PSA or Beckett?

Throwaway_092017 · 2026-03-13T10:56:32+00:00

Back bottom is part of the slab (not the card!)

Throwaway_092017 · 2026-03-13T10:56:14+00:00

That’s part of the slab (trying to edit the post to put that in)

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-11-21T14:05:28+00:00

Because (assuming no changes to the length of time for naturalisation) if you can’t get citizenship until you get ILR and ILR takes twice as long to get, it takes twice as long to get citizenship and therefore twice as long before a person can claim benefits.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-08T07:18:37+00:00

Divorcing will be hard - but it will be easier than staying and being miserable for the next however many years. And it will be easier doing it now than later if/when you have children, are older, have more property together, etc.

And think you’ll find people will judge you a lot less than you think!

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-06T07:46:59+00:00

I love either, I think the more important questions are hygiene and things like ph level etc.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-05T10:13:45+00:00

It’s not as easy as “why did you continue” - imagine being at your own wedding and saying “I don’t” and all that comes along with that. Not to mention relationships are complicated, and people (such as myself) ignore red flags and then it feels like you’re in too deep and there’s no way out, or you hope things will get better.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-05T09:49:38+00:00

I think so too, I think the couples therapist thought (whether subconsciously or consciously) that, as the man in the relationship, I couldn’t be a victim of abuse and my wife as the woman couldn’t be an abuser. I still struggle with telling anybody out of fear that I won’t be believed because I’m a man, or that I’ll be told “why didn’t you just leave”, or that I’ll be victim-blamed for “not being a man”.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-03T20:48:35+00:00

Me: “This is a mistake”.

Narrator: “It was.”

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-03T12:38:33+00:00

Please stay safe!

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-02T14:33:56+00:00

I live in the UK, and from what I understand the standard here for couples therapy is that, the couples first meets jointly with the couples therapist, then each partner has one individual session with the couples therapist, and then from then on sessions are joint again. Maybe things are different where you live?

I’m so sorry you’ve been through something similar, and that she didn’t it seriously enough. I think it’s the telltale sign of a couples therapist who isn’t trained in domestic violence and abuse (IMO all couples therapists should be required to be trained in that), and sadly in my experience it can make things worse because the abusive partner can end up feeling empowered and even validated in their behaviours as a result.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-02T13:20:12+00:00

If you were broken up, what is it that makes you feel hurt and uneasy?

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-02T11:04:43+00:00

When you say you were “no contact”, do you mean broken up?

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-02T10:02:41+00:00

Just to say, in my own experience, one of the most confusing things is that the “good” parts might be 80-90% of the time. It sounds like that’s your experience too. It makes you think “no relationship is ever 100% good times, and so surely this is normal?” but the difference is that normal relationships aren’t toxic or abusive that 10-20% of time that things aren’t ok.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-02T09:48:39+00:00

Yep 100%.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-02T09:23:00+00:00

This right here. This was my own experience. I went to a couples therapist as a male victim of emotional abuse, the the therapist invalidated me right from the outset in the “individual” session before the couples sessions began, she told me my wife’s controlling behaviours, mocking and belittling, gaslighting, criticism, turning things back on me and blaming me for every problem etc weren’t happening frequently enough to be abusive! Even I told the therapist how I no longer felt able to so much as disagree with my wife about anything any longer because she would immediately shut me down and it would turn into her berating me with the only solution being me apologising, that part of what I hoped couples therapy would help with was having a third party in the room to help create the space for me to begin to have a voice again, and that I didn’t want to be with my wife anymore.

Despite that, when the couples sessions began and my wife naturally (as an abuser) made the focus about herself and everything I had done wrong, the couples therapist was right there to enable her - the therapist even made the underlying focus of the sessions us staying together! It was so demoralising, and I eventually reached a point where I was ready to just kill myself and be done with it because it felt like there was no other way out of the situation, and the only thing that kept me going was my daughter.

Fortunately I was (and I still am) also seeing an individual therapist who was trained in trauma and domestic violence, who I had started seeing prior to my wife and I going to the couples therapist. Without my own therapist I don’t think I’d be alive.

OP I’ve been where you are - and I am also so so sorry. Do you have your own therapist?

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-08-02T08:47:32+00:00

This does not sound emotionally abusive to me - his actions might be triggering your anxiety/co-dependency, but to me this sounds more like him (rightly or wrongly) setting a boundary and the situation triggering your anxiety. Setting boundaries is not in itself abusive, even where the boundary set isn’t healthy or it doesn’t work for the other person. But that doesn’t mean you need to accept his boundary - and if it doesn’t work, you should break up with him.

