Why did I stay?

So. Why did I stay? Why did I have children with the man?

When you live with someone with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality you aren't sure what side of the personality is the "true" being. I wanted to assume that initially these outbursts were rare and because of extreme stress. The good side of my husband is very, very good. Our day-to-day life was usually normal.

I also blamed myself. A lot.

If only I were a better wife. Kinder. More patient. More loving. Smarter. Better. More organized. More intelligent. More ANYthing.

I also felt that I wasn't perfect. I had some major health problems. My husband didn't abandon me because of them. If he had cancer or was paralyzed I wouldn't just up and leave him. I viewed his anger as a "disease" of sorts that needed to be addressed and worked through. The problem is, while he would apologize a lot of the time, he never took responsibility or sought help when I began saying that he problem was not normal and required professional therapy.

I believe in marriage. I believe in family. I believe in loyalty.

We had the same socio-economic and religious backgrounds. We were the same age. We had the same goals. We both wanted children to love and cherish and raise.

For much of our early marriage we were under extreme stress. There was non-curable, painful disease, infertility, adoption, advanced schooling, moving, debt and much more. I always had in the back of my mind, "once we get through this hurdle...things will get better...this is just so stressful...things will get better."

Also, in early marriage you are constantly building towards something. First, there is college, then jobs, then a house, then children... But at the stage I am at now we are at a plateau. All of the "root building" distracting work of our early marriage is over and now it is just day-to-day living. The reasons to "hold things together for..." are diminishing.

The truth is, I did consider divorce many times in the back of my mind. The reasons that kept me in an abusive situation, kept me married. I had no self-confidence. I was depressed. I was often told "the house is mine, the cars are mine, the credit is mine, the money is mine...you will suffer without me." I blamed myself. I was in denial. I couldn't see the control or the abuse clearly.

Towards the end, what I decided is that my husband works very long hours. I was alone with the children allll day long everyday. The only day he saw us and them was Saturdays. I would ask to rest or would do housework while he took them out to do fun things...I know now this was to avoid him and the problems we were having under the "happy" surface. Sundays we had church and getting ready for the upcoming week. I started rationalizing that I could handle the situation until my children were grown and then move out when they were at a less impressionable age.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Less impressionable age.

The straw that broke the camel's back:

My husband got angry about something. Can't remember what. I just remember it was out of the blue and he started a tirade as I passed him in the kitchen. He gets loud and intimidating. His finger was in my face and he was leaning over me as I leaned back. He was red-faced and I could see "that look" in his eyes that told me that "my" husband had checked out and his evil twin was now reigning supreme.

Out of the corner of my eye I see my son reaching for his new bb gun. I didn't put two and two together until later. I had sent the children out to play while my husband calmed down and returned to "normal"...and when I went to check on them my son proudly told me (chest puffed up, eyes bright with pride) "Don't worry mama, I was going to shoot Daddy if he tried to hurt you!"

I felt nauseous. I felt the bottom drop out of my world. I wasn't protecting them by staying, I was hurting them...

I told my husband what our 8 year old said. I thought it would shock him into action. Our son adores his Daddy and vice-versa. He ignored me. Looked at me blankly and continued doing whatever it was he was doing. It didn't register. No emotion. No change-of-heart.

That was the beginning of the end.

Therapy

I studied in college to be a marriage and family therapist. I even counseled people for a grade my senior year. But I panicked and didn't pursue that career path. I didn't feel adequate enough to help others. I also think, deep down, I thought "therapy" was a crock. I thought it was for weak people who didn't have the wherewithall to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and face life head on. I have always been someone who prides myself on walking directly through a problem...not around it. I decided that therapy was for teaching basic life skills to people who had none.

I've changed my mind.

Real life changed my mind.

Real problems changed my mind.

I saw a new therapist yesterday. The one I've been seeing for 6 weeks moved. I really didn't want to go. The previous therapist was around my age, had the same number of children, and reminded me a lot of me. I "got" her. She "got" me.

This new therapist is a man. He's a member of the bishopbric in his ward at church. He is very quiet. I felt dumb telling him my problems. He just sat there for the better part of 30 minutes staring at me while I cried and confessed and told him my problems.

