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SuperDepressed

Tag Archives: domestic abuse

Ways He Hurt Me “Accidentally” 1

29 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by SuperDepressed in Things I Wish I Didn't Know

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abuse, abuse through finances, accidental abuse, bullying, domestic abuse, gaslighting, male privilege, mansplaining

I like to shop. I browse eBay and Facebook sale pages, combing through random items to find something I can wear. I have pretty bad acne scars on a lot of my body; I really need clothes that go up as high as possible in the back, which significantly limits my clothing choices, especially during Spring and Summer, or when I’m looking for occasion wear/party clothes/going out gear. Additionally, I have differently sized breasts (an A cup and not-quite-a-C cup) so a lot of tops or dresses hang funnily (on a visible slant) making me look messy or unkempt, no matter what I do. So despite being 4 dress sizes smaller than I was as a teenager–and being really pleased about that–I still have a number of issues, both body-image-based and practical, when going shopping.

He used to mock me for wearing “that same dress” over and over again–sometimes, we’d walk into a store with dresses of a certain cut, and he’d start laughing and pointing out how my one dress was on the wall. It was as if he couldn’t understand that the reason I refuse to wear dresses with low backs, is because numerous people audibly let out a shocked gasp when they see my upper back unexpectedly. It almost always happens the first time someone new sees me with my back exposed, but some people do it more than once. A GP once saw my back (after I had *warned* him how bad it was, after I had made an appointment to talk about my skin) gasped loudly, and said, “Yes, I see what you mean. We’re not talking dermatology, we’re talking a referral to plastic surgery, but they won’t be able to do anything for you.” This, despite the obvious flare-up of leaking, painful cysts that I really wanted treatment for… but nope. Even a trained medical professional couldn’t see past the ruined surface of my skin to the fact that there was physical pain and I needed help for it.

Yet my “partner” (I use the term so, so loosely) couldn’t seem to understand the emotional cost to me, of wearing a dress that was revealing in the back. He persisted in buying me dresses that had deep, v-shaped backs, and being wounded when I wouldn’t wear them outside of the house unless I could wear a cardigan or something with them (despite the fact that I would wear them around the house, out of thankfulness that he’d bought me something, yes something of limited use, but I was taking his gifts at face value and being grateful for them).

Once, I said I wanted to choose a dress, if he really wanted to buy me something–I was, again, assuming that he’d just forgotten how my skin makes me feel, and not actively trying to force me to wear things that appealed to him yet made me feel like shit–and I loaded up eBay or some other site, and did my usual. I set the sort function to show me highest price heading to lowest price, because if you do it the other way, you can easily creep up on things that are more expensive than you can afford (you just keep clicking ahead to the next page and before you know it, you’ve gone £100 over your pre-set budget and you’re looking at a dress you’d never buy). Whereas if you start off thinking, “Not these dresses, you can’t justify spending that much, but you may as well look at them and see if anyone is selling them cheaper in a few pages,” then even if you don’t find anything, you’ve let yourself down gently.

“No, you can’t do that–that’s not fair!” he said, as soon as I set the filters. I stopped and stared; I was genuinely puzzled; it took me several minutes to work out that he thought I was deliberately trying to spend as much of his money as possible (an odd belief, when I repeatedly told him to stop throwing money at me, over the course of the relationship; towards the end, I started sending him electronic rent for the room that he was meant to be letting me stay in 2-3 days a week, despite *him* refusing to take the money each month when I offered it).

It sounds silly, but my feelings were so incredibly hurt by that shopping incident. Who assumes that (after they have *badgered* you into accepting a gift from them) you’re out to take as much of their money as possible? And–he had been shopping with me in stores before, many times, and seen me look at the expensive or designer rails, before moving to the cheaper stuff; and then once I was looking at the cheaper stuff, that’s when I would tell him that if he really wanted to get me something, could he make it from that side of the shop (because as I was fond of telling him, I was a student and stay-at-home mom, and didn’t *need* designer clothing or evening dresses, etc).

But he was like that about so many things–if there was any possible way of viewing anything I did unkindly, he chose to view it that way… and then punished me for it (mocking me for not wearing the things he thought I should, assuming in every instance that I was out for something other than what I had stated, accusing me of manipulating him by leaving the house, despite the fact that I was usually leaving because he’d followed me from room to room screaming at me over some transgression or other, and would not stop and let me go to bed…).

