Major worries about benefits, mental health, rent and debt, clueless and can't cope

PippaGirl_2

BigAunty wrote: »

Also, while your partner isn't necessarily responsible for all her actions, there are charities for male victims that suffer from emotional and financial abuse at home (it doesn't just mean victims of domestic physical violence). You might benefit by giving them a call - what your partner did with your credit card is not acceptable. The kind of emotional blackmail you are under must be intolerable. Granted, she has mental health issues but you do appear to be in an abusive relationship. Granted that you may love her but you are in a toxic relationship as it's clear she's intimidating you, bullying you, manipulating you, not showing you the respect that is due.Don't be embarrassed or ashamed but don't put up with it or start to see it as normal.

I do agree with this. Your partner seems extremely controlling and manipulative and is definitely abusive. There is never ever a single good reason to assault anyone, not even once. I realise that was 'only' one instance of physical abuse/assault, but the abuse you appear to be experiencing is mainly financial and emotional.

ScaredCrazy wrote: »

Thank you everyone for your advice and concern, taken together it seems my immediate course of action should be to contact Citizen's Advice, so as soon as I can get out of the flat without my girlfriend stopping me I shall do so. My girlfriend is a very, kind, loving and generous person, and has only ever assaulted me once (and with good reason).

Because you love your partner and you perceive her controlling and manipulative actions towards you to be concern and protection you may not be able to recognise the abusive nature of what she is doing. It is not normal to be prevented from leaving the place you live and you should be free to come and go as you wish. She has no right to prevent you leaving.

Question, did you read the links Aunty put in her post about male victims of abuse? If not, please do.

A healthy relationship is based on openess and honesty and equality. This was written from a female point of view (as most domestic violence is on women) but have a look at this wheel which demonstrates what a relationship based on equality looks like and ask yourself if you can say this about your relationship. This is the duluth wheel of equality. Do have a look at it.

mattcanary

Where has all this anger towards OP's girlfriend come from??!!!

I am the first one normally to campaign for men's rights but seriously....

OP and his girlfriend are both clearly struggling and getting seriously stressed out. Understandable really -for someone without health issues who finds himself in this situation, let alone a couple with them.

We only have OP's word for everything that has happened of course, but on the other hand we don;t have anything to say that he is lying or not telling the whole truth either (if only in the good intentions of protecting his girlfriend).

People hit other people for a whole variety of reasons. Some seem more understandable reasons than others. Hell, some reasons are more understandable than others. A man discovers his best friend has been sleeping with his wife behind his back many times and when confronted, shows no remorse whatsoever. Understandable if this man belts his best friend? I'd say so.
Man wants to get the upper hand in a work relationship with a male colleague. Bullies him verbally - this develops into physical violence with no provocation form his colleague. I wouldn;t be impressed with this behaviour - I doubt most other people would be either.

What I am saying is this : you have got to put the situation of physical violence into some kind of context. Things are rarely totally black or white. I think society has lost sight of this basic characteristic of human beings - in all situations, not just this kind of example. Someone is always to blame aren't they? And it is so much easier if they are 100% to blame - rather than 50%, or 70%, or 30% maybe, isn't it?

Turn the sex of one of the two people around. Does that make the physical violence so much worse? I don;t think it does necessarily, in all honesty. Regardless of whether it is the man hitting the woman or the woman hitting the man (the latter oif which happens far more often that is publicly stated, in my opinion).

Controversial views maybe, but food for thought, I'd say.

Basically, what I am syaing is take each situation on its own merits.
Don;t just screech - ooh, she's hit his boyfriend, she's the spawn of the devil....

BigAunty

Mattcanary - context explains why the OPs partner is physically, emotionally and financially abusive, her mental state. DA experts maintain that THERE IS NO EXCUSE. Once people start thinking abuse and disrespect has some kind of sliding scale where some degree of it is justifiable or deserved , the battle is lost . The abuser will then refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and in this specific instance, the OP who has been clearly abused, will be in denial about it. He has been hit,verbally abused, is kept physically isolated by her so cannot
Leave their home, financially controlled by her and
Led into debt, she refuses to share quite basic domestic info with him like
Bills, she makes him utterly dependent on her. In turn, the OP has all the signs of a DA victim by excusing her behaviour, feeling as if he deserved it, low self esteem and excessive optimism she will change. To the OP - accepting the reality that you are in an abusive relationship is not the same thing as rejecting her or not being in love with her. You love and care for each other but there is no excuse for her attacks on you.

BigAunty

To the OP - how are you getting on with the debt, housing and benefit issues?

mattcanary

BigAunty wrote: »

Mattcanary - context explains why the OPs partner is physically, emotionally and financially abusive, her mental state. DA experts maintain that THERE IS NO EXCUSE. Once people start thinking abuse and disrespect has some kind of sliding scale where some degree of it is justifiable or deserved , the battle is lost . The abuser will then refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and in this specific instance, the OP who has been clearly abused, will be in denial about it. He has been hit,verbally abused, is kept physically isolated by her so cannot
Leave their home, financially controlled by her and
Led into debt, she refuses to share quite basic domestic info with him like
Bills, she makes him utterly dependent on her. In turn, the OP has all the signs of a DA victim by excusing her behaviour, feeling as if he deserved it, low self esteem and excessive optimism she will change. To the OP - accepting the reality that you are in an abusive relationship is not the same thing as rejecting her or not being in love with her. You love and care for each other but there is no excuse for her attacks on you.

