Abuse blogs
Lately I have been reading some blogs by women who have gotten out of or are working to get out of abusive relationships. I think part of this has to do with feeling kind of isolated and disconnected lately, which is another post for another time. But I also think it’s just a general need to connect, to remember, to plot my progress in some way. Maybe this is hard to understand for more ordinary people, but the way my life has been, the ability to say, “I remember what it was like to feel that way,” is a huge step forward. Most of my life, I did everything I could to forget my feelings, and pretend things weren’t as bad as they were. In some ways, I’m picking at a wound, but in other ways, that’s a luxury I’ve never had before; I’ve never had anything heal enough to scab before.
I think (hope) blogs like this, or the ones I’ve been reading, serve a few purposes. There’s the purpose it’s serving for me, right now, a kind of affirmation that I am not alone, I am not crazy, and my god, I am so much better. I’m sure for some women, it helps them recognize the abuse in their own lives. I don’t know if it would have been that way for me. I was a women’s studies minor, we had entire units on domestic violence, and it never clicked. But maybe that’s because I was keeping the subject academic; maybe it would have been different to hear an emotional account. And, too, out of all the women’s studies topics I read about, domestic violence left me completely cool and uninterested. That was a major anomaly in my general pattern, and should have tipped me off.
Maybe, in the spirit of disclosure here, I should describe my own story of how it finally “clicked.” I have read some stories from women about seeing a pamphlet, or an ad on a bathroom stall wall, describing abuse, and they finally understood. Well, like I said: women’s studies gave me all that in spades. I read the Power and Control Wheel obsessively (in case I was tested on it, you see), and yet when I came home and Mr. Flint had been kicking our cat because he was in a foul mood, and stealing my money because “you smoked all my pot!”, I never connected it back to the wheel. There was always some other, “rational” reason why Flint had done what he’d done. That reason was never abuse, but always because his life was hard and I had to help him, be better, work harder. It wasn’t his fault I was a bad wife.
During the six month period between when I told Flint “I met someone else, and it made me realize things have to change or I can’t stay with you” and I finally left, a period that I consider the worst in my life as Flint bore down on me harder than he ever had, I spent a day with my bear, who had driven from another state to see me. We were talking about my marriage, what I was going to do, whether I was going to stay. I told him Flint and I were really making breakthroughs, I mean, really. Flint had admitted to me the other day that he used to tell me I nagged, that I was a nagging bitch, because he knew it would shut me up and make me feel bad. I told my bear, that felt so good to hear! All this time I’ve been thinking I was a nagging bitch and I find out I’m not!
Later, while talking, my bear accidentally said the word “abuse.” I asked him quietly if he thought I was being abused. I really didn’t think he’d say yes. I’d been abused before. My father was abusive. I thought, how could I have left him and just get abused again? Don’t I know what abuse is? But my bear said yes, and I asked him how he knew. “When he told you he used to insult you just to make you feel like shit and shut your mouth, all you could feel was relieved,” he said. “You didn’t feel angry. You just felt relieved. That’s not normal. That’s fucked up, that somebody tells you they’ve been intentionally hurting you, and you’re just happy they finally admitted it.” After that, I looked at the things Flint said and did in a different way. No more benefit of the doubt — he didn’t really mean it that way, he’s just angry today, if only I would try harder, he’ll make it up later. No matter what he said to me, I started to respond with, “Why did you say that to me?” I could never get a reason, an answer. Just another insult to deflect me. Abuse, I thought. Yes, I think that’s what it is.
It occurred to me that one thing these blogs may not do is adequately describe abuse to somebody who has not been abused. Not that those people will probably be looking at abuse blogs, or need to. But I think somebody who hadn’t been through abuse, or seen another person go through it, wouldn’t be able to discern the depths of confusion, fear, and pain inherent in something like, “He used to decide where we’d go to eat.” For people who have never seen abuse, a partner who decides what restaurant to eat at isn’t terrifying, primarily because a non-abusive partner isn’t deciding where to eat in an abusive way. They say, “Let’s have Italian, okay?” And you say, “I feel kind of like Chinese.” And they say, “How about we get Chinese next week? I was thinking about lasagna all day.” And you say, “Okee-dokee.” The end.
