Emotional Abuse Study Guide, with Real-Life Examples!
Dec 9, 2016 20:13:05 GMT -5
JMX, GeekGoddess, and 7 more like this
Post by thebaffledking on Dec 9, 2016 20:13:05 GMT -5
I had been working on my running, a newb but always an athlete......and yet she registers for the community Valentine's Day 10K Partner Run with a guy we knew who was a master runner. She didn't understand why I felt hurt by that, like it was the wrong choice of events to make that choice of partner......her answer, "We want to win." It was probably a $50 giftcard or something. Approx. 10 years ago.
I had started an online radio program with two other Life Coaches, one of them very well-known. We interviewed people out there doing big, generative, life-affirming things....we'd had a couple of great shows.....and then one day I walk into the room where my wife is and she wheels in her chair to start berating me about how I'm always doing this and that, never finishing anything, why can't I just be happy with my regular job and stop pursuing all this other shit. I mean she really went off on me. I am so taken aback and alarmed by this that I withdraw from the radio team to try and be more like what my wife wants me to be -- (MAJOR mistake, but who knew back in the day?) Approx. 11-12 years ago.
One night she says, 'Hey, the kids are old enough, let's get a couple beers and go up to the park.' Sounds good, spend some time together, this is promising! We get up there, sit down, and she begins reciting a litany of things she doesn't like about me, all sorts of things. She's calm, she's just talking like the heartless bitch she is, while every new revelation of what I was doing 'wrong' with my life in her eyes was like a knife in the back. These weren't things involving drugs, alcohol, gambling, cheating -- nothing at all like that -- this was nitpicky shit, just the way I am or the way I do things, that she didn't like. Approx. 9 years ago.
After about six months of zero sex, I have had enough and I go into the computer room where she's posting away with her online community friends, and tell her basically, 'This is bullshit, I don't understand why you're doing this, this is destroying me, you're the one person......etc etc etc'. When I'm done, she glares at me and the first thing out of her mouth is a sracastic, 'What am I supposed to do, go live with my mom?' From there she goes on to tell me she's no longer attracted to me physically, and like she had told me before, there were things I did that she didn't like, that annoyed her, and made her not want to be intimate with me. She insinuates that I'm obese (I'm not, I can assure you) and says I'm like Doug from King of Queens to her Carrie (yeah, RIGHT). She tells me she can't be like the wives on The Biggest Loser who seem to love and support their obese husbands (those guys weigh 300+ pounds!!! I was maybe 200-205 and muscled!). A few days later, she is sleeping in another room -- forever as it would turn out. A couple of weeks later, I'm in our formerly shared room naked and dressing, and she comes bursting through the closed door and I immediately throw open a closet door to cover myself - this hideous body of mine - and she goes, 'What's your PROBLEM?!!' Approx 9 years ago.
The kids are grown now, but she had a particular penchant for going off on me in front of the kids (and does to this day) while in the car. That was a common M.O. with her. I think she wanted, in some twisted way, to bring me down BELOW her in the family dynamic. She couldn't be equal, she had, for whatever reason, to usurp the throne, and she did. As depression and fear and hopelessness and sexlessness took root and began to devour me, I withdrew in pain from my world, was not able to be fully present as the happy, active, fun, cheerful dad the kids might remember from when they were younger. Two things point up her need to be 'above' (not sexually, which she would only do on occasion and always after letting me know she didn't actually WANT to get up there and ride).......once in the store (approx 18 years ago), ran into a guy who knew about my work and congratulated me on the great job I was doing. My wife was there. I thought she'd be proud hearing these kinds of things. But after the guy left, she said, 'You get all this attention and what do I ever get?!!' At another time, I happened to see a post she'd made in response to prioritizing your life....... she put the kids at the top, herself second, and me third. When someone called her out on that dynamic, she replied frostily that 'my DH is an adult and I'm not responsible for his happiness!' Approx 15 years ago.
In college, winter formal......my roommate and I had gone and bought wrist corsages at the flower shop. They were all the same design, just different colors.......and pricey for a college kid!........so the girls arrive (my future wife and her friend who was dating my roommate) and we present them with the wrist corsages. Roommate's gal gushes over hers and kisses him on the cheek. Mine? After I put it on she jokes about how when she lifts her glass it's going to put her eye out. Roommates GF steps in right away, probably seeing I'm mortified, and says, 'Oh stop, it's beautiful!' Mine never said that, no kiss.......left me with a cold joke that is now 36 years old, and still remembered.
