A
female
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:Boyfriend and I are starting to have blow up arguments. Half of the time I can't even remember how they started. He starts to yell and scream and I have started to return the yelling and screaming, at first I use to just deal with it. Then he usually makes me pack my bags and leave. He often times stops me before I get out of the door and wants to talk more rationally.Once a month he breaks up with me for whatever issue he has even after things have been great.During a couple of arguments he would tell me to leave the home and I started saying "no you don't mean this, you are angry I am not packing my things to leave because of an argument". He then says "I will call the police on you, get out of my house etc." He has threatened to call the police multiple times but has never.So I packed all of my things for like the last 6th or 5th time and tried to leave...he stopped me to talk rationally and I ended up staying. The next day I still took all of my things home because I was tired of constantly being kicked out.Shortly after that we had a bad break up and didn't talk for about a month because he would ignore me, I would ignore him and it was just a constant power struggle. (I use to just take the blame for everything, things I knew were not my fault and the arguments got worse once I started standing up for myself.)I wanted a few things I left there and so I told him I was on my way to his home. I knew he didn't want me there but I allowed my emotions to get the best of me because he was ignoring me knowing that is very hard for me to deal with. He wouldn't open the door and told me I had nothing there. I told him I did and where it was. He was dragging his feet so I text him and said "Bring me my things now before I call the police on you.? I would never actually do that, I was simply giving him what he gave me.Eventually we tried to work the relationship out. Things were going fine for about a month and had another fight that he honestly started. I pointed out that he gets an attitude if I am busy with family and can't talk to him. An argument ensued about issues from years ago after that.We are currently not really speaking and started to talk today. Do you know he had a fit about me saying "I will call the police on him if he didn't bring my things outside." That happened over a month ago. He said the same thing to me though and I told him that. He seems to constantly say very hurtful things to me and if later I say the EXACT same thing I am in the wrong and the worse person alive. Now I "put his life at risk." But he said it multiple times first. I am confused. Help me.I acknowledged to him it was wrong, petty and I shouldn't have done it but then I explained why I did it...giving him what he gave me. I even told him I will never say it again. He once again ended the relationship and asked me not to contact him.....AGAIN.I am quite aware how toxic this relationship is, we have been in each others lives for over a decade at this point so it is hard to detach.I am no longer willing to be a participant in the yelling, threatening etc. I just don't know if I am viewing this situation wrong or if he truly has a hard time taking responsibility. I really need help. I am starting to question myself at this point even though I feel like I am making perfect sense.He use to be a professional boxer and I wonder if his mind had been affected my the hits. That worries me.
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female
reader, Jasmine1991 +, writes (28 December 2019):
I want to add even though I know I will get much scrutiny, this article... Abusers can change but it takes a whole lot. He has to change himself. And you can find many articles on this topic so it is really based on the person completely.
https://www.yourtango.com/experts/nora-femenia-ph-d/hands-if-your-abuser-ever-changes-he-has-change-himself
A
female
reader, Jasmine1991 +, writes (27 December 2019):
So first off some of these people on here are very harsh. I'm so sorry you are going thru this hard time. I definitely understand that when you love some one it is VERY VERY hard to see the truth bc love can be blind. But, your bf is extremely controlling. When he does not get his way your out the door, and I feel like its a way to get you to act how he wants you to. Almost like it punishment. I would stay away from him for a while. Stop communication and spend sometime meditating. Heal your self bc i'm sure (im in the same emotional boat) your heart is hurting right now. After that, see if he is willing to get some couples consulting. Things may get better. But if he refuses, I wouldn't put myself through that anxiety anymore. You must be on edge constantly. And imagine if you had nowhere else to go? How bad would that be for you? Couples fight, unless its abuse or cheating, I dont feel its right for him to throw you out for a petty argument. Every relationship has arguments, its just how you handle it and he does not seem to know how. He wants to control you.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (23 December 2019): Hi I'm the respondent who recommended the books and shared part of my story with you.