An abusive person says, “We’ll have Italian,” and you say, “I don’t really feel like Italian,” and they say, “You never feel like doing anything I want to do. You’re so selfish. You just take and take and take and always get your way. Have you thought about what I want for a change? Have you thought about the day I had? And then to have to come home and deal with you? You’re always demanding and manipulative and the stuff you like to eat is disgusting and makes me embarrassed to be seen with you in public, so just try to keep your mouth shut for the rest of the night, okay? You know what, just forget it. You can eat what you want. I’m going out for the rest of the night. Where’s your wallet.”
Unfortunately, I don’t think that comes across very clearly in women’s accounts of abuse. Anything can be abusive — where to eat, whether to open the windows, how you chop onions — if a person’s primary reason for discussing it is to cause another pain and fear. But if you’ve never experienced that, “he used to criticize the way I wore my hair” sounds ridiculous; from there (with a little bump from misogyny), it’s easy to make the leap to “that woman must be crazy and needy, if she can’t deal with criticism about her hair, for god’s sake.”
I realized that I have an opportunity to illustrate abuse a little better. Why? Because Mr. Flint emailed me obsessively after our divorce. One email in particular stands out. It was his “get everything off my chest” email. Now, for normal people, living normal non-abusive lives, I’m sure they have received or sent embarrassing emails after break-ups. I’m sure they’ve said things they’ve regretted, and feel bad about. If I were to try and describe this email, you might suspect that’s what it is, and that I am crazy for thinking it’s abusive. So maybe you need to read it.
Posting this, I felt like going through it and making some rebuttals — no, I did not have an affair while he rotted in bed, I was working extra hours to afford his medications; no, I did not “fool him” into thinking we could start over after I told him I wanted a divorce, I did not let him think things were okay by making love; he raped me — but, well, you’ve already lost when you do that. Everything he’s saying is so crazy and vile, to argue it is to give it validity. “I didn’t have an affair,” gets met with “Well, you might as well have.” “That doesn’t make any sense,” is met with, “So I guess your feelings ‘make sense’ but mine don’t. That’s fair.” “I didn’t mean that,” “It doesn’t matter what you mean; it matters what you say. And you’re telling me my feelings don’t matter. How can you do that and then wonder why I don’t want to talk to you?” “I’m sorry; please talk to me.” “Well, I don’t want to. I don’t have anything to say, until you grow up a little and can admit what you’ve done.”
I’m doing it. I’m rebutting. I’ll stop. I’ll say what I had to teach myself to say to people after I left him: I don’t think I need to tell you what to think; Flint does a pretty good job of speaking for himself.
There is a high possibility that this will be the last time we have any form of meaningful communication. Inevitably, there will be things I need to badger you about; little meaningless trivial details over photographs and loans. But aside from that, we may never speak
again.Where to begin? First off, I still love you. It hurts and I don’t know if I’ll ever get over that, but know that at the end of the day, I love you. I’m sorry you couldn’t gather up the energy to actually try to work this out with me. Secondly, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for a lot of things, I’m sorry for a lot of things I’m about to say. I’ll leave it at that. It was a cheap shot when we last spoke to bring up the fact I could pursue alimony. I said it because I was angry, because you’d threatened me with cops. It wasn’t meant as a threat. I brought it up because frankly, you betrayed me. You lied to me. And you treated my family and I like shit. The fact that I could
pursue legal recourses with you has less to say about my vindictive personality, and a lot more to do with how many mistakes you made over the last six months of our marriage; That they amounted enough to a plausible legal case.On more than one occasion, you told me that you wondered if you were a good person. That you felt as if you were merely going through the motions and that underneath it all you questioned whether your reasons were pure. I inevitably told you not to worry, that you were a good person, that you had the capability for being even better. Now I wonder.
