Gloria, if you see this - you say 'He wants someone skinny, I am not.' Realise that if you were skinny, he would want someone fat. It's not the content of his wishes, it's the fact that you can't fulfil them... took me a VERY long time to realise this.

The insidious building-up of disrespect was how I got caught up in it. It hurts my pride to say I am an abuse victim. Might be easier to confess alcoholism. I'm relieved to see men commenting here without shame - we can all grow through this learning process, dreadful though it is, to the point of knowing our self-esteem need not depend on others' assumptions.

I'm in the process of divorce after 23 years which is more than half my life. In fact I haven't been single, as an adult, more than 3 weeks in a row. It is terrifying! Even more because I now have chronic illness - various hard-to-describe and hard-to-diagnose conditions which together are disabling. I have no family to support me (even moral support, since my mother died unexpectedly last year) and cannot work. My only useful skill is loads of experience at weasling what I need out of the unhelpful medical and government System... ;)

Kellie, I'm sure you will say my health difficulties are (at least partly) caused by the long-term abuse and I agree with you! It is frustrating that I can't 'openly' blame him but it does give me hope that I will perhaps become more able once we're apart. Another reason I'm terrified of divorcing is that I stand a good chance of losing the funding for my disability care (this is not UK divorce law, but disability law; someone please change our government whose approach is very like my soon-to-be-ex husband's = bully only those who won't fight too hard!).

I've come to the conclusion that we are two separate 'species' as it were. There are 'elephant' humans like myself who automatically give support if someone is ill, weak, old, or whatever. Then there are 'wolf' humans who turn on those who can't keep up. Yes, he is only nasty behind closed doors, but more than that I have observed that he is worse when I'm physically or emotionally weaker (so now, much of my energy goes into hiding that from him) - and worse towards the weakest person present. When I am acting strong, he is horrible to our youngest. I think that's the key to why he's perfectly pleasant when witnesses are around, they have power over him. The needier I am, the worse he treats me, to the point of regularly refusing to reach a blanket (didn't even require standing up) when I was chilled to the bone and unable to stand up to get it myself.

Seeing that is like a loss of innocence and I mourn it. I used to believe that no one is truly bad on the inside, only misguided or unheard or similar. I used to think if I could make him understand how it affected me, he'd willingly change. But this knowledge is strength: the more he sees the effect, the more he does it. So that effort is one I dropped!

I used to think it was my self-centredness that made me so deeply mind being ignored. My personal learning curve has involved forgiving my own faults rather than trying to eradicate them - remembering we all have faults and I'd overlook most of mine if they were in someone else.

That was the second of two steps that got me to the point of being able to leave. I think you write about it in another post, Kellie? giving up the striving to be faultless. It really helped when I found rage as a symptom of BEING abused - I saw that I'm not (as he says I am) the perpetrator. The first step was recognising it as abuse - when I found a 'checklist' and it described his behaviour as if the writer had been spying on him! I was in shock for 6 weeks, and then able to gird my loins and plan to do what I hadn't been able to justify up to then: leave.

Took another 2 years to get well enough to take on Social Services for the support I need nowadays to be able to cope with a 'paperwork project' as demanding as divorce (with him refusing to contact them, preferring to 'help' me and whine that it was too much for him to cope with - telling me I'd lose my benefits if 'they' found out the 'truth' about how fit I actually was...) - and then wait for that support to be in place. I feel like a hostage escaping from years of solitary confinement. (Still feel presumptuous comparing my situation to people with 'real' hardship...!) You see why I am scared of being without the funding for that support. I'd be without cooking, laundry, transport, or the means to pay for any of it, and I'd screw up my finances within a few weeks.

And STILL better off than living with him. My only regret, honestly, is staying so long, letting our sons have him such a big part of their upbringing. :(

Aaagh, I resolved not to be one of your commenters who get carried away and write far too much... there simply is far too much to write, though. That's how PTSD takes me - lots n lots of getting it out of my system! Thank you again for your website.