I’ve been trying for 5 years - I’m finally leaving

[Joga]

Boat Babe, I've seen that the UK has been making great strides with the abuse laws. Here in the states, we don't have nearly as much protection. In my state, emotional abuse is illegal, but unless it's severe, good luck proving it or getting relief from the court, especially when it's all subtle stuff. My H has never outright called me bad names or cursed at me. It's mostly subtle belittling and mind games and gaslighting. He does yell at the kids constantly and they are scared of him.

[SonofThunder]

Joga,

Its always encouraging when I read of another Out of the FOG comrade's fully-educated awareness of their relationship with a PD, and the traits they experience.  It's such great wisdom and insight to be Out of the FOG and able to recognize and anticipate the behaviors.  Although surely a sad situation indeed, I tip my hat to you for your full awareness and your planning to move forward to improve life for you and the kids. 

You wrote: "...that for some men, the privilege of abusing their wife is something reserved only for dad. I don't know if that's what's going on, or if he doesn't realize how mean he's being until it comes out of his kid's mouth."

I was raised by a verbally abusive uNPDf, and now I am fully educated and aware, through my experiences with him in my youth and my years with my uPDw, of the hypocrisy that is so prevalent with PD's. 

My father raised us boys to be a gentleman to women, yet he verbally abused my mother and still now, as an elderly male, forms his opinions of all women based on appearance from a sexual perspective and also a domestic role perspective.  He will comment positively (albeit sexual in nature) regarding a woman with a full figure and/or slender, and negatively toward the opposite.  He will comment positively toward a woman whom he feels is performing her husband-serving role and opposite toward an independent woman. 

In full hypocrisy, us boys would be punished both verbally and physically if we raised our voices to our mother or disrespected a female or did not perform our gentlemanly taught duties (i believe he considered these duties as male-reserved power) toward woman, yet he verbally abused our mom, and in the presence of other women, our father side-commented to us boys (like we were part of his club) regarding the positive or negative traits of girls our own age or other adult women.  Very confusing for us boys in our youth and then also in relearning as adults. 

Back to my previous post comments, i believe male PD's act this way to females because it makes them feel powerful and then hypocritically scold their children regarding the same, for an additional power feed.  Their self-feeding opinion that adult males have the right to do this, and the pack-leading responsibility as a father to make demands of their children, as both roles (sexist, abusive male and strict hypocritical father) feed the power-hungry ego of the male PD. 

You and your children are surely not alone in these experiences, but again, it brings me joy to read of my Out of the FOG comrades being fully aware, and it continuously validates my own experiences.  Im sorry you and your kids are living in these difficult conditions. 

Thoughts and prayers for your strength as you move forward in your plans.

SoT

[PlantFlowersNotWeeds]

SoT, thank you for your post.
It provided a lot of insight into my situation and how my STBX relates to me and our son.
It is strange how he will verbally abuse me then scold our son if he even rolls his eyes at me.  What mixed messages my son receives.
Our son is 17 and I will soon be moving out, divorce pending.  I hope my son can recover from this - I do worry how he will treat women he is in relationships with.  I see glimmers that my son is questioning his father's behavior, he certainly does not like how his father can be so unpredictable, immature, and untrustworthy.

[Joga]

SoT, thank you so much for your post and for sharing your experiences. Now that you mention it, I've felt some of the things that my H has said to our very young boys have been inappropriate—teasing them about liking girls, telling them to look for cute girls—and my sons are clearly embarrassed and not interested in such talk. I feel like he's already teaching them to objectify women and it also seems like he gets a vicarious thrill out of it.

And yes, so much of what my H does are obvious power moves. Ugh.