AIBU to still feel unsafe and want to tell someone?

[Puffinsandcoffee]

My husband has done some things to me /around me in recent years that weren't great. Nothing really terrible - not hitting or SA - but stuff that has made me definitely a bit scared of him.

It's been well over a year since he's done anything like that.

I just have two questions I thought maybe someone on here would have experience of this stuff and could answer.

One is, when did you find that you felt safe and comfortable around your husband again? Is it normal that I don't? Every time he swears or slams a door or something I get scared, and then scared he'll notice I'm scared, because he would get annoyed by that because he just wants us to move on from the stuff that happened. The world cup is stressing me out because he keeps jolting out of his chair and shouting and swearing at the TV!

The other question is, is it really vindictive that I want to tell someone in real life? I obviously won't. He'd be so hurt and really angry, because it's such an injustice to who he is in general. But there was total secrecy in my family about my dad's additions and abuses and I think because of that, having to not tell anyone about the stuff my husband has done is making me feel worse, like as if it's all happening again even though it's not.

Just to pre-empt some stuff that might come up

• I have posted about this stuff before. I spoke to Women's Aid because of replies. I don't mind my other posts being referred to but please don't "catch me out" with stuff from them. Mumsnet is the only place I can have these "conversations" and I'm not trying to be defensive or in denial or anything like that.
• I am getting therapy for cPTSD which I have from other stuff mostly childhood stuff.
• I haven't gone into detail about what he did because I don't think it's relevant but I will if it is.
• I won't be leaving him. I can't even if I wanted to but I don't want to.

I didn't put a poll as it's not really an either/ or but just - is this all normal and will pass, or am I damaging my relationship by not moving on from it?

He is abusive. This is absolutely not normal or ok. Don’t bring children up in this please. Please speak to women’s aid and confide in friends/ family. You can’t live in fear of an abusive man. And please don’t minimise his behaviour.

Thank you for this. I do think @Jane379 has been really understanding, tbf. But in response to this, @Jane379 :

I will say, more widely, I think there are dangers to giving police harassment and prejudice as an excuse for DV and family violence.
Jews in Tsarist Russia and Poland and African Americans in Jim Crow South are only two of many groups who have suffered violent & state sanctioned abuse. I do not think that in recent decades Travellers in England faced this kind of violence, and even if they had, many Jews and African Americans did not respond by turning their violence on their families.
It hasn't been a conscious response to police violence and police violence isn't an excuse . I don't know why DV rates are higher in my community. Maybe because it's relatively a much smaller community than Jewish/ African American community? Maybe there's been less acknowledgement of what we've gone through, more sense that we brought it on ourselves, like social gaslighting? I don't know.

@RoseOliviaAu no, he was kicking the door in anger, shouting and swearing at me, not trying to get in to me for my safety.

It's not because of my ethnicity/ culture that I'm not divorcing him. I just don't think it's a proportionate or necessary response to what he did.

What happened after he kicked the door in to get to you?

Yeah, so it's all just normal stuff I'd say, but all adds up to too much sometimes.

We have 3 young kids and no family support anywhere nearby. Our oldest had some fairly impactful health issues when a baby, though these are thankfully resolved.

Our middle child also has some health issues - nothing disabling or life limiting, nothing majorly serious - but before we knew what was "wrong" it was very stressful.

Since our oldest was born we've lost 5 very close family members including both our fathers, in very upsetting/ hard to watch ways.

We've moved house and the new house needs a lot of work, which is fun and exciting but a fair bit of stress too.

My mum became extremely difficult and sometimes abusive when my first was born, which had a very bad effect on me that compounded my mental illness quite severely for a while.

Then, you know, my family is amazing but it can be stressful at times - fighting, drug-related incidents (not common, but v unpleasant), drinking etc. There has been blood!