Then he pulls out a sheet of paper. The sheet of paper that I scanned in at the beginning of this post. He points it out and tells me "no one can hold onto the negative experiences and emotions you've held onto for so long without popping in one way or another...it was just a matter of how and when you would pop!" He went on to explain that there is a set cycle for people who are experiencing negative emotions. If you don't have the coping skills to handle them correctly you try to escape them.

This was one of those "a-ha!" moments for me. It was such a relief to see that my behavior and patterns were "normal" in a loose sense of the term. I really felt in some ways like I was some kind of freak of nature. Like, what I did and how I coped were crazy.

One way I've coped is through eating. People who don't use eating as a comfort or escape can't really understand why eating sugary crap makes you feel better. But... it does, for a little while. Then you feel worse and the sick cycle starts all over again. I don't even want to say how much weight I have gained in my marriage, but if you look at my wedding photos and look at me now, you will see a shocking difference. I've noticed since my husband left that I no longer have an appetite and I'm losing weight fast. I love exercising and I have enough respect for myself to use some discipline.

There are other ways listed on the chart above that I used as coping strategies, but I don't want to talk about them here. I will say though, that it gave me a high, a feeling of release and relief, a feeling of connectedness...I felt powerful and adequate and accepted...for the first time is a LONG time. It felt wonderful. I felt cared for in a real way that I never have before. I hope someday to feel that for real, long-term. Is that even possible? Man, I hope so.

Lastly, one thing I didn't realize is that the stress of my marriage affected my health in major ways. I had constant migraines. I was always feeling exhausted and weak and listless. I used sleep to escape from fights and stress. It got to a point that I couldn't really make any move or do anything that didn't have negative consequences with my husband. So I just froze and stopped functioning. I have always noticed through the years that when he would leave on business trips or would be working late that I had this sense of relief... of freedom... a surge of renewed energy. I never understood it... until now.

Therapy is helping me. My "assignment" for the week is to figure out what 5 negative emotions come up most for me. (He gave me a list of about 30 negative emotions to choose from, oh fun!) Then we are going to talk about those emotions and how I can develop healthy and appropriate coping strategies for dealing with them instead of feeling powerless and trying to escape from them.

I can see my husband's negative cycle in the chart above too. I don't really have hope for he and I working things out between the two of us... but for his sake, and for the future of our children and our co-parenting of them, I hope that he will seek out the help that he needs too.

Hope! It's what's for dinner. So glad it's back on my plate!

Rage

Rage is by definition abuse.

Ragers react to strong emotion with rage (i.e. feelings of fear, sadness, shame, inadequacy, guilt or loss all convert to rage.)

Raging gives the person a feeling of power...offsetting their shame and feelings of inadequacy.

Rage sets up a neurochemical reaction in the brain that can be addictive.

(http://www.recovery-man.com/)

I remember being literally near death. My husband's mother had just left our home after helping us for a week. Not long after this I would be admitted to the hospital for 3 months on a feeding line. Emergency surgery would follow.

I was weak. In excruciating pain. I had 2 very small children I was powerless to care for. I could do little more than wake periodically from narcotic-induced sleep to take my next round of prescription meds. I was terrified. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I thought I might die. It sounds a bit dramatic, but the emotions were real.

My husband began raging.

It makes sense now as I do research. Obviously he was converting feelings of powerlessness, fear, inadequacy and sadness into rage. I guess the rage gave him a feeling of power in a situation where he had none.

He began screaming at me. Berating me. Insulting me. He told me to "stop doing this to him!" He insinuated that I was faking, I was doing this all for attention, to make his life miserable. He told me if I would "just eat!" everything would be fine and that I was deliberately trying to not get better by not eating. (I had not been able to keep food or drink down for weeks. I had lost 36 pounds. If I chewed a piece a gum, I would throw up the mint flavored saliva...)

All I could do was call for help. I called my mother. I called his mother. They both talked to him. Calmed him down. Soon after things returned to normal and he began helping me again.

I witnessed this raging over and over and OVER again throughout my marriage. He did it again in the hospital right before an emergency surgery I was terrifed of...a surgery that would take away any chance of having a biological baby...forever.