Oh my gawd, there's still SO much more but I'm getting hand cramps! Cutting to some bullet point highlights.........
- after about 6 months of no sex, we take a family vacation.......kids have their own room, we have ours. She actually initiates on night one. PROGRESS!!!
? It's great to have that experience with my WIFE again and when we're finished (and yes, we both finished nicely), I tell her nicely how I hope we can get that aspect of our life back on track. Without missing a beat, and without vocal malice, she says, 'Ya know, you can see a prostitute if you want sex.' Thought she was kidding. She wasn't. I have never taken that option, thank you very much BITCH.
- she criticizes the way I drink coffee (huh?), and yep - in front of the kids.
- we're on the freeway last summer and she's got her Starbucks. She goes to take a sip as I'm pulling back into the right lane to avoid the lift-kit 4x4 jamming up my ass, and she spills some coffee on her jeans. She BLASTS me, accusing me of doing this intentionally! Yep, daughter (age 19) in the car. Stone cold silence for 30 minutes, except for the sniffing of tears of anger from my wife's corner of rolling hell.
- headed back to my dad's house where we were visiting, it's nighttime, after a blast of a day up with my cousin and her family on their farm. We get close to my dad's, it's pitch dark, I believe I am supposed to take a left at the flashing yellow, so I go into the left turn lane.......she says 'I think it's to the right', but by then it's too late. I make the left and go down a couple blocks then start to turn around. Yep, son (25) is up front with me......and she LAYS INTO ME about how I NEVER listen to her, how she's constantly ignored, and just seething with rage! Oh fun, what a great end to what had been a fun day. Thank you again, BITCH.
And of course no sex for 8 years now........which she shouted, last time I brought it up 3 years ago, "THAT'S MUTUAL, SO DON'T YOU DARE HANG THAT ON ME!" And that's when I knew it was hopeless.........just needed to start disentangling from years of trauma bonding, codependence on her mood swings, maybe PTSD, maybe Stockholm, who knows.
There's so much more, but I'm tired.............
Freedom now beckons. It's been a long road with multiple failures to launch. Not this time. I have a life literally waiting for me.......one that's almost 3 years old now......and has grown deeper and deeper, has included a direct experience, and.........the beauty of it can't be adequately expressed. This is the gift the Universe has offered for all the years I endured and hung on 'for the kids'.........
And this, folks, is emotional abuse at its finest..........and physical, too, if you count forced abstinence as physical abuse (it is).
God Bless Us, Every One.
I had started an online radio program with two other Life Coaches, one of them very well-known. We interviewed people out there doing big, generative, life-affirming things....we'd had a couple of great shows.....and then one day I walk into the room where my wife is and she wheels in her chair to start berating me about how I'm always doing this and that, never finishing anything, why can't I just be happy with my regular job and stop pursuing all this other shit. I mean she really went off on me. I am so taken aback and alarmed by this that I withdraw from the radio team to try and be more like what my wife wants me to be -- (MAJOR mistake, but who knew back in the day?) Approx. 11-12 years ago.
One night she says, 'Hey, the kids are old enough, let's get a couple beers and go up to the park.' Sounds good, spend some time together, this is promising! We get up there, sit down, and she begins reciting a litany of things she doesn't like about me, all sorts of things. She's calm, she's just talking like the heartless bitch she is, while every new revelation of what I was doing 'wrong' with my life in her eyes was like a knife in the back. These weren't things involving drugs, alcohol, gambling, cheating -- nothing at all like that -- this was nitpicky shit, just the way I am or the way I do things, that she didn't like. Approx. 9 years ago.
After about six months of zero sex, I have had enough and I go into the computer room where she's posting away with her online community friends, and tell her basically, 'This is bullshit, I don't understand why you're doing this, this is destroying me, you're the one person......etc etc etc'. When I'm done, she glares at me and the first thing out of her mouth is a sracastic, 'What am I supposed to do, go live with my mom?' From there she goes on to tell me she's no longer attracted to me physically, and like she had told me before, there were things I did that she didn't like, that annoyed her, and made her not want to be intimate with me. She insinuates that I'm obese (I'm not, I can assure you) and says I'm like Doug from King of Queens to her Carrie (yeah, RIGHT). She tells me she can't be like the wives on The Biggest Loser who seem to love and support their obese husbands (those guys weigh 300+ pounds!!! I was maybe 200-205 and muscled!). A few days later, she is sleeping in another room -- forever as it would turn out. A couple of weeks later, I'm in our formerly shared room naked and dressing, and she comes bursting through the closed door and I immediately throw open a closet door to cover myself - this hideous body of mine - and she goes, 'What's your PROBLEM?!!' Approx 9 years ago.