To be quite frank, I think this kind of attitude is like religious dogma, and bears no relation to reality. Things are rarely 100% black and white. Furthermore, saying this is likely to totally destroy a relationship when there is no need whatsoever for that to happen. People have to work at relationships yes - viewing everything in this way can only destroy relationships.
OP, from what he has written, hardly seems fearful of his partner. Why would he hide it if he was - after all, this is an anonymous forum. He has said that his girlfriend hides paperwork from him, if he was fearful of her, why would he type that if he was scared of his ex and what she would do if she saw this thread?
And who's to say that out tod the two in the relationship, OP isn;t the more dominant one? From what has been written, I don;t think it's possible to tell.

OP's girlfriend is just as likely to be hiding household details from OP because she is scared herself and maybe thinks she is trying to protect OP from the dire situation. Maybe she thinks OP would get angry with her if displaying the information might in some way show that she has let things slip financially, which has led to some of the problems they face?
Yes, it would be better for her to share the info obviously - but to say that OP's partner is committing abuse because she isn;t showing it freely is hardly tantamount to abuse!!

People shout at each other in relationships, quite often. Some people are by nature fiery and tend to shout rather than discuss.Doesn;t necessarily mean they are commititng domestic violence, at all. My mum was like that - she was definitely not abusive though.

Sorry if I am hijacking this thread - but such comments make me angry. People are saying they know what is happening in the relationship and that abuse is being committed when really they know jack-all
And to be frank Big Aunty, your earlier comments to OP were hardly kind. You could argue they were harsh but fair - and needed saying. I could see this point of view.
But on the other hand, others might say they were bullying comments. As I say, things are rarely totally black or white

seven-day-weekend

I agree with mattcanary above. We simply cannot make these judgements about someone else's relationships.

When my husband's mental health was very bad in 2004, it coincided with a time when mine was bad as well, and we shouted and screamed at each other a lot, something we have never, ever done, throughout our marriage of over forty years. I hid things from him too, because I didn't want to make him upset or angry. It didn't mean we were living in a relationship of domestic abuse. Just that we were not acting 'normally' because we were ill.

As we recovered, we went back to our normal relationship, which is that not only do we not argue very often, we usually agree so don't even have to compromise .

It really would not have been true to say this was domestic abuse - so therefore we should not label the OP's relationship as we don't know all the details.

Poppie68

Our housing benefit entitlement is £115. Our rent is approximately £3000, rising each time it is due (I have been told we cannot realistically expect to save money by moving unless we go to another town). Additionally, there is a fee to the letting agency for I believe £70 (my memory could be unreliable here) to process the rent payment. My girlfriend has applied (I have seen the letter refusing to backdate it, but she wont discuss it further).


OP is this £3000 per month or 6 monthly?

mattcanary

I would add that OP's girlfriend's refusal to listen to her parents (who disapprove of the relationship apparently), must say something about her feelings towards OP. That must count for something.

joyfull

I would also add that the breakdown of OPs relationship at this point is just what is not needed. There is clearly enough instability in his life. The poster who with so much confidence labels this relationship abusive, comes across as somewhat aggressive themselves.

I wish the OP well, which is of no practical help, but I say it anyway.

BigAunty

The OPs issues are complex and span many areas of his and his gf's life.

Unfortunately, the OP is so vulnerable that many of the solutions that have been suggested seem unlikely not to be acted on and he needs a lot of personal support to action them due to his domestic constraints and social/communication skills.

He has readily dismissed contacting many of the expert support organisations and information that have been recommended, sometimes because the method of communication is something that isn't palatable to him. It's almost as if he's hoping a single organisation or person will visit him or do everything by email and sort out the whole array of housing/homelessness, finance/debt, benefits, health issues whereas despite the fact that they are inter-related, he will probably need multiple agencies or organisations to resolve them and some of them are unlikely to get sorted at all because his gf won't cooperate - some areas require her consent and for her to provide information and she won't oblige.

Hopefully, however, he will receive strong and kind guidance to solve his problems and get a bit more courage to address them. Good luck to the OP.

I stand by my observations that the information he has provided on the state of his relationship fulfills all the classic behaviours of domestic abuse, showing a deep level of disrepect and controlling behaviour, including verbal and physical abuse. Have you failed to notice that he is 'not allowed' to leave the house without the consent of his partner? That she won't share knowledge about how they may be financially linked? That he has been hit? It is up to him to decide if it is the case and clearly he doesn't think its an issue. This area has already been rejected, so too the information sheet about how to manage debt, autism charities and the Samaritans.

I think you are blinded to the reality of his abusive relationship, perhaps because he is male, perhaps because he refuses to accept it himself, because he recalls a time when she was kind and supportive, perhaps because you think her mental instability excuses it.

I reckon if the OP had posted the same information but was female and the abuser was male and/or without mental health issues, there would be a consensual reaction recommending that they prioritise their safety. Instead despite overwhelming evidence that he is subject to humiliating and intimidating behaviour, you have chosen to believe it is a figment of my imagination based on scant proof. Read here to find out why it corresponds to an abusive relationship.

If he's happy to be physically and verbally abused, socially isolated, not trusted, disrepected and financially controlled, and he sounds like he thinks he either deserves it or is a temporary state, then I am happy for him.

http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-violence-articles.asp?section=00010001002200410001&itemid=1272&itemTitle=What+is+domestic+violence