Stop Emotional Abuse

My dream guy

2008-11-10T22:15:00.003-08:00

Very soon after the marriage, it became clear that Rick didn't like, appreciate or cherish me. I made a list called "Mary's Dream Guy" that showed the frustration I was having in my "marriage" due to the fact that he was always disappointed in me. I sent it to Rick, and he told me he could maybe meet some of the main points eventually. Perhaps 1, 2 and 4, but definitely not 3 and probably not many others. When I asked him if he could cherish me, he told me we hadn't reached that point yet. (!?!!!?)

What I want in a husband:

1. Someone who thinks I am the most wonderful, interesting, intriguing and inspiring person in the world and feels lucky to have me because of it.
2. Someone who knows in their heart that I am their soul mate and who shows it by actions instead of words.
3. Someone who admires my passion for the things I believe in.
4. Someone who realizes that I am a step above most women in my honesty, integrity and refusal to use men for money and recognizes how very lucky they are to have me.
5. Someone who appreciates my "depth" and my disdain for frivolous things and shallow words.
6. Someone who also appreciates the things that really matter and wants a simple life.
7. Someone who thinks that my personality makes me the most beautiful woman in the world.
8. Someone who gets my strange comments and music references without my having to explain.
9. Someone who likes the same music as me and understands the passion it invokes.
10. Someone who shares my intense, spiritual connection with nature.
11. Someone who shares my desire for knowledge of the world around me- including history, genealogy, nature, world events, natural health, books, etc.
12. Someone who loves cats and understands that they are living creatures to be cherished rather than just "pets" or disposable decorations.
13. Someone who isn't materialistic and is turned off by greed and wasted wealth.
14. Someone with high standards who isn't easily impressed by shallow charm and unnatural "beauty."
15. Someone unconventional.
16. Someone who understands that sex should be saved for someone who really matters.
17. Someone who isn't vain or high maintenance.
18. Someone older who likes the styles and things I do.
19. Someone who is financially responsible but also knows that sometimes life requires a little splurge.
20. Someone who values travel and is willing to do it cheaply.
21. Someone who uses good language (ie. not ebonics or obscenities.)
22. Someone with class (real class- not the pretentiousness that comes solely from money.)
23. Someone who dislikes violence.
24. Someone honest who doesn't keep secrets about anything.
25. Someone who is willing to let me know everything about them and doesn't want to keep their past a big black hole.
26. Someone who is a Christian but is not religious or brain washed.
27. Someone who thinks for themselves- outside of advertising, medical, etc. propaganda.
28. Someone who sees through liberal bullshit.
29. Someone who isn't in love with or obsessed with anyone else.

That's not asking much is it?

The worst thing about the abusive marriage

2008-11-10T22:15:00.001-08:00

The worst thing about being married to Rick was his music. I actually liked it, but when you marry a person, you really don't need to hear a musical collection of love songs about how great his ex was. I had heard all of these songs about how he'd love the ex forever, would never forget her, how they should still be together, how she was so charismatic and attractive, etc. All of the songs, over ten years worth were all about the same person, which made for a creepy obsession.

The thing that was most painful was the fact that I could hear all theses tributes, yet at the same time, he kept telling me everything he hated about me. He kept saying "you need to change" and picked on everything from my teeth to my religion. He never told me what he liked about me, just all the things he didn't like. I kept telling him that he seemed like he didn't like me at all, and he'd say "of I course I do, I married you." But, now I know he never liked or loved me. Actually, I knew all along and I was confused as to why he married me and kept insisting that he loved me. So now, if I ever listen to Rick's music again, I'll know that he worshiped and adored his ex, but never treated me that way. I knew he was capable of cherishing someone, but it sure wasn't me! I kept waiting for him to appreciate me, but it never happened. What a blow to my self-esteem! The person he married was never the person he loved. I can't believe I wasted 1 year and 11 months of my life with a guy who so obviously didn't love me. He kept saying it, but the fact that he could only criticize me let me know that there was no love on his part.

When I pointed out that it seemed like he didn't like me, he'd say, he only liked me when I was happy. That was pretty rare, because how in the world could I be happy when I was married to a man who made his dislike for me clear every day?

I can't wait for the day when I meet someone who appreciates me enough that they can say/ write a song/ write a poem, etc. how much they like me instead of constantly fault finding. Rick seemed disappointed in me from the start and I continuously felt bad because I could see that he didn't like me. Even the original four day weekend when I visited him, he said he was disappointed in me. I should have ended it then and there despite all the connections we'd had on the phone. Even in its good moments, this relationship was never good. I was always depressed by the fact that Rick didn't really like me.

If he's impossible to please, there's something wrong with HIM! Not you!

2008-11-10T22:14:00.002-08:00

For months I let Rick drag me down. Every time he insisted that I was wrong for doing things my way instead of his, every time he was getting angry over meaningless things and blaming me, every time he was behaving in a ridiculous manner and having outrageous superhuman expectations, I believed him that his craziness was my fault. Despite all my instincts that something was seriously wrong with him.

I realize now that there is something wrong with him. I felt it all along-- an emptiness, a lack of self. He told me that one of his girlfriends had dumped him because he didn't have a personality. It's true. There is nothing inside Rick because he is only a reflection of the people around him. The things he does, the things he claims to believe, his interests, his hobbies, his morals, everything is simply a reflection of what he sees others doing. He parrots exactly what other people say to him. When he was leaving me, he used big phrases and specific phrases over and over and said that his friend was telling him to. I knew he didn't come up with any of it himself. He can't even tell you what he believes or why. He can't say how he feels or what he wants. I'd explain to him why I believed certain things, and he'd say it sounded good and he believed it too. I'd ask him what he wanted to do, and he said whatever I wanted to do. He didn't have any hobbies. His interests changed with each person he dated and HE, RICK was never a consistent self-aware, self-determined person.

He tried to tell me I ruined his life, but I know better. He admitted some things that made it clear. Starting long before he met me, he'd had years of therapy because his relationships went bad. He had quite a few self-help books on breaking your addictions to people, obsessive love, etc. He also had a collection of anti-anxiety medication and a "prescription" for marijuana for anxiety. That was before he met me. He had big problems before I got there, and he knows it.

It was like he had no soul. When some really horrible things happened and left me devastated, he just went on with his day like it was nothing. He had no empathy for me during traumatic events. One thing that he did to me has haunted me daily for two years because it was very bad. I cried for weeks, yet he never shed a tear, and always belittled my concerns. When my cat died, there was nothing. One day he got a call that his mom had a massive heart attack and wasn't doing well. I told him he needed to call off work, but he refused. He showed no emotion. I'm a normal person, so I kept trying... Rick, your mom might be dying, forget work. But he was insistent that he had to be responsible and go in even though he never missed work and this was a true emergency. Fortunately, his sister got through to him and before he even finished his 1.5 hour drive to work, he had turned around to visit his mom. When he got the call that she was definitely in her last hours, I had to spend quite a while convincing him that he needed to be there. All through her lengthy sickness, I had to tell him that he needed to be visiting his mom as much as possible before it was too late. He was so empty and vacant that nothing phased him.

I knew there was something wrong with him. Is there really such thing as a soulless empty person? I don't think at his age that there's much hope for him to develop into a person with personality and self. Despite all the times he blamed me for his emptiness and weird behavior, he knows something is wrong with him. Sixty women don't dump a guy for no reason. Even after he left me, when he was irrationally blaming me for his behavior, he broke down crying and said he needed to figure out why all of his relationships ended badly. That isn't because of me, and he knows it. The common denominator is HIM.

I did have little hints that he had controlled other women. First of all, an abusive man abuses in all relationships. All the therapists and books assured me that it wasn't the first time. Rick let little things slip that let me know I was not the first.
He told me a detailed situation of why his previous girlfriend dumped him-- basically because he was always telling her how to live her life. He had e-mails and letters saved from other exes. In one of his favorite movies, the star goes back and talks to exes asking them why they left, so Rick had done the same thing. One response stood out in my head- the woman had replied that she felt she wasn't good enough for him. In another e-mail, he was apologizing to an ex for the crappy way he treated her, in yet another, he apologized to someone for trying to control her and getting annoyed by her baby, the woman he's in love with told him that he needed to find someone more quiet and demure instead of her because she was too strong and driven. Rick admitted that he'd constantly been disappointed in her because her choices and priorities in life didn't match what he wanted her to choose. Other things gradually came out, so and so had annoyed him because she didn't do such and such, and more. It was pretty clear that I wasn't the first person he'd tried to control. He devotes his life to taking care of people then gets mad when they don't do what he wants them to do. Rick KNOWS there is something wrong with him. Perhaps he hates me for sticking around long enough to question and uncover what it is.

Another thing that bothers me... his family must know something is wrong with him. Even though they haven't lived with him in over 30 years, they must know something is wrong when their brother goes through so many girlfriends and none want to stay. They might even know that he gets infatuated and falls in love quickly then wants out just as quickly. He turned to them for support and it is their duty to love him, but they must know... they must see a pattern. I knew almost instantly that something was wrong with him, even before we met.

There were just too many weird things. One thing that always bothered me was when he got home from work he'd kiss me and hold on to me like he was drowning and I needed to save him. When he kissed me he'd always suck air in through his mouth with a whistling noise and I'd ask why. He'd say he was trying to breath me in. The symbolism of that bothers me because in reality, that is what he was trying to do. He was trying to own, control and absorb me, to let me fill his emptiness and to use me to give him a sense of self.

He was never happy with anything

2008-11-10T22:14:00.001-08:00

Last year, Rick and I visited Ohio for a week. We took an overnight flight from LA to Columbus and arrived around 6 AM. He had slept some on the plane, but I hadn't. We got our rental car and started driving to our hotel outside Cleveland. Once there, our first task was to find a grocery store. I have a special medical diet, so if I was going to have lunch, we needed to find the right food. Unfortunately, none of the nearby stores carried what I needed, something that surprised me because my home area in SW Ohio always has what I need. Rick told me I could stay at the hotel and sleep while he went exploring. I accepted, because I get physically ill when I don't sleep and I wasn't doing well. We had plans for later that afternoon, and I wanted to feel good. So, I got some sleep, but it was restless because Rick didn't come back for three hours and I was very worried about him. I was starting to get scared, but my cell phone wouldn't connect. Finally he came back. He'd driven all over the area but didn't find what I needed. I groggily thanked him for trying, but encouraged him to give up and lay down with me so we could cuddle and get some rest. I am very sure that I thanked him. I had learned almost right away that Rick needed to be thanked multiple times for every deed, so it became second nature to thank him several times an hour. If I didn't, I knew he would be mad.

So we got some rest, then had a nice evening. We went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to see the brand new Beach Boys exhibit that just happened to start right when we got there even though our trip had been planned six months earlier! We also went to a talk with David Marks who had many fun stories to tell about his experiences with the Beach Boys and afterwards. We had a great time. That night, after we left, there was a huge thunderstorm over Lake Erie with the type of rains one never sees in SoCal and lightning that amazed Rick. I've seen storms, but it was especially awesome over the lake. Everything seemed fine, we finally found a store that had what I needed, went back to our hotel and went to bed.

