Just when you think you have finally come to the conclusion that there were no more incidents of abuse that you were subjected to, you are faced with the reality that there was a lot more. This is what happened to me when compiling this list. As I was writing, I was thinking yes, this happened to me, no, this didn’t happen to me. Then I read again, and then again. That is when the truth hit; I am still confronting my past and what he actually did to me. I try to get my husband out of my head, but until I finally tick off all the forms of emotional and financial abuse he put me through, he will live there.
What follows is my experience of the types of emotional I was put through.
I will warn you now, if you do as I did and go through the list checking off what your abuser did to you, or for someone in an abusive relationship you start to recognise what is happening to you is abuse, it will be emotionally draining. You will need to take frequent breaks, step back, re-group and then carry on.
For family and friends who look through this, it might offer some explanation’s as to why the person you are concerned about is acting the way they are. They don’t have a choice. To all those who are interested in learning more about emotional abuse, this is what it looks like.
Are they constantly checking up on you by wanting to know what you are doing and where you are?
Yes, even before the days of the internet and mobile phones, he wanted to know what I was doing. This might sound fine and it does sound like he was merely being interested in what I was doing, but when my life revolved around when he was going to call, when he was away and he was asking the same questions over and over again, it was another way of keeping me under his control.Come the internet and mobile phones, it made it even easier for him to keep track of me. When the boys had their mobile phones, he was constantly texting them to see what they were doing. They quickly figured out what he was up to and ignored him. It didn’t stop him, but it gave them satisfaction that they were not playing his game. I on the other hand, heaven help me if I failed to answer the phone, or respond to an email or text message!
This is a subtle form of abuse and one, thanks to what he did to the boys, was one that I did pick up on earlier than others. However, initially I didn’t consider it be abuse, I thought he was just being incredibly nosy.
Are they continually pointing out your faults, mistakes, and weaknesses?
Yes. This could range from not cooking the potatoes to his liking, to not being that physically strong, through to having allergies. Using food to demonstrate what I mean. We used a steamer to cook vegetables. The potatoes had be on the firm side when cooked. There were times when they weren’t. This resulted in one of his favourite phrases being used. “If I wanted baby food, I’d ask for it”.My allergies were seen as a weakness. I am allergic to ginger and spend time reading the ingredients on all packages of food. This has resulted in me not purchasing items that have ginger in them or if spices are mentioned generically. For example, “other spices”. Over the years, there were certain foods I stopped buying, or buying a different variety of them. He was always reminding me of much of a sacrifice it was for him to also forgo the particular item of food. I happen to like ginger, but don’t like how ill it makes me.
As for faults, this is just one example. I am hopeless at map reading, and when it comes to following directions, I hear left, I go right. I need to do a route at least ten times with someone before it will finally sink in. I also suffer from car sickness when reading, that includes maps. This wasn’t a good combination around my husband. He would remind me he couldn’t drive and map read, which was interesting because he could do it when he was in the car by himself.
Are they lacking compassion or empathy for you and others?
Looking back, I don’t know if he knew what compassion and empathy were. I remember each time the boys were unwell he wanted to know when they were going to get well again. There were two occasions when my elder son hurt his hand, both requiring medical attention. Of course it happened when my husband was away. When I attempted to tell him about the incidents, his response was “What do you want me to do about it?” All I wanted was some words of support. Then there was his response to when I came down with food poisoning before we got married. I do appreciate his job was taking him away immediately we arrived back from the holiday, but it didn’t help that he expected me to be fully recovered when he came back. I wasn’t and it took me around three months before I was able to go back to work fulltime. Despite of everything, I forgave him putting his attitude down to work and our upcoming marriage. I should have walked there and then!
Are they at times emotionally distant and you find yourself asking if something is wrong and are they OK?
In one word: constantly. I now know that he thrived on me asking if there was something wrong and was he OK. He was the centre of attention, the place he wanted to be. Also by being emotionally distant, he knew he was hurting me and he got for want of a better word, a kick out of it. Of course I didn’t see it that way, all I saw was a man who needed looking after and it was my job to do so.
Are they extremely jealous and possessive?
Yes, looking back he was. He would even get jealous if I mentioned an actor was cute. He certainly didn’t like me having male friends. I was his wife and that was it. It is amazing how at first you see some of the abusers actions as them just treating you as something special, when the reality is that they are slowly starting to control every aspect of your life.
Are they demanding to the point of expecting you to act like a servant in your own home?
He did become more so in the later years. Life did revolve around his needs, meals at certain times and his choice of food. The quilt cover had to put on a certain way. There were lots of snide comments about the house not being vacuumed when it just had been. Also when was the garden going to be tidied. I remember the boys and myself spent a Saturday morning gardening, we weren’t going to stop for lunch; instead we would have it when we had finished. At lunchtime, my husband’s lunchtime that is, he opened the kitchen window to ask when were we going to have lunch as he was hungry. He wasn’t pleased when I said we were going to finish what we had to do before lunch. We finished what needed doing and had lunch. We were not allowed to forget about it.
Are you accused of being too sensitive so that they can deflect their abusive comments?
I was always being accused of being sensitive. I didn’t like it when he was rude about people I considered friends. He thought it was funny how he spoke about them. This was a warning sign that I didn’t pick up on, he made, in the comfort of his own, some very vile comments about family and friends. These could be as basic as a comment about their hair all the way through to their profession.
