My Verbally Abusive Marriage

To retrain my thinking, I’m going to start with ideas I already identify as problematic. But how do you attack an idea effectively?

Um, who is this causing an uproar? Erin says:

“(I am in the back of the class, extending my arm as far upward as it can go, waving it like a maniac!!!) Pick me! Pick me! Let me help you with this! (Faint whimper and whine coming from my throat…)”

Well, who could deny that plea? Erin, subconscious mind expert who has ALWAYS been on my side, wants to help. I know that she needs a starting point so she can begin tailoring a program for me. I am assuming that it doesn’t really matter where we start because over time and experience, we’ll work together to pinpoint other trouble spots.

I want to work on forcefully removing the thoughts that cause me to shrink back into myself.  I want to stop using my loved ones’ behaviors as excuses to clam up, shut down, and stop pursuing my awesome ideas! I want to value and pursue my interests/goals even if someone I love has a million reasons why it won’t work.

Likewise, I want to stop shutting off my loved one’s advice when they are pointing out things that may not work as I have planned. I’ve literally trained myself to shut down as soon as someone says anything other than “That’s a perfect idea! How can I help?” In my experience, that phrase NEVER reaches my ears. I’ve literally NEVER heard someone say that to me, so why do I constantly expect to hear it? I set myself up for failure by expecting it, because as soon as I DON’T hear it, I quit.

I’ve quit a lot of great stuff. For example, Bluelady Muse, a website that had promise but didn’t go anywhere (in part) because my husband said it wouldn’t. (When I closed it, I added it to my current site because there’s a lot of information there that I want to incorporate, possibly, into the healing process. You can’t get to it from a link on my current site, it’s “hidden” except in this paragraph, and I haven’t tested it so not all of the links may work.)

I’m tired of quitting. I’m tired of using assumed meanings to what other people say as an excuse to quit. I want to value my own ideas above what other people think of them, and I think the imagery of Thor’s Hammer can help me knock out that unwanted, detrimental, no longer subconscious habit.

So, Erin, is this a starting point you can work with?

What subconscious habits do I have that negatively affect me currently? I feel that to eliminate the situations I do not like, I must stop the habits that created the negativity.

I could begin with saying that my marriage is saturated with distrust and disrespect, or that my children are suffering in ways I am not sure I can repair. However, I’ve learned enough to know that before I can hope to repair relationships with others, I must repair the relationship I have with myself.

Therefore, I choose to identify some habits that affect me because they originate inside of me. I want to identify my own stinking thinking so I can decide how to go about changing me.

Negative Thoughts:

• I should pursue my talents, goals, or activities only if they please someone else; if I am the only one who wants it, then it’s not worth pursuing. 
• I am undisciplined and struggle to meet goals.
• I do not know how to set goals worth reaching.
• My goals are unimportant.
• What I want is unimportant.

OK. I’m stopping right here. I am seeing a disturbing trend in my thinking. For one, I believe that anything I do must be validated by someone else. I prefer that the ones I love validate me, but strangers will do (as in the old days of promiscuity or currently via this blog). When there is no one else to tell me I’m doing a good thing, I stop doing it no matter how beneficial it is to me or how much I enjoy it. I stifle me. I cling to the branches of someone else’s decision tree and attempt to force them to tell me which way to climb.

Following someone else’s decision tree guarantees I won’t be happy with what I do, nor will I be happy with the end result.

If this is true (and I know it is), then when have I ever practiced setting a goal for myself? One that I want to reach, one that would give me satisfaction both in the doing and in the result?

I remember a goal from high school. I wanted a top grade of 5 on my art portfolio – I wanted the Gold Key Award for Art. My teacher encouraged me, but I wanted it for myself. I put in the hours and produced the portfolio. I received the grade of 5 and the award.

Another goal from high school was to bench press 150% of my body weight. I did that on more than one occasion.

Another goal was to graduate Basic Training and distinguish myself in the Army. I graduated BT, received two promotions for being the top student in two different schools, received my third promotion in an unexpectedly short time, received the expert markmanship badge for the M50, and received one Army Achievement Award for other contributions to the service. I did all of that in 30 months before chaptering out honorably due to pregnancy.