The next morning, as we were packing to leave, Rick was pouting and agitated. As with every time this frequently happened, I knew that I had unknowingly done something "wrong." Eventually, it came out. I hadn't thanked him enough for spending the time looking for my food. I was ungrateful, unappreciative, selfish, all of the things I was used to hearing. All of my feelings of helplessness came back. I KNEW I'd thanked him. I was always on guard because if I missed a thank you, I'd be yelled it. I tried reasoning... "but Rick, I did thank you." I even described in detail exactly when and where I had thanked him, but he kept denying it. I said "well, you must not have heard me, because I am very sure I said it."

Still, the insults and yelling continued. Horrible, lazy, selfish, worthless, unappreciative. None of it was true. God and I both know that I had dedicated my life to Rick, to trying very hard to prove I wasn't any of those things. I was sick of hearing it. Whenever Rick got like that, all I could think was "this man is impossible to please. This is so crazy, what more can I do? No normal person would act like this. Why is he so demanding? Why does he not realize all I do for him? How many times do I have to thank him?"

His behavior is typical of his codependency. People with that disorder always feel like they are going overboard to please people and getting nothing in return. Sometimes, they are right. But in our case, I knew Rick was not right. I knew that I was thanking him constantly, trying hard to show him how much I enjoyed the things he did for me, keeping his home spotless, promoting his music online, complimenting him daily, encouraging him to eat healthy, helping him save money with coupons, encouraging him to increase his investments for his future, looking out for him in every way. And yet, he kept accusing me of doing the exact opposite of what I was doing. This is a form of abuse called "crazymaking," where the abuser keeps invalidating the victim's sense of reality and making her wonder if she is the one who is crazy and imagining things. Going through it daily really throws a person off guard. Rick confuses me. Is he so emotionally unstable that he truly believes I wasn't grateful? Is he so unconsciously abusive that he truly believes that he isn't demanding too much? Is he so incapable of reason that he didn't understand what I was doing? Whatever the case, something is seriously wrong with him. I've never met anyone else who acts like that.

The codependent as an abuser

2008-11-10T22:13:00.002-08:00

When Rick first came home with the claim that he was codependent, I was upset. Codependents are usually people who enable addicts, alcoholics and abusers to continue their bad behavior. I'm not addicted to anything, and I certainly wasn't abusing anyone because I was too busy walking on eggshells to avoid Rick's cruelty.

But, Rick certainly does have many qualities of codependency. He does far too much for other people, not for kindness but to get praise in return, neglects to have his own opinions, takes his feelings and personality from others, being instantly "in love," calling every hour, etc.

To quote one website: http://abuse101.com/codependency.html
codependents "attempt to control another and to control circumstances. The codependent may often feel like they are a victim, or that everything wrong in their life is another's fault. They have the tendency to blame others for wrongness within themselves, or to be hypervigilant to other's actions and opinions. They may attempt to 'fix' others, or feel an intense anxiety in a relationship."
" He often will blame others for his unhappiness or his problems. If he has an issue it is almost always because of something another person said or did, or didn't say or do. Additionally, where the codependent may feel that it is other's in their life that are 'over-controlling', it is in fact they, themselves, that are the overly controlling person. He is afraid that by allowing others to be who they are, or by allowing events to unfold as they will, that he will somehow, himself, be out of control. The codependent man believe only he knows best, he believes those around him should behave as he thinks they should behave, and he uses all kinds of little ways to get that person to do and think as he believes they should. He then becomes very controlling and if the other person fights this control, refuses to change, or remains adamant in their own beliefs the codependent will attempt to control and manipulate them even more - all the while claiming that the other one is the controlling one. He will use force, threats, coercion, advice giving, helplessness, guilt, insulting, shame, remove assets, neediness, selfishness, denial, manipulation, or domination - anything he can in his attempt to gain control over another."

This certainly explains a lot. There is a lot of information about codependents who enable others to misbehave because they are desperate for love, but not nearly enough about codependents whose desire to control and manipulate leads them to abuse others. Unfortunately, Rick's "diagnosis" of codependency depends on the traditional idea that he is enabling his abusive partner (me.) He claims that everything is my fault because I made him miserable and that I deserved what he did to me. (Hmmm, that parts sounds like codependency (and lunacy) for sure!) He is using excuses to deny responsibility for his own cruel behavior that left me traumatized and baffled.

Still, the codependency idea explains a lot. Rick and I met online, then I visited him in LA. He over prepared for my visit and spent a lot of money to plan trips, buy new things for his apartment, etc. Later I learned that his "nice guy" act of waiting on me hand and foot was a game for him to manipulate me. One of our first "dates" was an overnight trip to Sequoia National Park, somewhere I'd always dreamed of visiting. We had fun, but when we got back, Rick started acting weird and pouting. I finally got him to admit what was wrong, and he said I wasn't appreciative enough. I thought that was weird because I'd thanked him several times. Shouldn't once be enough? Shouldn't he have done something nice to be nice rather than as bait to be praised? He acted a little better but still pouted the next day. I felt like I was dealing with a child, but he'd been so nice, I thought maybe it was my fault. I tried to thank him for every little thing to keep him happy.

A few weeks later, I moved to CA, and he bought tickets to see Steely Dan. I thanked him for the tickets twice and bought him a thank you card. (I'd learned my lesson from the Sequoia trip!) We went to the show and had fun, but we got home late and I fell into bed half asleep. I'd forgotten to give him the card. The next morning, I was awakened by a phone call. He was yelling at me for not thanking him enough. I was flabberghasted and sat there staring at the card I'd so thoughtfully chosen to thank him. This was just the beginning of his behaviors that never stopped. Within days, I was wondering if I could ever do anything right or enough to please this man. I felt helpless and confused because I'd always been fine with normal people, yet Rick kept telling me there was something wrong with me because I didn't thank him enough, didn't do enough in return, didn't call him enough, etc. Then there were the demands to do everything his way... (that's a book in itself!)

He would do nice things for me, and I thanked him over and over (to avoid being yelled at,) but it was never enough. I asked to STOP doing nice things. I was afraid when he did something, because whatever I said or did in return was never enough. I didn't have an income and I couldn't keep up. It was his constant "niceness" that led him to abuse me more.

He would get mad and controlling pretty much every day. 99% of the time, our fights started with me making a comment that he didn't like then him yelling at me that I needed to "change" my opinions because they made him unhappy. In the past, I've blogged about some of the minor things that led him to yell at me. But, still, his manipulative niceness was confusing. Even though no one had else had ever berated me daily for being myself, Rick did. He was nice half the time, so I thought, if this nice guy is criticizing me daily and telling me to change, he must be right because he's clearly a nice guy. This is how I started to doubt my own reality. No one had ever done this to me, but maybe Rick was right. I pathetically went to therapy and told the therapist that I needed to change my personality because my husband hated the fact that I was opinionated. She reminded me that I have a right to be myself. Maybe he doesn't like me, but other people have and do. She tried to convince me that I wasn't as unlovable and horrible as Rick kept telling me I was. She was right, but it took me a long time to realize it. It is easy to be brainwashed when there's a guy doing everything for you, and coming across as a great guy, yet telling you you need to change.

Here are some more symptoms of codependent behavior:
http://www.proactivechange.com/relationships/codependency/symptoms.htm

One or both people feel "owed".
There are intense, exaggerated involvements.
Little spontaneous playfulness.
Too many fixed requirements or objectives imposed from within or without.
Non-valuing or awareness of individual differences.
Unrealistic relationship expectations.
One or both people have the myth of their own perfection or imperfection.

http://www.mnwelldir.org/docs/mental_health/codependency.htm
"believes deep inside that other people are responsible for the way they are and will blame others for the "spot" they are in. Others make them feel the way they feel, they are victimized, angry, unappreciated, and used. Others are driving them crazy."
"codependents do not feel happy or content with themselves. They look to others to supply them their happiness or their needs. They are threatened by the loss of anything or any person that provides them with their happiness."
"codependents blame, threaten, coerce, beg, bribe, and advise others... They avoid getting to the point, asking indirectly for attention by sighing, crying, or moping around...They say nothing is their fault. "

http://www.cdrs.ca/About/symptoms.html
Low self esteem, often projected onto others. (eg: Why don't they get their act together!)
Belief that others cause or are responsible for the codependent's emotions.
Overreacting to change. (or intense fear of / inability to deal with change.)
Rigidity and need to control.

These symptoms explain a lot. Codependents try to control and buy others by doing so much for them that the codependent feels "owed." The classic codependent naively gives into an addict, but in my case, I completely see how Rick's lack of self/ codependency led him to emotionally and verbally abuse me through controlling, expecting and demanding behaviors.

This really makes a lot of sense with the other things I'd noticed about Rick. He wanted me to be perfect to fill HIS holes and needs. Even though he waited on me hand and foot, the relationship was all about HIM trying to force me to meet his needs. He needed me to be happy 24/7 because he didn't have his own personality and was counting on me to create one for him.

I just had the bad luck to get sucked in to the life of a codependent abuser.
I was saving mementos in honor of the decent times, but now I feel like I should throw them away. Even though Rick was giving demonstrations that he claimed were love, I was the only one doing any selfless loving. His "selfless" giving to me was actually SELFISH because it was never about caring or empathy for me and was always about him.

Ways codependents become abusive

2008-11-10T22:13:00.001-08:00

I found this website today and sat bawling because it reminded me so much of the torture I went through with Rick and the fact that he was never happy with anything I did. It really explains what I was feeling in my heart all along. He did nice stuff for me, but I hated that because I knew it meant something was expected of me. He didn't do it to be nice, he did it to be praised. I hated the pressure of having to "perform" every time. And of course, no matter how hard I tried it was NEVER good enough!

http://codependency101.com/

I have quoted most of the page...

"Codependency

"My husband was codependent. Although he thought he was doing everything for me, in reality he was never there for me. Everything was about him..."

Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, provides an excellent definition of Codependency. She describes it as:
"a specific condition that is characterized by preoccupation and extreme dependence — emotionally, socially and sometimes physically — on a person or object. Eventually, this dependency on another person [or object] becomes a pathological condition that affects the co-dependent in all other relationships"

Codependents are the ultimate example of a Persecution Complex description. They always feel victimized, oppressed, and self-sacrificial. Although codependents may feel they give an inordinate amount of responsibility, obligation, and worry for another and mistakenly feel like they are giving, giving, giving, in reality they are actually taking, taking, taking. The only thing a codependent person wants to hear from his unappreciative (of course, this is usually in his imagination) spouse is the words "I feel so guilty about everything you do for me".

However, in reality, codependents do very little for the healthy betterment of their relationships, or the wholeness and completeness of their lives. Whereas they think they are doing for everyone, they are actually doing for themselves. Every time they can feel over-giving and under-appreciated (their main goal), they climb higher up in their Ivory-Tower and feel justified in hugging themselves while they hang from their self-imposed crucifix. Codependents appear to be very poor givers, so wrapped up in their imagined glories and self-sacrifices that they never really, truly give genuine love and care just for the simple reason of giving it and not for the real reason behind why they do give and give. And what is that reason you ask? Codependents give only for two causes and one reason; to cause 'self-pity', and to cause 'manipulation' of those around him, for the reason of being able to embrace, nurture, and love themselves, and to feel safe and secure..

A codependent person—although it may appear that they are over-conscious and over-aware of others—in reality are only conscious of their own role in other's lives and not with the actual other person themselves. They only need to pre-occupy themselves with other's emotional well-being and feelings to see what their own status is to that other person, and how they fit in that person's life. Although the experts seem to claim that a codependent person is overly involved in other's moods, feelings, and emotional being, they actually are more astute to another's moods, feelings, and emotions only when it directly relates back to themselves so that they may analyze the role they play in that person's life. Many codependents have an intense need for acceptance and validation of who they are. They can be more selfish and self-involved then fiercely independent people are, as they are so engrossed in the role they play in other people's lives that they become obsessed with others' moods and well-being only as it relates to themselves.