And he's lost some closeness to his own friends and family over the years too, because of his relationship with me. THey still love him, of course, but it's not as easy to have a regular relationship, which is hard for him - like, he has lost some support even though he's gained a whole community (though even then, he'd say he's not completely "us" and never can be, which is true I suppose). He's the main earner, a stress in itself. His mum needs increasing support which he can't always provide because of distance.

I can't remember. I felt like I was going to pass out from fear tbh, which probably sounds really silly or over-dramatic, but he's 6ft tall and about 80/85kg, fit and strong, and I'm about 5ft 3 and less than 50kg, and I was obviously was cornered and I'd never seen him so angry.

I know he didn't hit me. I know it prob sounds like I'm lying and don't want to say what he did but I honestly can't remember and I know I'd remember if he hit me. This happens when I get really scared - I space out and then can't really remember what happens. I think he maybe shouted at me a while until he'd got it off his chest?

Authority over what, exactly? In every single post you make it clear that you feel absolutely powerless and helpless. Even in this post it's all about what other people told you you were "for", what was seen (by others) as your "destiny" (there's no such thing, just circumstances and choices) etc. Did it ever occur to you that your life belonged to you, and that you could choose how to live it?

If you think you're "respected" for following the script, doing as you're told and spending your life subordinating yourself to men and children, you're kidding yourself. It's just something you're told to make you keep doing it. You've said yourself, repeatedly, that your family will withdraw their supposed "love" (it's no such thing) and "good opinion" etc if you dare to quit being everyone else's doormat. You have no respect, and no power. You'll be rewarded with their supposed approval for as long as you keep doing as you're told; that's all. You're not going to be able to get any further with any of this until you can understand and accept how you've been brainwashed by all this patriarchal bullshit. Raise your consciousness, as they used to say in the seventies. Actually make the effort to understand the mechanisms and systems of social control behind your own oppression. You can't be free of it until you stop believing in it.

But also because he's lost a lot by being with me. Family and friends. I owe him loyalty and grace.

No, you don't.

He chose you. That was his choice. When he chose you he owed you safety and stability and a life free from fear. He owes your children that.

You are NOT responsible for his health or his happiness and you are NOT responsible for his behaviour.

He has not made good on his side of the bargain.

@Elsvieta Authority over what, exactly? In every single post you make it clear that you feel absolutely powerless and helpless.
I think I sort of mean moral authority. I don't feel powerless or helpless - I don't know how I've given that impression. Maybe that makes me sound really stupid.

But the authority is in specific areas - hard to explain - but say, with cousin's GF and the incident there, I think, if she'd gone to the police, I'm now in a position where I would have been listened to defending that. Someone's conduct at a wake was a problem recently, and what I thought mattered, and influenced things. I've long said that being gay is just fine, love is love, that homophobia wrong and not in keeping with our (as in our community's) values - and over time (and obviously not the only voice saying this), views have changed on that. Obv the gay people in my community are the front line of that, but what I think has mattered. What's good for our (as in, our community's) kids, what's good parenting - I have authority on that.

@Elsvieta You've said yourself, repeatedly, that your family will withdraw their supposed "love" (it's no such thing) and "good opinion" etc if you dare to quit being everyone else's doormat.
I never said I'd lose their love. I'd lose their good opinion if I left my husband without good cause. I don't think I'd lose their love.

You're not going to be able to get any further with any of this until you can understand and accept how you've been brainwashed by all this patriarchal bullshit. A ctually make the effort to understand the mechanisms and systems of social control behind your own oppression.
I'm not brainwashed! The mechanisms and systems of social control behind my oppression are almost entirely outside my home and community. I went through a brief phase thinking I wanted a brilliant career and that it was a path to power and freedom. Then I had kids, and the "career" died. And my priorities completely changed. By far my most important role is bringing up my kids, with strong values and a sense of identity.

