My head and heart are both telling me to leave him. It’s gotten to that point now. He is very toxic, manipulative, controlling, liar, angry, gaslighting me, disrespecting me and a pretty bad father. Every bit of me wants to leave, but the thought of him being with someone else is nearly making my skin crawl. I don’t know if I can go through that. Why? What is wrong with me? I need to leave before our baby girl gets any older, but picturing him with someone else makes my stomach churn. Whyyyyyy
2 Replies
This is what abusers do. They condition you into believing that losing them would be some kind of terrible loss!
I promise you, once you’re away from this man and begin healing, the only thing that will churn your stomach is knowing he’s inflicting this shit on some other poor woman.
He has conditioned you so now your sense of worth is tied up in his approval of you. If he is with someone else, in your mind it would confirm that he was right all along and all these things he said about you were true.. because if it was wrong how could he find someone else so quickly and how could he just move on and be happy. For you this would just confirm all those thoughts he has meticulously planted in your head all this time.. that you are worthless without him.
From someone on the other side.. this is not reality. You are more than worthy of love. He is not capable of loving not just you, but anyone. He will go on to groom someone else and it will appear all happy on the surface but ultimately, he will do the exact same thing to her. I have lived this.
The only thing I regret, is not leaving earlier and I have heard many women say the exact same. Initially I told myself they deserved a relationship with their father so stayed. Finally, I left for them as I did not want them thinking it was normal. The eldest still has a relationship with him but it is so damaging sometimes. The younger two have had such abusive situations with him that they have now chosen to remove him from their lives. My youngest has no attachment to him at all because I left early enough for her. If you are not strong enough to leave for yourself, do it for your daughter x
You are strong, although you feel weak. When you no longer carry his voice around in your head, you will realise just how much he is draining your energy.
Remember there are support services including Centrelink social worker, DV counselling etc. Use these resources as it is better to have all of this documented to protect yourself when you get out.
Take care lovely, you've got this 💗