It suddenly occurred to me that a lot of the emotional abuse I experienced took place in restaurants.

I’m wondering if anyone else experienced similar?

A THREAD

#coercivecontrol #domesticabuse

The first one I recall is a French restaurant near Sloane Square. It’s the first time a babysitter has been booked. The first time I’ve sat in a restaurant childfree. Not for him. He’s been out plenty of times and, in fact, is rarely home.

I’m really looking forward to this.

There’s going to be amazing food. There will be wine and the atmosphere is convivial.

There is a conversation on passports and whether or not to apply for dual nationality and just like that the atmosphere changes.

I am a nothing. All mothers are nothing. Just incubators.

That’s the reason children take the father’s name. Because the father is the only parent that matters.

I start to feel my eyes sting and the tears roll. He speaks in a whisper and smiles at the pretty waitresses so no one looks at him but they look at me. The woman in tears.

A waitress comes to take the order and he is charming and even flirts with her. I lower my head so she doesn’t see my red eyes.

We eat whilst he talks about the people he knows. This time in a loud voice, so that everyone can catch the name drop.

We drive home on silence. He tells the babysitter not to worry about me as all new mothers are emotional. When the babysitter leaves he goes out and doesn’t return until 4 am the next morning.

The second one I recall is a private function we are both invited to. It’s in a wine bar/ restaurant. As we are getting out of the car he tells me that I haven’t been invited (I believed I had) and that he had only brought me along so I wouldn’t get lonely in the house by myself.

He proceeds to tell me that as one of the few eligible bachelors in XXXX there will be lots of women wanting to get to know him but that there was no need for me to get jealous as he’s chosen to live with me, not them.

I did NOT know this beforehand, funnily enough......

He tells me about this rule that he and his ex wife had - something about going to a party together but then not talking to each other until it’s time to leave.
I’m taken aback but not particularly upset. I will sit in a corner with my wine and canapés and people watch.

At some point a man comes over to talk to me. He is the only other man at the event (which I discover is a matchmaking evening). We talk and laugh. He shares my sense of humour.
He’s also surprised that I’ve come with the man I live with and he’s ignoring me. He says it’s rude.

At some point one of the women comes up to me and tells me that if I want a lift home, I need to leave NOW. I panic. The man I’m talking to gives me his card and tells me to ring him in the morning to make sure I’m safe.

At the time I don’t understand the significance of this.

When I get to the car there is silence but he is FURIOUS. He drives like an idiot. When we get home I’m called a slut, a whore, a cheap tart out on the make.

And much much more.

And do you know what? I spent years believing it was all my fault.

The third one is my birthday. Actually, if I’m being honest it’s more than one birthday. I’m beginning to understand that my birthday will mean an argument in a nice restaurant.

It’s always the same: He gets upset by something I say. I panic because I don’t want a scene.

I try to de-escalate the situation but it never works, so I fall silent as he either hisses at me or rants.

Always, always about what a useless, pathetic, mentally-ill piece of shit I am. I end up silently crying into my plate of food.

Once he stormed out of the restaurant and left me. Once he refused to let me get into the car and I had a 5 mile walk home and each time he’d stay out late and not come home , sometimes until the next day or the day after.

He would ALWAYS say why do you always start a fight? We were having such a good time until you ruined it.

And for years I believed it was my fault.

The fourth is in a French restaurant. Once again beautiful food. He tells me about his daughter’s maths teacher and how he’s not teaching her properly. I sympathise as I’ve had maths teachers who couldn’t teach me what I needed to learn.

He suddenly EXPLODES.

How DARE I criticise the maths teacher.
How DARE I criticise his daughter
He would NEVER criticise my children or their schools
( ha ha, that turns out to be a huge lie)

He defends the maths teacher as though his life depends on it.

I’m really confused. I was sympathising but nothing I say makes a difference, so I shut up. We eat the meal in silence.

I remember the oddest thing about that meal.

He holds his fork horizontal to the plate and turns the plate full circle so he scrapes the plate clean.

Now that I’m thinking back, there’s something else. I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced this?

On the day we are supposed to be going out to a concert, for a meal out with friends/colleagues- even to a wake- he will start a fight.

A HUGE one.

The first one I remember is a concert.
Sometime during the day we have an argument. It’s always about something small that escalates REALLY FAST.

Something like did I run the cold water tap before filling the kettle? Or about whether or not I reboiled water in the kettle.

I answer. He doesn’t believe me. He calls me a liar. I tell him it was the truth. In the space of maybe 20 minutes he has decided that he wants to end the relationship/marriage- that it’s not working out and he starts to pack.

I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t understand.

I get upset. I ask if there’s someone else. He accuses me of being jealous and possessive. I don’t know what to think as this all happened because of a bloody kettle! I’m crying. I don’t
Want him to leave. He says he feels nothing for me.

He packs. He storms around the houses fuming and stomps. I don’t know what to do but there’s a huge panic in me and I feel like I’ve been pushed off a cliff. I don’t know what I’ve done. I can’t stop crying.

Then an hour or so before we’re supposed to leave he comes to say he is sorry. He does love me, he wants to be with me. It’s just that I do things that really piss him off and that none of this would have happened if I had only let the tap run or didn’t reboil the water etc

I’m so grateful. And so relieved. It’s over. The horror of the day has come to an end and it’s back to normal.

He tells me to get ready so we can go out.

At the concert, it’s abundantly clear that I’ve spent most of the day crying. My nose is red and my eyes swollen.

He is the ‘life and soul of the party’ whilst he ignores me.
I am fuming.

