by Sue Langeder

Created on: February 17, 2009   Last Updated: February 21, 2009

As a child growing up, I always remember my father punching my left arm at the dinner table, "Because he felt like it." I am one of four daughters, number 2 in the line, and for some reason, I was his scape goat.

My parents ran their own building constructing company from home. He would be on the building sites with the manly tradesmen and the frustrations of employees, suppliers or clients and every night he would sit down beside me at the dinner table and thump me one, for absolutely no reason on my part. I had a constant bruise on my left arm.

As a teenager, I started to ask "What was that for?" and the answers would be "Because I felt like it" or "Just in case you did something that I don't know about yet." I had no chance.

Thinking back, I don't know if my older sister had some sort of spell over my father, where he would never touch her, because she was the oldest and most wanted when they started a family. I know my younger two sisters were abused by him, but I never recall Dad hitting my older sister.

Now as an adult, he doesn't abuse me physically, but does constantly, verbally. At my 21st birthday party, he told me I looked fatter this week than I did last and he announced to all my friends and my boyfriend's family that he didn't understand why I was with my loser boyfriend (who is now my husband). On my wedding day, he bagged my husband again in front of friends and family, but said in the quiet of a kitchen table that he meant to say some proud words - to me it was too little, too late. He constantly asks about my financial status, how much work I have had as a freelancer, how much my husband is contributing financially, and I crumble and succumb to his questions and give him the honest answers which, in turn, he uses against me in future conversations. When I give him the answers, you can hear his head ticking over like a calculator to see if what is coming in is covering what is going out.

To him, your financial status is everything - and unfortunately, some of that has rubbed off on me, as during conversations with friends about money, they get upset with me, as to be honest, it's nobody's business. If you don't make a quid the way he did, there couldn't possibly be another way to be successful. For him, it's about being debt free by your mid 50s with a number of investment properties, superannuation, shares and term deposits. But for most people, it is not the only way.

Sometimes, you think there is a glimmer of hope, that he might be getting better,

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