I'm so glad you're going to leave. As you said, it's really the only choice available. And very glad you're going to read the books. They helped me SO much, so I really hope you glean not only understanding from them, but also sympathy from them. Unless people have been abused themselves, it can be impossible for them to understand what psychological changes it makes you go through and how difficult it becomes to think straight and act straight yourself anymore.
You end up getting the blame sometimes for being in a situation that is in NO way your fault, when you have been blamed for situations within the 'relationship' itself, for things that were not your fault, for years! Doesn't help!
Thank you for the update, it's nice to know that it has helped you coming to this site.
Wishing you lots of love and luck in the rest of your life xx
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (23 December 2019): OP HERE----Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. I really learned from each of you.----- Yup, things got worse when I stopped being scared to voice my opinion. And stopped ultimately accepting blame when I wasn't in the wrong. Even before that he would break up with me ever couple of months if not less. For a few days to weeks, especially if he did something wrong. He would ice me out until I said sorry for whatever was not my fault.-----Thank you so much for the book references! I will surely check them out. And thank you for sharing your own abuse story and how it is parallel to mine. Sad indeed. He has pushed me down a couple of times. And yes, he has been right in my face to the point I could feel his spit once before. When he is like that I don't even want to walk in front of him because I feel he could push me down the stairs in a rage. As I write this I can't even believe that I stayed so long. I appreciate everything you wrote to me ??------I didn't want to believe it was mental abuse, but as of recently I started to consider that and possibly NPD on his part. But then I see how he shows extreme restraint with his mother, but he can be a bit bossy to her and she allows it to a great extent. But he knows not to go too far.------His father was never in his life. He lived in another country. ------ He does believe women should be submissive. I don't mind that to an extent, but for a woman to be that way doesn't mean she ahas to be abused.------ We haven't been together 10 years, I have known him for 10 plus years.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (23 December 2019): THANK EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU FOR YOUR HONEST RESPONSES. GREATLY APPRECIATED AND I WILL WORK ON REMOVING MYSELF FROM THE SITUATION. I AGREE IT IS ABUSIVE AND THERE IS REALLY NO REPAIR LEFT.
-OP
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A
female
reader, mystiquek + ♥, writes (22 December 2019):
 To quote an old song from Kenny Rogers "The Gambler"..."know when to walk away...know when to run". I would suggest you start walking away really fast or better yet...running away. This relationship is toxic, he's abusive and its not going to get any better. He is immature, childish and yes abusive. Now throw in controlling and you've got a mess.
Emotional abusive men often become physically abusive. I know it happened to me. One day the man just snaps and hes hit you. He may say I'm sorry, I won't do it again but he will. You say he was a boxer? That's even worse. Its in his nature to him. Do you want to become his punching bag?
Get out. NOW. I understand how him yelling at you makes you yell back because that happened to me. I am normally a non confrontational person but being around someone who constantly pushes your buttons, screams at you makes you want to fight back and defend yourself. The two of you are not compatible and if you don't get out things will only get worse. You turn into this frustrated angry person that is absolutely miserable because of whom you are with. Change your life. Realize that you are not in a loving caring relationship. Please help yourself before you get hurt.
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A
female
reader, Youcannotbeserious  + ♥, writes (22 December 2019):
 Let me ask you something: would you re-read a book expecting a different ending to the first time you read it? Of course you wouldn't. So why do you keep going back to this guy and expecting things to end differently?
After 10 years together, your relationship, complete with break-ups and make-ups, has become a bad habit which neither of you seems willing to break. Better the devil you know, eh? NO! NOT better the devil you know. You already know THIS devil. Stop trying to find excuses for his behaviour. Is this how you want to spend the NEXT 10 years or more of your life? Being turfed out of his house every time you dare to have a disagreement with him?
You can't blame him solely for how he is treating you because YOU keep going back and ALLOWING this behaviour. Find yourself someone who respects you enough to discuss differences with you, rather than yelling at you and throwing you out of your home. You deserve better.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (22 December 2019): From your description you're both beating a dead-horse. The relationship is dead! Your relationship has deteriorated into an exchange of threats and arguments. It seems you're both afraid of loneliness; and probably can't handle the idea of either finding somebody else. You just love to hate each other! I can't see how either of you can go on like that?