The kids are grown now, but she had a particular penchant for going off on me in front of the kids (and does to this day) while in the car. That was a common M.O. with her. I think she wanted, in some twisted way, to bring me down BELOW her in the family dynamic. She couldn't be equal, she had, for whatever reason, to usurp the throne, and she did. As depression and fear and hopelessness and sexlessness took root and began to devour me, I withdrew in pain from my world, was not able to be fully present as the happy, active, fun, cheerful dad the kids might remember from when they were younger. Two things point up her need to be 'above' (not sexually, which she would only do on occasion and always after letting me know she didn't actually WANT to get up there and ride).......once in the store (approx 18 years ago), ran into a guy who knew about my work and congratulated me on the great job I was doing. My wife was there. I thought she'd be proud hearing these kinds of things. But after the guy left, she said, 'You get all this attention and what do I ever get?!!' At another time, I happened to see a post she'd made in response to prioritizing your life....... she put the kids at the top, herself second, and me third. When someone called her out on that dynamic, she replied frostily that 'my DH is an adult and I'm not responsible for his happiness!' Approx 15 years ago.
In college, winter formal......my roommate and I had gone and bought wrist corsages at the flower shop. They were all the same design, just different colors.......and pricey for a college kid!........so the girls arrive (my future wife and her friend who was dating my roommate) and we present them with the wrist corsages. Roommate's gal gushes over hers and kisses him on the cheek. Mine? After I put it on she jokes about how when she lifts her glass it's going to put her eye out. Roommates GF steps in right away, probably seeing I'm mortified, and says, 'Oh stop, it's beautiful!' Mine never said that, no kiss.......left me with a cold joke that is now 36 years old, and still remembered.
Oh my gawd, there's still SO much more but I'm getting hand cramps! Cutting to some bullet point highlights.........
- after about 6 months of no sex, we take a family vacation.......kids have their own room, we have ours. She actually initiates on night one. PROGRESS!!!
? It's great to have that experience with my WIFE again and when we're finished (and yes, we both finished nicely), I tell her nicely how I hope we can get that aspect of our life back on track. Without missing a beat, and without vocal malice, she says, 'Ya know, you can see a prostitute if you want sex.' Thought she was kidding. She wasn't. I have never taken that option, thank you very much BITCH.- she criticizes the way I drink coffee (huh?
), and yep - in front of the kids.- we're on the freeway last summer and she's got her Starbucks. She goes to take a sip as I'm pulling back into the right lane to avoid the lift-kit 4x4 jamming up my ass, and she spills some coffee on her jeans. She BLASTS me, accusing me of doing this intentionally! Yep, daughter (age 19) in the car. Stone cold silence for 30 minutes, except for the sniffing of tears of anger from my wife's corner of rolling hell.
- headed back to my dad's house where we were visiting, it's nighttime, after a blast of a day up with my cousin and her family on their farm. We get close to my dad's, it's pitch dark, I believe I am supposed to take a left at the flashing yellow, so I go into the left turn lane.......she says 'I think it's to the right', but by then it's too late. I make the left and go down a couple blocks then start to turn around. Yep, son (25) is up front with me......and she LAYS INTO ME about how I NEVER listen to her, how she's constantly ignored, and just seething with rage! Oh fun, what a great end to what had been a fun day. Thank you again, BITCH.
And of course no sex for 8 years now........which she shouted, last time I brought it up 3 years ago, "THAT'S MUTUAL, SO DON'T YOU DARE HANG THAT ON ME!" And that's when I knew it was hopeless.........just needed to start disentangling from years of trauma bonding, codependence on her mood swings, maybe PTSD, maybe Stockholm, who knows.
There's so much more, but I'm tired.............
Freedom now beckons. It's been a long road with multiple failures to launch. Not this time. I have a life literally waiting for me.......one that's almost 3 years old now......and has grown deeper and deeper, has included a direct experience, and.........the beauty of it can't be adequately expressed. This is the gift the Universe has offered for all the years I endured and hung on 'for the kids'.........
And this, folks, is emotional abuse at its finest..........and physical, too, if you count forced abstinence as physical abuse (it is).
God Bless Us, Every One.