Codependents lack in self-perception and can only identify who they are through that of a second person. They manifest 'who they are' only through another's eyes, thoughts, or views of them...and without another they are unable to find their own identity. Codependents tend to latch onto partners because of this lack of being able to self-identify through themselves.

Thus, codependents become 'emotionally unavailable' or 'uncaring' to others, unless it is for the selfish reason of improving their own role in that person's life. Everything they do they do to pity themselves or to applaud themselves...nothing is done out of voluntary loving or freely given for the mere fact of truly caring for another. NOTHING! Everything that a codependent person does is done to further establish their self-pitying thoughts of 'overdoing' and of being taken advantage of and for granted, "I am so unappreciated around here, they treat me like their slave...", or their self-worshipping thoughts that they are perfect and well-respected for the 'good' or 'right things' that they do unto others. "I am a great person, see how I saved the day!" These thoughts are based on the fact that because they are overly concerned with the role they play in other's lives that they become more acutely aware of how others do or do not acknowledge what they do.

Basically, the codependents motives are all about gaining self-pity or gaining self-respect enough so that they can feel safe and comfortable enough to embrace their own inner soul and give much needed self-love to themselves. Just below the surface of every codependent is a lost and rejected child that doesn't feel that who they are themselves is worthy of love.

A codependent is so caught up in their own little "I am a self-sacrificing hero" fantasy that they have no idea that they have no real identity of their own, and are actually (and ironically) never really fully available to another (although they believe just the opposite). Codependents spend an inordinate amount of time hugging themselves and finding new ways to feel like they are abandoned and unappreciated, or acclaimed and heralded. They spend an elaborate amount of time planning ways to feel more damaged and martyred (so they can heroize themselves), and to do this they must worry more about making everyone but himself happy. They must be self-sacrificial. Although they feel that they are over-giving and over-doing, they actually do very little real emotional loving, or make themselves truly available to the people in their life. (It is hard to be there for somebody in an honest and genuine sense, when you are being bitter and indignant about the fact that you are there for them.) You can never love a codependent person enough, for they will not feel your love, they will only feel all the drummed up sacrifices they have done for others. A codependent person will not hear, "thank you, I appreciate that" but will seek out and concentrate his focus on all the non-acknowledged things that he does do, whereas most non-codependents will hear the "thank you" and not really get to worried over the fact that occasionally someone didn't acknowledge something they did for them. A codependent person very rarely recognizes genuine acts of true love and caring from their spouses, but rather is hypervigilant to their spouses negativities or requests (which the codependent person takes to mean 'more demands' on, and 'belittlement' of, them).

Codependent people have a huge hole in them that needs to be fixed. They find temporary relief via another person's redemption through them, as it allows them to redeem themselves when they see themselves through the other's eyes. This may possibly be the reason why codependents almost always choose mates that have 'problems'. They can find a temporary patch for their own 'hole' by fixing others'.

The simple fact is, the codependent person is an unavailable partner.
Codependents have this empty hole that only they can fill up. Sometimes you may be able to get it a quarter full, or even halfway full, but no matter how much you put in this bucket, it keeps falling right out the bottom. "

My views:

So much of this is familiar! Some parts really show what I kept feeling when Rick would yell at me for not saying thank you enough. His doing things for me was a burden to ME because I knew the anger was coming when I couldn't live up to his expectations. I felt like he didn't care about me, just how I could make him feel. And that was proven when he kept telling me he only liked me when I was happy. He had no empathy when I'd had a hard day. He had no ability to understand my feelings. Just minutes before he left me, he was (again) telling me how horrible I was. And I said, "Rick, what about MY feelings? You are hurting me. I am sick of being criticized. Do you even like me?" He started yelling "bullshit!" and I cried back "my feelings are not bullshit, this is how I feel when you berate me." But, he could only look at his own feelings. I felt like I was alone and ignored in that "marriage." All he ever cared about was how I could make him feel. It never crossed his mind that I was a human with feelings that also mattered!
Even though he is convinced that I ruined his life, and he worked hard to save the marriage, the acts of giving were not "saving" anything. They were one-sided. I told him over and over to STOP giving and doing and just respect, cherish and appreciate me for who I am. That's ALL I ever wanted! As much as he praises him self for being "loving," I have a feeling I was the only one doing any real loving because I was accepting of his faults, etc. and saw him as a human. He saw me only as a robot to make him feel better about himself, so any time I was human and less than perfect, he was disappointed. I carried the burden of that daily disappointment

Haunted by abuse

2008-11-10T22:12:00.002-08:00

For some reason, the only time the divorce bothers me is when I first wake up. According to my divorce group, the estimated recovery time is one year for every four years of marriage. Wow, with an 11 month marriage, I should feel better in 3 months! I'm going to assume closer to 6 if I include the entire 2 year "relationship." This actually seems realistic. I don't miss Rick at all. I miss the cats and amenities, but not the abuser. Maybe it's easier that the marriage was one sided. I'm not losing a great confidante or best friend. I'm losing a companion who always seemed disappointed to be with me instead of someone else. Big loss! NOT! It's more like a relief. Once the initial shock wears off when I wake up, the rest of the day I'm filled with relief because I am around people who actually like me, appreciate me and are interested in what I have to say. I'm back in the real world instead of Rick's isolated Twilight Zone where nothing makes sense and he is impossible to please. Actually, the trauma of the divorce is not about missing him at all; it's due to other reasons:
I keep remembering how Rick NEVER had anything good to say about me from the beginning. All he ever noticed was little flaws and he started with my teeth on the second day I knew him. I know he wrote poems and love songs about how great his ex gold digger and porn star girlfriends were, so I keep wondering why someone would be so stupid as to chase married ex girlfriends who honestly seem pretty shallow and treated him like crap, yet he picked at everything about me. I'd never experienced that from anyone, so it's pretty confusing. Still, like my therapist said, Rick clearly has emotional problems and some type of mental illness. I can't take his behavior personally because there is something wrong with him and his thought process. He doesn't know what love is, he only knows infatuation and trying to win attention from women that don't want him. Still, I keep worrying and fretting about WHY he married me when it was so clear from the start that he disliked me. I spent the marriage walking on eggshells and hoping he'd come to his senses and learn to appreciate me for my good points instead of trying to turn me into his ex.
I'm annoyed that I put my education on hold and wasted two years of my life for some guy who didn't love me and just needed someone to fill HIS needs. His emotional hole is so huge, that even when he was doing things for me, it was for the purpose of making him feel less empty. I wasted two years trying to keep from being sucked into his black hole.
I just keep hoping I'll find a reason or an answer for why I had to endure this: fall in love with someone who didn't really exist, give up my entire life for him, get beat down and discarded. My therapist warns me that I'll probably never get answers from Rick because he is not self-aware enough to understand his own crazy behavior. Most abuse survivors never do get any apology, admission or real closure. You can't expect reasonable results from someone who is incapable of rational thought and self examination. He is too messed up to think beyond his own problems and realize what he did to someone else.
Obviously the aftershocks of the abusive criticism are the top reason I wake up with a nasty headache every morning. I was an okay, average person when I met Rick, but after two years of hearing him pick out my every flaw, I worry about things that never bothered me. Very early on, Rick complained about my teeth. He was so embarrassed that he even sent an e-mail explaining to his family why I had fluorosis stains on my teeth. He contacted a dentist and gave me brochures about getting veneers the first week I lived there. I'd never thought about it before. I didn't realize it was that obvious and that big of a deal. Now, I worry about it whenever I want to smile and I don't want to open my mouth. Thanks to Rick's repeatedly pointing out how ugly my teeth are, it's all I think about when I meet new people. I feel like I have to apologize and explain that I have severe fluorosis.

He also used to complain that I had frizzy hair. Something I'd never noticed. Still, he kept trying to get me to use hair stuff. Now, I can't help but notice all those little flyaway hairs that didn't seem like a big deal before.
I wont list them all because I'm sure normal people aren't ultra picky and critical like Rick was with me, but let's just say I'm left with a huge list of things to feel insecure about. Things that never crossed my mind before when I was content with just being a normal person and wasn't expected to be PERFECT for Rick. I'm pretty sure that every woman Rick dated wasn't so perfect either, so I know he must have done this to all of them. Unfortunately, I got the brunt of it, one because I was the longest continuous relationship of his life (at a mere two years!) and two, because he had extra expectations of me because I was his wife and "soul mate" who was supposed to be the perfect person for him.

Love me for what I am

2008-11-10T22:12:00.001-08:00

Every time Rick started telling me all the things he didn't like about me and told me I needed to change, I felt like I was in a nightmare. With REAL love, you love someone for who they are. I kept telling him that. If you love someone, you love all of them all the time. He kept telling me he only loved me under certain conditions. It was so crazy! No wonder this guy is over 50 and I was the longest relationship of his life!

Anyway, he is a Carpenters fan. I am not really; I just know the hits. Still, today I came across these lyrics from a song they recorded (but didn't write.) Too bad Rick didn't understand them, because they say exactly what I kept thinking:

"We fell in love on the first night that we met,
Together we've been happy, I have very few regrets.
The ordinary problems have not been hard to face,
but lately little changes have been slowly taking place.
You're always finding something wrong in what I do,
but you can't rearrange my life because it pleases you.

(Chorus)

You've got to LOVE ME FOR WHAT I AM for simply being me.
Don't love me for what you intend or hope that I will be,
And if you're only using me to feed your fantasy,
you're really not in love, so let me go.
I must free.

If what you want isn't natural for me,
I won't pretend to keep you, what I am I have to be.
The picture of perfection is only in your mind,
for all you expectations love can never be designed.
We either take each other for ev'rything we are,
or leave the life we've made behind and make another start."
(repeat chorus)

My head knew all along that anyone who loved me would not continue to say such absurd things, unfortunately, my heart was in denial. Rick finally caught on to the idea that he didn't actually love me, but I wish he hadn't led me on so long.

An abuser can be codependent and that makes it worse

2008-11-10T22:11:00.002-08:00

Rick's abuse really escalated when he decided he was codependent. In a codependent relationship, the codependent person feels responsible for taking care of an abusive or addicted spouse. Yes, Rick did have many issues of codependency, such as waiting on me hand and foot, trying to take care of me, and isolating and controlling me. BUT, the part that did the damage was when he accepted the other half. Codependents usually have an abusive counterpart, so he decided that was me. Never mind that he tormented me nonstop, criticized me daily, berated me and called me names for hours and hours at a time, pushed me around, bullied me, and told me I shouldn't have opinions. And that's the "clean" version because I'm too private to put the really bad sexually and physically offensive behavior and comments on a blog. Once he decided that I was the abusive counterpart, he gave up all responsibility for his actions and the abuse escalated. He went to his therapist and said I was ruining his life, so he got inappropriate advice. Therapy can't help if you lie! Rick didn't tell the guy that he was demanding, critical and impossible to please. By last fall, he had decided that I was 100% to blame for the failure of the marriage and all his problems. That is absurd, and no reasonable therapist or person would actually believe that. (Especially considering Rick is the one who cannot keep a "relationship" for longer than three weeks!) As the victim, who would like an apology for the year of torment (yes, I know that will never happen,) it upsets me that Rick is going to therapy and learning NOT to take responsibility for his cruelty! He left me about two weeks after he started seeing this therapist, and was coming home with outrageous accusations that he'd learned. Telling me that everything was my fault, that he was stupid for allowing me to make him mad, that I had ruined his life, and that his only mistake was marrying me. Never, will this lunatic ever take responsibility for the torment he put me through. At no point was I ever safe from his controlling, demanding abuse. He called me 5-6 times a day from work, and I was berated if I neglected to answer even one call. Sometimes when he was abusing me, I'd lock myself in the bathroom and turn on the bath so could block out his vicious words. But, he'd take the door off the hinges so he could come in and abuse me more. The nerve of him, seriously telling me that I was at fault! It's just outrageous! I am seeking more abuse recovery support, because the human and logical sides of me want him to understand the truth and be sorry for the torture I endured. From what I've learned, many abuse survivors suffer as they wait for justice and hope their abusers will finally apologize. It just makes me so angry that he's lying to his therapist and further denying responsibility for his mental illness and abusive ways!