Reaching those goals required self-discipline and the drive to meet the mini goals within each accomplishment. I didn’t struggle to meet those goals, I reveled in the challenge. So aren’t my statements saying “I am undisciplined and struggle to meet goals” and “I do not know how to set goals worth reaching”  wrong?

Really, those two beliefs follow lock-step with things I’ve heard Will tell me for the past 17 years. I’ve let what he’s told me become my reality. And because I’ve attempted to do things to please him instead of myself, the statements “my goals are unimportant” and “what I want is unimportant” readily infiltrated my thinking.

My thinking began to change when I married Will. No, that isn’t entirely true.

Elements of this stinking thinking are evident before marrying Will, but I somehow overcame them (at least partially if not entirely). Or maybe my parents didn’t direct me in any certain way so what I did to try to please them aligned more directly with what I wanted for myself.

Will ”directed” me. He, unlike my parents, tells me what I am and what I should be doing. He is willing to define me.

Perhaps, when I met Will, I liked how easy he made it for me. Do this, be that, need this, want that…. In a way, he made my job (pleasing someone in return for their love) easy. I’ve said it before, but in the beginning, Will gave me the gift I thought I wanted.

Will reinforced the negative thoughts I hold of me. What may have been tiny flaws in my thinking have become magnified over 17 years. Because HE seems to believe them and a part of me agrees, these once small flaws amplified into huge problems.

My thinking didn’t begin to change when I met Will. My negative, habitual thinking was amplified when I met Will.

At least I have identified some of the subconscious thinking. I’ve also got a pretty good idea of what helped to make the negative subconscious thoughts habitual. I’ll leave it to the next post to try to unravel how to retrain my thinking.

I am currently looking for an enemy. Yes, I’m wondering who or what I’m fighting. I know that I am struggling, fighting, with something; naming my foe is the difficulty.

I could say that I am fighting the abuse, but that entices me to name Will as “abuser” and me as “victim”. I assume that if labeling myself as a victim diminishes my ability to be anything other than “victim”, then labeling Will as an abuser diminishes my ability to see him as anything other than “abuser”.

I do not want to fight with my husband. In fact, the longer I envision Will as “the enemy” the longer it is going to take to create peace. So long as I externally fight (and blame) Will, then I am ignoring the fight going on inside myself.

But I am not fighting myself, either. I am a wonderful person, and I love living inside my own skin. I have beautiful qualities, and I (usually) prevent my uglier qualities from overwhelming my goodness. Although I am working to reverse or at least quiet my uglier qualities, the internal struggle is common, inherent in human nature, and in no way compelling evidence that “I am the enemy.”

Fighting abuse, my husband, or myself is primarily fruitless and ultimately distracts me from the real enemy. So who or what is the enemy?

In reality, the question came to me after the answer. Like on Jeopardy.

Announcer: “The clues are:

• Your husband’s new and frequent talk of muscle memory,
• Your feeling that you are fumbling around for a foothold,
• Tyrial’s wisdom concerning Thurisaz,
• Your sister’s knowledge of the subconscious mind.

And the question is…”

Kellie [pounding the buzzer excitedly]: “What is the enemy?!”

Announcer: “Yes! That is the question we’re looking for! Kellie, you win a foothold in reality [audience applause] and a new, healthier way to fight this battle!”

Whew! That was exciting.

The clues themselves are not the enemy. My husband’s new phrase,  my confusion, Tyriel, and my sister are not my enemies. BUT, the one thing they all have in common is my subconscious/unconscious mind’s habits. Specifically, the habits that keep me the same, the habits that follow the path of least change.

The habits I’ve developed (mentally, psychically, physically) have led me to where I am right now. In the context of my marriage, my habits perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

I am not saying that what I habitually do or say EXCUSES any abuse, nor am I saying that what I do or say CONTROLS Will’s actions or reactions. I’m saying that the things I do and say (out of habit) ENABLES the abusive cycle or abusive dynamic to continue.

Tyriel, the rune expert I linked to in a former post, recently gave me some wise advice. (see Tyriel’s entire comment at the end of “No History“)

“The lesson of ..Thurisaz…is to harness the protective force of the present to undo the unconsciousness and conditioning that rules your life… and you have picked a fight with that unconscious conditioning. So finish it.”