Are you afraid to say or do anything to upset your partner in case they become angry?
It certainly became like that in the later years of our marriage. It was like walking on eggshells around him. Something as innocent as telling him to have a good day before he went to work could set him off on rant, usually about how he hated his job and wanted to quit.
Are you pressured into having sex when you don’t want to?
Yes I was. Sex was always on his terms, when he wanted it and how he wanted it.
Are you stopped from going where you want to?
When you are at home with two small children and don’t drive, you are pretty restricted. That isn’t to say there were opportunities to go places that I took advantage of. When we lived in California, I did make friends who included the boys and myself in activities. However this happened when my husband was away. When he was at home, I refused them saying that we needed to spend time together as a family.
Are you told what to think?
The most obvious one is that he didn’t like me having any political views that were different from his.
Do they accuse you of having anger issues and make themselves out to be the victim?
On the very rare occasions that I did get angry with him, he played the victim card. Arguments between us were always my fault in his eyes and each time I apologised even if I hadn’t started them.
Do they blame you for any problems they are having, at work, with their family, with their life in general?
All of the above. In the early days of our relationship, he hooked me in by portraying himself as the victim of his ex girlfriend, his mother and his boss. He blamed his parents for the reason he didn’t obtain good exam results. I fell for it. This, I might add, was before I really knew his family. In the last few years I was the one he blamed for all his problems, big or small, with his family or at work.
Do they constantly cross your boundaries and ignore you when you request anything of them?
Yes he did both physically and verbally. Everyone needs boundaries and he found it amusing when he crossed mine. One example is I can’t stand the sight or smell of mustard. I don’t have a problem with anyone eating it; just keep it away from me. He took great delight in waving the pot of mustard without its lid in front of me, telling me not to be so sensitive when I objected. The best way to stop him was to ignore him. My lack of reaction took the fun out of tormenting me with the mustard.
Do they guilt trip into getting their own way?
The biggest guilt trip he pulled was when he went on about how he had to go to work and how he wanted to retire. When you hear that all the time it is easier just to agree to everything they say and want.
Do they have control of the finances including your money? This is also financial abuse.
The simple answer is yes and I detail it in the articles about financial abuse and what control he had over my finances and the household expenses. However, just to provide a couple of examples, he prevented me from working and I had to ask him if I could spend money on the basic necessities for myself and the boys like underwear.
Do they have a derogatory pet name that is cloaked as an endearment?
When I say he used call me wench, which according to vocabulary.com the definition is: Wench used to mean young girl, so if you find someone describing a lovely wench in Shakespeare, it means a lovely girl. Wench comes from Middle English, and was a common word for girl, child, or servant. Over time it came to mean mainly serving girls, as in a bar wench, who serves drinks at a tavern. Eventually it came to mean prostitute. If you find wench in a love poem from the 16th century, think of it as an informal version of maiden. But if someone called you a wench last week, you should be insulted.”
He certainly didn’t mean it in the Shakespearean sense; it was telling me I was his servant or his own personal prostitute.
I did protest about his name for me, but the more I did so, the more he used it. I learned that the only way to get him to stop was to ignore him calling me it. That isn’t to say he stopped altogether, he didn’t, but I learned not to take the bait.
Do they ignore your suggestions and views? Do they consider them stupid?
Thinking about it, I do recall times when I would make a suggestion only for it to be ignored. But for then someone else to make the same suggestion and for him to act on it.
Do they make decisions without consulting you that affect both of you and or your family?
The most obvious one was his decision to move back to the UK from the USA. It was something I suspected he wanted to do and a decision I didn’t agree with.
Do they make grand gestures if they believe they are in the wrong or want to impress someone?
Why join one wine club when you can join two? It during one of my in-laws visits when we were living in Oregon that he decided to join a second wine club. The area we were living in had several wineries and he had already joined one. During his parents’ visit, he decided to join another. It was all about show with him and spending his money as he wished. Around me, he never made grand gestures, if he believed he was in the wrong. The reason he never believed he was ever wrong.
Do they prevent you from seeing your family and friends?
Not only that, he split me away from my family, thus preventing an escape route should I have realised what he was truly like.
Do they show you complete contempt and consider you worthless?
He certainly changed over the years. When we first met, he valued me and he to put it bluntly, saw me as an asset. By the end, I wasn’t worth a thing to him and he showed it in the way he treated me.
Do they tell you that you can’t cope without them, that you are useless and will be nothing without them?
Not in actual words, but he did make me feel that I was useless and was unable to cope without them. I did worry how I would cope if anything happened to him or if he decided to leave me. As I was to discover, I have managed, at times not that well, but I am still here and so far have survived.
Do they tell you what clothes to buy and what to wear?
Yes and also how to have my hair. He also used to make sarcastic comments about the amount of make-up I used to wear when we first met.
Do they say things that frighten, intimidate and upset you to the point you feel threatened?
Given that our finances were always in a perilous state, due to his out of control spending habits and he had prevented me from working, his tendency of saying he was going to quit his job did make me feel threatened. Threatened in the sense that once he had quit his job he made it clear that he no intention of finding another one. He would quit and then I was to get a job that paid enough to keep him in the lifestyle he wanted. If I didn’t do as he required, then who knows what would have happened!