The abusive personality

2008-11-10T22:11:00.001-08:00

Another good website:
http://usfweb2.usf.edu/advocacy/abusivepersonality.htm

Recognizing the Abusive Personality by Nora Penia
1. The Need to be in Control

"The abuser may try to control many things: thoughts, speech and actions, clothing worn, employment, access to money and how it is spent, choice of friends, use of spare time, what is said and to whom it is said, and so on."

Oh yes. Among many other things, Rick yelled at me for spending my time the way I wanted to. I didn't have a job and I kept the house immaculate. I'm not sure what else he wanted me to do, but he yelled at me for "wasting time." He didn't want me to have a job, and I did the "chores" he required... why shouldn't I do what I wanted afterwards? Once, when I had some extra money of my own, I paid a little extra on my student loan and he yelled at me. Apparently, he'd wanted me to put it towards a different bill.

2. A Critical Nature

"An abuser may be very critical - of the target's appearance, taste in clothes, music, friends and family, anything the target is interested in. Often, though, this criticism is disguised as loving concern. The abuser will justify the criticism by explaining that it is for the victim's own good and is done out of love"

"Often, early in a relationship, the criticism will be very slight, until the abuser feels a commitment to the relationship has been made on the part of the target"

YES! He constantly picked at every little thing and got mad if my opinions didn't match his. It was lighter, but annoying at first, but exploded when we were married. My hair was too short, my clothes not sexy enough, I didn't like every bit of music he liked, etc.

3. A Need to Shut Out the World

"Many abusers try to cut the target off from friends and family. The abuser may contrive to move the target to another city or state, to limit contact."

I wasn't allowed to work, and was stuck in California (with no transportation for the majority of the time.) Classic isolation!

5. A Jealous and Possessive Nature

"At the same time, the abuser may be very reluctant to share personal possessions with the target. Everything in a relationship with an abuser is one-way- the abuser's way."

Rick didn't care enough to be jealous for me. He was more jealous of his ex-girlfriend's husband than anyone I might talk to, but I included part of the quote that rings very true! Rick didn't even want to share his closet, clothes hamper or chair with me.

6. A Deep Internal Rage

"The abuser often carries a volatile rage inside and it will flare up unexpectedly, in reaction to minor irritations. Many targets of abuse describe arguments with their abuser about "stupid" things. "

Oh yeah. Like the time I was berated for hours after noting that a woman wearing a heavy winter coat on a 110 degree day seemed a little odd. It was just an amused, conversation making observation, but Rick went crazy saying I was cruel to the woman.

7. An Unbelievable Charm

"Frequently, abusers have charming and likable personalities. "

Well, until you live with him!

8. A Cruel Tongue

"Many times, an early indication of abuse is the use of verbal language designed to make the target feel small, ugly, worthless or stupid."

Yes. Rick would not stop with the cruelty and name calling until I was beat lower than dirt.

9. A tendency to blame others.

"If they get mad - it's someone else's fault. If they hit someone, it's their fault. Abusers are so good at this that the victim often comes to believe it is true. Then the victim feels guilty."

Yep. This is true.

10. Cycles of Fighting and Making-up

This says it all.

11. Behavior That Creates A Sense of Confusion in the Target

"Surprisingly, abusers do not seem to realize that the things they do to hold the target close, pushes the target away. Over time, the target begins to carry a feeling of sadness within, and because of the abuser's attacks, feels that somehow the fault lies within, not the abuser, but the target. Along with the sadness, many targets describe feeling very confused about the relationship, what should be done and the causes of the problems."

Yes. Just like Hitler's propaganda started to seem "true" after repetition, so do abusive comments. After a while, you start to doubt yourself, your reality and the fact that the comments seem unreasonable and cruel.

12. Physical Contact
It should be understood that any physical action such as "playful" slapping, pinching, pushing, shoving, tripping, etc. can be a HUGE warning sign. There is nothing funny about causing discomfort, fear or injury, even in the "name" of fun. Watch out for any person who uses such tactics.

Hmmm.... like the time Rick "accidentally" slapped me under the eye and left a painful gouge and bruise?

Wanted for spousal abuse

2008-11-10T22:10:00.002-08:00

I'd love to hang this at the post office!

WANTED!
For domestic violence- verbal and emotional abuse!
Unreasonable behavior and cruelty to spouse!

Rick Gallego
born 10-03-1956
residing in Lancaster, CA

5'8" (claims 5'9") weight around 150-160 lbs
hair- dyed dark brown. medium length, eyes- dark brown
wears contacts and pretentious sunglasses, occasionally prescription glasses
drives like a maniac in a silver Prius
often spotted with a flighty, homeless, big mouth alcoholic musician and other unsavory types

Guilty of:
extreme verbal cruelty, nagging, berating, non-stop criticism, complaints, name-calling, phone stalking, being impossible to please, demanding, smacking, shoving, pushing, obscenties, blackmailing, threatening, abandoning, controlling, isolating, denying, blaming, cheating, obsessing about ex-girlfriends (and little girls, yuck!) adultery, coercing others to join the abuse, belittling, gaslighting, mocking, yelling, spreading disease, lying, womanizing, intimidating, destroying, refusing, manipulating, degrading, inconsideration, scaring, scarring, bribing, raping, multiple personalities, pouting, whining, ignoring, crazymaking, tormenting, tricking... and more.

If seen: RUN AWAY from this crazed womanizer who demands unearthly perfection and uses a second, crazy personality with women. He is acting. He cannot hold a relationship because no one will over match up with his wacky OCD, fairy tale standards. No matter how hard you try, he will find any tiny little way to criticize you and berate you until you wish you could die to escape the harassment! He creates his personality by leeching on to the nearest person, so beware! He will stop at nothing to degrade you and your personality so much that you will be angry enough to create wanted posters for blogs!

The abusive hell I endured

2008-11-10T22:10:00.001-08:00

I am definitely in the angry stage. Rick treated me horrifically and had the nerve to send me an e-mail telling me it was completely my fault. He is sick, cruel and delusional. This letter for him really describes what I am feeling at this moment:

Rick "closet abuser" Gallego,

http://abuse101.com/codependency.html

It talks about how crazy codependents use "gifts" to manipulate and try to control people. It also talks about how attempting to dominate, change and control people destroys lives. You certainly have a sickness for trying to control and change people who have nothing wrong with them.

"He then becomes very controlling and if the other person fights this control, refuses to change, or remains adamant in their own beliefs the codependent will attempt to control and manipulate them even more - all the while claiming that the other one is the controlling one. He will use force, threats, coercion, advice giving, helplessness, guilt, insulting, shame, remove assets, neediness, selfishness, denial, manipulation, or domination - anything he can in his attempt to gain control over another."

How DARE you blame me for your mental illness! You controlled, dominated, berated and attacked me for over a year, and you have the NERVE to say I deserved that severe emotional and verbal abuse? The only thing I ever did was be myself. I wanted to have rights and opinions but in your crazy, backwards world, you thought I should obey you. Your sickness revealed itself very early. I'll never forget the abuse I endured because I didn't thank you "enough" for the Steely Dan show. That was psychotic, and no normal human acts like that. I'd already thanked you twice and bought you a card. How much more does it take to please you?!? And you were still yelling at me for it nearly two years later! Decent people do things to be nice, not to manipulate someone into doing something in return. You are IMPOSSIBLE to please because you are unreasonably demanding. You are sick and psychotic. I am learning about jerks like you in my domestic abuse support group. There was never anything wrong with me other than the fact that I naively got involved with a controlling, dominating, demanding, perfectionist abuser. YOU ARE AN ABUSER! You made my life hell with your sick demands. What kind of psycho tells his wife she shouldn't have opinions? What kind of asshole tells his wife she isn't family but then claims that his brother-in-law's sister is? You are crazy and deranged and your ridiculous comments like that are OUTRAGEOUS. What kind of cretin allows his loser friend to join in abusing his wife? What kind of idiot tells his wife not to work then yells at her for not contributing? You are NUTS and impossible to please. No matter what I did, it wasn't the right thing or good enough. I could clean your bathroom until it shone, but you'd yell that I didn't clean something else well enough. Then you'd belittle the work I did trying to make your sorry ass happy. No wonder every woman dumped you right away. You are dominating, controlling and ABUSIVE. Not to mention CRUEL. Doing things and buying things for people means nothing if you think that makes up for abuse. I can't believe the HELL you put me through with your outrageous demands and unrealistic expectations. Then you have the NERVE to say you are putting up boundaries? What about my boundaries when I locked myself in the bathroom to stop you from abusing me? You took the door off the hinges so you could abuse me MORE! You are SICK! How dare you abuse me for over a year, then cry that I deserved it. NO human deserves what you put me through. You terrorized me and tried to beat me into submission. I was scared when you came home everyday because if I didn't have my chores done, you'd abuse me. If I wasn't waiting at the door to worship you, you'd abuse me. You demanded non-stop attention then whined, pouted and picked fights if I didn't coddle you all the time. And you had the NERVE to seriously abuse me then claim that everything was my fault! PSYCHOTIC. You bet I'm angry. All victims of abuse become angry. I put up with it far too long. You kept telling me I was worthless and you almost had me convinced with your sick brainwashing and your manipulative "I do everything for you/ I'm a great guy" "I hate you worthless bitch" behavior. You are sick and deluded and excusing yourself from taking responsibility for your CRUEL and VICIOUS behavior.

You better get real with yourself in therapy buddy and let your therapist know that you are a SEVERE emotional, verbal and sexual abuser! Believe me, it will go on record because YOU WILL NEVER ABUSE ME OR ANYONE ELSE EVER AGAIN.

Crazy one liners from a crazy abuser

2008-11-10T22:09:00.004-08:00

Seriously, if it wasn't such an ugly situation, I could write a dark comedy book about life with Rick "Crazy" Gallego!

Here are some of his lines that dropped my jaw and have the same effect on others (with my comments in parentheses):

You should be cheerful 95% of the time because I don't love you when you are depressed. (Gee, no wonder I suffered from depression throughout the marriage!)

I only like you when you are smiling. If you aren't happy, I don't like you. (Glad to see you were with me for better or for worse!)

I thanked (friend) for sending you hate mail. You deserve it. (What kind of crazy man allows his uninformed friends to send his wife drunken hate mail?!?)

I love my family unconditionally. You're just my wife. (You mean the one you purposely chose? The person who slaves for you daily because your wonderful family has been just TOO busy to visit you for the past YEAR!?!?)