You don't know how you've given that impression? Helplessness is the dominant tone of every single one of your many posts. I couldn't possibly divorce, ever going to the police about anything is unthinkable, I couldn't contemplate doing anything my violent druggie family might disapprove of etc etc. You literally said you want a way to "feel ok" about being abused and frightened in your own home; it never seems to even occur to you that you might be able to actually stop it or escape it. It's disturbing that a lifetime of being beaten down by violence, abuse and misogyny means you don't even see it.

So, authority to perpetuate the system that's fucked you over, basically? To tell some more women what to do, to teach them that they should be controlled by the "community" just like you were? And that there's a specific way of raising children that's different from how anyone else does it, in the country that you live in? That you have to be married to tell someone to stop being an arsehole at a wake? That they will never be treated like they're equal human beings if they choose to be single / childfree? That anyone's decision to call the police when they've been the victim of a crime needs to be "defended"?

You have been controlled all your life by a misogynist culture and your reward for complying is to have a little spurious "power" over a few women who haven't yet buckled down and subordinated themselves to a man. And a bit of additional male approval because you have. And no actual freedom for yourself or control over your own life, obviously. You can free yourself, but only if you can stop wanting it. Do you really want it that much?

I don't think anyone on here can help you to be honest as you have very limiting beliefs, you want to live within the confines of a very narrow view of what women can expect in life and from others who supposedly care/love them, and a very poor sense of boundaries. Until you can see that you deserve more, you will keep defending the bad behaviour from your husband, your family and community.

What use is a husband, family and community if it's not good for your nervous system? Your body knows even if your brain is trying to deny it.

• being not married doesn't make you inferior. If your community thinks that, that's not right.

OP; Don't lots of people think that, on some level? And anyway, in my case, that was sort of what was seen as my destiny. It's been said to me before and since, that wife and mother is what I was meant for. And I can sense the respect I get - I have authority now. People in my family think I'm doing really well in these roles (even if people here don't!).

Omg this is so depressing to read!!!

NO! It’s 2026. It’s absolutely not normal to think that unmarried women are inferior.

I really do hope you find the strength to leave your psycho husband and distance yourself from a backward toxic community.

I will try to respond to what you've said here, but - and I'm absolutely not just throwing out a "prejudice" card because all else has failed - I just, really gently, would ask if you think maybe some of what you've said here isn't based on anything I've actually said but more on your ideas about my culture?

I will really attend to what you said, but would you do the same for this suggestion of mine? Just, I think I gave like a pencil sketch of what I meant by "moral authority", and you've come back with a very vivid colourful picture.

It's absolutely possible you're right - I am open to that - maybe there's stuff I've said elsewhere that totally backs up your view here. But I just wonder if it's partly based on stuff other than me.

You mentioned a few pages back @Puffinsandcoffee that you hadn't really looked at your husbands behaviour through the lens of his culture, only your own. I thought it might be helpful to you to get a perspective of a man from the same background as your husband. Feel free to tell me to bugger off if this isn't appreciated though.

For reference, I'm an intimidating bloke. Not through choice, I'm just tall, bulky, have a very deep voice, and a scar on my face that suggests something much worse than the fact that I actually fell off a table when dancing drunk at 18.

As a result, I'd learnt by the age of 14 that I can't get visibly angry, I can't shout, because that scares people a lot more than most people getting angry would.

DP and DD have heard me raise my voice precisely 3 times in the last 20 years. Twice because DD was about to do something stupid and dangerous and I needed her to stop right this second, and once because two young men were fighting outside a pub we were in and I figured a roared "You Will Fucking Stop It Right Now", might snap them out of it. And it did, I can be that loud.

I'm not saying I don't get angry. Of course I do, I'd have to be superhuman not to. But I don't use that anger when arguing with DP. I tell her I need to go and calm down, and come back to the conversation later. And then I go and do something productive with my anger like go for a bike ride or pull up an old tree stump I'd been meaning to get round to for months, until it's worn out and can go back and have a calm discussion with DP.