For six months I tried to atone and redeem myself. I opened up to you, I told you things that I’d never told anyone else. I allowed myself to be vulnerable with you for the first time in years. And all you did was hold it against me. You had an affair, and when I voiced my concerns and my anger about it, you acted like I was fucking insane. It took going to a marriage counselor for you to even realize that there might be a problem with how you were acting. After pleading, and cajoling and arguing with you to no avail eventually I reached my limit. I told you, under extremely bad circumstances that I felt like killing you and (bear). A statement that while understandably creepy, my psychologist assures me is fairly normal. And then I apologized and tried to explain it and instead you held it over my head like the sword of Damocles. And why not? You weren’t ever going to stop having the affair, and isn’t it easier to justify
betraying someone you love if you can paint them like a monster? Fairy tale romances are a lot easier after all, when your flabby knight in sweaty armor can save you. Looking back on that, I’m sickened. Considering how unhappy your childhood was, considering your own unpleasant thoughts, considering your experience and knowledge of psychology, considering how you knew how unhappy and distraught I was, you instead used an omission I made at a moment of
great personal weakness to help you justify your affair. Because the alternative would have meant looking at me like a person instead of as a monster. What cowardice. Worse, what hypocrisy. You never let me get away with shit like that. Your mental problems were of limits to criticism. But fuck me.You lied to me so many times I honestly wonder if you ever loved me. You did it out of fear and you did it out of convenience. Breaking your word was easy enough, because you knew I’d take you back. You knew I’d try to forget it and move on. You used my desire to reconcile with you to fuck me over again and again with (bear) and I took it because I loved you and I thought that you loved me enough to work through it. But you never wanted to work. You just wanted what
was ever easier at that moment. When I was wasting my life smoking pot and staring blankly at wall, denial was the easiest option. But when I came to, realized how much of a fuck I’d been, realized how much of my life I’d wasted and how badly I’d treated you, suddenly it was all out in the open. And you had two choices: you could work with me or you could just let it slide until you finally gave up. And then (bear) came along, and while I convalesced in our apartment incapable of moving from pain killers you had an affair. And when I demanded that you work with me, you said you’d try, but didn’t do a god damn thing. And when you finally got up the guts to say you were leaving and I broke down crying and begged you to stay, you acquiesced,
because that was easier. So you put on a fake fucking smile and held my hand and made love to me and all the while it was a lie. You cowardly fuck.When you told me one thing and then did another that made you a liar and a betrayer. When you hid yourself from me, when you held me to a standard you would never hold yourself, that made you a hypocrite. When you did nothing but wait for our relationship to end all the while saying that you loved me, when you told me we may have a chance rather than break cleanly, when you hid from me afterwards and threatened to call the cops, that made you a hypocrite. And after my family helped support you for years with education, finances, clothing, food, love and almost a grand in driver’s lessons you left in the night without saying goodbye, thanking them or frankly, anything. And there’s a word for a woman who takes and takes and takes until it no longer suits her interests; it’s called a whore.
So if you’re still reading, congratulations, that’s all of the vitriol and anger I’ve been repressing for six months and that has sent me through a roller coaster of hell since the divorce. A lot of this I’m sure is just my aching, bleeding heart. Particularly the insults. But a lot of it is true. I loved you for 8 fucking years. I still do. It hurts, and I hate you, but I still love you to death. But I look at what you did to me and my family and I have nothing but bitterness. And now you’re dragging another poor fuck into your life, who when the going gets tough you’ll discard like so much garbage. At least this one’s enough of a loser that it’ll be easier.
I love you Harriet. But you tore out my heart and then took a big steaming shit on it. If you ever want to speak to me again, in any fashion that goes beyond business, we’ll need to talk about this. I spent six months trying to atone while all you did was get your own punches in. My soul is hardly clean, but at least I know I tried. I doubt you can make the same statement.
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I’m way late, but jesus fuck, this was painful and triggering to read. I totally dated this guy too, thank goodness I never married him though. I’m going to be weak and shaky all day now. It’s like running into my abuser on the street or something.