You need to change. I don't like you the way you are. (Nice. I really like your version of "love")

You have too many opinions. Why do you have to have an opinion about everything? (Well, I guess because my brain is turned on...)

(On filling out a political quiz:) I don't know what I think... what'd you put? (Ummm.... you are filling out YOUR opinions. Get your own personality, not mine!)

People shouldn't have flaws. Maybe a stutter would be acceptable, but that's it. (What planet is this guy coming from?)

I did (nice thing) because I like doing things for you, but you only said "thank you" once. You should do (nice thing in return) to prove you love me. (Good to know you do things from the heart and not for manipulation!)

You aren't outgoing enough. You embarrassed me in front of all my friends. (Sure thing Mr. Wallflower who knew I was shy ahead of time.)

You should get a tattoo on your back. The porn star I dated had one there and it was sexy. (Yes, thanks for the insult.)

Of course I love you, just not when you are sad or in a bad mood. (Ahh, true love!)

Okay, I relent. All of our problems are 95% your fault instead of 100%. I have made mistakes too... I married you.
----------------------------

Gee, and I thought there were two people in a marriage. I like how his "mistake" that he admits to is still my fault. Never mind that I had to go to therapy for the first time in my life because he berated, criticized, picked at, tormented and harassed me daily (sometimes for HOURS at a time) with no empathy or remorse EVER for his behavior. I talked to at least 4 therapists who told me I was suffering from brainwashing and severe verbal and emotional abuse. The signs were classic as were the consequences. In fact, every single one of them said it sounded like Rick had a mental illness that he was trying to reflect onto me. The word "narcissism" came up many times. Rick isn't really conceited, but I think there is a grain of truth to that because he had no empathy for me when he hurt me or when something unfavorable happened to me. All he thinks of is how it will affect him. He STILL cannot understand that what he did to me was cruel. I'd never experienced that kind of treatment in my life.

Really. These are just the ones that come to my head at the moment, but many more keep rushing back. I may not have been the best wife in the world, but I'm rational enough to know those comments, and pretty much everything else I heard from Rick, were CRAZY things that NO decent man says to his wife or anyone he claims to "love." His version of love was one-sided and completely selfish. Sure, he did a lot for me, but everything he did was for the purpose of gaining praise or other actions from me. When you do things for that reason, the recipient catches on, and it becomes a burden. I would have been very happy if he STOPPED doing things for me with manipulation in mind, accepted me for myself and honoured his marriage vows instead.

Ten signs of relationship abuse

2008-11-10T22:09:00.003-08:00

I have spent many hours trying to understand the abuse I endured and why it happened. There are many abuse websites that describe it so well. This one has some good points that I can completely relate to:

http://www.abusivelove.com/AbusiveLove_3_1.htm

Here are the ones that jump out:

"You cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong, but you cannot put your finger on it."

Yes. Even when Rick and I did something fun, it felt empty, like he wasn't really there. I felt like I had to have extra fun, to make things fun for him because he always seemed bored... even at Disneyland!

"You have a feeling of being trapped, of frustration, of being locked into something
that you are not happy with"

" You have a feeling of being distorted or twisted.
You have a sense that the person you really are is being changed and twisted by the relationship into someone else."

Not only that, but Rick was telling me things about myself that I knew were not true.

"You have a feeling of being drained, tired and exhausted.
You have to do most of the work, either physically or emotionally, much of which may be
avoiding potential blow-ups with the abuser."

That explains why I was sleeping 10-12 hours a night with exhaustion!

"You have a feeling that your needs are not being met -- that you are working hard to satisfy someone else, but things you want are not being addressed."

Yes, I was constantly on guard to keep him happy, but no one cared about my needs.

"You feel incomplete around that person.
You cannot express your full range of emotions or you would be afraid or embarrassed to
express these emotions around that person. You might be afraid that he/she would make fun
of you or criticize you or tell you to act differently. At the same time you do not have
a problem showing these different sides of your personality to friends and
colleagues."

Absolutely! And being home in Ohio, I find that people like me! The innocent things I couldn't say around Rick, I can say here. People even tell me I am nice and funny, which I'd always heard before the year of terror with Rick.

"Your friends like you, support you and tell you that you are a good
person but the other person in your life tells you that you are worthless, insensitive, controlling and misguided.
You can talk openly with others and feel at ease. When you get home, however, you feel nervous,
guarded and ill at ease."

Yes. I could not be myself at all. He kept telling me I was worthless and horrible.

"You feel helplessness because you cannot respond to the other person's attacks on you.
While you would like to respond, the other person has convinced you that it is pointless because he/she is always right or is too sensitive and will crumble (yes, this really really happens), that he/she has a right to attack you but you do not have a right to attack him/her, or that he/she is superior to you and you are inferior -- and the list goes on and on."

"The other person avoids true communication.
When you try to have an honest conversation, he/she will not answer your questions, distort things that have happened in the past, lie, leave sentences half finished hoping that you will complete them (statements like "oh, you know..."). He/she may become quite angry when you try to get to the bottom of a problem by insisting on a thorough discussion. At this point he/she may accuse you of being abusive, of pushing too hard or of being controlling."

Whenever I tried to sit Rick down for a quiet discussion about the abuses I was feeling, he accused me of causing trouble and refused to talk. It was so nuts.

Yeah, that's crazy!

2008-11-10T22:09:00.001-08:00

I haven't even begun to post about the most serious abuse that occurred in my marriage, but here's an example of the wacky behavior I had to put up with.

On one occasion, I told Rick I wasn't a fan of Lynyrd Skynyrd. He became angry because he likes them and I don't. Gee, just because he likes them doesn't mean I have to... I thought that seemed unreasonable. It also happened with Alice Cooper. I'm not an Alice Cooper fan. Big deal, well, yes to Rick... Again with the expectations. He was so concentrated on the idea that I should be his ideal, that any bit of my own personality that got in the way was a problem . He became angry on several other occasions because I didn't have the exact same taste. Come on, he found a 27-29 (depending on the time) year old female who likes pretty much the same music as 45-60 year old males. That's pretty unusual, and he will never again find anyone even close.

Rick had a much larger music collection- the advantage of time and extra money- so he played me a lot of music I wasn't very familiar with. At one point, I mentioned that of all the artists he'd exposed me to, one in particular stood out the most because I really liked his music. Rick became angry, yelling "that's all? you didn't like the rest?" No. I liked a lot of it, I just mentioned that one was my favorite. It seemed like such a silly thing to get angry about.

Yet another time, I commented that I wasn't crazy about the newest Hall and Oates album. Rick became angry and yelled at me, saying "I thought you liked them? Why would you dis someone you like?" Good grief! I like a lot of their music, that doesn't mean I have to worship every song! Again, it seemed pretty unreasonable that he would get so agitated over my having a different opinion. It's not like I recommended burning every copy of the album and imprisoning the artists because I disliked some of the songs.

Crazy. Just crazy. After a few months of these types of incidents occurring every day, I started to wonder if something was wrong with me because it felt like I was in some kind of twilight zone episode where Rick said and did ridiculous things and blamed me. But, after talking to therapists and NORMAL people, just telling the story aloud reminds me that, no, I wasn't the one who was crazy.

Every day, I hug myself emotionally because I don't have to go through that anymore!

In what world is your wife not family?

2008-11-10T22:08:00.002-08:00

One of the last arguments that Rick and I had involved an incident with his extended "family." I was introduced to his brother-in-law's sister who Rick barely knew. She shook my hand and said "oh I better go wash my hands."
Yes, you read correctly.
I was dumbfounded that someone could be so rude. She was one of those new money, conceited, high maintenance women with the make-up, perfect hair, etc. and I was just dressed like a normal person. (We were at the wake for Rick's mother.) I am neat and clean, but I certainly don't dress for a wake like I am going to a high society party. After she was gone, I turned to Rick in shock and said, "I can't believe that woman just said that." Seriously, what kind of person says that? Of course I was shocked that someone would be so outright RUDE.

Instead of seeing my point, Rick got mad at me for disrespecting his "family." Yes, that is outrageous. Someone was pointedly rude to his wife, right in front of him, but he sides with the offender. This is just not sane, reasonable or normal. I heard about it for days... so-and-so is family, of course she wasn't rude, I was rude for being offended. Okay, this is just not earth logic! Instead of respecting me and wanting others to treat me like a fellow human, Rick turned on me for being RIGHTLY offended. He kept defending this woman that he barely knew and only exchanged five words with as "family" and more important in his life than me. This was his brother-in-law's sister that he may have met once or twice before. I was his wife that he lived with daily, who he vowed to honour and cherish. Nice. Call me crazy (this is sarcasm of course) but I could swear that a wife is closer family than a non-related sister of a brother-in-law. He kept telling me that I wasn't family and was less important because I wasn't blood. Yet, somehow, in his crazy mind, your brother-in-law's sister is a closer relation.
Yes, Rick logic makes no sense. He became very angry over these types of situations. Finally, I put my foot down and said "Rick, you need to respect me like you do your family (and imagined "family"!) If you wouldn't treat your sister in a certain way, and you wouldn't stand for someone else treating her that way, you shouldn't treat me or allow me to be treated in that manner either."

Apparently, respecting his wife caused a problem for him, because he left just days later. THANK GOD! Yes, it put me through hell when he kicked me out with nowhere to live, etc. But THANK GOD I am out of that crazy, crazy, abusive situation.

Website about dating jerks

2008-11-10T22:08:00.001-08:00

I have found yet another site that really explains what happened to me. Some of what it says matches up with what I'd already figured out, but it's nice to read confirmation and to know I'm not the only person who ever fell for it.

http://www.relationshipheadquarters.com/badboys.htm

"Perhaps, she wondered, something she said or did had caused her boyfriend to become suddenly disenchanted with her. In fact, she often spent hours thinking and thinking about what she had done to bring on this bad behavior."

I had this problem. Rick would wait on me hand and foot, then turn around and tell me how horrible I was. At first I thought that if such a great guy was hating me, it must be my fault. But, after a lot of therapy and self examination, I realized that no one has ever treated me like that other than Rick, so obviously, the problem must be him and not me.

The article talks about why women feel so "in love" with someone, and feel like they should stick around despite abusive behavior.

"Don't confuse intense feelings with genuine ones. Any man can be charming, wonderful and intoxicating in the moment because at that particular moment, they really do feel that way toward you. Those that are insecure won't be able to maintain their passion because it is based solely on getting what they want. Once they get the least bit bored or irritated, their nasty disposition will surface."

Oh, yes. Rick told me he only loved me when I was in a good mood, but not if I was sad or had a bad day. He had no empathy for me when I needed it. He only liked me if I was making him happy. His comments seemed so unreasonable to me- what decent man tells his wife that he only loves her at certain times? That seems pretty messed up to me!

"Men that are jerks are self centered and only interested in a woman who is exciting. As long as you make them feel excited, they will be enchanted by you. The moment you dare to reveal any doubts, feelings or less than perfect characteristics, they will blame you for ruining a "perfect relationship.

In other words, jerks can't stand a real complete woman. Their (sic) too interested in having someone who is always happy, upbeat and rarely has a down day.
What they want is a fantasy, a perpetual girlfriend who knows better than to expect too much from them. They aren't interested in growing, only in having fun."