Those are big examples. Sometimes it could happen out of the blue over something small. After grocery shopping one day I asked him out in the car, "Why did you say that to the cashier, that embarassed me!" I have no clue what it was he said...all I remember is that he exploded in a terrifying, red-faced, never-ending rage. I was called every name in the book...the one I remember most was a "dirty filthy whore". It broke my heart. It still hurts to think about it, ten years later.

It could happen over anything really. Once it was over Christmas cookies, once over a tv show I asked a question about, once it was over not bringing my bathing suit, once it was over him forgetting to pay a bill while on vacation... the list goes on and on. I can't even remember them all. All I would do is ask him about it and the same red-faced, terrifying, gas-on-a-flame, name-calling, sometimes violent episode would follow.

More often than not, I wouldn't even KNOW what the rage was about. If I asked what was wrong I would get a lot of "don't play that game with me! you know exactly what I'm angry about!" I never did. I still don't.

Ever hear of "learned helplessness?" If you keep shocking an animal over and over and over again to the point that they perceive they can't help themselves they just lay down and take it. It's a true psychological phenomena. I learned about it in college. I experienced it in real life.

Now. Finally. I feel hope again. Slowly, but surely, hope is returning.

I'm SO grateful for that.

Denial

Denial. It's difficult to explain. When something bad happens, but the only other person involved tells you "it wasn't like that!?" or "you are to blame!" or "you are overreacting"... You start doubting yourself in a very fundamental way. One of the greatest reliefs I have found in my research is a term called "crazy-making". This is exactly how I have felt for so long. Crazy. Like I can't trust my own judgements, perceptions or experiences because I am told they didn't happen, or at the very least they didn't happen in the way I experienced it.

From www.verbalabuse.com

DENIAL

Denial at its most basic is saying something has not happened.

It is extremely sick and extremely powerful.

It is the way that people can commit abuse and still live with themselves.

It allows them to continue being abusive by staying in the sick place, and by allowing them to hide their sickness from others so that they can maintain the abusive situation for a longer period of time.

They lie to others, and most devastatingly, they lie to themselves. The major tactics used in maintaing the denial are minimizing, rationalizing, and justifying.

MINIMIZING

Minimizing distances the abuser from the damage caused by saying it wasn't as bad as it actually was. "I didn't beat her up, I just pushed her..." By minimizing the damage, they can blame the victim for "exagerating" the abuse or accuse the victim of simply making the whole thing up.

RATIONALIZING

Rationalizing is lying to oneself about what was done to make it seem acceptable--telling ourselves rationalizing lies. This lying becomes more and more practiced until we can convince ourselves of anything--particularly when the pain of admitting the truth of what we've done becomes larger and harder to deal with.

JUSTIFYING

Abusers always have a reason to explain why their behavior or reaction was deserved and/or necessary. "She needs to know that over-drawing the bank account is serious. She knows I don't really hate her, but at least now she knows I'm serious!"

Sticks and Stones...

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones...

But Names Will Never Hurt Me.

I have been hit, intimidated, grabbed, pushed, shoved, strangled, bruised, thrown and squeezed.

Being verbally abused has taken a greater toll on me.

I am just learning, now that I am newly away from the situation, just how hard it is to see the effects of abuse on your life. As I said before, denial glues the entire mess together. You just keep trudging along, picking up the stray pieces of your life being ripped apart and steadily glue them back together with denial one by one.

The hardest part is that you are unable to see a clear view of what is "normal". You doubt yourself. You doubt your inner voice and what it's telling you about truth and love and God and light. You blame yourself.

My therapist asked me to start a "truth book". She wants me to write down the truth of abuse, the truth of my personal experiences, and the truth of my husband's abusive traits. I see things clearly for just brief patches of time. To survive in a world where the rug is pulled out from under you ever month or so you learn to cope by pretending "everything is fine!" and pushing the dark truth deeper and deeper down. It takes courage to pull it into the light and examine it under harsh reality. I say courage, because doing that means losing your family as you've known it. No matter how bad things were...it was all you knew and no matter how bad, it is still excruciatingly painful to lose the "dream" of your family.

