Jump to content

How much danger am I in?


phoenix66

Recommended Posts

My husband of eight years is constantly making unreasonable demands, yelling at me until I am just overwhelmed by his anger, name calling and threats. If I try to leave the house to escape his angry outbursts, he will block the doors with his body and dare me to make a move. Other times, I have become so frightened, that I am on the ground shaking and crying uncontrollable. After being forced to listen to his tirades for hours, I am unable to go to work because I can’t stop shaking or crying.

 

After his outbursts in which he sometimes blames me for everything bad in his life, even things that happened years before I met him, he would turn around and then act like nothing happened. Two or even three weeks will pass and he is Mr. Happy and expects the same from me. He is often angry when others do nice things for me (birthday gift or job promotion). He is outraged sometimes if I watch a TV program or smile at his family members or my own. He has on several occasions blown up at me and stopped speaking to me for days because I laughed with his sister.

 

I spend so much time and effort doing things for and with him but he is never pleased or even grateful. I am required to get up at 5 am to work out for an hour, get myself and child ready for school and work, go to work - he will come by and check on what I am doing or if I am eating lunch with co-workers(a no-no) and do daily chores and work out for 1 more hour. As a result, I am forced to run in the dark in the am and pm in our neighborhood.

I am not allowed to use the exercise room in our house, that is for his use.

 

He is upset if I do anything that I like, watch a TV program or read a book. These actions cause outburts and angry fits on his parts. His behavior is getting worse. He is now starting to nitpick and challenge his mom on everything. On her last visit, she said, Stop putting down everything I say, that is why I don't like to come visit anymore. You make me not want to come.

 

Can a normal person behave like this? I know that he choses his behavior because he does not do this at work, his friends, and ususlly not his or my family. I know I have to leave and forget my ideas of marriage forever, and risks of a child in a single parent home. It was not and has never been about improving the marriage, he simply wants complete control at the cost of my son's well being and my self esteem and physical safety.

 

I need to know what kind of person does this? Should my son ever be alone with him once we part? How much physical danger am I in?

Link to post
Share on other sites

You need to get out...and now! Not only for your well being, but your sons as well. Each day you stay with this man, you are teaching a lesson to your son that that kind of behavior is tolerated by you. Once you are away from this man...you should by all means request that his visitation with his son is supervised. Call an attorney today! Tell everything that has happened in your marriage. And also get counseling for yourself and your son...so you can put this terrible experience in your past.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Can a normal person behave like this?
m Emphatically NO. There is something wrong with him. He needs to see a doctor and you need to get yourself and your child out of the house immediately. His condition is escalating and will become violent and you and your child are in danger. Get out now.

 

Pick up your phone press -0- and ask for a crisis hot-line. Tell them what has been going on and ask for help in your area. There are shelters and counsellors that will help you. You may have some resources available to you through your job as well.

 

Get out of the abusive situation right now.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Leave. When husband is out, get the number of a women's shelter. They will tell you what to do to get out safely. Do this now for the sake of your own safety.

Link to post
Share on other sites

He's certainly not normal.

If he's just bad, you're in danger. If he's mentally ill, you're still in danger. And so is your son - even if not physically, then certainly emotionally.

For your own and your son's sakes you have to leave as soon as it is safe to do so. Call domestic violence helplines - this is what you are experiencing - just because he hasn't beaten you yet doesn't mean he won't.

 

Take the necessary steps so that he doesn't see these messages and please let us know that you're OK.

Link to post
Share on other sites

You've received good advice from everyone here. Please take it on board and act on it straight away.

All the best to you and to your son.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Ditto what everyone else is saying here. Get the f_ck out now while he hasn't yet become violent toward you or your child.

 

Be forewarned: this will set him off more in the short-run and there is the risk that this could escalate. Your husband is definitely in need of some professional help, but I doubt he's going to seek it. Right now, I think he suffers from terrible self-esteem. He's obsessed with controlling you. He wants to break you down so that you'll feel so worthless that you'll accept whatever he gives you. Whatever, you have no choice. You MUST take action now. You cannot raise your child in this kind of environment. This is your duty.

