My Verbally Abusive Marriage

Written November 2009 while still married to my husband:

Abuse is wildly twisted and warps the minds and hearts of everyone it touches. The ones who we call abusers are as tortured as the ones we call victims. There is no excuse for any abuse one person afflicts upon another. It is not noble or okay to hurt anyone, but to end abuse we must realize that demons have both the abuser and the victim tightly by the throat.

I, an abuse victim, am at a double-disadvantage because I am clear-minded enough to acknowledge that, by nature, I have my own set of problems and sins to conquer. Therefore, I acknowledge that at least in this one way, Will and I are the same. I am willing to forgive Will his sins committed against me because I want him to forgive my sins against him.

One difference between us is that I am willing to say “I fucked up,” and seek forgiveness. If he says, “I fucked up,” he seeks silence; he doesn’t want to think or talk about it ever again, and a true apology is the source of much pain. Apologizing admits fault; he cannot be at fault.

The demons in him demand perfection. He measures his self-worth by the imaginary yardsticks he’s placed in their hands. I look to him to tell me my value, but he looks at every other soul in the world to validate him. When he chokes me or demands my allegiance, it is because I am the one person he can control when he truly wants to choke the shit out of every other person looking at him, judging him.

And he is okay with this because he believes I let him down. In the beginning, he wanted what I had to offer, and set about taking it from me. Like the farmer who killed the goose laying golden eggs, his greed quickly smothered my fire. Probably as the farmer did after cutting open the goose, he desperately sought to find another source of fire. He didn’t check inside of himself because he never once thought there was a fire inside of himself; instead, he sought the fire in another woman or dug at my entrails, hoping for a spark.

In the story, the goose is undoubtedly dead. It is different when a person figuratively dies. The spark of life within us dies only when the body dies; Will has not physically murdered me, so my spark has never completely vanished. Over time, the tiny spark tries to become a fire again.

When Will sees this happening, he is at first overjoyed. He thinks there is hope for him; he feels in love and happy. Or maybe simply secure. But he has a bad habit in greed. It is never long before he wants my spark for his own. It is never long before he seeks to take it. It is not long before he abuses again.

On one level, my participation in the abusive cycle is one I do not wish to stop. I do not want my fire to go out; I do not want to die. Naturally, when I feel the spark roar into a flame, I do not wish to douse it, I want to let it burn. That desire is not a mistake, it is life itself.

The problem is that I want to make Will happy. I know I have something that he wants, and I want to share it with him. I gingerly expose my roaring flame to Will, thinking, “I want to share myself with him; I want to live with him.”

Intuitively, I hope that an ember from inside of me will jump inside of him, igniting his own spark so he will realize he doesn’t have to take mine. This is my mistake. I am trying to share my life with the wrong person. I will not accept the fact that Will must resurrect his fire on his own, just as I have done a thousand times for myself. I dare to think one thing easy in this life: I know how to resurrect the fire within myself. The hardest thing for me is to not share it with Will.

So where does this leave me and what will happen to my marriage? I want to share my life with him. I want to share everything I am with this man who cannot live on his own. His habitual taking of what is good is killing me and his habitual refusal to find the spark of life within himself is dooming him to a life of failure.

If I am able to learn to not give of myself to Will, if I am able to keep my fire from him, will he learn to look inside for his own fire? Or will he crack and finally kill me so he can once and for all take the spark of life from me to implant inside his own belly?

Can anyone say “Murder-Suicide”? Men kill their wives and then themselves because once she is finally dead and motionless on the floor, he realizes that the life spark was hers and hers alone. In killing her, he sought to absorb her; now that All is gone from her, he realizes he will never ever and had never ever been able to use her life spark for his own. Overwhelmed with true grief because he feels unable to live without leaching from her, he turns the weapon upon himself.

He truly loved her life force. His mistake was thinking he could ever take it from her and use it as fuel for himself.

I’m writing my blog on healthyplace.com about “trust” and found a picture page on this website that I’d forgotten existed.

[Did anyone else just hear the song "Picture pages, picture pages, time to get your picture pages, time to get your crayons and your pencils..." Bill Cosby, I think. Anyway...]

I drew some pictures in the beginning of my marriage that, in hindsight, are very revealing.

There are photos on this page too. Just scroll down a little to see the art: Less Than I Am Photo Gallery

Tshirts to empower:

I am 14. I have opened my window, rotating it out just enough to see his headlights reflect in it when he turns down his driveway. I want him to return home, want him to come tapping on my window. I want to be his girlfriend.

He is the boy who raped me, on his couch, in only a few minutes, weeks before. But I didn’t want to call it rape. I wanted to call it love.

I wanted to have sex with him over and over and over again until I convinced myself that he was my first true love. For a few weeks that summer, I succeeded in doing that – at least most of the time.

But the tapping at the window and my subsequent hopping out of bed to glance out that window to see his face belied my true feelings. I was not Bess, the landlord’s daughter. He was not the bad boy Highwayman for whom I spent hours plaiting love knots into my long, dark hair.