~Tyriel

The universe, god, converses with all of us in many and differing ways. When Will said “muscle memory” for the first time, I thought it was out of context in the conversation, so I noted the phrase. Then he said it four or five more times in three days. “Weird,” I thought.

My private journal entries over the past few days, upon review, relate to my lost footing, my confusion, the feeling that I have lost my grip on the present. I’ve listed what I’ve done consistently throughout my marriage, good and bad, and I didn’t know why I was making the list.

My sister, a subconscious mind expert, continually speaks to subconscious mind dynamics and how they may affect us. She asks what type of hypnotherapy I think I could use; she’s willing to develop a program for me, but I’ve resisted because I didn’t know where to focus.

But these clues from god were not enough to make “it” click for me. So god somehow nudged Tyriel, a person who has read but not commented to this point, to write. Tyriel’s comment pulled it all together for me. I am grateful.

I’ve told Will that I can’t take a hint – he’s got to be direct if he wants me to “hear” him. I am thankful that god nudged Tyriel at precisely the right time for me to put all the clues together. Earlier, I wouldn’t have understood; later, it may have been too late.

Today in therapy, we talked about cats for most of the session. More specifically, we talked about how disrespected he felt because I chose to keep three cats.

I am so freaking tired of hearing how disrespected HE feels. I hear it all of the time from him, and I’m (almost) at the point of not caring if he feels disrespected or not. However, the therapist kept talking about the cats, so I decided that she must have a reason for it and rolled with it instead of fighting it.

It didn’t seem to matter that Will and I already agreed to the terms of keeping three cats in the house; we talked about the cats anyway.

I just deleted a paragraph beginning with “One good thing about talking about the cats is…”. I couldn’t finish the stupid sentence. I couldn’t finish the sentence because a thousand possible things were going through my mind, all of them interrelated.

In fact, the therapist could have picked any situation between Will and I and the discomfort of it being related to “everything” would be the same. Will and I rarely have ONE situation UNrelated to our history together. Almost every time we want to confront ONE problem, we wind up discussing two, or three, or four others.

I feel half crazy when I problem solve with him because there’s no easy problem, no easy solution, for us.

The therapist said and Will seemed to agree that women do not keep to the subject. Although that may be true some of the time (I am not above embracing a negative stereotype if it helps, which it rarely does), I am not the only person in my house who suffers from that particular compulsion.

When the therapist let this suggestion fall past her lips, I REALLY REALLY forced myself to believe she had a plan and a reason for saying this to us. It was infuriating to be at marriage counseling for a problem that is due, in part, to stereotypical labeling, only to hear the therapist stereotypically label me.

If this counseling is going to work, it seems as if I am going to have to act as if the past didn’t happen. I am going to have to pretend that I am once again a naive 20 year old girl who has never suffered injustice at the hand of the one I love. I have to “let it go” in order to move forward. I feel that the counselor wants me to pretend that we have no history.

It seems like she wants to pretend that she’s been with us from the beginning, and that the beginning is NOW. It only matters what we say NOW. The history between Will and I doesn’t exist. The abuse doesn’t exist (at least not yet because she hasn’t seen it).

This foundation of problems IS our history. Brick builds upon brick and also supports the bricks next to it. I would feel better if instead of pretending that we have no history, she ask me to begin knocking down the bricks that already exist. Acknowledge our history, ask about it, find out how we got to where we are and THEN help us to remove the foul habits that built our first house so we can build a better one starting NOW.

I wish she had asked about more than the cats.

Today’s counseling went well for the most part. I learned that I can ask Will to clarify statements that sound “off” to me instead of internalizing his words and hearing something not said.

Remembering to ask questions like, “Are you saying I’m a bad mother?” when he says, “You don’t discipline the boys” is better than inferring that he thinks I’m a bad mother.

Of course, it is hard not to infer what he means when he has loudly told me several times that our boys are f***ed up because I try to make them my friends (& other such reasons). To me, that sounds like him blaming me for irreparable damage done to our children, although he would probably prefer it if I quoted him verbatim from more than one occasion in order to “prove” he has said it. [is there an emoticon for "brushing aside snide remarks bred from a hostile history"? that's what I'm doing now...]

