Going forward, while looking back

oxyD –

I’ve been there, done that and to be honest, I cannot trust professionals anymore. I just can’t. I think in all I’ve seen seven counselors plus have attended support groups at my local women’s shelter.

No one – NO ONE – got it.

Their ignorance played into this for me. All they wanted to talk about was what I was doing to allow it. I will not EVER EVER sit and look at what I did again.

That is EXACTLY what he wanted, for me to keep questioning myself.

I know now that I was a victim of a crime. Period. There are things now I must do to protect myself so this doesn’t happen again, but in reality, this could happen to any of us again.

I must now deal with what has become of my life, and decide what to do now. It makes me sick to have to rebuild my life again because someone decided to prey on me, but that is what it is.

I either give up or I rebuild. There is no choice.

I think you are a particularly educated ‘retired’ professional, because you have endured this. But I am finished with ‘professionals.’ DONE.

I know I am in trouble here, but I finally have the knowledge and tools that I need to deal with this. It is NOT easy and I have been lucky because he is leaving me alone for the past four months.

But my fear is that the minute I laugh, the minute I breathe, the minute I take a baby step forward, my phone will ring.

I know it will ring. I know he will show up here. I know he will try to get to me any way he can. It is not a matter of if – it is a matter of when.

I need to go through this process and remember these things in a healthier, stronger state of mind and see the reality of what he did.

Then I will be strong enough to resist him. I feel like I am preparing for the battle of my life.

Only by doing this, talking with people who understand and keep the blame where it belongs – ON HIM – will I be able to overcome what has been done to me.

I am as strong as they get. I am also not the first woman he has done this to, and I will not be the last. People have let me know that he has done this in the past, I don’t have the details, but I know enough.

That is the deepest comfort in this – that even though the dozens of people are holding his hand today, sooner or later he will do this again to someone, and then those people will see the truth.

Someday some of them might come to me and tell me they are sorry they abandoned me for him. I might get the good ones back in my life.

My only regret is that for this to all play out, another woman will suffer this, or another child, or he may end up with a child of his own to abuse.

He might be successful at killing someone next time.

I escaped with my life, that is how I feel. I escaped. Right now that is where I am.

These holidays are toughest on me. They are the times when people are either really happy or really sad. Holidays always gave him an extra reason to slam me to the ground, he knew they were tough on me.

Any holiday would be the time he would always abandon me and tell me I didn’t deserve to go to the beach or skiing in Vail for Christmas or over to his parents’ for a barbeque.

And he would make sure I knew he was going.

I would be left at the last minute alone. So I sink very low when the holidays come around. But at least I am alone today because it is my choice. Not his.

Thanks guys, you are getting me through this holiday weekend – it has been a long one.

Aloha, it is a comfort to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and a pretty nice dresser too.

I think when I post and when I talk to friends I tend to emphasize the horrible things he did without talking about how he soothed the damage he did. That was the important aspect to keeping me hooked.

How he knocked me down, picked me up, kissed my wounds and then knocked me down again.

He became my rescuer from the pain that he gave me. That is how he twisted me into depending on him more and more. He controlled EVERYTHING.

That is what they do. The times they are kind and generous and loving are as good as the times they are cruel and controlling and abusive are bad.

When they are good they are very very good and when they are bad they are horrid.

That is the cycle. That is the cycle of abuse. He builds and builds until he blows and destroys me and then he soothes the pain he inflicted on me.

Sometimes I could see it coming. I knew he was working up to deliver a ‘punishment.’

But all the while, he appears human. He appears to be struggling with it. I always told him he is the man who beats the crap out of his wife and then brings her flowers in the hospital and cries at her bedside.

He would cry and speak the language of a fresh start. He would plead with me not to give up on him. He would use my goodness to hold me with him, that I was reluctant to walk away from someone who needed me.

I can’t seem to get people to understand that this was not obvious, it was not like he came up and called me a worthless piece of crap.

He did it not as a man who came up and beat me up, he did it out of ‘love’ out of trying to improve me, out of trying to get me to be a better person…HA.

It is like you said Aloha:

“He told me, “You can’t see how you are.” I had had revelations in the past where I realized things about myself, things I hadn’t “seen” before and so, when he said this to me, I was open to it.”

So true.

I WAS open to it. Maybe there were things about me that caused people pain and he was the first person to have the ‘courage’ to tell me about. it??? My husband of 10 years had just left me for another woman when my son was 3 months old – so maybe I DID drive him away with the “way” I am.

I was open to hearing criticism, and like any human being, was open to looking at myself and making changes.

That – if you ask me – is not a weakness. It is a strength. The ONLY human beings not open to looking inward, evaluating themselves and making appropriate changes ARE PSYCHOPATHS.

That is the quality he saw in me that he robbed. That he manipulated.

But I am not going to change ME. He tried. My goodness, my openness to looking at myself and my behavior ARE ME. He used those good qualities to abuse me, control me and hurt me.

Because I am that way, I did not welcome, entice or open myself up to be abused. I honestly was just plain naive. I thought I could tell a bad person by their looks.