There’s no easy way to look back on all this and not feel like an idiot; he used to essentially throw money at me, refuse to let me pay my own way, actively hide our relationship from some people, and then when I said I felt like a prostitute, he’d shout and scream and “how very dare you accuse me of treating you that way,” all over the place… what a moron, eh? I should have known how he felt about me the first time he shamed me into wearing something he’d bought (that was too short, low-cut in the back, and in colours that I would never choose to wear) because, well, he’d spent the money and I should be thankful for his gifts.

Before I Continue…

09 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by SuperDepressed in Uncategorized

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abuse, consent, domestic abuse, intimate partner violence, intimidation, misogyny, pathological lying, relationship, relationship trouble, sexual abuse, spin doctoring, toxic people, verbal abuse

….the potential pregnancy saga, I have to get something off my chest. It’s about the last guy I was seeing, before I started seeing my now-husband. We’ll call the previous guy, “The Spin Doctor,” because literally everything he says is spun to his best advantage, and he is a master of PR.

Essentially, I started seeing someone who turned out to be the aforementioned Spin Doctor. I didn’t realise at the start of the relationship, but in hindsight, the SD decided they understood me based on a few factors, and treated me “accordingly”. As he’s also sort of an accidental misogynist, that did not go well.

I’d love to post this on Facebook, get some support from my real-life mates, but the last time I did that, I just got a list of reasons from The Spin Doctor (and his new girlfriend–well, not new, since he started seeing her the day after convincing me to take him back, which was in April, but you take my point) why it was perfectly acceptable that he behaved that way. I can do without the hassle. I’m going to post here, and just hope he never sees it. I digress. Moving swiftly on.

In a writing prompt, the question was asked: “What do you want to say to the person who broke you?” And this was my response:

“It was domestic abuse EVERY time you screamed and shouted at me when I hadn’t raised my voice or even said anything unkind. It was abuse every time you blamed me for something I didn’t do. It was abuse every time you stomped around your house, looming over me, leaning into my face, slamming doors and cabinets and generally making me feel unsafe, when you were meant to be offering me a room 3x a week so I could finish my degree.

It was abuse when you said I ‘couldn’t be raped’. It was abuse when you, months later, proved that you weren’t joking, when you forced my hand onto your dick and told me that ‘you can’t dip in and out of people like that’ (in other words, finish jerking me off and I don’t care about your RSI pain) and later berated me for being upset about it. It was abuse when you were screaming at me so loudly in the car, for 10 solid minutes, while I begged you to pull over and let me out, that eventually I lightly tapped your face to get you to stop, and it was definitely abuse when you blacked my eye nearly shut in retaliation.

It was abuse when you said, ‘I’ve come to terms with the fact that your kids might always be awful, and I have to protect myself from them.’ All of that was abuse. You didn’t ‘make one mistake’ (blacking my eye). You abused me repeatedly, for a year and a half, and threw money at me to ease your own guilt…. but *I* know, you’re an abuser.”

I still have mixed feelings about the guy–you always do, in a situation like that–and, as stated above, there were times when I screamed too, times when I almost struck him, and, once (under extreme duress) I even slapped at him (I say “slapped at” because it was the kind of tap you do to get someone’s attention, but it did knock his glasses off and I’m sure it was disorienting). I’m certainly not blameless, in that relationship.

The thing is, I wanted to be with him, and I made it very clear over and over again, but he just wanted to stick his dick in me; preferably, without ever having to deal with my actual life, or, God forbid, my children. Once he got tired of pretending to actually care, the gloves came off, the abuse escalated, he to the point of his taking shots at my kids. In the end, it was that comment about my kids being awful that made me walk out of his house and take a train back home, missing a uni lecture in the process; I stayed for months after he blacked my eye, but I was permanently gone as soon as I had somewhere else to stay, after the comment about my babies.

The last time I tried to talk to him about any of it, he showed no awareness of wrongdoing, nor remorse. He actually denied making that comment about my kids; awkward, as the comment was made in a conversation via Messenger, so…? I mean really, what *is* the point, I ask you? And I may as well ask you, the anonymous reader.

God knows, I’ll never get a straight answer out of The Spin Doctor.

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