So anyway, after counseling I told him I would ask such questions of him in the future, and that I hoped he’d hear them without accusing me of being a smart ass. He said that he could do that.

Also after counseling, he finally told me a couple of nice things I could do for him. (Remember, I asked him last week what I could do in hope of dispelling the hostile environment.) One, it would be very nice for him if when he came home, the house was “presentable.”

“Presentable” is a word his mother used to say as she hurried his siblings into a cleaning frenzy before Dad walked in the door at 5:30. Presentable, to him, means the same thing as “straightened” means to me, but it’s more the feeling that I and the boys care about the home he provides, and out of appreciation for his hard work, we pick up the joint before he gets home.

That isn’t so much to ask, I don’t think.

Another thing he would like is if on weekends where he is outside working at lunchtime, I call him inside to eat. Lunch doesn’t have to be fancy or hot, it’s not about the food. He wants to know that I care about him enough to remind him to eat, and respect the work he’s doing enough to fix some food.

I can do that now.

I could go into the past, telling you about WHY I stopped doing those things in the first place. But this is a clean slate (nothing is forgotten, I’m not in la-la land, but I am willing to wipe the slate clean and start fresh and small). I trust that by doing nice things for Will, he will be encouraged to do nice things for me, too.

I don’t know what, if anything, Will took away from the session today. I hope he heard the counselor tell me “No one has the right to define you…” when I mentioned the “housewife” thing from earlier this week.

I hope he sees that I learned from the counseling already – that I can ask him what he means instead of swishing it around in my head and then turning on him like a crazy woman because I feel as if he is demeaning me. I would very much like to respond to his concern that I am not disciplining the boys (or any other concern) with meaningful dialogue.

I would very much like to respond to his critiques with requests for help in meeting his expectations or “Oh, yeah, I can see where what I did could be a problem” or “No, I disagree, I see it another way” and be able to talk it through.

My ultimate hope, eventually, is that he takes as much responsibility for our problems as he expects me to do, and critiques of my job performance transform into assessments of our abilities, to include what is being done well.

Or maybe my ultimate hope, what I really want, is that we can move beyond talking about problems all of the time and start enjoying each other’s company, talking about interests outside of children, finances, respect, and our roles. I want to laugh, and I really want to laugh with Will.

I’m finding myself in need of anger management skills.

Last night, while watching a documentary about the Army Rangers, my husband became horribly upset at the fact there was a woman psychologist present at the 2-week initial Ranger training program. I don’t know if it was because she was a woman or because she was a psychologist. Maybe both because he didn’t pick at the male psychologist also present, only the woman.

Anyhow, he commented on how she shouldn’t be there. She couldn’t go through the training so she couldn’t understand the mental state of the men who were.

I disagreed, saying that there are some things you don’t have to experience first hand in order to understand. Some things about the human mind are evident; it is okay to offer aid to someone even if you don’t know exactly what circumstance brought them to the trouble – especially if you’ve been trained to do so.

But Will wasn’t having any disagreement. He’s the one who works alongside Special Forces. He’s the one who … blah blah blah. I commented that using his logic, he and I “shouldn’t” be having this conversation. Neither one of us are trained in Special Forces, so we should both agree to disagree and move on.

Nope. Not happening. I started laughing at the ridiculousness of it to which Will responded, “What do we think is so funny here? Why are we laughing?”

Well, “we” weren’t laughing. I was. Now I was angry, and I’m angry still this morning.

I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about whether or not female psychologists are present at Special Forces training. What I am angry about is that he tried to shut down my opinion of the situation and force his opinion onto me.

I am pissed off about his tactics of manipulation and fuzzy logic (with rules apparent only to him and changeable only by him)! I am angry that “simple” conversations can take a turn for the worst at the drop of a hat. I am angry that he seeks to shut me down instead of let me be.

I want to be me. I want to be me without some heavy hand over my head ready to squash me into the floor because I am different from Will.

So, I need some anger management tips. It’s no fun to go to bed feeling angry, hoping the new day will relieve the feeling only to wake and find the anger went no where. It’s still here.

