By It is day 22 of Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2014 for Men and Boys, the invisible victims of domestic violence. Today’s In His Own Words tells the tale of “Kyle,” a nice guy from an abusive family who fell for and married an abusive woman who likely has borderline personality disorder.
When I first met my second wife, D, I thought she was perfect. She was everything I thought I could want in a woman. She was funny and caring and into all of my hobbies with a smile that could melt your heart. A real dream come true. However, what I didn’t realize at the time was this was simply her mask.
I had come from an extremely abusive home, so I was definitely the kind of guy looking for a woman to validate my existence. I told myself that this wasn’t the case after having been through several bad relationships and a previous marriage to a personality-disordered woman before. So, I thought I had “learned” from my mistakes and was ready for the right person to love me in a way that no one else could.
In the beginning, there were very few red flags, or so I thought. Though, to be honest, at that point in my life, I was so ready to find my “one and only” that I was readily willing to ignore what Dr. T calls those “WTF moments.” I thought I was safe, as I had been friends with D for a year previous to us dating.
However, if I knew back then what I know now, I would have run given some of those early warning signs and never looked back. For example, about three weeks into dating D, she showed up at my doorstep with a bag full of laundry, giving the impression that she was: 1) hopeless in managing her own affairs, and 2) ready to move in. As bad as it was having someone whom you’ve only dated for a few weeks wanting to move in, it was worse. She had the expectation that I was responsible for her laundry.
Not only did she passive-aggressively bring more stuff over to my place, but she started to complain that I was not washing her clothes for her while she was moving her stuff in. Being the “nice guy” that I was, I eagerly complied, since I was looking to win her approval. Yet, this wasn’t even the worst part.
After a great night’s sex, she took off early in the morning, and I proceeded to do her laundry. I was also in a hurry to get ready for work, so I didn’t thoroughly check all of the pockets in her jeans before I threw them in the wash; there were about 10 pairs in total. I didn’t realize that she had left her cellphone in one of her pairs of jeans. It wasn’t until I heard a clunking sound coming from the wash machine that I realized what had happened.
A couple of hours later, I got a call from D while she was at work asking about her cellphone, and I promptly explained that I had accidentally washed her phone. I apologized for my mistake, and offered to buy her a new one. This is when the “fit hit the shan.”
D exploded in a verbal tirade about how I had purposely washed her phone in a resentful act to hurt and offend her. I kept repeating that I was sorry for the incident, but I hadn’t done anything on purpose. Further still, I was confused about what the problem was, since I had offered to buy a replacement. This still wasn’t good enough.
Not only did I have to buy her a replacement phone, but I also had to admit that I purposely washed her phone “to hurt and sabotage her.” After going back and forth like this for about 45 minutes to an hour, I was rather worn down and confused. I was also working (I run my own business and was now severely late getting to my next job site), so I simply “confessed” my crime to be done with the conversation.
This wasn’t the end of D’s tirades. D comes from an extremely religious family, so her wanting to move in with me before we got married was considered a big deal, or at least it was to them, not so much with D. D’s family blamed me for corrupting their daughter and turning her into “a whore and a prostitute,” as well as literally calling me Satan. Despite all of this, D sided with her family’s actions and blamed me for causing her emotional pain and distress, even though she had no problem living with me or having sex with me outside of marriage.
Even worse, D’s family blamed me for causing her to break up with her previous fiancé shortly before we got together, although they repeatedly told me how much they hated him. Of course, they also refused to pay for the wedding as a way of further showing their disapproval of me, as well as threatening to hit me at more than one family function.
This didn’t bother me because I was “in love” with D. She told me in those first few weeks, while she was moving in, how she had never felt this way about anyone else before in her life, and how much she loved me/was falling for me. I was pretty hooked on what Dr. T calls the BPD crack pipe.
I offered to pay for the wedding myself: big mistake. D tried to plan the most elaborate wedding she could think of, totaling about $15,000.00. Although I wasn’t going to pay for something that expensive, I wanted D to be happy, since this was to be her first and “only marriage.”
Planning for the ceremony was awful too. Anytime I would make a suggestion, D would scream and yell and point her finger (trying to shame me), or she would break down crying, leaving my head spinning about what was going on. Fortunately, I was able to calm her down by “agreeing to the alternative plans” that she was willing to agree upon. But in doing so, I realize now that I was being primed for years of emotional and psychological abuse – as well as physical abuse, although that didn’t start until later.