In answers to your questions. He is very immature and unable to discuss things calmly, and like an adult. He yells because that's the kind of household he grew-up in. Yelling and tempers flaring. People like that will make you like that too. It's a defense-reflex to yell back at someone yelling at you! The problem is, it becomes a part of you; if you allow yourself to continuously be pulled into it. He has anger issues, and his aggression gets the better of him.
Yelling is violence, and verbal-abuse. When men reach the point of yelling; we are approaching rage. Rage often leads to violence and breaking things; for guys who cannot control their tempers. Aggravating a guy with a anger-management problem is poking a bear with a stick. One prod too many, and he is going to knock the mess out of you! He'll hit something first as a warning that you're next! Just because he hasn't hit you yet, doesn't mean he won't. Calling the police into it is a threat he makes before it's your idea. My guess is, somewhere in the past that's what it took to calm him down! Perhaps it goes back to his own father. It's no random thought that just occurs to him. Maybe he has used it, or it was used against him! He's snatching that idea from you, before you consider it! Who is more physically threatened than you are? He's the stronger one! It's a form of degradation when he throws you out, like trash!
It's time to leave. Going back and forth, just to restart the cycle of on and off has passed the point of reason and common-sense. You're incompatible; but you both have a desperate fear of loneliness. You've also establish a pattern of fighting in your frustrations with each other; because you both have issues with stubbornness. You can't compromise, effectively-communicate, or repair the fissure between you. You don't change, you just cool-off; and tolerate each other until you can't stand each other. Then you blow-up in a big fight!
You want to leave each other, but you're terrified of being apart. Time for both of you to grow-up. Stay apart! You can't fix or change him. He only wants you back when he realizes no other woman in her right-mind would put-up with him. You're just used to him, but he's too hard to love. He pushes you too far, and you are going to discover you will yell at everyone who pisses you off. You'll become combatant, defensive, and edgy. You aren't really like that, but it will seem all of sudden that you are! He will make that belligerence and anger a part of YOUR personality. The longer you're around it, the worse and more toxic you'll be. It's like his demons become yours!
Getaway, and stay-away! You may even need some counseling to deal with post traumatic stress; it may not be apparent now, but you will notice changes in your behavior that weren't always there. Men like your boyfriend have that negative-affect. It leaves scars on you emotionally, if not physically.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (22 December 2019): The problem here from what i can see from what you have described is you are now both caught up in the habit of falling out and repeating the same patterns of behavior. No one but you can decide that this relationship is going nowhere, from an outsiders perspective i think it will be very difficult for you both to change. What you also have is a decade of built up resentments, do you honestly think you can both wipe the slate clean?
I think individually you could benefit from counselling, it may help you make sense of why you are continuing to stay in the relationship as by your own words you say it is toxic. The other option if he really wanted to continue in the relationship would be relationship counselling, but at the end of the day that could quite easily conclude for you both you can't make this work. After ten years why is he still your boyfriend and the relationship hasn't progressed further? You could either simply be incompatible or he has issues that he isn't dealing with, either sole counselling (both of you) or couples counselling in my opinion is the only way there is a chance the pattern can be broken...
Best of luck
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (22 December 2019): Hello
No, his mind has not been affected by boxing. He is very aware of what he is doing...and doing it ALL on purpose. It is called emotional abuse. When you have been together longer, if you choose to stay, it WILL escalate to physical abuse. You are in an abusive relationship. NO doubt about that one.
I have been in three abusive relationships and the last one was the EXACT same scenario as you are describing, even down to the words used.
