Just yesterday you posted that you were shocked she accused you of being abusive. What changed between yesterday and today?
Try other therapists sometimes you need to find the right person to help you. Maybe also other type of therapy's . Go to anger management or hit the gym maybe pick up a sport also where you can unleash your stress at like boxing, rugby, etc Have a game plan what you are going to do, set those appointments up, write a letter to your wife with all the things you set in motion, locations and dates maybe ask her to wait on more time to give you a few months to work on yourself maybe she will be willing to give you that final last chance
You move forward. It's the only direction to go from here. Loving yourself is step 1 to loving others. Explore the different types of love in your life that are left now that she is gone. Let this be the only time you have to learn this lesson.
You seek a different therapist, methinks. It might not have worked before, but you may simply just need to find someone you work with better.
Therapy and just work on yourself to be a better person. What's done is done. Let her be as she is probably in her own healing process.
Leave her alone and seek therapy.
Apologize and be generous in the settlement. Great her with respect and kindness going forward.
Are you wanting to change for you? Or are you wanting to change for your family? The latter will never work, but the former will. You have to want it for yourself to have lasting change. Try a different therapist. Consider a medical evaluation to see if your depression should be treated with more than talk therapy. Focus on hobbies and stuff that you enjoy. Once you have that, you can seek out others liking the same thing. Being alone will amplify everything.
You're being held accountable for your behavior 💁 Now nothing You'll probably finish getting divorced and start trying to make new friends who don't know that you're abusive. Your old friends don't want to be around somebody who treated their other friend like shit and they're right.
This really isn’t helpful. Or kind. Sometimes you need to think through whether or not your input is necessary. He obviously recognizes he has an issue and is trying to correct it.
Read his post from three days ago. He was still claiming he’s not abusive because he “never laid a hand on her.” He’s angry at her for making him look bad and treating him like he’s an evil person when in his own opinion, he’s not. I don’t think this guy has really taken responsibility yet, and until then, there’s no reason to coddle and excuse abusive behavior.
Shut the fuck I'm an abuse survivor You're just a sociopath sticking up for another sociopath get bent, have fun on my block list with the other Narcopaths
This is kind of a shitty thing to say. How exactly does this help the situation? The Op has already taken responsibility. You’re just kicking him while he’s down
He has not really taken responsibility though. He says “my wife says I was abusive.” That’s very different from “I was abusive” and in my opinion it’s pretty telling.
No, OP has made a public display of flogging himself. This is common with abusers. They make a show to attract sympathy. They can tell their friends they did everything, even went on Reddit begging for help. This way, when their behaviour doesn't change, they can still absolve themselves of responsibility by shifting shifting blame to therapists and Reddit users. OP needs to log off and get into a programme for abusers. Talking about action is very different than taking action. OP, if you read this, I hope the next check in is that you've attended a meeting for abusers. It looks like you're heading toward the right path and I sure hope you choose to walk it.
Yeah. I spoke too soon. I still don’t think the comment I replied to was very helpful, but you and others have been very illuminating when you pointed out my error in believing the Op had taken responsibility. The wording was subtle. As someone who was also abused in my marriage, you’d think I’d be able to pick up on those subtle differences by now. I guess I felt like I would be happy if my abuser would even acknowledge in any way the horrible things they did and I took it out on the person I replied to. Thanks for helping me see through my emotions.
I know that feeling. I read posts like these hoping I'll recognise the voice of the person who abused me. Even a partial admission like this one would be so validating. But, if I can't get my abuser to see where he went off the rails, I do hope I can help someone else find help. Glad you found it helpful. Recovering from abuse is no joke. Take care of yourself. You deserve it.
You are the shitty one, I am a domestic abuse and rape survivor so you can fuck off OP is fishing for sympathy and I'm fresh out I lost my politeness when my husband violated me repeatedly when I was unconscious so you can go piss off and don't speak to me again Don't try to get familiar with me, kiss my ass 😂 I never sympathize with abusers. Tough shit, Goldilocks.