Someone who could break my ribs wore a dirty white tank top T-shirt. Someone who would twist my mind danced around a basement with wild eyes and stretch pants on.

I didn’t think an abuser would come from one of the most wealthy and respected families around. I didn’t think abusers knew art, and music and social graces.

I didn’t think an abuser could brush the hair from my eyes and pick my son up and hug him. I didn’t think he could be good at times, and that we would have passion that I never knew existed.

I didn’t think he would take me to dinner at the country club.

I thought if he was abusive we would go out on a date and he would get mad and hit me.

This guy didn’t. I would have rathered he beat me every day of my life. It would have been obvious then. Those wounds would heal easier.

It isn’t as simple as everyone wants it to be. It isn’t as simple as I want it to be. I thought bad guys wore black.

They don’t. They wear Diesel jeans and Patagonia shirts. They are runners and golfers and hoteliers. They drive nice cars, they ski like a champion. They have lots of friends who send them invitations to parties.

They light fires on cold winter nights, cuddle and drink wine.

One night I was on my knees in tears, begging him to tell me the truth about why he was doing this to me, why he was being so cruel.

He reached up for a wine glass. Poured himself a drink. Swirled. Sniffed. Held it up to the light.

While I was on the floor, sobbing.

Holding the glass in the air, he toasted himself.

“To me,” he said. “I am really a great guy.”

That was the last time we were together.

I know you guys think I need to change, but I am telling you – I am not giving up one speck of WHO I AM because he decided to rape my mind.

That is like telling the victim of a random shooting at a convenience store that they should have seen the gun and gotten away.

It is never that simple, easy or controlled.

He didn’t pick me because I was weak. He didn’t see me as a weak member of the herd. He picked me because of my goodness.

Anyone who knows one of these creeps knows they are forever looking for a ‘dream girl.’

One who will look beautiful on his arm, never complain, never have a need. In short, a stepford wife.

In the beginning, I was the answer to the problems in his life – why? Because the problems in the relationships before me were never his fault – ONLY THE FAULT OF THE WOMAN HE WAS WITH. She never turned out to be perfect.

But when he first met me, in his mind, I would be that perfect girl.

That’s how his thinking went.

So here I come along. Beautiful, happy, full of life, love and trust and loyalty. PERFECT.

“See mom? This is the girl who is going to do it for me. This is the girl who I can marry. See mom? I can do it! This is the girl I have been waiting for my whole life. See mom?”

The trouble is, I can’t stay a stepford wife, or Barbie. I am human, I will have needs, I do have needs, I do cry. I do have bad hair days. I can’t always admire him when he is breaking my ribs….

All of a sudden, because I don’t live up to his expectations, he turns on me. He can’t say, ‘Mom, I did it again. I screwed up another relationship.’

So he has to turn ME into the psychopath. Into the nutcase. Into the jealous bitch, into the one who is crazy. It’s a compulsive cycle that he cannot break.

He feels entitled to abuse me, but I am not allowed to stand up for myself. If I do, I am crazy. I am not then perfect.

He is impulsive, can’t think anything through. One day he tells everyone he loves me. The next I am a crazy bitch. The next I am the best thing that ever happened to him. The next he breaks my jaw.

The times when he begs me back – I think one thing happens. Sam Vaknin – the self-proclaimed Narcissist – got this right I think –

When he sees how much I sacrificed, how hard I worked, how much abuse I took just to stay with him in this relationship – but eventually even I left him, then who will be able to stay with him?

If I couldn’t do it, who can then? What woman will work this hard to stay with him?

All of a sudden – PANIC hits him. He fears he is destined to be alone.

So he begs me back.

UNLESS – he meets a girl in the meantime and he can start all over. Sometimes he meets her and still begs me back. Two strings in the water then.

It is difficult for him though, to go through that honeymoon stage with the new girl – where he is the caring, all giving, loving wonderful dream come true. It is a tough act for him, so he’d rather not do it.

He’d rather call me and use the mind control crap he has already worked to implant into my brain. Way easier than acting like a loving human being.

I remember once in the very beginning weeks of our relationship he said that “one woman would call me controlling.”

I said ‘Controlling? You are the LEAST controlling person I have ever met. What was wrong with that woman? She must be crazy.’

At that moment, I was his dream girl. Somewhere out there today, a girl is saying that about me. That is the only reason he isn’t calling me now.

But sooner or later she will turn out to be imperfect. He will remember how I loved him and sacrificed and tried. I will again be perfect and she will be dirt.

Whoever he is with is then dirt. Whoever leaves him is perfect.

Just like he felt when he was a baby whenever his mom would ignore him.

He ‘knows’ deep down that he is unlovable, after all, his mother didn’t. If she didn’t love him, well no one will.

He is sure no woman will love him so he drives them away, because he knows they will leave him anyway. But this way he controls everything about how, why and when it happens.

This had nothing to do with ME. I am just the woman he happened to stumble on. I just happened to be a really GOOD woman.

Almost perfect in fact.