Once I realised my husband was a serial abuser I told both his family and mine. Perhaps I shouldn’t but I genuinely thought they would and could help us sort it out. I thought his father would say something helpful like “oh yeah, he gets abusive sometimes when he’s under pressure/stressed/tired/if you say so-and-so….” If I’d known what the trigger was I could have stopped it or eased it, talked to him about it or something. What actually happened was that they completely sided with him, against me. My relationship with them became increasingly frosty until even they were mean to me. At first I could not understand it. My father-in-law (whenever my husband was not around) treated me like a second-class citizen and yet in front of his son he was charm personified. I pointed this out to my husband but he refused to believe it. Initially I dismissed it as a one-off but it kept happening. 

My husband and I run businesses together and we have employed a number of people over the short time we have been together, which has always ended in disaster. On two occasions my husband has done to them what he has to me. Both times I have unwittingly done to them what my in-laws have done to me. I have found myself siding with my husband and acting aloof and distant with these people, both of whom have been wonderful human beings, capable, likeable and competent. I have hated myself for doing it but at the time, whilst wanting to stay in the marriage, I couldn’t see what choice I had. On the occasion when I did stick up for them it made the abuse from my husband and his family for them and I even worse. 

The only way to side with or support an abusive person is to become one yourself. I have heard that counselling does not work in these cases because the only way the counsellor can validate the abuser is to agree with them and if they don’t they end up being abused themselves. It’s an impossible dynamic. If I’d have been brave enough at the time I should have stood up to my husband and not let him get away with his appalling behaviour towards these people but it would have meant the end of my relationship with him too and at the time I was not ready for that. I didn’t have such as understanding of it as I do now. 

So, I see that this is what his family is doing. They are sticking up for him because they are scared of being abused themselves (which they have in the past. I know my husband has hit his mother and I have actually witnessed him swear at her and being rude to her in front of me and other members of his family). I truly believe they are scared of him. But that is the crux. By doing this, by letting him get away with it, his family are supporting, feeding his psychosis and perpetuating it so that he will never get the chance to recognise it and change and that makes me really sad. If they would just stand up to him at the same time as me, that might, just might, give him the opportunity to change.

I keep hearing the words “I love you darling.” He keeps saying it; all over the house. I walk past the room he is in, he says it. I pass him in the hall, there it is. He stands in front of me in the kitchen and………

It makes me feel sad. I want to believe him, like I did in the beginning. It could have been so simple to make this marriage work. We’re a good match in many ways. But every time I hear him utter the words, my first reaction (the first thought that comes into my head) is “no you don’t.” If he did he wouldn’t treat me this way. I want to believe it. I really do. But he has lied to me so much I cannot believe anything he says. The more distance there is between us the more I realise about him and our ‘relationship’ and it makes me sad that, what I thought at one time could be the perfect marriage, has actually been a sham all along.

I must not dwell on that. For me right now, the most important thing is turning that corner and embarking on a new life – without him! Once I have done that I can start to plan a future, start to live the life I want. Whatever that might be.