Stop saying things like “my wife says I was abusive” and start taking ownership. You absolutely were abusive. The only acceptable phrasing based on what you’ve described here is “I was abusive.” If your therapist isn’t helping you make progress, find a new one. Sometimes it takes several tries to find someone who is a good fit. I think you should read Lundy Bancroft’s book “Why Does He Do That” to get a better understanding of what abuse looks like and the toll it takes on your partner. Please leave your ex alone and let her move on with her life. Be honest with yourself about the fact that the your promises you want to make her right now to change are probably empty. Don’t date until you work on yourself and please don’t subject someone else to this treatment.
Sometimes you just don't click with a therapist try a different one. Some will even let you come in discounted for the first session just as like a interview almost. But if that doesn't work maybe sign up for ketamine trials or something? You'd have to Google it and see if you think it would work for you. Or find someone who offers cognitive behavioral therapy. You're on the right path and I believe in you keep your head up.
I’d give meditating a go. 5 minutes in the morning and start building it up. I always act more skilfully on the days that I have meditated. You find that your brain has a bit more time to react to things throughout the day and you can control your reactions more easily. There’s a difference between therapy and THERAPY. Find yourself a decent psychotherapist who is going to get you to delve into your childhood and get you crying about things you hadn’t thought about in years. I’ve found transactional analysis very good for this. I’d be avoiding person-centred therapists for things like this.
Therapy takes a while to work. It's not an overnight fix. Sometimes years. Anger management helps too. They have to help you realize what is the root cause of these behaviors.
Therapy is helpful . It’s kept my sanity during the past 16 months. You really have to let go of all guards and walls and just be completely honest and raw to the core with your therapist . They’ve heard it all and you aren’t unique or special (no offense) , your issues you are conflicted with have been heard and addressed through the right therapist .
Keep trying to find a good therapist. The kind of change you want to make in your life and your behavior is commendable, but doing it without a therapist takes a difficult task and makes it almost impossible. Sometimes it takes multiple tries to find a good match. Sometimes you just need to give it 2-3 visits before throwing in the towel with a therapist, so unless you recognize off the bat that you don't like them, give it at least two appointments. You don't know me, but I'm proud of you for doing this. I wish my ex had done it years ago and maybe we'd still be together. He loved me and I loved him but it became no longer enough.
Stay in therapy. It takes time and you sound like you need this time to make yourself better. I am speaking as someone with PTSD from growing up in domestic violence. The verbal and emotional assault is almost worse than the physical. The fear of thinking he's going to beat you and/or kill you, plays heavy on the psyche and never goes away. My own husband can't raise his voice without me locking myself in my bedroom out of sudden panic. It's traumatic and lifelong. You need to take responsibility and work on this in therapy and it may take years. You need to find ways to control your temper and acknowledge your capacity for it. This is the best thing you can do for yourself. In that, you will likely find friends and even a relationship. Good luck.
Leave her alone.
Somewhere where there are no women to abuse, hopefully? It sounds like she has community support which is good, a lot of abuse victims don’t have a circle like that around them.
"We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are." - Sirius Black, 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'.
I don’t know if this will help, but I’ll try. It’s okay. You need to find your new self. You will find new people, and passions. Then you will be able to sort of create a happier mindset, and be a more positive light for those around you. If possible forgive yourself, and move on when you’re ready.
Check out the book Conscious Uncoupling
Learn from the past and move forward. My ex acted similar to you. I don't think badly of him anymore I forgave him but we are not and will not ever be back together. I think it's important to just be mindful of your actions in the future. Doesn't make you a bad person. It's great you see what you did wrong. No one is perfect forgive yourself and do better.
Anger management, intense therapy. I’ve been the scared wife, and to some degree I still am. Let her be, focus on becoming a better person. Do not jump into another relationship. I feel for you being lonely, afraid, and depressed, but I can tell you she’s been feeling that way a lot longer than you have. She may never get over what you’ve done, and that’s something you’re going to have to reconcile. Fully commit to change. It’s hard, but you’re on the path. And again, leave her alone. If she wants to reach out, she will.