 

As Errol said, pick up the phone and call a crisis line and find out what you can do. They deal with this stuff all the time.

 

I really wish you the best. Come back here anytime.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Just an afterthought, I really f_cking hate people like this woman's husband.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I've said this once before, on this forum. He doesn't need counseling - he needs an exorcism!!!

 

Please take Moimeme's advice and get away from him. Do it before it's too late. :eek:

 

~V

Link to post
Share on other sites
befuddled11

My ex husband, who I've been divorced from for going on 10 yrs now, was exactly like this.

 

With him, it *started* with the verbal and emotional abuse, and controlling behavior. But then it slowly escalated to slaps and shoves and kicks and punches and being dragged by my hair and being spit on and locked outside when it was -40C (Canadian winters).

 

He would say horrible things to me, berate me, degrade me, humiliate me, insult me.....and being a sensitive person that i am, one that takes things quite personally, it was most upsetting. I remember a million occasions when he'd be this way to me, and I would be desperate to leave our home....just so that I could get away from his cruel words. And like your husband, he would stop me, physically, from leaving the home....thought taunting me all the while. He would dangle my car keys in front of my face and be laughing, saying things like, "oh gee, wish you could leave, don't you?"

 

He would block me from leaving, by standing in the doorway. He would follow me around the house like a shadow, making sure he could see my every move, so that i couldn't slip out.

 

On the few occasions I did manage to leave (which often involved sticking my extra set of car keys down into my underwear), he would be outside in a flash. It didn't matter if it was the middle of winter, or if all he was wearing was a robe and boxers and bare feet. I don't know how many times I would manage to get into my car and would be leaving, and he would throw himself down on the hood of my car, and there we'd go.....in our quiet little residential neighborhood (small town, too).....him sprawled across the hood of my car in an attempt, I guess, to get me to stop and turn the car around and go home. Why the neighbors never called the police, I don't know, I wish they would have. Probably nobody "wanted to get involved."

 

I often felt like a prisoner in my own home. He would get in "these moods" and he would purposely "pick fights"......and no matter how I tried to react, he would get uglier. If I tried to ignore his taunts and baiting me, he would become more rude because he was hellbent on getting a rise out of me and upsetting me. If I did cry, he would take sick pleasure in it, and then to top it off, he would laugh in my face and say things like, "awww, look at the big baby".......if I verbally defended myself, and tried to stand up for myself, that would provoke him to "get in my face" and threaten me.

 

He did not like me calling my family. He did not like me having friends. He was controlling in terms of how I did the housework, or how I kept things organized in the flippin fridge. If the cans in the cupboard were not organized to his liking, he would go on a rampage, out of the blue, and toss them all out onto the floor and berate me all through it......OR, his favorite trick was b*tching about how I had the fridge arranged (and no, it was clean..no "science projects" growing in there) and he would toss out EVERYTHING in it, onto the floor....busting stuff, a mess everywhere.....berating me as a "wife"......and then he'd have the audacity to stand there and curse me out and demand that I "clean it up."

 

He would never take me out for dinner, not even to McDonalds......we were a young couple then, me 25, him 27. Going out on a Friday night for drinks to the neighborhood pub, just to get out of the house, was out of the question. But you can bet that when I was busting my ass working 12 hr nightshifts on the weekend, he was out with "the boys" doing god knows what.

 

Sometimes he would be so verbally and emotionally cruel to me.....our house wasn't very big. I obviously couldn't "leave" so I'd go into the bathroom and lock the door, just to have some time to myself.......but then I'd hear him out in the kitchen, in the cutlery drawer, getting a knife to use to pick the lock on the door. He would then corner me in the bathroom, I'd be crying....he would sit on the bathroom counter, with his legs across the doorway, so that i could obviously not leave..and he would taunt me and humiliate me. The more I cried, the more he'd make fun of me. And I had to listen to it, because we didn't leave the bathroom until he was "done."