How do I get rid of the anger? I don’t want to ignore it, I only want to acknowledge it and decide what, if anything, to do about it. If I’m going to focus on the “happy moments” then I have to figure out how to healthfully move past these uncomfortable ones.

quietone said, “But in some ways trying to force him to be committal about counseling is asking him to correct everything before he even goes in for his first session. It’s also asking him to acknowledge that his is wrong. He won’t acknowledge that right now but if the counselor is any good he might start seeing it within himself after a few sessions.”

Quietone gives the same advice my therapist gave to me. We have a counseling appointment on Wednesday, hopefully the first of many. Deanna, my therapist, said to let my husband take the lead when describing our issues. Perhaps quietone and Deanna are right. I will let him take the lead in therapy.

Does that mean that I will take the abuse at home? No. I don’t have to take it. I will continue to say things like, “please don’t talk to me like that” and “stop”.

Granted, “Stop” doesn’t work very well. After I say “Stop” I have to walk away because he launches into the ”it’s impossible to talk to you” tirade. But hey. Maybe “Stop” is my best answer.

My sister asked how I was doing last night. It is already hard to describe how I’m doing without describing what Will is doing, and that makes me sad. I find myself wrapped so tightly around his axles that it is hard to describe how I am doing, what I am feeling.

I read somewhere that some codependent people describe what they thought another person was feeling when asked. For example, when asked “How are you?” the codependent may answer, “Well, my son is feeling ambivalent about being suspended from school and my husband thinks I don’t love him. I’m trying to turn them around.”

Doesn’t answer “how are you?” at all.

So, last night when my sister asked me how I was, I caught myself launching into the drama that is “us” – Will and me. When I stopped myself, I realized that I’m living in fragments.

Near the beginning of Will’s deployment, I visited a counselor who told me to live the “good” moments , enjoy them. Without appreciating the good, it all seems to be a continuous strand of bad.

Since Will has been home, there have been good moments. I have felt them, loved them. The problem is that when they come to an end, I cannot allow myself to “pretend” the good moments are going to continue.

You know how some people have a wonderful night with their loved ones and wake up in the morning still happy and confident that those good feelings will carry through the morning? Their loved one, who also had a good time, is also confident that the two of them can ride the wave of good feeling for some time. Afterglow, with or without the sex.

Well, around here, I cannot allow myself the luxury of afterglow.

After a joyful moment, a joyful hour, there is something that marks its end. Whether Will falls asleep, I go to cook dinner, his dad comes in the house…whatever common thing it is, there is something that marks the end.

I cannot afford to assume that the goodness will continue. When I go to cook dinner, I can take a minute to relish in the previous moment, think that something good may have happened, BUT if I assume the next time I see Will’s face that he will be glad to see me, smiling at me, hugging me, … well, I cannot assume those things.

It is just as likely that when I see him again he will be scowling at me. Angry with me for something he saw while walking into the kitchen. Unsettled or unhappy about the conversation we’d had moments before.

If I allow myself to live with an afterglow, his scathing remarks will come as a surprise. Throw me off my rocker. Shock me.

I must live in the fragments of life. There is no flow. It’s stop and go.

I do not think this is how god wants me to live, how my sister wants me to live, nor how I want to live. This is no way to live.

Yes, I am a housewife. I am also many other labels. I am a mother, wife, sister, daughter, writer, patriot, conservative, seeker, and loads of other “things” we people seem so enamored with associating to ourselves.

But to Will, I am a housewife. He said so. He also rejected any of the other labels I listed because none of them bring home any money.

And after rejecting me, wholly and unequivocally (since “housewife” is only a fraction of who I am), he continued to tell me what makes housewives happy.

Housewives are happy when they have a roof over their head, food on their plates, a home to clean, a man who is willing to work, and children to care for. Therefore, I should be the happiest woman alive and appreciate him “for a change.”

Hmph.

Double hmph.

Narcissism. I’m not certain my husband is a narcissist, but I am tired of trying to diagnose him. I do know he displays several narcissistic qualities. I like Kim Cooper’s latest post because it gives tips on how to deal with the narcissistic traits I see. Check it out.