Home→Forums→Relationships→Emotionally Abused Man
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Tee.
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September 27, 2016 at 8:02 am #116397
AnonymousGuestDear Broken Man:
Your story, your ongoing story is fascinating. Fascinating to me because I lived your story as a child and kept living it until my first experience with a competent, empathetic and hard working therapist… and then it took more time before I cut contact with my mother (my abuser) in May 2013. Following that I was still enslaved to my mother’s mental representative in my own brain, and it is only yesterday that I noticed it was her birthday and again, I didn’t call to say happy birthday.. but had no guilt about it, nothing but a smile.
Back to your story, I was wondering- when you did leave your wife (your abuser) the few times that you did- how were those experiences? Were you then in no contact with her? Were did you stay during those time and what brought about you going back to your abuser?
anita
September 28, 2016 at 1:32 pm #116589
JohnParticipantMy leaving has usually been fairly short lived but the last time it lasted 4 weeks during which time I was not at all at ease. I stayed in a rented house, on my own mostly but also spent quality time with the lady I mentioned with whom I have had a long term relationship. I was in a rather depressed state of high anxiety for much of the time. I’m not quite sure why I went back or how it really happened other than I didn’t go “no contact” so somehow got reeled back in to the trap. To be honest it is all a bit vague and I was something of a wreck in terms of my mental health. Going back was a big mistake and as soon as I was back the thoughts of leaving returned at least as strong as ever, if not more so.
September 28, 2016 at 8:00 pm #116626AnonymousGuestDear Broken Man:
About your relationship with the other woman, twenty years or so? What is that relationship like?
I am asking because I am still trying to see something I am not seeing. I don’t know if more insight will be helpful to you, so my attempt to gain more insight may be of no benefit.
It is okay with me if you choose to not answer this question.
I do hope that you will somehow exit this … what would be the right term for this marriage…?
anita
September 29, 2016 at 7:49 am #116668JohnParticipantHello Anita – I’m not sure I understand your question exactly – “What is that relationship like?” other than to say it is a very positive and intimate relationship and we get on very well despite lots of difficulties over many years. My original posting contained more detail. If you need to know something specific then please feel free to ask a specific question.
September 29, 2016 at 7:56 am #116669AnonymousGuestDear Broken Man:
I will be re-reading your whole story here, on this thread (and your comments on other threads), taking notes and when done I will post some questions for you, so to get a better understanding. I am hoping it will be helpful to you somehow, maybe (it’s a very ambitious hope on my part).
anita
September 30, 2016 at 4:57 am #116735JohnParticipantAnita. I’m happy to answer anything. Please feel free to ask.
September 30, 2016 at 3:13 pm #116815AnonymousGuestDear Broken Man:
I am preparing for my ambitious endeavor. Since you offered to answer more, will you elaborate on what you wrote on a 9/23 reply on another thread: “Like you, I feel I am a caring person and that my wife’s happiness is connected with me continuing to be with her..”
Tell me more about your wife’s happiness: why is it your motivation to promote it? Also, please do share: do you have… good moments with her, as in intimate moments- what other than the fear do you experience when in her presence?
anita
October 1, 2016 at 6:35 am #116861JohnParticipantAnita – I am not sure I am interested in promoting my wife’s happiness anymore but her unhappy performances have a bad influence on me and cause me great emotional turmoil so it is the negative side of her behaviour that I have become conditioned to avoid through the brainwashing by her abusive behaviour. As regards your question about intimate moments, there haven’t been any for decades. We have slept in separate rooms for around 25 years and there has been no physical intimacy for over 30 years. I don’t like being around her and do not like her touching me. I am repulsed by the thought of physical contact with her. In the early days of the marriage she exhibited so much verbal and psychological aggression, which was a big turn-off for me. The marriage was dead in that respect right from the beginning. Around 20 years ago she asked me if I was gay, which I am not. She concluded that I wasn’t much interested in sex, which is not at all the case. Just not interested in her in that respect.
October 1, 2016 at 2:07 pm #116891AnonymousGuestDear Broken Man:
Working on it today. Will you be okay with telling me about your mother? What kind of a woman was/ is she?
anita
October 1, 2016 at 9:10 pm #116917JohnParticipantThese days she is old and housebound. When I was young she was a schoolteacher teaching very young kids. Being a schoolteacher she brought us up to be good mannered and to know right from wrong. She is a good natured person and got in very well with my father in that they never had any significant arguments in all the years they were married. She was the leader of the two but not in any domineering way. In many ways she is a very ordinary person who just likes to stay at home in a quiet and peaceful environment where no one bothers her.
October 2, 2016 at 9:17 am #116926
Adam PParticipantHi there healed man,
I hope all is well with you and with all due respect you are greatly delaying your satisfaction and happiness. There’s the fire, you’re afraid of jumping in and getting burned. There’s the water, you’re dying and you need to drink. Let me ask you a question you need to ask yourself over and over again in the mirror.
“Why am I so damn afraid of leaving my abusive wife?”