EXACTLY! I'd ask Rick what he wanted from a relationship, and he said "fun." I thought that seemed weird, because you don't build a marriage on "fun." Plus, Rick knew that I was very shy before we met, but was very angry about it after we met. Pretty soon after I moved to LA, he told me I was too shy and embarrassed him in front of his friends because I wasn't a social butterfly. He then asked me if I was going to embarrass him in front of his family as well. Later, he told me I was too uptight and that I should start getting drunk so I'd be more fun. He told me that I should be happy and cheerful at least 95% of the time. Seriously. A lot of his past girlfriends had been happy-go-lucky, childish, party girls who couldn't act their age, but even they couldn't have possibly been cheerful and jumping for joy 95% of the time (which must be why they are gone!) I couldn't believe this crazy comment! He did blame me for ruining the "perfect" love because I couldn't meet those ridiculous expectations. The things he said to me and expected were completely outrageous! I was in a long term relationship for eight years, that wasn't right for other reasons, but certainly I am realistic enough to know that NO ONE goes around bubbling over with joy 24/7. I felt like I was living in some kind of crazy zone when Rick told me these things, because they defied logic, experience and common sense. Now I know that the verbal abuse had nothing to do with me, and more to do with his unrealistic expectations. I just made a very bad choice in marrying him, but other people have and do enjoy my company, so I can't take Rick's craziness to heart. I am frustrated with him, but how can I be completely angry with someone who so far from reality? It's sad really.

The anger stage

2008-11-10T22:07:00.002-08:00

Divorcing (and all grieving) people go through various stages. I am in acceptance, and the anger is off and on. Today, it is on. I know Rick did me a HUGE favor by getting the strength up to stop the torment of the marriage, but I'm disgusted now that his true colors are coming out. I went through hell in that "marriage" and I kept quiet about it unless I was talking to the therapist. I'd never needed therapy in my life, but the therapist became my lifeline in the height of the abuse. Even she didn't hear the worst of it because I was too embarrassed to admit that it was that bad and I hadn't left yet. Since I've come back to Ohio and started confiding in old friends and relatives as well as new friends, the horror of it all is really hitting me. There wasn't much in the way of physical abuse (although there was a little,) but the verbal abuse was severe. I can't believe that jerk had the NERVE to consistently treat me like that. When I tell people how restricted I was, the things that made him angry and the crazy things he said, they are amazed that anyone could be that bad. When I say it aloud, I realize how very bad it was, and I have to laugh at the absurdity of it.

So why am I mad today? After over a year of abusing me daily, yelling at me for hours, saying cruel and horrific things, Rick refuses to have an e-mail conversation with me regarding a settlement. We both had agreed to avoid court, and I was willing to take significantly less alimony to avoid the hassle and spending. Now, he is refusing to respond and has blocked his e-mail saying his new boundaries forbid him from talking to me. WHAT? I took his abuse for over a year and he can't respond to making an alimony deal? I endured domestic violence (and YES, all therapists will tell you that verbal abuse is domestic violence,) yet he says I'm too mean when I ask for a minimal amount of alimony. Seriously, he moved me across the country under false pretenses, then suddenly decided he was done with me and left the house. At that point, my attorney told me that Rick was obligated to keep paying the bills since we were married, but Rick threatened to turn everything off and stop paying the house payment. He basically bullied me into leaving even though he knew I couldn't afford to. He knew I would have no source of income, yet he just forced me out of the house with no place to leave, work, etc. Hell yeah, I'm going to ask for alimony! You don't just ditch your wife, where she is 2500 miles from home and leave her with no way to live! I was severely abused for over a year. Yet Rick has decided I am out of line and refuses to come to a compromise as if I'm some kind of Heather Mills. I am sick of this jerk! He abuses and harasses me to the point of anger, then turns and says I am too angry to deal with. Yeah, surprisingly, humans do get angry when you torment them daily!

The abuser has supporters but I have the truth

2008-11-10T22:07:00.001-08:00

I go back and forth on my blogs. Sometimes, I post about the abuse I endured because I have to speak out about what happened. Then, I get hateful messages from Rick or his friends bullying me into taking my blogs down. Then, I get pissed off and decide to forget those idiots, they weren't in the marriage experiencing the abuse, they have NO idea what it is like living with Rick. I don't care if he is easy going with his drinking buddies that he rarely sees. I, as a wife and the person who lived with him the longest, went through hell! It was pretty easy to see why nearly all of his girlfriends dumped him in less than a month. Seriously, if you date over 50-60 people who rapidly decide they don't want to be with you, something is wrong! Here is a small sample of the CRAZY things that Rick said or did or got angry about. I think any normal person would agree that something is seriously off. I couldn't believe I was going through it!

For Rick's last birthday, I had mail ordered him some pretty cool presents that I knew he'd like. I was going to make him a matching card and wrap everything up, but just before his birthday, I got sick. The night before his birthday, I was in bed, miserable, and worrying about trying to make everything perfect. He said not to worry about it. It wasn't a big deal, he didn't care about birthdays, we'd just wait until that Friday to celebrate when I was better. I resisted and said, "no" we really needed to celebrate his birthday on the day. Finally, I gave in. I was pretty miserable with a runny nose and the idea of wrapping presents while wiping my nose every two seconds was gross. So, in the next few days, I was better. I carefully wrapped his presents in paper to match the gifts, made each tag specially to match the theme, and made everything really nice. We had a nice little evening and he liked all the gifts, etc. A week later, he was pouting (pretty much a daily thing for Rick,) so I tried to figure out what was going on. Finally, it came out that he was mad because we'd celebrated his birthday on the wrong day! Remember, this was HIS idea and he'd insisted! Nobody else got him anything, and most of his "friends" didn't even remember. Yet, he was angry because I'd gone with HIS idea to celebrate it the Friday after! This was his 51st birthday and he was pouting a week later. I couldn't believe the craziness! After that, he brought it up regularly whenever he was mad at me. It really was ridiculous! I tried to reason with him that he couldn't get mad at me over HIS decision, but it never sunk in.

crazy controlling behavior from my abuser

2008-11-10T22:06:00.004-08:00

I had to change a lot of my habits to keep the peace with Rick.

Here are some things I was yelled at for, and had to change:

The way I did dishes. Seriously. In my family, we fill the sink with soap and water and swish the dishes around in the water while we clean them with a wash cloth. According to Rick, that was not acceptable. I had to pour soap on the wash cloth and rub it directly on the dish without filling the sink with water. Whatever. I went along with it.

Making the bed. I've never made my bed regularly. I'm just going to get back in it, and no one sees it anyway. Pretty much everyone I know is like this. Maybe it's an Ohio thing. My first week in CA, Rick yelled at me for not making the bed. Okay, lesson learned. It's an opinion, it doesn't really matter, but Rick's world will end if the bed is not made. Got it. New daily chore.

My sleeping schedule. I am a night owl, so I go to bed late and get up around 11. Rick got up around 5:30-6 and thought I should do the same so we'd be on the same schedule. I compromised and got up at 9, but he was still mad that I ate and went to bed at slightly different times.
In fact, here is one reoccurring fight we had: Rick would get home at 7:30 PM hungry. I would wait until 9 or so to eat because my lunch was later than his. He'd want me to eat when he was hungry, but I'd say no because I wasn't hungry. I'd tell him to go ahead and eat though, I didn't mind. He'd get mad and decide to wait. I'd eat when I was hungry and he'd wait until I did. Then, after making his own decision to do that, he'd get mad and blame me for causing him to eat late! I kept saying "Rick, I want you to eat whenever YOU want. I didn't force you to wait, I tried to encourage you to eat when you got home." It just seemed so crazy that he'd make HIS decision then get mad at me for it. Then, I'd stay up later after eating. I have acid reflux, so I can't lay down right away after I eat. He'd be tired and want to go to bed, so I'd encourage him to go to bed. No. He wanted to stay up with me. Whatever. He's over 50, I can't force him to go to sleep. So, he'd stay up until I went to bed, then get mad at me for keeping him up! He'd be tired the next day and blame me for HIS choice. He wanted me to get up, eat and go to bed when he did, but that isn't my natural schedule. Plus, I didn't have a job. Why get up at 5:30? He decided I was being lazy, I thought I was silly for me to get up early if I didn't have a job or reason to be anywhere. My schedule of getting up at 9 seemed early enough for an unemployed person!

I didn't have a lot to do, and I am neat and clean person, so I kept the house pretty immaculate. In fact, I learned that if the dishes and kitty litter box weren't clean and the bed made when Rick got home, I was in for a fight. In fact, if I got caught up in something else, and forgot to do one of those things, I would get scared when I heard the garage door open and Rick coming in the door. I'd always run to get the offending chore done as fast as I could. It's pretty bad when your husband coming home from work fills you with fear!

Speaking of Rick's coming home... I HAD to be waiting at the door. Preferably with newly minty breath, brushed hair and cute outfit. On the rare occasion when I wasn't waiting at the door, Rick would pout, sulk and become angry. Then he'd pick a fight asking me if I was upset about something. No matter how many times I insisted I was fine, he'd pick and pick until I wasn't fine. He'd tell me I must not love him if I wasn't waiting at the door. It was scary and pathetic.

These are just the crazy 50's housewife expectations. It doesn't even begin to cover the torment and emotional abuse that quickly followed. But, these controlling things should have been a huge red flag. Naively, I kept thinking it was because Rick hadn't lived with anyone for a while. Surely, I thought, he will get better once he's used to living with someone. Not true....

When the abuser leaves you it's the final slap in the face

2008-11-10T22:06:00.003-08:00

A lot of women who are abused have a hard time leaving. The average woman takes seven tries, and I was far above average. In the end, my abuse left me, then kicked me out of our home.

Here is a blog I wrote soon after. I hadn't yet escaped the brainwashing long enough to fully understand that I was very LUCKY that he kicked me out:

I’ve had quite a few people and beloved pets die in my life. It’s painful. But, for the most part, all of the people who have died were sick and elderly. I hope it doesn’t seem heartless when I say that being rejected by my spouse feels a million times worse for me. My grandparents loved me, they grew old and they died. My husband rejected me, ceased to love me, and will go off to love someone else more than he was ever capable of loving me. It is excruciating to be rejected.

I’ve blogged for months about the verbal abuse I have endured in this marriage. I’ve tried a dozen times to leave. I know that the pain of constant criticism and disappointment of this marriage is destroying me and leaving me depressed and hysterical. I’ve felt like I’m having a nervous breakdown, I’ve felt suicidal, I’ve felt like I wanted to lay down and die, I’ve felt worthless, I’ve felt like I’m going to break because I can’t take anymore. It has been the most traumatic year of my life, and I can hardly remember what I was like before I met Rick when I felt alive and confident. Still, I didn’t have the strength to leave. I felt like I owed it to myself to try. I gave Rick my heart and my body. I left my life in Ohio. I felt desperate to make this relationship work because of all I’ve invested. Even when it was clear it would never work, I tried to force it to work, pray it into working, change myself to make it work, pray for Rick to change to make it work, anything to tell myself it wasn’t all for nothing. Every time Rick told me that his ex girlfriends were better at love, money, sex, having fun, whatever, I died some more inside and felt like I’d wasted myself on this man who couldn’t appreciate me for ME. It was at that point that I started feeling like a failure because nothing I did pleased him. It was at that point that my self-esteem began it’s spiral into the garbage can. But, no. I’d uprooted my life on a hunch that this was the "one." I couldn’t give up that expectation and hunch. I kept clinging to the idea that our initial strong connection was a sign. Guess what? It wasn’t.

