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| Fri, 11-26-2004 - 9:52am |
I posted this as a response to another thread. I decided that I should post it as a new discussion since I have just joined. Please excuse the redundancy if you have already read this.
I am new to this board. This is the first time that I have posted. I will apologize in advance because my post will also be long. I could really relate to your post. I guess I was hoping that I would come to this board and NOT be able to relate. IN my heart, I knew that I would, but I still hoped...I am just now starting to understand just how emotionally abusive my marriage was. I have been separated for 8 months. I knew that I was very unhappy in my marriage. My husband was very quiet and a loner (I thought). Our courtship was wonderful. I thought I was so lucky when we married. Things changed within about 2 years. He did not seem to know how to talk to me except to make jokes. I am sure that I enjoyed the joking at first, but after a while you have to have a serious conversation. My husband did not want to spend time with me, he rarely communicated with me, he stayed on the computer most of the time, he never held my hand or held me, and sex was WHAM BAM. His abuse was so covert that I just did not think that it was abuse. He was secretive and silent. I never realized how damaging silence could be. It took a lot for me to get up my nerve to try to talk to him. When I did, he would not say ANYTHING. He would just stare at me with this cold, blank, stare. I began to think that something was wrong with me. I tried writing him letters. I think that I wrote about 7 letters in my 9 year marriage. He never acknowleged one letter. If I asked, he told me that he needed time to think about them. I also gave in to sex because I wanted to try to be closer to him. But it was so hard without communication, or any other kind of intimacy. I felt like a prostitute. He never forced me or anything like that so, once again, I did not consider it abuse. I also cried through sex many times. He never noticed. Sex was generally about him. I felt that he did not really want to touch me in any way. I also tried to talk to him about that. I never got any answers. I desperately wanted a family and children. I could not get him to really discuss that with me. When we had trouble conceiving, he did not take part in being tested. I went and had the preliminary tests done alone. Finally, I realized that I should stop trying to have a child with him. His disinterest in conceiving was a very bad sign for his future as a father. He finally said that he was not sure that he wanted the responsibility of children. My heart was broken. We went to marriage counseling, but he only made it to 2 sessions. I remained in therapy alone for the last 5 years.I began to develop my own life without him. I have horses and spent a lot of time with them. Again, I would have preferred that he be out riding with me. I was already shouldering most of the responsibility for our home. I did everything around the house. I withdrew also. I am ashamed to say it, but that is what I did. I lived as if he were my roomate. Shortly before we separated, I discovered that he was very involved with internet pornography. My friends had suggested that was what he was doing until late at night on the computer. I really did not believe it. I put spyware on the computer and discovered that was what he was doing. He was visiting many teen porn sites. Once again, I was heart broken. He had stopped wanting to be intimate with me (except wham bam). He preferred porn over me? I blamed myself for that also. I felt there must be something deficient in me. My husband found another woman within 2 months of our separation. She has children. I felt suicidal. I could not believe that after all of my years of practically begging him to tell me how he felt about having a family that he became involved with someone with children. I am now 43 and it is almost too late for me to have children of my own. We separated because I had an affair. Again, this is something that I am so ashamed of. He left immediately. At first he said, "I guess I cannot blame you". That only last one day. After that he began to tell me that I brought all of this on myself (separation/divorce). He would not take any responsibility for his neglect of our marriage. I was hoping that by being honest with him he would do the same for me and that we could to counseling and try to work things out. I have been through so much emotional pain and guilt in the last 8 months. Today was especially hard because I know that he was probably at Thanksgiving dinner introducing his new girlfriend and her children to his family. I suspect that all they know about me at this point is that I had an affair. They have no idea what our marriage was really like. I know that it is common not to get any closure with emotionally abusive partners. That part is like torture for me. I will never get an answer to any of my questions. I will always wonder what happened to the man I thought I married. The man that I thought had become a reclusive loner just moved right in with someone else. He simply said that he could not tolerate my affair. Just like that, he was done with me. He has been so cruel that he has given his cell phone to one of the children to answer when I have called him in the past. The child said "Is this M's ex wife?" It is very hard to find peace with all of this. Finally, the most difficult part of all is that I am still battling that fear that just maybe he will treat someone else with respect. Maybe he will be a good partner in his new relationship. I know that this is a common question/fear/belief of partners of emotionally abusive people; that they will be "different" with someone else. I still battle with that in my mind every single day.

Abusers are not different with different people.