Reddit mentions of Should I Stay or Should I Go?: A Guide to Knowing if Your Relationship Can--and Should--be Saved

I have been following your story as it unfolded. Can I recommend an Author? I have read Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft. It is a very good book and really applies to anyone who is angry or controlling not just male significant others. I read it because of an abusive SIL. So you will recognize your MIL in it.


Bancroft also had a book titled Should I Stay or Should I Go? which may be more appropriate for your situation, but I have not read it, so I cannot say.

Best of luck as you figure out the best course of action.

PLEASE read this book: Should I Stay or Should I Go

The top reviewer summarized it much better than I could:

Most women in destructive relationships know when the relationship is over. Choosing to leave is not the same thing as knowing it's over. The reasons that women stay with destructive partners after it's over generally fall into three categories. The first category is economics. Sometimes it's better to live with a destructive man than to be homeless and poor. The second category is magical thinking. This comes in multiple flavors. One form of magical thinking is the belief that God is going to swoop in and change this man's behaviors and attitudes through no work, no struggle, and no time lapse. He's just going to wake up one day and realize he truly has treated you poorly. All of his apologies will now have meaning and he'll start treating you better. Another form of magical thinking is the belief that one day a large truck is going to ram the back of his car and kill him and all your troubles will be over. Some other flavors somewhere in between those two exist. The third category is that somewhere inside, even if it is only .01%, the woman believes that there is some hope. She is going to stay in the relationship until the hope factor goes down to zero percent. She is going to make valiant efforts to make the relationship work because of that tiny piece of hope.

If you are a woman who knows your destructive relationship is over, but you feel unable to determine if you should leave or not, this book will help. Most likely, you don't need help realizing the relationship is destructive and you don't really need help knowing how to leave. (If you want to explore all the ways that your partner is destructive, then this book will help you sort out your partner's types of destructive behavior.) Most women know how to go to the internet or local crisis center and find resources for leaving. This book will help you in the area that is most important. Bancroft and Patrissi will help you know that you gave it your all to make the relationship work before deciding to leave. The book will help you realize that a destructive partner is only going to change (if at all) after long, hard, dedicated work. No magic is involved.

If you are in a destructive relationship and you want to exhaust all possible avenues of creating change within the relationship, then this book is for you. This book will lovingly guide you through the steps to address your partner's destructive behavior in a healthy and safe way.

If you have been in a destructive relationship and you want to focus on yourself and find a way to build a new life, this book is for you too. The first part of the book will validate for you just how difficult it was to live with a destructive partner and keep your sanity and self- esteem intact. The second part of the book will give you exercises to start letting go of the pain so that you can start building the life that you want and deserve. You will realize that you are not alone with the struggle of healing from the harm caused by a destructive partner.

I hear you, and I have shared in your choice not to abandon an abusive partner in the past. I agree with you that often, abuse comes from a legacy of hurt and suffering that is repeating itself. I believe that if people are aware of their behaviors and thought patterns and emotional trauma and are willing and motivated to break the cycle, progress can be made. That said, I don't think that any relationship is worth prioritizing the physical or emotional safety of one partner over another, and that if one partner feels unsafe around the other partner, they should do what they can to get out and to be safe. Each person is special, and every relationship holds its own sacred allure - if this wasn't true, we wouldn't date or stay with abusive partners.

It's especially "sticky" for partners who are emotionally attuned to their abusive partners' suffering. When we can see the wounded child, we have a harder time painting that person as a villain. Sometimes we do this until it's too late. Sometimes we reach a breaking point within ourselves. Sometimes we maintain this dynamic for the rest of our lives. I have seen it play out in many different ways. People are complicated.

If your partner is able to admit that his behavior is or has been abusive, and wants to change, then there is indeed help for him. Therapy with a counselor is a great place to start. I would strongly recommend this route for the accountability that it provides.

However, if that's not a step that your partner is ready to take, here are some books that might be helpful for you and/or for your partner to read. You can find them all on Amazon:

Should I Stay or Should I Go?: A Guide to Knowing if Your Relationship Can--and Should--be Saved by Lundy Bancroft

The Emotionally Abusive Relationship: How to Stop Being Abused and How to Stop Abusing

Stop Hurting the Woman You Love: Breaking the Cycle of Abusive Behavior

I wish you luck, and I encourage you to keep your own safety and well-being at the front of your mind. As they say, if you don't put on your own oxygen mask first, then how can you assist the other passengers in need?

Also, I BEG you to read the book Should I Stay or Should I Go?: A Guide to Knowing if Your Relationship Can--and Should--be Saved by Lundy Bancroft. The Amazon reviews alone may give you pause:

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>[The book] helped me understand why I was able to tolerate a final year of angry explosions, open raging, infidelity and systematic social humiliation. It helped me understand and cope with my failure to get support from friends and family. It encouraged me to try with family and friends in a different way. When I finally had an emotional break, I took myself to a local office of HAWC, completely beside myself. Me? Asking for help and support from woman's help center? I make donations to that charity.

>
>They lent me Lundy Bancroft's book Why Does He Do That? That led me to this book. Because of the resonating humanity and clear understanding of what I have gone through, I am finally able to face the truth. It's not possible to "behave" in a way that would make my husband be nicer, more fair, more caring or more civil to me. Conventional strategies failed because he does not want our marriage to be different. He chooses to abuse me. I have to love myself the way I love him. I have to be a support to myself. I have to surround myself by people who agree I am worthy of love, care and compassion. I am using this book first to rebuild my outer and inner strength to have clear, strong boundaries with him to manage him out of my life. Step by step i will use the resources to disengage from this man who seems to possess an unending need to hook me for reasons that I may never fully understand and will eventually stop caring about completely.