 

Of course, his memory was always very short. He'd treat me this way, then an hour later, act like everything was fine..he'd try to be funny and make me laugh...and he'd suck up and want sex.

 

The last straw came 2 weeks before our 1 yr Anniversary.......when we now lived out of town on an acreage.....and he came home one night and was looking for a fight......and when I would not give him one, he proceeded to toss me across the room....and I landed on the arm of the sofa.......it knocked the wind out of me. He began flipping over the dining room table and tossing the chairs. This night, I was mortified..because we no longer lived in town where at least I always believed that if someone heard me scream, they'd call the cops..now we lived in the country where neighbors were a mile away on either side, and I was very helpless.

 

He kept me prisoner in that house for 3 hrs that night. I tried to call the police twice but he would get to the phone and rip the cord out of the phone. If I tried to call from an extension, he'd have taken a phone off the hook downstairs, so I couldn't get a dial tone. To feel so helpless and unable to "get help", I feared for my life. We had a loft for a bedroom..and there was this very tall winding staircase that went from the main floor up to the loft. In a frantic attempt to get up there and call the police from the phone in our bedroom, he chased me up there and had me cornered. There was one occasion where we were both standing at the top of the staircase and he was taunting me, "why don't you push me down the stairs".......my God, how sick....I'd never hurt someone like that.....but the look of rage and evil and a sick sense of pleasure on his face, in a flash, I felt that he might try to push me down the stairs.

 

I managed to locate my spare car keys.....and stuck them down into my panties. 3 hrs later, I managed to sneak outside, through a door in our basement. No shoes on, (bare feet), ripped clothes, eyes swollen like slits from crying.....I managed to get to my care in the driveway. Within seconds, he was out in the yard. He was trying to block me from driving out of the driveway. I nearly hit the fence. He had himself positioned in such a way that I either drove into the fence, or hit him. I was stuck in my own car.

 

This was at midnight, pitch dark out....in the country.......no lights except our yard light. Of course, he did his usual trick of sprawling out on the hood of my car. I stalled the car a few times, because my legs were like jello and shaking so badly that I couldn't coordinate the clutch and gas pedal (and I had never had any problems driving my car, which was a standard). There we went, down the gravel road.......him smashing his one fist on the windshield, screaming at me. Then trying to kick down my flip-up headlights, so I wouldn't be able to see where I was going. I couldn't even see the road. I could only tell where I was driving by looking out my passenger door, to gauge the distance between the side of the car and the hill-like ditch along the road. I was mortified...that if someone came barrelling up this gravel road, as people often did, and came up over the hill and didn't see us, there'd be a head-on collision and he would be killed. As much as I had no respect for him, I didn't want to be the cause of him getting hurt or killed.

 

I also feared he would maybe get tired of hanging onto the hood (at the base, where the windshield and the hood meets) and that he's "slide off" and I would inadvertantely run him over.

 

I began to honk and honk and honk......trying to attract attention, of ANYONE who lived around there. Of course that made him more angry. He was slamming his fist on my windshield so hard that I was sure he'd bust it and somehow get into my car. I wasn't driving fast, maybe 15 miles an hour.......I finally slowed down, hoping he would think I was going to stop and he would climb off.......he did but was still holding onto the hood...and he was running along side the car, determined not to let go. When I could see that he was no longer in front of the car, I sped up....out of the corner of my eye, I could see him either roll off or let go. I was mortified that maybe I'd run over his feet.

 

I NEARLY STOPPED the car to check on him......but God told me to keep going.........I drove like a bat out of hall all the way into town that night. I went through every stop sign and red light. For once, I was praying a cop would pull me over.

 

I made it to the police station, looking like hell........I buzzed, they let me in. They were kind. They took my statement. I called my Dad to tell him what had happened, but my husband had already called him to give "his side" of the story. (of course, BS).

 

It was a hellish night because they sent 2 cruisers out there to arrest him, but he was actually hiding in the ditch. Myself and the lady from the battered woman's shelter had to meet them out there, as the yard light was off and the doors were locked. They appearently didn't have the authority to go inside (which I still don't get). So we had to go there and unlock the door for them. I asked them to remove the loaded guns we kept in the house (or, he kept). I was glad to see my 2 cats (kittens at the time) were not harmed, as prior to me getting out that night, he'd threatened to kill them.