Talking and message posting is great and helpful unless you don’t take any action to go along with it. Conduct a mock practice of leaving your abusive wife with trusted individuals. After a while do it for real. Clear yourself from her, the other woman and just start from scratch. This was not to be interpreted as aggressive, I just don’t want to end up seeing you posting to 5-10 pgs on this thread still suffering.
All the best
Thank you and take care
AP85October 2, 2016 at 9:35 am #116930AnonymousGuestDear Broken Man:
I am ready with my best understanding of your situation:
My first point: I am about your age and I met in-person only one individual, my mother, who displayed a combination of the symptoms/ behaviors that your wife and my mother displayed. I read about such people in True Crime books and saw a superficial depiction of such in a movie. Online, on this very site, I came across only two individuals, out of hundreds, who described such rare people in their lives. Those two people are you describing your wife and another person describing her mother.
My second point: your home life before you met your wife did not prepare you for dealing with such rare people. This is obvious. And so, you were unprepared.
When you met her, you were a young adult living separately from her, not a child or a disabled adult who was dependent on her financially or otherwise. The speed by which you became stuck in that “prison without bars” as you called it is puzzling.
The fact that while suffering almost immediately from your then girlfriend’s extreme behavior, you did not reach out for and/ or received counsel from any of your parents is also puzzling. And then years and decades of a torturous marriage, separate bedrooms, extreme distress- and no mentioned counsel, support or help by your parents.
This is what I figure at this point: you had a quiet, peaceful home life as a child. You were raised to play by the rules, to be polite, to say Please and Thank you. Your mother taught you those things as she taught the young children in her classroom. If she was as effective in the classroom as she was with you, then her pupils behaved nicely while in class with her. What her individual pupils experienced outside her classroom was not her responsibility.
Unfortunately for you, what you experienced outside the home as a child was her responsibility (as well as your father’s of course). I am assuming that outside the home, as a child, you experienced conflicts with peers/ other people who did not behave by the rules. And I assume you came home to your parents (perhaps more to your mother because “She was the leader of the two.”
And she, your mother, taught you how to deal with people who broke the rules of good social behavior. What she taught you was probably effective in dealing with minor infractions. When the rules were broken in more severe ways, she probably told you to ignore those people and keep going.
It is possible that your mother did not want to deal with any … unnecessary stresses and discouraged you from coming to her with real problems. She wanted life Nice-and-Easy, Please-and-Thank-you, smiles and no frowns and so, you learned not to bother her, not to reach out to her or to your father.
When you met the woman who you later married- did she break the rules! In big ways! What a misfortune for you. You were unprepared and you had no one to reach out to for help or guidance.
It is a natural instinct for a living thing, an organism, to turn away from pain. But you moved in with the pain. Why? What makes a person make residence with pain?
This leads me to think that you were already used to living with pain. Before meeting the woman who became your wife, you were already living with pain. Otherwise, you would have naturally turned away from that woman (pain) instead of moving in with her.
What was the pain you lived in? The child that you were, in that calm home- you must have been alone with distress- distress that you experienced maybe in school. Distress that wasn’t welcome at home; distress that wasn’t allowed because home.. had to be calm, pleasant, polite and what happened outside home (like what happened outside her classroom) was not allowed to enter the home.
Your thoughts?
anita
October 3, 2016 at 1:36 am #116982JohnParticipantAP85 – Thanks for your input. I know I need to make changes if any happiness is to follow and I know I am overdoing things with the victim mentality and self pity. The things you suggest I have tried multiple times and they don’t work for whatever reason. I am not sure why they don’t work other than to say there are forces within me that lead me to a very bad place in terms of how I feel. Believe me I have tried and battled against whatever it is that has caused me to get stuck where I am. The road to recovery is going to be a long one and I find that this message posting is very helpful to me as a way of getting things out of my system.
October 3, 2016 at 2:02 am #116984JohnParticipantAnita – Your insight is very good in many areas. I did not reach out to others for help until fairly recently and my story was totally hidden for many years as I am not the type of person to confide in others about my problems. This includes my parents. From childhood to this present day I have never really discussed any of my problems with any family member. I am not sure why this has been the case but it is a lifelong pattern of behaviour. I was never discouraged from discussing problems but I would never raise them as I would not feel comfortable in doing so. As regards your question about living with pain before meeting my wife, I don’t recall much distress from my childhood or teenage years or early adulthood. Obviously, there were ups and downs but I recall just before meeting my wife I was in a happy place and enjoying life. Things changed quickly after that. Certainly, I was not well equipped to deal with the aggressive behaviour, which I found very controlling from the beginning and I think I mentioned this aspect in my first posting. The enduring pain in my life has been since meeting my wife and not before.
October 3, 2016 at 4:57 am #116986Adam PParticipantI understand healed man,
I just don’t want to end up seeing you take as long as I did to recover over something that I now laugh about and feel absolute pity for the abusive person.
All the best
Thank you and take care
-AP85 -
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