My Verbally Abusive Marriage

When I read the notice that my Amazon.com affiliates account had been closed, I had no earthly idea WHY.

Although the affiliates links promoted on my site have not brought in any money (yet) for my emergency account, I felt that Amazon was the best way to pass informative books (mostly) onto the readers of my blog, site and Emergency Fund Store. Plus, Amazon had some really cool widgets that allow song clips to be played. I used them as kind of a “sound track” in some pages.

The account was closed because of a piece of legislation passed by my state’s government. No, I cannot simply “use another state” for my bank account (ILLEGAL) or in some other way hide my residence. You know the IRS. Bastards. (BTW – we can get rid of the IRS via the Fair Tax).

ANYHOW, I was just disgusted and temporarily flung into panic mode. I mean, there’s a LOT of amazon.com promotion on my site. LOTS of work went into promoting this company. I had hung a lot of hope on the idea that I just might become more financially independent by using the service.

So yes, panic mode.

But then I got to thinking.

What if this is my smack on the back of the head from the universe? What if I’m being forced in a different direction? What if there’s a different and more reliable way to fund my emergency account?

What if what I’m doing is valuable enough to warrant some other type of income plan? A plan based on what I have to offer instead of what a “trusted” affiliate could do.

So, I’ll be thinking on that.

Until I come up with a plan, I’m leaving the amazon.com links in place. Clicking on them will STILL take you to amazon where you can purchase the books and other items I recommend. I still believe in those products even though I no longer feel I can trust an affiliate marketing strategy of the amazon (or google) structure.

Know what? Even though the idea that I may be able to fund my emergency account without amazon’s help is exciting, I’m still a little ticked off about the closing of my account (with no notice). I’m taking links to amazon off of my blog today; the rest of the website will follow in time.

REF: the categories in bold listed below are from the book Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out by Patricia Evans, ISBN 1558503048, Adams Media, February 2003.

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I checked my page on types of verbal abuse and realized that Patricia Evans did not list ”LYING” as a type of verbal abuse. For a second, I thought I had discovered a glaring omission in my heroine’s thinking. But it only lasted a second.

I realized that lying is not a form of verbal abuse, it is the basis of it. Lies (even the ones the abuser tells himself) underlie all forms of abuse – verbal, emotional, physical – all of them.

Abusive Anger is the lie that justifies my husband’s beliefs. If he can become so violently angry, then there must be truth in what he’s saying, right?

Accusing & Blaming is the lie that throws the responsibilities for all of ”our” suffering onto my shoulders alone. This is the lie that allows my husband to believe that he is victim of my “imagined” feelings.

Blocking & Diverting is the lie that hides the truth. If he can avoid answering my questions or divert my attention to some other topic, then the truth stays hidden.

Countering is the lie that nothing, absolutely nothing I’m saying, thinking or believing is “right” even if it was “right” when he said, thought or believed it.

Denial is the lie that there is anything to lie about. IT, whatever it is, doesn’t exist. IT doesn’t even have a name. IT is nothing.

Deprivation & Withholding is the lie that allows him to manipulate without saying or doing anything; he’s able to deprive and withhold affection or anything else from me while denying me the ability to point to any one thing he’s done or said that is “wrong”.

Discounting is the lie that feeds his feelings of superiority.

Forgetting is the lie that enables him to hide behind a common human frailty that cannot be disproved and “must” be forgiven.

Joking is the lie that gives him cover while he humiliates me either in front of others or alone.

Judging & Criticizing is the lie that allows his words and beliefs to be superior to mine, ALWAYS. He is the only one capable of judgment or criticism; my judgment is warped, my criticisms have been injected into my head by some outside force.

Name Calling is the lie that tries to force me to defend myself instead of him having to defend anything he says or does.

Ordering & Demanding is the lie that puts me in my proper place – beneath him. He can tell me what to do and I have to do it because he is in control of me.

Threatening Behavior & Words is the lie of last resort. IF I don’t XYZ, THEN he will be forced to show his power over me in some undeniable fashion.