 

To make a long story short, they arrested him the next morning. He had a police scanner, so likely knew from the start that they were on their way out there. He knew they'd get him.

 

Your guy has all the makings of being a monster like this.

 

I thank God I didn't have children.

 

You need to contact your local Domestic Abuse Shelter or Battered Woman's Shelter...and speak with someone there, on how to proceed here.......on how to safely leave, you and your son.

 

Your son will grow up believing that it's "normal and okay" for men to mistreat women. Abuse is learned. Your husband likely learned his behavior from someone growing up, too (even if you're not aware). I know in my case, it wasn't until I had been gone and divorced for a few years, that I learned that my ex husband's father had been an angry, mean "binge drinker" when they were growing up......he would beat my ex, my ex's sister, my ex's mother. My ex then grew up to think that that was 'acceptable behavior.'

 

While your husband may not have laid a hand on you or your son yet, that still may come. but you know, the verbal and mental and emotional abuse is worse than the physical. I still remember the humiliation and degrading words and the names I was called......they leave deeper scars.

 

If you live in a small town and there is no Domestic Violence Shelter, look on Google http://www.google.com and type in: National Domestic Abuse Hotline ....you should be able to find a toll free # to call them.......and you can remain totally anonymous. Talking to ANYONE at these places will not result in your husband being arrested......I know many women are afraid to seek this kind of support because they're not at a place yet where they want their husband to be arrested.......That won't happen. Not until you're ready to contact the police yourself.

 

Come back here to post any time.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Befuddled

 

I'm very sorry you went through all this. I was lucky; I ditched mine quickly.

Link to post
Share on other sites

And yet when a woman does what's only natural and snaps....she gets the blame.

 

Spousal abuse should be a felony. No questions asked.

Link to post
Share on other sites

My goodness, befuddled. A very chilling story. :(

 

Well, I must say that I have alot of respect for you. You've got guts :cool: and are strong to have survived his abuse.

 

~Viv

Link to post
Share on other sites

Befuddled...your story is an inspiration that could help many women...if they would only listen.

I experienced many of the same things you described...only I was with my abuser for 14 years.

You were very lucky, and smart to get out when you did.

Link to post
Share on other sites

pack his stuff and change the locks while he is out.

serve him with a restraining order and file for divorce.

i lived with the guy befuddled did, almost to a T,

I never called the cops on my ex, I just made him go away.

I was lucky to have supportive family & friends who helped me pack his stuff,and checked on me often.

read The Verbally Abusive Relationship, its pretty helpfull

 

good luck

 

befuddled, i wouldn't leave the house because i was afraid he might hurt the cats too.

I stayed to make sure they were safe because I couldn't figure out how to get out and take them with me.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Gee befuddled...wow! You have such strength to have come through that...

 

I am so saddened when I read the tales on here. :(

Link to post
Share on other sites
Midnight Magic

Run, don't walk away.

I have been in one very abusive relationship for over 8 years, and it was a living hell.

I too was scared of leaving and I am thinking what the hell for.

Why live your life where you are terrified. Don't stay because of the cats, take them with you

when you leave.

If you have no place to live, find a womens shelter near you.

I lived in one for over 6 months, and then moved into one of their housing complexes and paid very little rent for another year until I finally moved out into my own apartment.

 

Life is too short to have to live in the conditions that you are living.

Please take everyones advice here and leave.

I have been there, I know what hell is like.

 

Take care and best of luck to you

Link to post
Share on other sites
Midnight Magic

befuddled11

 

You are such a brave woman!!!

I am so proud of you that you got out of this situation.

 

I too was in a situation such as yourself, so I have been there.

And it is a horrible way to live. I know that I used to wish that I were dead.

 

I have been out of this relationship for 10 years and there are times when I still to this day get the shivers for what I went through. No one should have to live like this.

