Re: Need advice before I make things worse..

I've read this post several times and I am really hoping that my response will be clear-headed and calm. If it becomes long, I apologize in advance.

I was also married to a man like the one that you describe. It was a whirlwind romance and, before I knew it, I had been separated/isolated from friends, family, and/or any network of support outside of the walls of our domicile and attempting to be a new mother. We moved several times and I always had to sever friendships for one reason or another, particularly if HE didn't "approve" of the people that I considered friends.

I was also forced to perform sexual favors in return for "babysitting" our sons if I wanted to attend the symphony or go to lunch with a friend. In the end, I was prostituting myself to my husband for groceries, to pay bills, to purchase gasoline, to purchase school clothing for our kids, to be able to volunteer in our sons' classes, etc. This is one of the most heinous types of spousal abuse that I can think of. I was also physically abused, though I was in complete denial and kept referring to the punches, slaps, and pinches as "horseplay" in front of the children. I experienced financial abuse in that every dime that I brought to our marriage in the form of stocks, bonds, and even our own children's college funds were wiped out due to his encouraging frivilous spending. I experienced spiritual abuse when he would tell me that "...in the Bible, it says that a GOOD wife will OBEY her husband..." and he would not allow me to practice my own religious beliefs. By the time that I finally ended the denial and realized what I had married, we were 245,000 in debt and I was wishing to be hit by a truck and killed. He would threaten suicide in front of our children if I disagreed with him and he would scream (with spit flying) in my face that I was "...undermining (his) AUTHORITY..." if I tried to get him to back off of our children. This did not happen over night, either. Looking back, I could have seen the red flags going up even before we had our first child, but I was blind and dependent and believed myself to be "in love" with something that never existed. My ex is an abusive narcissist and the "qualities" that I fell in love with never truly existed - they were mirrored behaviors that drew me in and they were not real.

If I were doing this all over, again, I would have sought counseling from an abuse therapist a whole lot sooner. I would be involved in counseling, keeping a WRITTEN log of everything that my spouse did that crossed the line of abuse, and I would begin to weave a network of safety and speak to my family members about my situation. Long after the fact, I learned that my folks would have been willing to help me if they had known the facts about the abuse that my children and I had endured. I was so far into denial that I only told them the truth after I had left and lost everything. The ugliest lesson that I learned then, and years after when I was counseling victims of domestic violence and abuse, was that things will never get better unless the abuser is willing to seek help. It only gets worse and I wish I had understood that before I had our first child.

You are welcome to email me, if you wish. You are in my fervent prayers and I wish the best for you and your children. God keep you.
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