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Wow. He was a pro at this, better than mine was. And yet it’s so recognizable, the pattern of the crap missive from an abusive dude, because it’s basically always in three parts:
Prologue: “I love you, and I’m so sorry–”
Chapters 1-INFINITY: “–that you were such an evil bitch to me, I mean! God! ARE YOU EVEN AWARE WHAT AN EVIL BITCH YOU WERE? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS.”
Epilogue: “Okay, listen, I’m sorry I just wrote 463 chapters detailing what an evil bitch you were. I only did it because you were such an evil bitch WHOM I LOVE SO MUCH XOXO PLS CAN HAZ 2ND CHANCE? P.S. One of the inviolate preconditions of that second chance that I want sooooo much with you, my beloved, is that you acknowledge and work on your evil bitchness, with myself serving as sole judge of when that work is complete. It may be never, because you’re just that much of an evil bitch, an evil bitch who took a big steamer ON MY HEART for, like, NO REASON–but I am such a good person, who loves you sooooo much, that I am willing to try to work with you on this. Hey, yeah, sorry I have to insist on that? But my therapist told me that it’s important for me to set boundaries.”
Yeah. Familiar.
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yep, brings back memories – what a piece of work – manipulative a**hat
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a memory this brought up: crying on my cat in my towel after friends dragged me out of the shower after the police had left, with the psycho-Cuban in tow, and my friends calming me and realizing how bad things had gotten and p-C calls cuz it’s *my* fault the cops found dope in his apartment and he’s now got a $500ish ticket he has to pay. the transfer of responsibility, usually to intended target-under-thumb, but anybody but self will do
good did come out of that relationship though – the cat was his kids’, whose mom wouldn’t let them have at her place and rarely let them visit the psycho’s place and he’d brought kitty over to my place so she wouldn’t always be alone because he was always over – so when he left, she stayed; I won.
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Oh my god. Reading this was like a punch in the gut, even before I got to the email (which I couldn’t even finish).
I always knew my relationship with my mother was not quite normal, or maybe not “ideal,” but I always thought: “…well, it sucks, but at least she’s not abusive. It could be so much worse. And I really do need to work on (whatever thing it was I’d done wrong that time). And also I hate her and I am NOT WRONG. oh god I suck.” It had just always been that way, as far back as I can remember, sucky and the two of us fighting and always something wrong, you know? And we fought it out and eventually I grew up and left home and told her I wouldn’t ever come back if she didn’t stop being so negative, and she did stop, pretty much. And was sorry.
Then once in my early 20s she finally admitted that, in her words, “the two of us just never quite hit it off after we came home from the hospital.” Like, when I was born. And I was SO RELIEVED that she ACTUALLY SAID IT. I knew she had disliked me for my entire life and she actually fucking admitted it and by implication all of our fights and conflict weren’t because I was always wrong, they were because SHE DIDN’T FUCKING LIKE ME. So I told her, “Yeah, I know” and all day I was SO HAPPY because it was finally, finally some validation that I hadn’t imagined the whole damn thing (where “thing” = “18 years of constant criticism and never being good enough, but of course I love you, honey, I’m your MOTHER, that’s why I criticize, I’m just trying to HELP YOU”).
Even today, some five or six years later, I’m still SO RELIEVED whenever I think about that conversation (which has never been repeated or acknowleged or alluded to). SO RELIEVED. It’s like a breath of freedom, to remember that. But it’s still not like I was abused or anything. I just had a fucked-up relationship with my mom, who maybe doesn’t have the greatest vocation for motherhood and I can sympathize with that as a feminist, let’s not just always blame the woman.
But that conversation you had with your bear about Flint…that hit home. What the hell? What if I was abused? How would I know? I can’t even conceive of myself as someone who was abused. How could I even look the rest of my family in the face and say “That was abuse. She was abusive. I was abused.” when I’ve been given EVERYTHING and they even put me in therapy and what have I even done with my damn life anyway? How can I tell my mother she was abusive when it would break her heart, when she’s so sorry for hurting me anyway and didn’t mean to do it and always tried her best? How can I tell what is knowing I was or wasn’t abused and what is rationalization? I don’t even know what to think anymore, or how.