 

Take care

 

You are an incredible woman!!!!

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 months later...
aroseInLove

Befuddled, I am so very sorry to read this... I ache that you went through all of this.

 

Phonxix66, I ache for you and I feel your fear ..I feel your pain. When I was was 20 I was beat up on my honeymoon.. Back then, calling the police did nothing. No arrests.. they'd take him in one room and calm him down and me in another and calm me down.. sort of make us shake hands and make up.. then they'd leave.. they called it a domestic squabble.. it just got me further beat up when they'd leave... finally, like Pavlov's dog trained to be shocked by the bell.. I stopped calling the police.. I called a shelter from work one day after getting cigarettes burnt into my skin and one flicked under my eyelid, and the woman at the shelter yelled at me; she said, "You are at work.. what are you doing risking your job.. Get off this phone and get to work and snap out of feeling sorry for yourself!" I proceeded to live that hell and called NO one for the next five years.. I was trying to save money to have my own car I would need to get back and forth to work. Things escalated with the pregnancy of my 2nd baby girl, that he tried to 'force abort' from me with kicks to the stomach.. I had a boss and his wife that rescued me from that hell.. I even got help from my mother-in-law... It took five horrific years, but I finally got out and found peace.

 

Today, 23 years later, women are in a better place... We are now protected by the Tracy Thurman Law .. NO longer do police walk away... or do shelters turn away abused or frightened women.. You are IN the best times where there is Internet.. You found Love Shack... it is a beautiful resource for the soul, the mind.. the heart.. Please take the great advice given in all these posts.. and know we all care.

 

Please use every resource available to gain inner strength to remove this man from your life.. and to never LET anyone hurt you again ... not with words.. not with violence... Removing you and your son from danger will let you and your son find peace in coming 'home'.. as it should be.. God bless you, write me anytime.. I care.

 

Love,

Rose

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...
Originally posted by moimeme

I was lucky, I ditched mine quickly.

 

That was exactly the same as me. You can only put up with so much Verbal/Emotional Abuse. It messes with your mind and Self Esteem.

 

Heard rumours that he was also capable of Physical Abuse. His Ex Girlfriend before me got done in by all of that.

 

A good thing I got out before he could even lay a hand on me.

 

Also agree with other posts in saying...

 

Phoenix66 get out before it's too late with your son. Don't let him learn that that behaviour his father is using is normal towards other woman. Get out to show him that that behaviour is not tolerated towards other woman. Especially you.

 

Supervised visits for your son if your husband still wants to keep seeing him is the best way to go. If you want to cut out the father completely. Get an AVO out against him and move to another town or state if that is what you want.

 

Befuddled. You are proof that you can get away from that nightmare. It shows that you have a lot of strength. Hopefully you will know the warning signs to look out for when you are back on the dating scene again with a brand new clean slate.

 

The last thing both of you or want to do is fall into the same trap again. It does happen Don't make the same mistake! Do searches on the internet, read books, use your own experiences in ways to make sure that youdo not have to go back down that road ever again!

Link to post
Share on other sites

You need to get away as soon as possible. Contact your local women's shelter. You're going to need legal advice, so ask them if they can set you up with legal aid.

 

Try, if you can do so safely, to have some sort of proof of his abuse to use for your divorce and custody. The more you're able to show his abuse, the greater the chance of him getting no visitation with your son. You'll want to push for no visitation for your as well as your son's safety.

 

Take advantage of the services offered at the shelter. You're going to need help in the transition, so take part in any therapy offered. Your son could probably use some, too.

 

Good luck, and be safe.

Link to post
Share on other sites

your in alot of danger!! he is abusing you now, rather you know it or not....emotionally,etc...and next could be physically abusing you..Pack your bags, get your son and run as far as you can!!

Good Luck

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...
innocent112

he sounds like he is bipolar. He goes through periods of mania and then gets really deppressed or angry. My dad has issues like that to. You never know when he is going to snap. Its like your walking on eggshells.

Link to post
Share on other sites
×
×
  • Create New...