One thing that keeps popping into my head is what my husband’s version of events would be. Would he be telling people the polar opposite of my story? Possibly.
I think he truly believes (most of the time) that he has done no wrong. He thinks that I have ignored him and made him feel bad for everything he has done. Every single thing. I have been cold towards him and shown no affection. In recent years he’s right. He has ground me down to the point where I feel no love for him. I feel nothing for him. I am numb towards him. Asexual. Like a plant.
He will probably be telling people what a bitch I am. How I left him out of the blue with no warning. How I left when he was at work and phoned him to give him the news. How I gave him no explanation and still haven’t (even though I have told him several times that I left because I was desperately unhappy and because of the way he yelled abuse at me the night before I left).
He’ll be telling them how sad he is, how confused he is. How he just can’t understand what I’ve done.
If I ever say I was scared of him, all the time, he would say he was more scared of me. If I ever say to him that I left because of his abuse he’d laugh his scariest laugh and say he’d never abused me – I had abused him. I’ve made him feel bad for everything he ever does. Maybe I even made him feel inadequate. To a point he’d be right. I did want him to feel bad for the bad things he did. And I did feel as far as being a good husband goes he was inadequate.
Am I to blame? Could I have made things better if only I’d shown him some affection and listened to him and talked to him. Believe me I tried. I am exhausted from trying.
My children have been telling me – ‘he just wants to talk to you mum’. Believe me I’ve tried. I’m exhausted from trying.
I need to be free.
Tag: abuse
Tuesday 24th April
Writing this blog is making me feel better. It’s good to get my thoughts written down and I feel that I need to tell my side of the story. Then if my husband does ever kill me people will know what went on behind closed doors. Abuse usually does occur mainly behind closed doors. It’s only since things got really bad that the signs started to become evident in public. And even then to the onlooker it would only be a couple bickering, or me giving him the silent treatment and being standoffish. Yes, I did stop talking. I was silent sometimes. Because I honestly didn’t know what to say or how to react. I didn’t know what would make things worse. It was easier to be silent.
I’m sure that my husband has Othello Syndrome – also known as Pathological Jealousy or Morbid Jealousy.
Othello killed his wife because he believed she was having an affair. Apparently my husband is seeking professional help. He’s been promising to get help for years, so I won’t hold my breath. There have been times when he has had some insight into his problems with low self esteem and insecurity. At times he has appeared totally paranoid about what others think of him and I could help him sometimes to see how irrational his thinking was. But I couldn’t fix him. In fact I was the last person who could fix him. I am his main obsession. He wants to possess me and I don’t want to be possessed. It’s a power struggle that can never end well.
I feel so much happier away from him. I can breathe again.
Late Musings
So, basically for the 22 years of my sad excuse for a marriage I felt more anxious every time I was in the company of my husband and he felt less anxious whenever he could see me and he knew I wasn’t shagging someone else, except on the occasions that I disagreed with him about something – that would increase his anxiety. And on the times I came home late from work he wouldn’t be happy until he had sufficiently interrogated me as to why I was late. The horrible realisation that I have had over the past few days is that at the time I actually thought this was normal behaviour, that this is what men do. After speaking with many of my female friends over the past few days I am assured that this is not what all men do. It is the behaviour of emotionally immature insecure men.
Something which keeps happening at the moment is that I get a sudden urge to forgive him and I feel sorry for him. Then I have to remind myself of why I left and how worthless he made me feel. I have to remind myself that he said I wasn’t a normal human. And not even just that, but not a normal fucking human. In saying that he dehumanised me. He belittled me by about as much as it is possible to belittle someone. And I also have to remember that he always followed up his insults with an excuse that he ‘had never really meant it’, ‘it was just in the heat of the moment’ or because I had made him ‘frustrated’.
He has never taken ownership of things he has said. Apologies were shouted, or more recently never happened at all. I would be told that he had done nothing wrong. I make him angry and frustrated therefore if there is any blame to be had it lies with me.
In fact all the blame lies with me and my behaviour. He said so in the Divorce Prayer document. I’d stopped talking to him, I enjoyed myself with other people but not him. He actually put this in the paperwork – as if it was a crime to enjoy talking to other people. Also, apparently I avoided eye contact with him in public. Perhaps he should wonder why I was so unhappy that I couldn’t look him in the eye.
Learning to live again
23/4/18
Where to begin?
I have recently escaped from an abusive relationship that had been sapping my very life blood for the past 23 years. I chose my moment and left, when I knew it was safe. I left my children, my house, my dog, my cat, packed a bag and went to my mum’s, back to the home I was born in 50 years ago, back to my old bedroom. I’m not sure who I’m writing this for, or whether anyone else will ever read it, but right now I need to write it all down.
I moved into my own house 4 weeks ago, and since then all the pieces of the puzzle have started to fall into place. I know now why I’ve felt anxious every morning for the past 23 years. I know now why films like Sleeping with the Enemy resonated with me. My husband never hit me, not with his fists, but he changed me. He strangled me with his obsession to control me and soothe his own insecurities.
It’s like I’m waking from a nightmare and realising that I don’t have to feel scared anymore – as long as he stays away from me. At first I thought we could be friends. I suggested we just separated and waited to see what happened. His reaction puzzled me. He said ‘I can’t do that, I’m not made like that’. Then he filed for a divorce. And even though he did that he insists on reminding me that he’s still my husband.
And he isn’t staying away from me. He keeps phoning me ‘just to hear my voice’ because he ‘misses me so much’. He tells me he knows how it feels to be suicidal. Am I meant to feel sorry for him? Am I meant to say I’ll come back and everything will be ok? Because it won’t be ok. It never was ok and it never could be ok.
He’s convinced I’m having an affair. He has the evidence. He found some old condoms at the back of a drawer. An unopened packet was irrefutable proof of the affair I’d been having for the 22 years we’ve been married. Then this week he phoned me in a rage because he’d seen me with his own eyes with ‘someone’ in the passenger seat of my car. Only, he really hadn’t seen me because I don’t even drive down that road.
When he’s spoken to me since I left he’s swung from Mr Nice to Mr Nasty within seconds. Like Jekyll and Hyde, but more scary. So, I’ve been to the Police. His harassment is logged. I haven’t taken it further so far.
So many times over the years he’s called me a ‘child’, ‘too sensitive’, a ‘control freak’ whenever I tried to have an opinion. In recent years he’s ramped it up a notch. F words have become more common and the insults have worsened – now I’m a ‘stupid fucking bitch’ or ‘not a fucking normal human’ – this was the last insult he yelled at me on the night before I left. That insult was the final straw. That insult broke my marriage irreparably. That insult was my cue to leave. He denies he ever said it. I can’t work out if he genuinely doesn’t remember, or if he’s gaslighting me. I suspect the latter.
The 23 years of our relationship are unravelling in my head. Things keep popping up in there like flashbacks. The times when he commented on my clothing that made me change how I dressed. I stopped wearing nice underwear, stockings, make up, even V neck sweaters. I changed myself to please him. I changed myself to make him happy. I changed myself and made myself feel bad about myself.
I withdrew. I withdrew from the world. It was easier to stay away from people than to keep on trying to live the lie and put on a brave face that everything was ok.
this is me again 