Because I wasn’t strong enough to leave, Rick did. He told me he didn’t love me. He told me he wasn’t sure he ever did. He told me he’d loved his ex-girlfriend more than me and had been happier with her. He left me coldly and didn’t console me as my heart was wrenched out and I sobbed with more pain than I thought was possible. Cold, with no sign of love or humanity. He’s disappeared for over a week and apparently disconnected his cell phone. I’m here in a strange town, alienated from my family, dying inside, and the one person who I still had in my life has cut me off without a care. As if it matters, I’m embarrassed that people might be hating me for Rick’s sake without ever knowing my side of the story. Apparently this is how divorce feels. I’ve been reading, reading, reading as I always do, and it seems like every divorcee or "leavee" goes through this intense pain. We aren’t separated by death, we are rejected by the living.

A small number of abuse victims are rejected by their abusers. In my case, my abuser had been quickly dumped by dozens and dozens of ex girlfriends. He knew I was trying hard to leave, and he got rid of me before I could be the next woman to dump him.

I've read dozens of abuse books, and I end up underlining half the book and exclaiming aloud about how much it sounds exactly like my life with my abuser. One of the best known books is "Why Does He Do That" by Lundy Bancroft. I could quote huge portions of his book that everyone needs to read, but honestly, I'd be typing for weeks! So instead, I'll add some short quotes that apply to this particular blog:

"Since he has to see himself as the more powerful one, he may declare that he broke things off while you 'begged' him for another chance and that you 'promised to change." These kinds of aftershocks of abusive behavior can be painful."

"Women in this position can experience the abuser's departure as one final slap in the face following a long line of previous ones... that leaves her feeling even more humiliated and unlovable."

"... his exit was just one more way she was walked on."

It's hard to escape abuse

2008-11-10T22:06:00.001-08:00

Most of us who were abused loved our abusers at one point, or at least got used to them. It's hard to face being alone again. Plus, many people feel that their religions require them to stay. I had many reasons I stayed, many of the monetary since I had nothing. When my abuser was trying to kick me out of our home, I was so afraid to start over, that I wanted him to come back. Abuse seemed better than poverty and loneliness. One day, I came to my senses and wrote:

And I wonder, why would God or I want to save this marriage? Rick shows a selfish lack of interest in my feelings and the pain he causes me.
1. He criticizes me and tells me what I should do/be, then says it isn’t criticism, it’s the truth for my own good.
2. He gets angry over innocent comments and never ceases to bring them up months later.
3. He told me that he’d never love me unconditionally or as much as he does his family because I’m "just" a wife and not blood.
4. When I asked him to listen to my thoughts on things he was doing to hurt me, he said I was talking "bullsh-t," and that his hurtful comments weren’t hurtful, they were just true and I was being sensitive.
5. He tells me I make him miserable, and that I’m the only person to ever do so.
6. He tells me my habits are wrong, when really it is a case of opinions not wrong or right.
7. He told me I was no fun because I was too serious and that maybe I should try getting drunk. Considering I come from a long line of alcholics on my dad’s side, and therefore do not want to get drunk, that was offensive!
8. He belittled me for enjoying Laura Ingalls Wilder books. (I’ve got news for him, there are many, many adults who savor these happy books and some who do graduate level research about her life!)
9. When I started getting stressed out and angry about the constant criticism that was wearing me down, he tried to convince me that I had a mental illness. When several therapists assured me that was not the case, I was simply a victim of intense verbal and emotional abuse as well as brainwashing, he became angry.
10. I shared secrets of my childhood with him in confidence and he used them against me and told his friends.
11. He has told his friends about all of my flaws for months without ever realizing his own. He gave his friends to join in the disrespect and send me hate mail.
12. He belittles the work I do around the house (even though I have yet to see him clean,) and belittles my hobbies and interests calling me lazy.
13. My first Thanksgiving here, I was sad and homesick, but he was totally heartless and mad at me because I wasn’t dancing for joy to spend the holiday with his family that I barely knew.

I could go on, but it is just things like these that consistently show the lack of love and respect for me.

I have tried to leave him so many times for my own good, so why I am I devastated when he finally left me? I read a while back that women have a need to see justice. I am making myself sick wondering when he’s going to wake up and admit his half of the marriage failure.

Angry email never sent to the abuser

2008-11-10T22:05:00.000-08:00

You know Rick,

I must be a real idiot to still want to honor my marriage vows. I am sick of hearing you claim that I am the cause of all your problems, how you were right to criticize me, how you want to escape me, etc. Get real buddy! It’s not all about you, even though you live in your sheltered little world where you never had any empathy for me and all you can think about is yourself.

A lot of times you were very sweet and considerate. I will miss the "Rick" I fell in love with who brought me a stuffed skunk the first time we met. I will miss the "Rick" in the e-mail and the one I talked on the phone with. I will miss the "Rick" who indulged my love for Pallas Cats and liked to make me happy. I will miss the "Rick" who looked forward to seeing me and greeted me.
But, the Rick I ended up with most of the time was not the great guy I thought he could be. You didn’t like me unless I was happy and making you happy. If I wasn’t happy, or if I had a bad day, you had no use for me. You were a controlling jerk who tried to convert me to your opinions with the insistence that they were true. Many times you treated me like shit. You made me feel like shit, and you REFUSE to admit it. You read the love book and yelled at me for not reading the new one, but you never got it yourself. You never, NEVER accepted and cherished me warts and all. You picked away at the little things until I was insecure, and you were so bad last summer that you drove me to be suicidal. Now, you irrationally claim that my problems ended the marriage as if you were totally innocent. You are cold and cruel and refuse to admit that we are married or that it ever meant anything. You even had the nerve to spend an hour talking to my mom telling her your BS. Someone needs to call you on it. You CANNOT berate, correct, fault find, criticize, reject and fail to cherish your wife and then blame her for the failure of the marriage. The man I fell in love with no longer exists. All that is left is a selfish man in his body. I will grieve and mourn for the loss of my marriage to the Rick I love, but the one that’s still around is poisonous to my self-esteem.

Guess what? I get what I did wrong. I will get better. But, as of now, there’s no hope for you because you will not tell the truth about yourself and why NO woman other than me would ever stay with you. You beat me down last summer and convinced me I was worthless. You beat me down some more until I wanted to kill myself. THEN when I was in the emergency room so I wouldn’t kill myself, you STILL continued to list my faults and tell me how horrible I was until I wasn’t sure I could survive another moment. What kind of soulless creep are you? After all that, you tried to convince me that those feelings were because I had a mental illness. Lucky for me, the nurses and psychiatrists knew better. They saw that I was a normal person being severely traumatized and strongly urged me to go seek domestic violence counseling because they recognized all the symptoms and hallmarks of an abused woman. But I’ve learned I am not the sole cause of your problems. You are responsible for your problems. I learned in therapy that I was acceptable as I was, and that no man who loved me would have tried to convince me otherwise. That made you mad. When I no longer took the blame, you got even more angry, and when I tried to voice my rights you called my feelings "bullshit" and told me I was causing trouble.

Here, too long later, I am STILL willing to accept you because I know that your behavior is caused by inner pain very similar to that you’ve caused me. I know that your cruelty and anger toward me is due to your insecurity and emptiness. Right now I am venting, but I still see that you are a hurt person, and I am willing to put up with that until you feel loved enough to stop hurting me. Why am I so stupid? I guess I’m not as evil as you kept trying to tell me. All those accusations you directed towards me? Look in the mirror. I admit my faults, I have tried to reach out to you. Not only for the sake of saving the marriage, but because I don’t want you to hurt. But, you... You hide under a rock and insist that everything is my fault and my personality is so horrible that you have to escape. Guess what? NO ONE has ever told me that before. In the past, my friends and boyfriends who loved me loved me for who I was. You only loved me when I was bubbly and cheerful, but you hated me when I was frustrated or thoughtful. REAL love doesn’t act like that. You only liked me for how I could make you feel, then you disliked me when I wasn’t catering to you.

Oddly enough, all the professionals have been telling me to escape the intense verbal and emotional abuse. So, I am darn sick of hearing your whine that everything was my fault and you worked tirelessly to save the marriage until you couldn’t take it anymore and had to leave. Yes, you bought things and did things. You took me places and did chores. BUT as I’ve told you all along. I DON’T want that. All I wanted was a husband who accepted me good and bad. If my self-esteem hadn’t been so shattered, and I hadn’t been isolated here, far away from my home and everyone I’d ever known, I probably would have been strong enough to come to my senses months ago, the first time I left.

The abuser pitted me against his family

2008-11-10T22:04:00.002-08:00

Rick was more interested in being "married" to his family than he was to me. I actually liked his family, but Rick continuously pitted me against them with comments like "I love my family unconditionally, they're blood, they're forever but you are just my wife. I love you conditionally because I may divorce you some time." YIKES! At first I thought it was impressive and sweet that he loved his family so much, but when he started seriously insulting me and raising them on a pedestal, I was horrified. One time I said that his niece and nephews seemed a little spoiled. (A valid observation considering they have more toys and belongings than anyone I've ever seen in my life.) I made this comment in response to the fact that his younger sister devoted her whole life to driving her children around to multiple lessons to indulge their every (changing) whim. We had lived in our house for about a year, and his wonderful, angelic family had never "had the time" to visit him. I thought it was sort of sad that these adults were being ruled by their children, so I made the "they seem a little spoiled" comment. I didn't say anything nasty about anyone or target anyone in particular, just said my opinion. In any normal relationship with a normal person, someone would possible agree or possible just shrug it off. Not Rick. That began an ordeal that lasted well over 7 hours. Rick tore into me with every nasty thing he could possibly say, every offensive comment you can think of, both obscene and cruel. I tried to add some perspective that a general comment about a group of children is entirely different from a loud, cruel rampage denigrating every aspect of my character, but he insisted that my comment was the ultimate crime. That incident was particularly bad, but from then on, whenever Rick got mad at me, he started in about how wonderful and perfect his family was and how he much preferred them to me. I liked them well enough, but personally, I thought they took advantage of him, but that is a longer story. Later, my husband gave his drunken friend permission to send me hate mails. After a while, I told Rick that he needed to take the fierce devotion and respect he applied to his distant family and also apply it to his chosen wife. If my saying some children are spoiled is a crime, then how much worse is it to verbally abuse your wife for hours and hours and then allow your friends to join in?

Promise to the abuser

2008-11-10T22:04:00.001-08:00

I for some reason kept loving my abuser even though he tortured me emotionally. At one time, after we were married, he said that even though he'd promised to love honor and cherish me, he couldn't cherish me because he didn't feel that way about me. I was horrified. That is really not what a good husband says to his wife! I took it hard. (What new wife wouldn't feel like crap when her husband tells her he doesn't cherish her or love her as much as he did his ex girlfriend that he's still in love with?) I was seriously depressed for most of the marriage because he said things like that daily. Oh yes, he'd wait on me hand and foot and buy me things, then he'd turn around and tell me just how little he loved me.

When we were married, he made a list of rules for me to follow. He didn't follow them, but I was supposed to. The list hung on our dining wall and every day, as I ate meals, I stared right at it and lost my appetite. How sick to post a list of rules for your wife?