Damn. I’m sorry. I’m comment-hogging, and I think I just had a mental breakdown or something on your blog. So, um, thanks for writing what you do. It’s…powerful.
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Does it help you to think of what happened to you as abuse? It helped me, because abuse is wrong, and not the victim’s fault, and I was caught in this mindloop of “but what if I’d just done THIS?” The word “abuse” gave me permission to say, “These things were not my fault, I did not deserve them, I could not stop them or fix them, and the person who hurt me did so on purpose, which is wrong.” Before I called it abuse, when it was just “disagreements” or “fighting a lot” or “we miscommunicate” there was no way for me to move forward past the hurt. When I called it abuse, I could let go of the need to fix things, or explain them. It was just abuse. That was the explanation, and it wasn’t something I could fix.
But abuse also comes with the baggage of now being one of those victims. And with that baggage comes a recognition of how full of abuse the world is, and how often you will be asked to take it, which can lead to a very frustrating life experience. There are times in my life where that was not helpful. If I had called what happened to me abuse, and then was forced to deal with all the other abuse in my life in one fell swoop, and asked to defend myself as a victim, I would’ve collapsed inward. But there came a time in my life where it was more useful to me, where it answered more questions and gave me more peace, to call what happened to me abuse, and I was able to take that peace and use it to cope with the baggage of being a victim.
You don’t have to fix or explain your life, to your mother or anybody, even if you decide to call it abuse. Everything you do should be for you and you alone. If it helps for you to call it abuse, in your own head, privately, that’s great. If later you find it helps to explain it that way to another person, great. If someday it really helps you move forward to tell your mother that her behaviors were abusive, great. If none of those things make your life better, more peaceful, more calm, then don’t do them. You’re not responsible for having a life that makes sense to other people, or is acceptable to them, or fits into a theory. You are responsible for leading a life that satisfies you. Naming something abuse isn’t inherently the right thing to do. It’s just one way of coping with the life you’ve had, and it may not be the way you want to cope now, or in 50 years.
My mom likes to use a 12-step saying: My problems have other people’s names on them, but my solution has mine. When you’re abused, somebody else is creating problems for you, and that’s not fair and it’s not your fault, and sometimes calling that treatment “abuse” can be the way to recognize that it’s not fair and not your fault. But after that, you’re still left with finding solutions, and those are all your own. So if calling your treatment “abuse” doesn’t help you find a solution, then it’s not something you need to do.
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Thank you.
*deep breath*
Right now…saying that I was abused or that my mother was abusive makes me feel panicky, and guilty, and ashamed, and kind of sick to my stomach. I’m not sure of myself, and I’m not sure of how to handle that label (and its associated baggage, very astute). So I don’t think I will call all that stuff in my childhood abuse right now. It feels a little like being an ostrich sticking my head in the sand (probably a telling feeling, that), but sand feels like a GREAT place to be right now.
But I think I will start gradually start thinking about maybe considering whether there were abusive behaviors or an abusive relationship going on back then. That maybe that will become one of my self-narrative options. And I think that maybe I will try to scrape up the money to go back into therapy. It helped a lot the first time.
Your approach is very…liberating. I suppose abuse is kind of like (other types of) obscenity: it doesn’t necessarily have an arbitrary and absolute definition, but exists or not according to the judgment of those who experience it. I sort of thought I had to cross some sort of agreed-upon Minimum Bad Crap Threshold (hitting over and above spanking? yelling with epithets? any non-consensual sexual touching at all? moveable feast!) in order for a situation to be abuse, but I guess not really.
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Also, if it helps, I’ve found it helps me a lot to remove behavior from a person.
That is, saying, “My mother did abusive things,” does not have to mean, “My mother is AN EVIL ABUSER FOREVER AND EVER.” She did a thing. That doesn’t mean she is that thing. Behaviors can change and be chosen, or avoided, and behaviors can be engaged in by all kinds of diverse people, with good intentions and bad intentions. But it doesn’t matter what the intention is; what matters is how a behavior affects your life, and whether or not you want it to be a part of your life.