Now, I get that I'm probably right at the extreme opposite end of the scale from your husband, and that most couples I know probably have the occasional argument that involves shouting, some door slamming etc. But I think the vast majority of those men would find your husbands behaviour just as unacceptable as I do.

Pushing you, calling you bitch or "the c word", destroying property. All of these things are done on purpose to try to intimidate you, to try and scare you into doing exactly what he wants, to control you. Most men in my culture would say that those behaviours are abhorrent, and abusive, and utterly unacceptable in a relationship. Importantly, even the men actually doing it, the ones who hit and rape their wives, would outwardly say that the behaviour of your husband is unacceptable.

Which is what scares me so much about the situation you're in. You've grown up in an environment where a certain amount of intimidation is a part of life. So have then men you've grown up with. So where the line is drawn between acceptable and unacceptable is different to where the line would be drawn for me and most of the other posters on here.

So you accept a certain amount of scary behaviour from your husband, because that's what you've grown up with. And believe that he won't cross the line into anything worse because he's a "good" man.

The problem is, he crossed the line years ago. Because his line is in a completely different place to yours. He knows his behaviour is unacceptable, he knows his family wouldn't approve of the way he's behaved so far. He knows he's not a "good" man, because everything in his upbringing tells him so. So given that he's already stepped over the line, what on earth is there to stop him going further?

You're seeing a normal man, we're all seeing the man who might end up killing you. And that's what he's seeing too, and he's fine with it.

so its good parenting to model living in fear to your children?

How can we have ideas about your culture when you haven't said what it is?

@Elsvieta I couldn't possibly divorce, ever going to the police about anything is unthinkable, I couldn't contemplate doing anything my violent druggie family might disapprove of etc etc
I said I won't divorce or go to the police. I'm allowed to. These are my choices, acting within a moral framework I am conscious of. It's shared by my family, yes, which is why I'd risk their good opinion if I went outside it, but it is also my own.

You literally said you want a way to "feel ok" about being abused and frightened in your own home;
I said I wanted to feel ok despite having been abused, or at least that's what I meant. I don't want it to happen again. I know it might. But I'd like to feel as if I was safe in my marriage, which I think I am, despite some low level abusive behaviour from my husband.

authority to perpetuate the system that's fucked you over, basically?
No. Authority to help shift the moral framework of my community to be more inclusive and contemporary.
To tell some more women what to do, to teach them that they should be controlled by the "community" just like you were?
No. To help amplify the voices of women when they want things outside what's normal, maybe?
And that there's a specific way of raising children that's different from how anyone else does it, in the country that you live in?
No. Things like, I'm very passionately in favour of education, and in schools at that. I also believe that being a SAHM is a legitimate and vital role. i don't think that education should prevent that, or vice versa. I have a degree and a job. I think my husband should support me to be at home with my kids, if that's what I want. I'm listened to on that.
That you have to be married to tell someone to stop being an arsehole at a wake?
No, but I don't want to get into the details of that situation.
That they will never be treated like they're equal human beings if they choose to be single / childfree?
No. But mothers have a specific role and status. Cousins who've lost their mothers, other mothers can fill some small parts of the gap that's left. That's all I meant.
That anyone's decision to call the police when they've been the victim of a crime needs to be "defended"?
It does need defended. Whether that's right or wrong, it does need to be defended in my community. And I'm in a position to be able to do that.

You have been controlled all your life by a misogynist culture and your reward for complying is to have a little spurious "power" over a few women who haven't yet buckled down and subordinated themselves to a man. And a bit of additional male approval because you have. And no actual freedom for yourself or control over your own life, obviously.
I really don't think any of this is fair but maybe you're right.

It's based entirely on what you've said, and nothing else. (I'm still not quite sure which culture it is. I don't care - it doesn't matter). You've said you can't do anything your family don't approve of. You've said that whatever power or authority you supposedly have takes the form of bossing younger women and maybe being treated like you're actually a person in conversations with men. And reinforcing a system which doesn't seem to have done you much good. It does not take the form of having any actual power or control over your own life. So I ask again: do you really want this moral authority, quite that much? Is it worth what you've lost? Do you want to live in fear every day in order to keep it?