One night recently, in the midst of prayer, I received revelation. I was begging God to help me to see the truth of my life, the truth of my relationship and the path I needed to follow once I knew the truth. I had the impression to look up "verbal abuse" online and came across a website that told my story like no other had. It IS my life! http://www.verbalabuse.com/ I want to share some of the examples from that site that are helping me....

"Name calling is verbal abuse. It is harmful for children who witness it. They either see their survival threatened or they think it's normal, or both.

Abusers almost universally act like nothing happened, like they feel fine and the relationship is fine. This is because they have more control. If you doubt yourself then you might go with what they tell you. This makes them happy.

"My husband's abuse is very quiet, insidious. He always finds a way to make me the problem. When he gets angry he is enraged. There does not seem to be any degree between not being angry and rage. I have reached a point of deep depression myself. Will things ever be right?"

The abuse you describe usually happens behind closed doors, so some people may not see the problem. I do. Most abusers present a "perfect image, admitting a mistake or two, which they swear wouldn't happend if only their wives wouldn't 'whatever..' "

Also, most women don't take to an abuser sexually once he shows his controlling side. Most who are abused are too traumatized to regain the level of trust necessary for physical intimacy. Please trust your intuition. No wonder you are depressed, you suffered from verbal abuse. Verbal abuse falls into many categories...

• Abusive Anger--He blows up at you


• Criticizing--Duragatory comments


• Name Calling


• Threatening--taunting you about leaving


• Blaming--He tells you his behavior is your fault

And these categories are just a few. Battered women have always told me that the verbal abuse was the worst. So having experienced "worse than battering", it will take some time to recover.

"It has taken me time to see that I was in an abusive relationship, and that my husband's abuse wasn't 'all my fault'. We separated, but we have three children, was separation a good idea?"

Separation is a positive step. You might feel lonely at first, but stay strong. Some men who've been abusive want to change to get their partner back. But is a rare one who actually changes, and it can take him a long time.

Verbal abuse so controls ones mind that some women who have left a verbally (sometimes physically) abusive relationship twenty or more years ago still find themselves wondering... "Maybe there's something I could have done..." or "Maybe if I'd tried to explain just one more time my relationship would have gotten better?"

The victim can't comprehend it.

To gain freedom you must recognize you are abused. Recognize there was nothing you could have said or done--no way to "be" to stop the abuse. The person indulges in abuse.

I have a hard time calling my husband an "abuser". He is so much more than that. He has so many wonderful qualities... I ultimately believe in the good in him and hope with all my heart he somehow sees the truth before it's too late and his life is strewn with the wreckage and debris of his anger. I also hate to call myself a "victim"... but if we are talking technical terms, it is what I am. I think I need to keep walking towards the truth if I ever want to heal.

Me? Abused?

"You need to attend a domestic abuse support group!"

The words hang in the air. My denial refuses to let them in.

Denial, it seems, is the glue that holds the beast of abuse together.

I am 30-something. I have been married for 13 years. I am college-educated. I have 3 small children. My husband has a Master's Degree in Business. We both come from upper middle-class families. We go to church every Sunday. We own a large and spacious home. We attend barbecues with our neighbors. We gather with our families for Thanksgiving and Christmas and special occassions. We go to Disneyland and the beach for vacations. My husband coaches the kids in sports. He helped our oldest build his pinewood derby car for Cub Scouts. I am deeply involved in my children's schools. My husband tells me I am beautiful. That he is lucky he got me. He gives me wonderful gifts for holidays and birthdays. In many ways he spoils me. Cooks for me, lets me nap...takes the children out to play at the park. We go out to dinner and camping and everything that happy families do.

But I am not happy.

Underneath the thin veneer of domestic bliss lurks throbbing, palpable, out-of-control rage and pain. It has taken on a personality of it's own. It is the third partner in our marriage. I never know when it will rear it's ugly head. It is mean and ugly. It is insane. It's eyes are black. It's face is red. Once it appears, there is no force on heaven or earth that can coerce it to leave. It must exhaust itself...any words, any actions are like gasoline on fire...creating fierce, nonsensical eruptions.

It looks like my husband. But it is not...

It scares me.

It hurts me. Physically... Verbally... Spiritually... Mentally...

It hurts our children.

It has destroyed our family.

This blog is about my complicated journey away from It.