I have known many abusive people, and they are all, to a one, suffering, miserable, pitiful, sad, frustrated, unhappy, and in terrible, terrible pain. They are also all, to a one, complicated and complex people, who sometimes do heartbreakingly sweet things that I really feel they truly and genuinely mean. And they’re all the more sweet-seeming because they come out of this sea of abuse that is their usual behavior.
But if I let myself believe that I have the right to adequately sum up the value of a person, that’s one small step away from judging other people, and that’s one short step away from believing I have the right (or ability) to change other people. Which is how you get to Crazytown (because, hint, you can’t change other people). I can’t really say or judge or understand who a person is, down to their deepest darkest core. That’s their bag. I have my guesses and all, but I don’t really know, I can’t make a definitive statement. What I can make a definitive statement about is how I want to be treated, because that’s my bag. And if somebody treats me in an abusive way, that’s unacceptable. That behavior has to stop. It doesn’t matter who is doing the abusive behavior; the person doesn’t have to stop or even necessarily change, only the behavior.
I can’t control another person and make them stop the behavior, anymore than I can be responsible for making another person start a behavior. But I can take steps to ensure certain behaviors do not come into my life, by setting down boundaries, like “I love you and you are my friend but I don’t like being spoken to this way, and if you don’t stop I am going to go home.” Or, “I love you and you are my friend but you keep speaking to me in a way I don’t like, and you haven’t stopped when I’ve asked, but it’s really important to me not to be spoken to this way, so I’m not going to be around you anymore so I don’t have to be spoken to this way.” Or, “I love you and you’re my mother but I do not let anybody treat me this way, so I will call you later.” Or, slightly easier, “I know you like to tell that story about me and that thing I messed up when I was 12. But I have to go. Talk to you later.”
I’m sure there’s a lot of complexity within your mother, and a lot of things to understand and sympathize with. I’m sure there’s good in there, too. But who she is has nothing to do with how she acts. And you can love who she is while refusing to tolerate the way she acts around you. You have the right to do that because you have the right to change your own life, because it is yours. It’s not a value judgment on who she is when you demand that certain behaviors stop around you. She can act in those ways around other people, if she wants and they accept. It’s simply a declarative self-assessment about what you can and can’t tolerate from another person, with absolutely no value attached. She can still be your mom, and a complicated person that you are pretty sure you love. None of that has to change. She just can’t call you fat, or insult your boyfriend, or whatever.
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But who she is has nothing to do with how she acts.
…thank you for this. I know this is coming from way the hell outta nowhere, as I sift through your blog like some sort of Internet archeologist, but it’s poignant and useful to me. And it’s something I’ve needed to hear, all of that above. I’m having my own “…but that’s not abuse! …Oh wait” moment right now, that suddenly snuck up behind me and booted me in the rear. Yeah. Yeah, what he’s doing actually is that. At least, it’s abusive behavior. That’s what he’s attempting to do, consiously or not. And I can set a boundary against that. He is still my father, with all of the good things that implies, but that does not excuse how he now acts.
Thank you. THANK YOU. Thank you so much.
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Heqit, it sounds like you’re describing my childhood. I never knew what to expect from her whenI came home from school – it could be anything from a loving hug to a screaming match over something apparently trivial. I love her TO DEATH – she’s my mother, after all – but she did abuse me. I’ve been working on accepting this fact for the last 6 years (since I was 16 and moved in with my dad) and its still tough.
And thank you SO MUCH for this blog, Harriet. Your writing is some of the most moving I’ve ever read.
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I read this on [website redacted by Harriet -- I'm making a general effort to keep these two things somewhat separate, as I didn't post that with the intent of getting traffic here] , but didn’t realise it was you, Harriet. I’m so sorry to hear that happened to you, and kudos for getting away from the scumbag bastard and for being able to talk about it so eloquently.