Trivializing is the lie that allows him to dispose of me; it allows him to ignore any thought coming from me because it’s only nagging, nit-picking, hen-pecking…I am only an annoyance.

Undermining is the lie that proves to himself my incapability, irresponsibility, etc. He secretly (even to himself sometimes) makes it impossible for me to succeed as a wife, mother, and person.

I talked to the mother of one of Marc’s friends today. Her son had grabbed his backpack, hopped on his bike, and ran away. Again.

This same mother is the one who called my child’s school and told them he was selling drugs at school without so much as a phone call to me. I was pretty heated about that, but nothing came of the allegation against my son. So today when she called, I held my tongue about the school-calling incident, choosing to share information instead.

Come to find out, my son has been telling anyone who would listen that:

• His dad no longer lives with us
• I am sleeping with my husband’s father
• I approve of his drug use and allow him to smoke cigarettes

These things did not make me happy, but the fact that the mother did not believe I’d taken my father-in-law as my lover and that she figured Marc’s dad was deployed (vs. “having left us”) comforted me.

The “fact” that I approved of Marc’s drug use made her think, “What’s going on with Kellie?! That doesn’t seem like her,” and it made me realize that above all else, we WANT to believe our children.

Out of the sick and outright lies she’s heard about my household, she latched onto one of them. And I’m not condemning her for that. I also want to believe at least something my child tells me.

What I’ve learned from talking to her is that it is important to realize that my son will say anything to either gain sympathy or get out of trouble. He’s willing to fabricate stories in order to get what he wants.

He’s a liar, and I can now treat him as such. Talking to him only allows him to make up more lies (which I WANT to believe) and further complicate the situation.

Interestingly, I’m coming to the same conclusion about my husband. I’ve found out recently some of the things he told me and has told me for years are simply not true.

• The dog he told me his grandfather forced him to shoot was instead euthanized due to worms.
• He did not break into an office building while drunk and pass out there; he was in fact beaten up and dumped.

Both revelations were delivered to me innocently by the ones who told me. I didn’t mention to them that “that’s not what he said” or draw attention to my surprise at having hearing the truth. Nevertheless, the revelations were deeply unsettling.

If he had told me that he was deeply hurt by the passing of his pet, I would have sympathized with him. However, if I had known that he had never shot the dog under the direction of his grandfather, then Will’s “belief” that animals must have a purpose or they’re worthless wouldn’t have held much water.

I mean, the excuse that the animal ”has no purpose” has led to his mistreatment of many animals I have loved. I’ve practically given up on having a pet if it wasn’t a good mouser, guard dog, or whatever by HIS standard. He’s denied me my desire to love soft furry animals just because I wanted to love them because of a LIE he tells.

 And is being beaten up and dumped any worse than breaking into an office building? Unless he knows why he was beaten up and didn’t want me to know. I’m thinking angry boyfriend.

One lie elicits sympathy and understanding for the mean way he treats animals (“my” animals anyway), and the second seems more like a cover up for a different story.

Regardless of why he (or Marc) lied, the fact is they saw some greater benefit to themselves by telling the lie. To THEMSELVES. These lies are not to protect anyone except themselves. I’m left wondering what else they’ve lied about.

Have you heard of synchronicity? Synchronicity occurs when everything’s going your way or when similar subjects pop up out of nowhere in a short period of time.

I think I’m in the middle of some synchronicity. It’s time for me to think about lies.

Steve Becker, the guest on Martha Trowbridge’s radio show “It’s [Not] All in Your Mind Dear has also written a piece entitled Relationship Abuse and the Mentality of the Abuser. It is a perfect primer for understanding why my abusive crazy-maker acts the way he does.

Steve Becker’s website is Power Communicating, and his blog is Love Fraud.

I’m going to listen to Martha’s show again with a pencil and paper so I can take notes in the morning. Mr. Becker is packed FULL of great information and Martha does a wonderful job of relating his comments to my crazy-making husband’s behaviors.