In late October 2007, he told me he was sick of my asking him to love me and made me print and sign the following "contract":

Dear Rick,

This is to confirm that I will no longer be ruining your life with my insecurity. You do not have to love me, appreciate me or accept me, and I will no longer be upset when you don't. From now on, I will worry about loving myself instead of trying to get you to cherish me the way a wife should be cherished. From now on, I will accept and love myself. I will no longer be disappointed, so I will not react sadly or angrily towards you or be depressed about it. Here is a copy of my new self rules that we discussed on the phone.

At that time, he kept telling me he hated being married to me and I needed to get out of his house. Did I mention that this man tricked me into giving up my entire life and moving 2500 miles to be with him? And once I got there he refused to let me meet people or have a job or drive a car? Yet, when he was tired of me, he made me sign a contract promising not to expect him to love me. To this day, he insists the failure of the marriage is my fault because I wouldn't change to fit his wishes. He is a very sick man.

Letter to an abuser

2008-11-10T22:03:00.000-08:00

In October 2007, just four months after I married my abuser, he pulled one of his more common tricks. He didn't like me if I had differing opinions. If I didn't like the music he liked or the movies he liked, he took it personally. To me, it was just a difference in opinion, but to him, it was a severe problem. One morning, I commented that I wasn't very interested in a particular band. It wasn't a band he liked much, but he became very offended that I didn't like them at all. It was crazy! But, it wasn't the first or last time I was yelled at for having my own insignificant opinion. The day after I was attacked, I sent him the following email. As I mentioned in my first blog, he had stolen my voice. That day, he'd called from work to yell at me, but when I tried to reply, he said I was causing trouble and he hung up on me. Then, he refused to answer his phone for the rest of the day. He had his say, but I was NEVER allowed to reply. Thus, I resorted to emails:

I’ve figured out the problem.

Coming into this relationship, I wanted to be loved and cherished for myself (like I have been in other relationships.) I wanted to be with someone who appreciated my good points enough to deal with my bad habits and accepted me as myself (like other people have.) Instead of love poems or songs of adoration and unconditional love like you gave other people, I got criticism and directives to change. Instead of calling me the love of your life and begging me to stay (like you did with other people,) you told me I was terrorizing you and told me to leave. Then you wondered why I doubted your love and became increasingly insecure and jealous! Who wouldn’t?

Once again yesterday morning, you showed that you don’t accept my opinions or point of view. Obviously the reason you can’t accept me unconditionally and cherish me (like you did other people,) is because our personalities just don’t match up. I deserve to be with someone who really thinks I’m special and respects me for my uniqueness instead of disliking it. Do you think you will ever be capable of that?

I’ve never been so insecure in my life. That is my self-esteem problem, but it is exacerbated by the fact that you just don’t like the things I say, do or believe. I don’t think we are meant to be together. If we were soul mates, we would have connected on more than just one level (music) and you would have treasured me enough to accept the rest. I want to find someone who will really treasure me, because (despite what you had to say,) I am a special person who CURRENTLY deserves to be cherished. Not later, not only when I’m happy and cheerful, but NOW for who I am.

Isn't it a horrible thing when you have to understand that your husband hates you?

Confusing "giving" and control

2008-11-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

From the very start, I realized something was seriously wrong with my abuser. I should have run away immediately. I realized he could never be appreciated enough. He did all kinds of good things for me, so I tried hard to believe he was a good guy. BUT, after doing something nice, I could never thank him enough to avoid being attacked. I'd thank him like you'd thank any normal person. I'd show him that I appreciated what he did and enjoyed it. But, after a while, he start pouting and withdrawing. He was rarely affectionate, but things would get worse. He'd ignore me, he'd literally turn his back on me at bed time. He'd refuse to speak to me. If I tried to hug him or cuddle, he'd stiffen up and push me away. At first I just felt confused. It was pretty clear that he didn't like me! Sometimes this would go on for a few days with my asking what was wrong and getting no real answer. Finally, he'd explode and yell at me telling me I was ungrateful and worthless. At first, it shocked me. I took all the blame and tried harder. But within a few weeks, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, it would never be good enough.

He would become nasty and petty as well. One time, the very first time I flew to Los Angeles to meet him, I'd only known him two days when he pulled that behavior. I was so confused and couldn't figure out why a 49 year old man was pouting. Finally he exploded and I thought everything was okay, until he continued to be petty the next day. At one point, we had been outside in the heat and went into a store to get a drink. He was looking at a drink that had honey in it, and I told him I was allergic to honey so he wouldn't be able to kiss me if he drank it. He completely ignored me, picked up the bottle and opened it and took a big drink. Then he went to the cashier to pay for it. What a nasty way to be hateful without ever saying a word! Again, just three days into the "relationship" I should have left and never come back. I was scheduled to stay just four days for our first meeting and throughout that four days, I saw repeated examples of pouting and petty behavior. He made it clear that he didn't like me and didn't want me to be around any longer. Yet, I kept trying. At the end of four days, he finally decided he liked me and wanted me to extend my visit.

Throughout the next two years, the not being able to thank him enough continued. I tried harder and harder after each blow up. Sometimes I'd cry and ask him to stop doing nice things for me because there was no human way for me to make him feel appreciated. No matter what I did, no matter how much I thanked him, he'd still say it wasn't enough. I tried to explain that he was giving, not out of the goodness of his heart, but out of manipulation to get adulation in return. When someone is only "nice" to you in order to get something in return, then the nice things don't seem so nice. I never did figure out what he wanted. I tried everything. Hugs, kisses, sex, thank yous, cards, chores, gifts, compliments, etc.

At one point, he bought me concert tickets for our wedding gift. I'd been through that before. Fo previous concerts I'd thanked him, bought him thank you gifts, sent thank you emails and cards and more and was still yelled at for being ungrateful. So, I was pretty nervous about the wedding gift. I went all out, determined that I would not fail. I wanted to FINALLY do something that was good enough. So, I thanked him verbally when he gave me the tickets, I sent him an email, I sent him an ecard, I gave him a paper card, I made him dinner, I made him dessert, I thanked him for driving to the show, for paying for parking, for waiting in line, for driving home and more. The next day, I sent a follow up e card and email and more verbal thank yous. SURELY that would FINALLY be enough to prevent his yelling at me. No. The next day he was pouting and being distant. He was like that for days before he finally exploded. The concert was in June 2007, and as of March 2008 (the month he finally kicked me out of our home,) he was still bringing it regularly (along with dozens of other things) and constantly telling me I was ungrateful and didn't deserve anything. It was hell!

People saw all the things he did for me and assumed he was a great guy. He certainly believed it. But, no one understood that all of those "nice" things weren't done from a caring heart. They were done to manipulate and get something in return.

Abusers steal your voice

2008-11-10T08:28:00.001-08:00

In April 2006, I met a very charming man who gave me all kinds of promises about what a great, responsible, moral guy he was. In June, we met in person and he soon displayed the first signs of unusual behavior. By July, I ignored the significant warning signs and moved in with him. That's when the abuse began. In late summer, he did something unspeakable to me, so in September, he proposed to make up for it. He continued to say and do weird things, and I continued to overlook his faults. In April 2007, I married him and the abuse went out of control. He was controlling and demanding before, but the abuse became full blown less than a week after the sham wedding and I realized I was living with a true emotional black hole. There are many, many points I want to make in this blog: how abuse seems "innocent" at first, how it escalates before you realize it, the cycle of abuse, the effects on the victim both emotional and physical, the way an abuser circles from cruel to kind to cruel to kind and how it messes with the victim's head, and so much more. But, first I want to begin with the way my abuser stole my voice.

This man would verbally attack me for tiny, tiny things. He'd say horrible things that no loving husband would say, irrational things that made my jaw drop. Then, he'd insist that his crazy comments were always true and I was always wrong. I was always wrong. No matter how cruel, crazy or harmful he was, no matter if hours of abuse left me crying in a ball, he never ever admitted doing anything wrong. All of relationship experience and reality told me that there was something seriously wrong with his demands, his verbal and emotional abuse, but in the interest of being a good wife, I took it. When he attacked me and called me worthless and lazy for leaving a single dirty dish in the sink, I took it and tried harder the next time. But sometimes, the side of me that wasn't beaten down would understand that HE was wrong. I'd stand up for myself and say "hey, this is crazy. Normal men do not yell at their wives for doing dishes 'wrong,' not making the bed properly or going a quarter inch into your side of the closet." (That is just a small example of the outrageous reasons he used to attack me.) When I did stand up for myself, after hours of taking his verbal abuse, he'd get even angrier. No matter how rational I was, no matter how much I tried to let him know that he was hurting me, he was too inhuman to have empathy. He'd accuse me of trying to cause trouble, then he'd tell me he was leaving if I didn't shut up. If I did persist in standing up for myself, he'd leave and disappear for hours or days. He'd turn his cell phone off so I had no way to contact him. That was one way he stole me voice. He'd have his turn attacking me, but when I wanted to respond, he left and refused to communicate. If he was attacking me from work, he yell at me on the phone, then he'd hang up and refuse to answer his work phone. If he didn't want to know that I had feelings and emotions, he simply refused to listen and refused to let me have a voice. I've talked to many therapists but during and outside of the abusive marriage, who all tell me he is a narcissist. At no point did he ever see me as a human being, I was a living doll to fit his impossible needs and fill his emptiness. I was one of the most recent in a collection of over 60 dolls. Only he could make himself happy, but he blamed me for not making him happy. When he attacked me, he seriously felt that was his right and when I countered with my feelings about what the attacks were doing to me, he said my feelings were "bull sh*t." His own therapists tell him he's codependent because he constantly wanted to "take care" of me, but they couldn't be farther from the truth. He puts on a facade, but his only reason for "taking care" of me was to control me. I wasn't allowed to leave the house or have a job because he said he needed to take care of me. That's not codependent; that's isolating and crazy.

During the abuse, I finally confided to a single person. I was so embarrassed that I'd made such a bad decision and ignored all the warning signs. No one had warning signs bigger than this guy, but I tried to be accepting and ignore them. After I was free from the abuse and brainwashing, I became angry at the horrors of what he did to me, and I started speaking out in my blog. Soon, I was getting hateful messages from his "friends" and fans (he's a small time musician) telling me that I must be lying because he seemed so nice and his music was pretty. These were people who never once sat foot in the abusive home, never once lived with him or saw him in action, many of them had never even met him or me! I learned that society condones abuse. In fact, he has supporters! Many times I wanted to give up. In this society that ignores abuse and doesn't understand that a man can be Jekyll and Hyde, abusers get away with their crazy behavior at home. One person told me I was a bitter divorcee. Hell yes, I'm bitter. I was controlled, dominated, attacked, interrogated, belittle, criticized, silenced and more for nearly two years by a man who can put on a show for the outside. Although if his friends and acquaintances really thought about it and paid attention, they could see the hints. My abuser is very empty and he is a chameleon. "Who" he is changes depending on who he wants to impress. He admitted to me that at least one of his collection of exes had told him he didn't have a personality, and it's true. If people look closely, they can see the emptiness at all times. He tries to fill it in with drinking, drugs and promiscuity, but it's there. This man has no self and no soul. It's scary!

So, after being attacked, degraded and silenced, I will not be silenced anymore. My abuser will not hide behind an act. Even if people don't want to believe that Mr. Nice Guy is a monster underneath, it is important that other victims hear the story. I have read so many books about abuse that describe my ex husband word for word, and it's validating. When all of his clueless friends and fans send me hate mail saying I was never abused, I recognize how my story perfectly matches the classic story of abuse. It's about time we all started taking a stand against abuse rather than allowing abusers and their supporters to silence us.