Thanks for your feedback - it's good to know someone can see some progress in my journey.
Also good to hear your perspective on my D case. I need that validation from time to time. Stbx is certainly angry and frustrated at the moment and he's acting out all over me.
In regard to your question, yes he was controlling during our M.
At first it was like 'nice' controlling - i.e. always driving me everywhere and worried (apparently, I learnt later, to the point of ringing hospitals and going out searching for me if I was late coming home from something).
Towards the end it got stranger - he'd sit around in the hairdresser's waiting for me while was having my hair done (this sounds wierder than it was, I suppose - he went to the same salon and we were sort of 'friends' with the hair dressers). He admitted at one point that he was convinced I would leave him for some other man.
And he also got really 'bullying' and always wanted me to do anything financial 'his way'. He became manipulative and argumentative. He kept trying to force me to pour more and more of our money/assets into his failing business.
Not to say, of course, that I wasn't attempting to control him as well... Probably a case of two manipulative control freaks going head-to-head with each other!
I can't imagine that one can ever heal from something like this. I can see that it would be possible to move on (out of necessity), and to learn, but to 'heal' implies recovery.
As someone else said on another thread, it's like having a limb lopped off. You can't really recover from that. You can deal with it and adapt, even strap on a prosthesis... but I'm not sure about 'healing'.
Still, I take your point about moving on and creating space to focus on a new life - thanks for the support!