Since you’re still up, why don’t you listen to the show now? We can compare notes in the morning!

I am not an expert on abusive relationships.

I do not know how to deal with them. I do not know if abusers will change. I do not know how to “live” in an abusive relationship, and I don’t know if it’s worth it to stay.

If you email me and tell me that your significant other abuses you in hope of me telling you how to stop it, you will not be satisfied with my response.

I will tell you to call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or TTY 1-800-787-3224.

And I will tell you to leave right now if your abuser has escalated to physical violence.

ONLY by talking to someone with the knowledge and ability to help you will you find sanctity and sanity.

I realize that by sharing my experience through this blog and on my site, I may look like some sort of “expert.” Add to that the fact that I’ve been married for 17 (!) years, and you may think that I must have SOMETHING figured out. I MUST have been able to “cope” with or “respond” to the abuse in a satisfactory manner to have stayed for this long. Right?

Absolutely wrong. I am writing this blog BECAUSE I don’t know how to successfully “cope” with abuse. Not a clue. Everything I’ve tried to do, say or become has either increased the abuse or merely postponed it to another time, and that includes everything I did, said or became before I even knew it was abuse.

My ONLY source of sanity is my journals. Writing it out. Putting it on paper even if it doesn’t make sense at the time. And although my journalling habit may have kept me “sane” it is now only a record of past abuse, thought circles, and misplaced blame. My journals record depression, anxiety, angst, worry, fear, solving the wrong problems, guilt, anger, and hopelessness punctuated by the occasional short-lived ray of light that I wasn’t yet ready to see.

My angels tried to help me back then. I see it NOW.

My journals are a record; nothing more.

But, now they’re online for you so you can validate your own feelings and thoughts (which your abusers have almost convinced you are wrong). This blog is simply a “real time” journal. It’s an up to the minute record of my thoughts and feelings along with what I’m learning about abuse and what my thought process is as I try to figure out what to do next.

There’s no guarantee that I will EVER get it right.

Please don’t ask me how to make life with an abuser tolerable. I haven’t tolerated it well myself.

Nope, warning you about the physical danger of verbal abuse didn’t make the knot in me disappear. Damn it, I was hoping that it would. I really don’t want to go back into the expectations thing, but here I go.

Patricia Evans talks about how victims of abuse are not abused because of who we are. We’re abused because of who we are NOT.

I am NOT whatever person my husband wants me to be or thinks I should be. And because I am not (an can NEVER BE) a person who my husband has imagined, the abuse will continue.

One of the horrific effects of being abused is that usually, the person doing the abusing is very important. We love them, or we need them (our husbands, parents, etc.). So we try desperately to be the person they “expect” us to be. In the process, we lose and consideration for who we expect ourselves to be.

In the end, we don’t know who we are, who we want to be, or even who we could have been; the prospects for becoming someone (other than a failure) dims.

The only thing I want to be is someone who is loved, valued, cherished by my husband. I didn’t used to care what I had to do to be loved; I’d do anything. Sexual acts that make me cry, feigning happiness so he isn’t embarrassed, trying things “his way” for “once”, keeping my mouth shut, trying to be less emotional, more focused, less conversational with my boys, …It’s painfully obvious that I am not loved by my husband, but why? I made the mistake of thinking something was wrong with me, missing in me, … I was not enough.

But remember, the person I’m trying so desperately to be loved by abuses me because of who I am NOT.

I am NOT his princess nor his ideal mommy. Sadly, I am NOT the woman he married either. Often, I am a crying, screaming, ranting, begging banshee who flies off the handle and cannot carry a logical conversation. I need to be in a straight-jacket. Seriously. He worries for our children’s futures as men because their mother is such a flake.

All I ever wanted to be was loved, honored and cherished for who I was the day he married me and for who I had the capability of becoming.

Trust me, becoming a crying, screaming, ranting, begging banshee was not on my wish list of “people I most want to be like when I grow up.”