Anyway…yeah. What you said about people doing abusive *things*, not the *person* being abusive, is right on.
The conversation about parental abuse struck a chord. I know the way my mother treats me is not right. But yes, I always thought *I* was in the wrong – according to her, pretty much whatever I think or feel is wrong. She will not allow me to express negative feelings, as if it is somehow about *her* if I am not happy. She thinks she can be insulting and make digs and twists any reaction to make me in the wrong. Calling me fat, yes, I know that well. ‘But I’m only criticising you to improve you, for your own good!’ know that well, too. Sigh. I am not letting her get away with this crap any more.
Anyway. End of ‘all about me’ aside.
I think we tend to think of abuse as Only Something Bad People Do, you know, the ones with devil horns and red eyes. Most abuse isn’t. It doesn’t have to be a parent beating their child, or one partner beating the other, until they have bruises. Psychological scars are just as painful. It’s like the way people think ‘real rape’ is the kind where a stranger drags a woman into the bushes.
It is another way of people deluding themselves that these things won’t happen to them, or to the people they care about, that nice, normal people don’t do them. Yet 1 in 4 women have been raped, and 1 in 4 suffered domestic violence, don’t know about childhood abuse but I’d be willing to bet it’s at least that many. It can’t be a few of those Evil Devil Horns people! I bet *all* women have been victimised in smaller ways, too, the ‘not quite’ rape, bullying ex, routine emotional abuse from parents and so on.
It *does* happen in normal life, and it isn’t going to stop until people admit this.
Phew. End of essay!
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Oh, man. This sounds familiar, too! (I know, I’m commenting like crazy.)
The last email I got from mine, he informed me that he hoped we would be able to move forward together, and that for his part, he had forgiven me.
I LOLed for real.
Let’s see…my ex claimed he never raped me. When faced with the fact that I said “no” and he did what he wanted anyways and when pressed to define that, he said, “I don’t know, but it wasn’t rape.” The few times he *did* admit to doing something wrong, he explained it away by either blaming me for being beautiful, or God for *making* me so beautiful that he just couldn’t help himself.
Wanna hear something totally off-the-wall? Where I’m living now? He *drove* me here. He asked for a divorce, I jumped at the chance (threatening divorce was his very favorite way of reminding me of how financially dependent I was on him – I don’t think he actually meant it). I think a lot of it was him being too prideful to say “no” and beg. The other thing that helped it along was that I made all these false promises of, “yes, we can try to work it out!” *only* because I knew if I gave him hope, he’d be more likely to bring me.
(What can I say? He’s not all that bright.)
So now he’s pouting and saying, “what about all the things you said about working it out?” completely ignoring the fact that I told him repeatedly that he would not treat me X way, and that he repeatedly treated me X way anyways, and that he was confronted about being abusive by several of my friends. I mean come ON, dude. You can’t honestly rape a woman and sabotage her education to the point where she drops out (among other things) and SERIOUSLY think she’ll still want to be with you?!
But that is why I think he’s a psychopath. He can’t see the consequences of those behaviors, he only sees what he wants and why he should get them. He raped me because he loves me and I just can’t accept it, and besides, he bought me stuff afterwards, so that proves how he cares. He attempted to alienate me from friends (something I never let him get away with!) not because he’s a selfish loser who needs total control, but because he was *protecting* me, you see. He was *protecting* me from people who really were not worthy of my time, and why can’t I appreciate that?
Okay I’m done. That was a long-winded way of saying:
Holy shit.
On another note, I am rather curious as to why he largely ignored me after he brought me here. According to people who live near him, he’s been obsessing over me ever since I left, but he never made much effort to contact me (he doesn’t have my home phone, but even emails have only been once a week. I have a strong feeling that has more to do with his need to be viewed as a victim than it does anything else. “That bitch! She hasn’t even called! I’m so HURT! ” *pout*)
I do know, based on the experience of his OTHER ex-wife, that he will not give up even after papers are signed. He called her TWO MONTHS after their divorce was final, asked for a meeting, she met him in public, and he asked her if it was really over. Creep.
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