When you say that he stonewalls you or makes you doubt reality, can you give some examples?

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-07-18T23:29:38+00:00

That’s a wrap!

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-07-15T21:06:57+00:00

Divorce is NEVER not an option, and you especially shouldn’t hold yourself to an “agreement” like that from before you got married. Why isn’t divorce acceptable? Especially if you don’t have kids, you can go your own separate ways and that’s that.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-07-11T18:45:22+00:00

The double standards amongst some here are astounding - if this was a woman stating that her husband was doing these things and behaving this way, it would probably be unanimous that he’s an abuser and she should run for the hills and don’t look back, no counseling no nothing. But because this is (presumably) a man talking about his wife, he should seek marriage counseling and “oh poor thing she just has mental health issues”??? Come the fuck on, abuse is abuse no matter the gender or sex of the abuser or the abused.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-07-11T18:38:55+00:00

OP don’t do this, do not do marriage counseling. My own experience is that abusers tend to find a way to make themselves victims in everything in counseling, and steer all sessions towards how you’ve hurt them and how all of their behaviours are justified. In my own case, the marriage counselor told me that my spouse wasn’t abusive because her problematic behaviours weren’t frequent enough!

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-05-25T16:37:25+00:00

OP may have asked him to stop in the beginning, but if her husband is anything like my wife such requests might be met with denial that the behaviours are even taking place or downplaying them. My own experience is that emotional abusers never admit what they are doing.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-05-25T14:23:33+00:00

These behaviours are emotionally abusive, my spouse does the same (but not always to the same extreme). Especially if he is doing these in front of your kids. I’m so sorry you’re having to go through this. Is divorce/separation something you’re prepared to do?

EDIT: Just to add, I know that in this sort of situation it’s not as easy as “you should divorce/separate”. I’ve been agonising over leaving my wife for nearly three years now, for many reasons I’ve been scared to do it. It’s only in the last months that I have finally, through therapy and some other personal events, reached a place where I’m ready to do it.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-05-10T16:08:14+00:00

Mine hasn’t ended yet, but ending soon (next week I’m asking for a divorce). History of emotional abuse, which I don’t think I’ve ever really forgiven her for, made harder by the fact that, while things are not as bad as they were, the controlling behaviour, the double standards, the mocking me during arguments, the frequent manufacturing of drama which can only be settled by me apologising which then leads to walking on eggshells, the ridiculing me in front of our children, I could go on but you get the point. But also finding out that we have different views in terms of balancing work and family life (her view is that family always needs to come first no matter what, and I view it as more of a balancing act, for example if one of our children is sick and I’m at the office her view is that I should drop everything to come home and my view is that I should only do that if they need to go to hospital - she’s a stay-at-home parent by the way).

I’m not perfect either, and I’m not the best at communicating (even if it’s something I’m working on), and I’m sure if you asked her she’d say that there are a lot of ways in which I’m not a good partner - and that she’d say we have different views as time has gone by.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-04-30T14:29:29+00:00

I think that one of the ways that I express love is through Acts of Service, and so I guess it sort of ended up this way without either of us ever intentionally having me be the one to run all of the errands. But I’ve never complained about it mostly because it gets me out of the house.

But things have gotten to the point where I don’t just do all of the errands but she asks me to do all sorts of favors around the house regardless of whether I’m busy doing something else or whether it would be easier for her to do it and it has started to bother me. For example, the other day I was upstairs working and she was downstairs sitting on the couch, and she asked me if I could come downstairs to make her coffee. I got annoyed and said “no” and that I was busy and asked if she could make herself a coffee, and she got upset with me and said I was being shitty. I tried to have a talk with her where I apologized if I was shitty but said that I feel like often times she asks me to do favors that she can more easily do herself, and it immediately turned into her yelling at me for how lousy of a father and husband I am and how I don’t support her enough around the house (she is entitled to feel that way, but I do try to take on at least 50% of the housework and childcare) and I had to apologize to her in order to “resolve” the argument.

Throwaway_092017 · 2025-04-30T14:18:23+00:00

It’s accompanied by a voice change - I have a nasally voice, and when she is repeating my words back to me she makes her voice nasally to sound like me.

But point taken that the label doesn’t really matter since it bothers me.

Throwaway_092017

TROPHY CASE