​

I am not a shill for Bancroft, I should add. I just know how powerful his work is, and how it's changed the lives of a lot of people who spent years trying to make their relationships with their SOs work and blamed themselves for the failures.

All of this sounds pretty textbook abusive.

Should I Stay or Should I Go is a helpful book for people who think they may be in an abusive relationship but aren't sure. Regardless of whether or not he's abusive, it may be able to help.

http://amzn.com/042523889X - a whole book about it

This book is an excellent as a resource as you think about what to do.

There's a great book from an expert on the subject, Lundy Bancroft. It's called Should I Stay or Should I Go?. It sounds like you know what's right in your heart--which is that this man is not good for you.

Look into resources to help you and your baby. I bet, with support from good resources, you can raise this baby on your own, and break the cycle of abuse. You AND your baby deserve a bright future.

"I'm scared to hurt his feelings and start a fight". Well, that says it all. You can't communicate with him about how you're feeling because 1) he will take it as a personal attack and then 2) he will then become aggressive.

He is also making hurtful comments about you to make you feel bad, and then gaslighting you by claiming that it's a joke.

So, it's not a healthy relationship, is it? A healthy relationship is where two people cherish and support each other. And your parents didn't show you what a healthy relationship can be, but you still deserve one. You deserve to be with an equal partner, who doesn't treat you like a domestic servant. And yes, I know he does all the driving, but given that controlling, abusive partners like to know where their victim is all the time, that probably suits him just fine. I bet he's not actually helping you to get a driving license, is he?

Weirdly, him being super romantic and pressuring you into marriage are also warning signs of coercive control in a relationship.

This is all a bit more complicated because you live with his parents so you're quite dependent on him. First off, read this book by Lundy Bancroft and have a good think about the relationship. https://www.amazon.com/Should-Stay-Relationship-Can-Should-be/dp/042523889X Definitely do not marry him or move into an apartment with just him. Explain that you need to live with someone who is capable of doing housework.

I've been single for a long time, so my experiences aren't going to be helpful. I'd like to refer you to https://captainawkward.com/category/abuse/ . Some of the advice-seekers are lesbians.


I'm going to recommend two books:
Should I Stay or Should I Go?: A Guide to Knowing if Your Relationship Can--and Should--be Saved and
Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men.
If you're in a financial bind, put these 2 books on an Amazon wish list and message me the wish list and I'll spring for it. Something about your other posts push a button for me and alarm bells are going off.

I'm nearing the end of a very long divorce process with my kids' Ndad (who's basically a male version of my Nmom). In hindsight, there were so many red flags over the years... yelling at me in the car, trying to control my friendships and how I dress, stonewalling, sponging off of me financially, ignoring my needs and desires, etc... None of this is good, but I was used to it. It was manageable until we started having kids. Our first child was born a few months after our 9th wedding anniversary. I started thinking about divorce after I was pregnant for a second time... I lost that baby at four months and he was a total asshole about it. To make a long story short, I thought about divorce off-on-and for the next six years. I had more than two years of counseling and worked hard to understand why I felt so depressed and hopeless. The conclusion I came to was that I just couldn't tolerate my husband's behavior... he was angry all the time, paranoid... financially, sexually, verbally, and psychologically abusive when he wasn't being outright neglectful.

I started fantasizing about moving out. I did little things when I was feeling particularly frustrated... I moved precious belongings (irreplaceable things like photos) to my office, opened a PO box, started looking at apartments online. In October 2013 I found a marriage counselor. After a couple of appointments on my own, I told my husband that I wanted to go to marriage counseling... I wasn't happy and he didn't seem very happy either. He said we didn't need marriage counseling... everything would be fine "if you would just do what I tell you to do and keep the house clean."

That was the last straw for me. I paid for a security deposit and moved out that Friday while he was at work. I told my kids the night before that we were moving... I told them it's usually not good to keep secrets from your parents, but I need you to keep just this one secret for one night. They totally understood.

I've been working on this divorce for almost three years now. At this point, I feel absolutely, 100% confident that getting divorced is the right decision. I wasn't always so sure. It took me a long time to understand in my heart what I was reading on various websites and hearing from my counselors: the fact that you don't want to be married to another person is reason enough. You don't need to justify. You don't need to explain. Very few people are 100% evil. Almost everyone has occasional good moments and positive qualities... even my soon-to-be-ex. That doesn't mean that you have to keep living with them. It doesn't mean that you have to put up with their bad moments. If you want out, then get out. It's truly as simple as that. Like you, I spent YEARS deciding. I literally tried everything I could think of to make my marriage work... this December would have been our 20th wedding anniversary... but it takes two people to make a marriage work. My soon-to-be-ex doesn't see anything wrong with his behavior and will never change. I feel much better accepting him just the way he is and refusing to live with him than I ever did trying to change him.

One book that I found helpful along the way was, "Should I Stay or Should I Go." It's kind of a "decision tree" like doctors use to make a diagnosis. https://www.amazon.com/Should-Stay-Relationship-Can-Should-be/dp/042523889X

It's sounds like you're feeling pretty clear about your choice though. Don't let anyone shame you into making a different decision. I'm so much happier these days. I'm a better parent, a better co-worker, I have more energy... I actually feel younger! I was able to stop or cut down on almost every single medication I was taking, including my antidepressant. Feel free to PM me if you want more specific information. Lawyers are expensive, but there are ways to get things done without one... it depends on what you need and how cooperative your spouse is (or isn't... mine has been horribly uncooperative every step of the way).

Hugs. I know it's a hard decision. I still wish things could be different.

*edit - a few minor things for spelling and clarity