Do you realise that abusive men know exactly what they are doing to you? And that they are doing it on purpose? To confuse you, make you lose judgement and confidence in your judgement? To ultimately break you and your mind? So that you stay with them? What abusive men ultimately want is a woman who stays quiet, obeys, is too worried about stating her own opinions or to question anything they do. They want a woman that they can basically treat like a pet. They will 'love' you, take care of you, but look out if you EVER do anything that exhibits a mind and a will of your own, you will be beaten, physically or emotionally, and reminded of your place. As time goes by, this becomes the norm and people get used to their situations. Human beings are very adaptable to help them cope with life and what it throws at them, but it also works against us in situations like yours. It becomes the norm, you get used to it.
Also, I bet your boyfriend was great in the beginning wasn't he? Attentive and loving, everything you could ever want? That's how they het a hold on you. If you don't understand that you are being abused, you think that everything must just be a misunderstanding and when things are sorted everything will go back to how they were. That you will get your wonderful partner back. But the wonderful man at the beginning was a lie and the man he is being right now is the REAL man you are with.
When you are told repeatedly that things that you KNOW are not your fault, ARE your fault, even though you know in your heart and brain that he is starting these arguments, you DO start to doubt yourself. Look up the term 'gaslighting' if you haven't heard it before.
In my last abusive relationship, I was told that I had said things that I knew I hadn't, that I had done things that I knew I hadn't and that every single thing I said or did, had a nasty motive behind it. He started arguments out of nowhere. Before I understood about abuse I use to say things like, 'We argue.' If someone ever asked me how the arguments had started I could NEVER remember. I realise now that because being verbally attacked for no reason whatsoever, TOTALLY out of the blue is so shocking that actually your memory cant operate in that state.
As an experiment with a willing participant, talk to someone and whilst you are talking, SLAM a book down on a surface, or do something that will make a very loud noise and then ask them what you had been talking about. They wont remember. Abuse is like this. As shocking as this. Do you ever find yourself with your mouth open like a goldfish? So shocked by what he has said to you that you have no clue as to how to respond? Verbal abuse does this to you and you have to leave and leave permanently for your sanity. I'm not exaggerating.
To help you understand how TEXTBOOK what your boyfriend is doing to you, I will tell you what my boyfriend did to me. He would start arguments out of absolutely nowhere, we would be having a nice time and suddenly he would be in my face, close, red in the face, eyes bulging, supposedly angry about something. He wasn't. He was acting, I know that now. He would order me to leave and start to pack my things. This happened as many times as it did with you. And guess what? When, in the end, I said that no I wasn't leaving, I was fed up with his tantrums and asking me to come back when he had calmed down that I wasn't going to leave. I said I would go, if that was what he really wanted, but that I wasn't going to be pushed and pulled around like that anymore. Guess what ? He shouted at me as he got me by my clothes and THREW me onto the floor? 'I'm going to call the police if you don't get out!!' He then picked up a wooden chair, the type that sits at a table, and held it in the air over my head as if he was going to smash it over me. I remember putting my arms over my head to protect myself, but he turned and smashed it into a thousand pieces on the floor behind him. He was a big guy.
I'm telling you this to try and help you realise that abusive tactics are learned by some men who want to control 'their women' as they would put it. They learn the same shit as each other and use it, to great effect. There are places that teach this stuff. A few years ago a young man, I've forgotten his name, was trying to come to England to hold seminars on how to abuse women! He was doing the same thing in America to great acclaim! Thousands of bums filled thousands of seats! Truly shocking. Anyway a petition was got up which I signed to prevent him from getting a visa into this country to teach this stuff. We succeeded, he never came.
I found a book by chance which was called, 'Why Charming Men Can Make Dangerous Lovers'. I read it realisng that my relationship had indeed become dangerous. I read it after the weekend I bought for us to go away, because that's what he said he really wanted and that was where he threatened to hit me for the first time. I left him of course and in the week on my own, I read this book cover to cover with my jaw on the floor!
To realise that all this is being done on purpose to break you, destroy you, make you an obedient and subservient woman who will never leave them, because you now have no confidence or mind left of your own, is the target...well, it's the most shocking thing I'd ever read. But I knew that what I was reading was true. All his behaviour was there in black and white in that book, even down to the words and phrases that he used. YES, abuse IS that intentional. This is what your boyfriend is doing to you.