Shame, dread, revulsion, … those feelings welled inside of me in between the taps on the window. The feelings’ poisonous nature sloshed around in my guts, eating and corroding my belly from the inside. Hyper-alert, unable to sleep, almost obsessive, I felt compelled to avenge my rape by pretending to control its circumstances; I couldn’t go back and control, re-do, what happened on the couch, but I could control whether it happened again, or again, or again. Continue reading

I am so excited!

A woman who is in the process of leaving her abusive husband decided to blog her story here on My Verbally Abusive Marriage!

She’ll go by the name RedVelvetRiches, and will post as often (or infrequently) as she likes.

Welcome to the blog, RedVelvetRiches. Thank you so much for your willingness to help.

My memories are like an old thriller that keeps replaying the same scenes when I go back and try to rethink it. I often catch myself trying to justify my childhood. When I think back to the horrible events that have happened over the years, I can tell you I’m grateful for my life today. I love who I have become. Although I can’t change my past I can understand it. Writing this will be the first time I have come clean, another way of putting it behind me. I’ve wanted to let this out for some time now.

My name is Joe. As a young boy, I lived with my mom and dad and my sister. My sister was my closest friend. She was part of me as I was part of her. Dad abused my mom, sister, and me. My dad, who I thought was a normal average father and husband.

In 1975, I was five and my sister was three. We had money at this time of my life because my dad held a good job and important job. I remember being proud of what my dad did for work. I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I wanted to be just like him.

He had come from a hard childhood, in an out of foster homes and being abused by his parents. Alcohol played a big role in Dad’s life. He drank while he was a young man and he still does. He also liked guns. My sister and I grew up under the threat of guns an booze. Continue reading

Have you been given bad advice by a member of the clergy? Did you feel blamed for the abuse in your relationship instead of helped? Have you been told to carry the water and serve the one who abused you?

If so, then you know that some clergy must be better educated about the dynamics of abuse.

Doug and Cindy Burrell’s ministry is about to take a giant, positive leap forward. They are speaking at a church about the harm done to abuse victims by clergy attempting to follow “God’s Word” but overlooking key scriptures in support of ending abuse.

Your experience will benefit their ministry and change someone’s life for the better.

If you would like to be a part of the story and positively impact the ways in which the church counsels domestic abuse victims, please contact them via the form at Cindy Burrell’s website, Hurt By Love.

Your anonymity will be protected.

Une Vie, a new blog, stands on the threshold of liberating its writer and many others who care to follow her story of abuse. The writer contacted me to let me know she identified the issues in her marriage as abusive and is ready to do something about it. I’m so excited for her!

Running From Abuse is another new blog in which our heroine fights for her independence from an abusive relationship. Her story inspires courage against the odds and is well-worth reading.

Please read and comment and share the links to their blogs on your networks.

On January 22, 2012, it will be two years since I left my marriage. I’ve come so far since then; I did the right thing for my children and myself.

I’m having some “issues” today that I was going to discuss in this entry. But before I did that, I went back and took a look at the two entries that changed the meaning of this blog forever.

Today, I am fortunate to write “My Verbally Abusive Marriage…and what I’m doing in it” from a different perspective. The marriage was abusive, but it no longer exists. What I write now concerns how I’m moving past it and the abuse, and I am joyful that I am no longer “in it”.

On January 22, 2010, I left my home two times. The first time was the (what had become) the usual, run of the mill event: I left because I was scared, planning to return home after his temper had cooled or he had passed out. I took a blanket and my purse.  I left again only minutes after typing the last “Smack” in My Heart is Failing.

When I returned home, all hell broke loose. I ended up calling the police, but I had no showing bruises, so the cops would not remove him from the home (worthless!). I left because I truly feared what would happen after they pulled out of the driveway and left me alone with Will. Continue reading

There are agencies designed to help victims of domestic violence when they’re ready to leave the abusive relationship. Those same agencies may counsel victims of domestic abuse who are not yet ready to leave, but need support and information as they try to salvage their relationships. If you have access to those groups, then please use them. They’re free to you and have their fingers on all the resources available to you in your community.

Nevertheless, some victims of domestic violence do not or cannot access those services. And still others discover that although they’re plugged into community resources, they still feel hopeless, helpless, angry and scared.

I’ve been there. In the end, it boiled down to finding my voice (and drowning out his). I learned how to do it, and I can show you how to do it too.

It won’t take long to deliver the information; in fact, you’ve probably seen it on the free literature in your community. Yet actually taking the time to work through the emotionally draining steps can seem like too much when you’re carrying the weight of your and his worlds on your shoulders. I will help you go through the process safely and as serenely as possible.

I understand your trepidation – this process doesn’t have to end with you leaving your marriage or relationship – you decide when or if you leave that important facet of your life behind. I’ll support you either way.

The fee is $60 for two hours of mentoring via phone. If you’re interested, contact me and I’ll guide you.

Contact Me