I would later find out that he would tell people I was really difficult to live with.

And I really can’t blame them for thinking that. All they see, when we are out together, is a woman who has obviously been crying. Doesn’t engage with others, looks sullen and must surely have mental health problems.

Poor him. And he’s just SO NICE!!!!!!!!!!

This happens before a funeral. I pass it off, not as my fault for *starting a fight* but as him being upset because his friend has died. He tells me he wants me to come with him because he needs my support.

That morning he starts a fight.

I can’t remember the exact details but, as always, it escalates. What I do remember is that it then becomes about a female friend of his that I don’t like.

When baby only a few weeks old ( I think 3 weeks), she invited him to a party because he needed cheering up. Rightly or wrongly, that really pissed me off. I can’t understand how a woman would think inviting a man whose wife has just had a baby to a party is appropriate.

At the time, he told me that I was being unreasonable and jealous and that this was a woman friend who cared deeply for him and wanted to spend more time with him and he can’t help that, can he?

Incidentally, it’s the same woman he would meet for full moon midnight meditations. He would tell me that the women at these gatherings wanted him there, because the wanted to ‘bathe in his light’.

I thought it was creepy.

But I didn’t think he was being unfaithful. He surrounded himself by women because he had always told me that he was uncomfortable in the company of men. This was something I had known from the beginning.

He told me that he wanted me at the funeral, by his side, as that woman would be there and she was hugely influential in the crowd he was in and, maybe, if she saw me there, she might leave him alone.

It didn’t make sense. It still doesn’t.

What is clear is that he doesn’t really want me as support but to parade me in front of a woman I don’t like and so I don’t want to go.

He persuades me and I go because he’s upset that a friend has died and I don’t want to be cruel.

Just before we get there, in the car, he suddenly decides that he doesn’t want me there. He wants to go by himself. He thinks that I will embarrass him in front of his friends and colleagues and that I’m the odd one out and won’t fit in. I get angry and ask him why he asked me.

We have an argument in the car. He says he wants to introduce his wife to his work colleagues but my belief system is too different to theirs and I’m a ‘ low vibrational being’ and his colleagues won’t understand why he’s with someone like me and will want to split us up.

I’m angry and upset and shout at him. He continues to explain why the people at the funeral will see me as unworthy of him.

I cry. We sit in silence. I tell him I want to go home.

We drive home.

Half way home he stops the car and says he’s sorry and he does want me to come to the funeral. ( I don’t think of this at the time but he turned it into me wanting to go, when it was him who wanted to accompany him.)

We turn back. I can’t say no. I just know that his friends will claim that I have stopped him from going to the funeral if he doesn’t go. They will think I’m an even shittier person than they already do. I want to stay in the car whilst he goes in. He doesn’t let me.

Thinking back on it, it was yet another occasion where we went out as a couple and my face was red and tear stained from crying. I don’t think of it at the time but he is actively searching for this woman. When he sees her he taps her on the shoulder and says ‘hello, my love’

She turns around and he introduces me to her, as his wife. She’s surprised to see him there and he tells her that he’ll talk to her later as he doesn’t want to leave his wife alone.

It’s only years later that I wonder about the significance of what happened that day.

This time is around a meal following a Mind Body Spirit event.
I had catered for the event. He was the organiser. Everyone involved was meeting up for a celebratory meal in a restaurant.

Guess what? Yep, you guessed it. On the day of the event he started a fight.

Apparently I’m stifling his creativity. I won’t let him be who he wants to be even though he is out of the house at 6 am and often doesn’t return home until late evening.

Apparently my kids get in the way. They don’t spend enough with their father.

We have an argument and I stand my ground. I do not stifle him. He does everything he wants to do. It gets personal. I’m a
* low vibrational being* and he needs to be with someone who understands his * service to humanity*.

I can’t help it. I laugh. That wasn’t a good idea.

I’m stupid, I’m a failure, I’ve failed at everything I’ve ever done, I take but don’t give, I deserve everything bad that has happened to me in my life because I attracted it into my life because I refuse to meditate.

And on and on it goes until I start crying.

He says it is over. He feels nothing for me and the baby ( that is his default response when he wants to hurt me) and that he only wants the best for me and wants us to be friends.

For YEARS this would confuse me.

I would see him trying to be nice but I would ignore the abuse.

And this is a HUGE reason why I would come to believe that it was always my fault and that all he had ever wanted was for my best interest to be served.

It was always couched in pseudo-magnanimous New Age talk.

An hour or so before we are due to leave, he apologises to me. I’m sorry, I DO love you.

He’s ALWAYS been good at apologising but, thinking back, that apology was always accompanied by something that would make me feel sympathy for him.

So it wasn’t really his fault that we had the fight. When it wasn’t my fault it was because his mother abandoned him ( not true, as it happens) or because of some betrayal ( all his exes had cheated on him) or his violent ex.

So, we go to the restaurant and my eyes are red and raw from crying and I am very quiet. I hardly talk. He sits opposite me on a long rectangular table full of people and keeps trying to catch his eye. I ignore him.

I’m angry that he’s been vicious to me all day and shouting yet here he is, now, being courteous and charming and soft spoken.
He talks to the woman sitting next to him and they are having a conversation about about hair and he talks about his pubic hair.

The woman he is talking to gives him a really odd look and I’m thinking, yes, this is the real person. Not the higher vibrational being he passes himself off as.

Some years later two women who were at that meal would talk to me. He had always told them that it was really difficult being in a relationship with me because I was always so volatile and mentally unstable but he couldn’t leave me because of the baby, you see...