That someone who is supposed to love you, is the one person who is systematically trying to destroy you with tactics that they have learned is VERY hard to accept and understand. I know that. But it's true. The boxing has not affected his mind at all, he knows what he is doing. He is
abusive. Bottom line. And you need to leave him once and for all. Realise though that if you do try to leave him, do it with people around you, or when he's not there and go someone safe. Somewhere where there will be friends around you, family.
Please read, 'Why Does He Do This?' by Professor Lundy Bancroft. I read for England when I started to understand that all my relationships had been abusive, as had my father. I wanted to understand what had been happening to me. And this book is the best book that I have ever read on the subject. Read it before you leave him, if you decide to do so, to help to keep you safe. This eminent psychologist worked one to one with abusive men for fifteen years and learned all their abusive 'tricks' first hand. He worked with the legal courts where men had been instructed to 'get help' otherwise they were going to jail for the abuse that they had carried out on their partners. He chaired the sessions with these men and came to understand that there is no changing them or helping them. Their mindset is that they are the most important person in the place and that women and children come last to their needs. They also don't want to change, the way they behave gets them what they want so why would they? They usually have personality disorders which don't change either e.g sociopath, psychopath, narcissistic, etc etc.
He explains everything brilliantly and sympathetically, in a way that people who haven't been abused can't do, because they don't understand it properly. It feels so wonderful to read about what you are going through, from an understanding and sympathetic point of view. He isn't just an author as someone on this site once sadly suggested, he is an expert in the field of abuse. And he will explain to you why going to counselling with ANY abusive man is a very dangerous thing to do. You NEVER let an abusive man into your brain and tell him your hopes and fears etc. Because he WILL use them against you. It is more ammunition for the abusive man to use add to his armoury.
Forget trying to change him, because you wont. Certainly don't go into counselling with him. That is dangerous.
If you love yourself and wish to have a happy life someday, then ALL you can do is leave. And try to find support out there with others who have been through the same.
I wish you all the luck and keep safe and learn about abuse because one is often attracted to the same kind of partner, again and again.
xx
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (22 December 2019): You’re both fighting and you don’t know what the fight is even about anymore. Sounds like a lot of underlining issues you both need to deal with. Communication is important and when your both calm and rational it’s important to talk and find out what is really causing these outbursts.
Also,if he’s an ex boxer perhaps he did sustain a head injury. Maybe suggest he goes and sees a doctor to ensure there isn’t anything serious going on.
Bickering daily is not a good thing. You both sound a bit immature
Good luck
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (22 December 2019): Quite possibly the boxing took its toll.
He got paid to punch with the force to knock some one out of the ring or down for the count of ten.
He took his blows till he lost vision and sound and fell!
Of course it affected his brain and his mind and his memory and quite possibly the way he behaves.
But you do not have to become his punching bag and you should always remember that.
It sounds as if you are stuck in an abuse cycle which you can look up online and understand.
There is not always a happy ending in these circumstances and you should proactively consider your own safety.
So far it's a familiar cycle of blame and removal.
Maybe you should consider removing yourself to a safe zone permanently, by having your own permanent home.
Perhaps, you could consider during violent incidences, should they arrive, that you would call the police who must register something like the ring ref in your ex-boxers mind , who can call fair fight, foul fight, or fight over.
If he damaged you he would probably be prepared to do his time.
It would be a good idea to acquaint him with the terms and conditions of the domestic abuse act as it has no strong connection to the rules of boxing.
But if a man can box by the rules he has the capacity to live according to domestic rules so you may have to consider that he is prepared to risk his freedom in order to have an authority over you.
Perhaps he would prefer to break up with you in a more civil manner and you could also facilitate this.
If he is just a cyclical madman then I suggest you consider caution in being alone with him.
And finally you need to question whether this relationship is really what you want and whether or not it provides you with the life you wish to lead.
You can be a willing victim or a non victim or a coerced victim.
You can be a punching bag or a non punching bag.
You can choose how you want your future to unfold.
sight and fell!
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