Maybe, sometimes, it's your culture that plays the prejudice card, when anyone else suggests that it's sexist and it's about time its women stopped putting up with it? Or, rather, the men in your culture? It's not uncommon for men in oppressed groups to try to retain control and power where they can - which often means over women and children. And that's true in a lot of cultures.

OK, I will respond properly, but I did not say that "whatever power or authority I supposedly have takes the form of bossing younger women and maybe being treated like I'm actually a person in conversations with men."

I'm not bossing anyone around, and never said what age anyone was. this is where I think you're getting some ideas from elsewhere. I'm not trying to shut you down at all. I am really listening to what you're saying.

Maybe, sometimes, it's your culture that plays the prejudice card,
Yes it is, definitely. that's what I was referring to. I was saying, I'm trying not to do that, because I know we do that sometimes.

OP I've been following this thread since Monday night, and I've answered a few times.
Reading all of your posts I've gained an increased understanding of your position.
I don't want to bang on about your culture or ethnicity, but one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me, you are obviously an intelligent and articulate woman who seems appreciative of all of the advice and comments here, but I believe that you would really benefit from contacting groups that work with your community. We can all be giving you the exact same message, but you are not in a place to hear it. Calling a helpline manned by women who understand your exact circumstances and have more insight into your culture, even if just to chat and offload, may do you more good than reading 300 opinions here.
A quick google will give you telephone numbers and names.

I really really wish you well OP.
No woman deserves to live in fear.

Well, you said that being married gives you some sort of right to advise those who aren't - the unmarried women would generally be younger, right? And on the childrearing thing - presumably you advise women who have children younger than yours, and therefore the women are younger than you? That's the only interpretation I was putting on that.

Anyway. We're 25 pages into this, and nobody has given you what you asked for - the magic key to feeling ok and feeling safe and believing that your husband won't behave abusively in the future, when there's no reason at all to think he won't. I don't think it's coming. I don't think it exists. So, what do you think you're going to do?

Yes this is absolutely what I was trying to get at in my post earlier, @Puffinsandcoffee - this

"Which is what scares me so much about the situation you're in. You've grown up in an environment where a certain amount of intimidation is a part of life. So have the men you've grown up with. So where the line is drawn between acceptable and unacceptable is different to where the line would be drawn for me and most of the other posters on here.
So you accept a certain amount of scary behaviour from your husband, because that's what you've grown up with. And believe that he won't cross the line into anything worse because he's a "good" man.
The problem is, he crossed the line years ago. Because his line is in a completely different place to yours.

You're seeing a normal man, we're all seeing the man who might end up killing you. And that's what he's seeing too, and he's fine with it."

I now realise that that's what was going on when you said ages back "All men are scary" and everyone (including me) was perplexed and assumed it was due to your own personal experience of trauma.

What you've since said about your culture, and the information someone else put up about "honour" cultures, IMO explains that difference in understanding of how men in general "are" - in your community they're "scary" because they're expected to look intimidating, no matter how they actually feel inside. So they might still be really good, gentle people who are playing the role they've been brought up to believe is how a man has to behave to keep himself and his family safe. But your husband isn't doing that - you said he's not a hard man, and that's because he doesn't play that "hard man" role in public. What he does do is intimidate you in prIvate. Not the same thing at all.

@Elsvieta you said that being married gives you some sort of right to advise those who aren't
I didn't say that either, though it's not synonymous with bossing anyone around. I said I am seen as having some kinds of authority, including moral authority, because I'm a wife and mother. Arising from the life experience and wisdom you get from that. My auntie brought up 6 kids with a husband who was in and out of jail for the whole thing. Surely it's right that I look up to her, see her as an authority on some aspects of bringing up children, on navigating a complex moral situation, etc?