My sister tells me to stop saying “It makes me sick” because she’s afraid “it” really will make me sick.

Once upon a time, “It makes me sick” was a kind of heart-sickness, an expression.

The first time I realized that I really felt physically sick because of my marriage problems was in 2002. My boys and I were living with my grandmother while Will retrained for re-entry  to active duty.

I kept a purple journal then, and it is filled with pictures. A few of them are pictures of me, of what’s going on inside of me. And in those pictures, there’s a big knotty ball drawn in my chest cavity. Sometimes the ball starts at my throat and extends to my naval, and sometimes there are two separate “balls” – one over my heart and one over my stomach.

At the time, I labled these knotty balls “Depression”. (Hee hee – “knotty balls” – sounds funny)

Now, my cholesterol levels are over 300 (taking vytorin though), I have panic attacks, and I’m “obese” on the BMI scales. My heartsickness is setting the stage for another form of attack – a heart attack.

I can and will unravel those damn heartsick, disease-causing balls. I’m sure of it. But they and the physical disease they’re causing are already here.

Depression does make you physically sick, and abuse causes depression. How you feel mentally and emotionally will have effects on your body over time. My thoughts and emotions are telling my body to gear up to kill me. My spirit is (was, I hope) dying. And without my spirit, there’s no reason for my body to be here at all.

You’ve been warned.

Like many of our “good” conversations, my husband and I talked for over three hours last night.

I went to bed at 3:30am, tired of course, but also daring to hope that MAYBE we opened discussion on a basic problem in our marriage. Expectations cause us a LOT of damage – a lot of hurt feelings,…a lot of abuse.

From what I gathered last night, usually when I behave in a way he doesn’t expect, he sucks it up. Counts it as one of the “little things” that, at the time, he chooses to ignore.

Typically, I will continue to behave in this unapproved-of-fashion. At some point, this “little thing” causes him to become very angry. To explode and unload on me all his anger, frustration, and disappointments – maybe only about the one “little thing” but maybe because of many “little things” he’s kept bottled in.

The big event may be triggered by the original “little thing” or it may be triggered by something else I do or say.

Usually, I’m caught completely off guard by what feels to me like an attack. I feel violently attacked by some “little thing” that is just me being me. I feel attacked for being me.

In fact, I am being attacked for being other than what he expects me to be.

So where did all of these “expectations” come from? Does it matter where they came from? Do we need to sit on Freud’s couch and recount every morsel of “what my parent did and how I internalized it” in order to effect any change?

Is it enough for him to know that some of his expectations cannot and will not be accepted (by me)?

The knot in my stomach says this problem won’t go away that easily. Really, that question made me sick to my stomach, but instead of throwing up, the tears spurt out instead.

So no, I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.

Yes, the Army names everything with a number. DD Form 2893 is the safety plan provided to me by the Victim’s Advocate on post. In my opinion, it is the best outline of a safety plan that I have found.

Safety planning topics include what to do if an “incident” is in progress, what to do if you’re planning to leave, what to do after you’ve left, what to do if alcohol/drugs are involved, what to do at work, and others.

It’s very comprehensive.

If your abuser is NOT in the military, you can easily overlook a few phrases like “Senior Enlisted Advisor” and the formal “purpose” information (which does nothing but make the purpose of the form dummy proof) included in the phrasing.

I just spent an hour creating an only slightly modified form of the safety plan to post on my site. It will go on “Escape Your Abuse” in a matter of minutes.

However, to save me bandwidth, I’d like you to have access to the form on the Defense Technical Information Center site. If you click this link, you can fill in the form in pdf format right from your computer, save it, and email it to yourself AND a trusted friend. (BTW, only send it to yourself IF your abuser has absolutely NO ACCESS to your email!)

Safety Plans contain the information that will keep you safe in an emergency. You do not want to arrive at your “safe place” only to find your abuser waiting for you there!

I’m a clumsy stumbler. I mean, I stumble sporadically… If you’re a stumbler, please be my friend! This is me: http://journalme.stumbleupon.com/