Finally, after a year of dating and planning our wedding, we got married. Things seemed to die down. Yep, I was so naïve that I let a girl I had just started dating convince me that she was in love with me enough to get married right away. Worse yet, I was convinced – mainly through oral pleasures – that we didn’t need a prenuptial agreement, since that wouldn’t have been “romantic.” I rationalized all of this away.
I had known and been friends with D for a year before dating, so I thought I knew what she was like, which made it easier to explain away the crazy. Plus, anytime I didn’t rationalize things away or I was upset about something, D would either blow me off, blame me for everything, or give me so much sex that I couldn’t think straight.
Soon enough things started to get worse, a lot worse. About a year into our marriage, I was continuing to have health problems from growing up in an abusive household. My health was getting worse, and I needed to see more specialists about what could be done. I was losing my ability to work, which of course bothered D. (The long story short on this part, I was left to freeze as an infant by my parents, and although I was resuscitated that evening, it caused permanent injury to my body from frostbite. Further, I was not taken away by Child Services, and in the process of surviving my household, I was taught that pleasing my parents and anticipating their needs was my only way of receiving love, priming me for an abuser like D.)
So, as my health deteriorated, D escalated her abusive behavior, especially when I had a cancerous tumor develop. She actually blamed me for getting sick because it took the focus off of her and the money away from the gifts and trips that she was receiving. Even worse, she yelled at me and emotionally terrorized me whenever I pointed this out, going so far as to point and laugh in my face for wanting emotional support. She still expected me to do all of the cooking and cleaning, like I had been doing up to this point. Anytime I was having issues, she would conveniently be gone with her friends or give me the silent treatment for days or weeks on end.
While I was recovering, I was still expected to bring home the bacon, which I did because I felt it was my duty as a man to be the provider, regardless of the circumstances with which I was faced. No amount of pleading with D helped. It was around this time that she started to take her frustrations out on me while I was sleeping. That is, I would wake up to D punching or kicking me in my sleep.
For example, I remember waking up to my head being slammed against the wall, causing me to have a goose egg on my forehead for about two weeks. When I looked over, D acted like she was sleeping. I again rationalized D’s behaviors away by saying it was me being exhausted from surgery and working so much.
The craziness began to die down again as I started to get better and bring home more money. I thought that D was finally coming around. I was trying my best to set boundaries, explain why her actions were inappropriate, and not be such a pushover. After getting things back on track and paying down our bills, not only from my medical expenses but also D’s refusal to limit her spending, I was blindsided. During this time, she kept gaslighting me, engaging in double standards and no-win situations, and being physically confrontational like charging and flailing at me (similar to Janay Rice).
I noticed my personality was beginning to change. I was developing severe anxiety, having problems leaving the house, losing work contracts, and was no longer as outgoing as I used to be. In fact, I was even diagnosed with depression and loss of self-esteem at the time from a counselor that D forced me to go see. He said, “[I] was having relationship problems,” which were causing my issues. Though, I explained this away – once again – as having relationship problems with my friends, not D, since my social circle was also starting to contract, leaving me rather isolated.
This is when my true nightmare began. I was going through several legal issues with a few different contractors at work. While I was attempting to correct the problem, D was going behind my back, sabotaging my clients and business. Then, in true borderline fashion, she complained that I was not supporting her enough financially. I got good at alternative means of making money, like selling my prized vehicle and downgrading to an older car to use the difference to support D.
No matter what I did, it was never enough. D would even secretly open credit cards, then throw them in my face when she got tired of paying the minimum balance. D even hid the title for my new/old car for several months, claiming that it had never shown up in the mail. Then, one day, she conveniently pulled the title out of her purse while we were at a doctor’s appointment (more on that later), claiming, “Look what I forgot in my purse for the last three months.” Now, her purse was not one of those dufflebag-style purses either, more the kind that you could barely fit your driver’s license and a pack of gum into, so I knew she was lying.
Thank you, Kyle.
Nice guy meets abusive borderline personality disordered woman, Part II
By It’s day 23 of Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2014 for Men and Boys, the invisible victims of domestic violence. Today’s In His Own Words is the second part to Kyle’s story.
Yet, despite all of this, like a good lapdog, I held on due to my beliefs about correcting my past mistakes and not letting God down. But the constant fighting was starting to wear on me. In fact, I was developing grey hairs from the abuse and never knowing what was going to set D off. Even on days like my birthday, there was no reprieve, as she would use days like this to emasculate me or make it about her.
She would want to have a party for her “special man,” then complain about how much of a loser I was for not planning my own birthday party or making enough money to support her ever-growing list of demands. It got so bad that I started to snap. I became very angry and would yell a lot during these times, which of course then became about my “gross” anger issues instead of whatever preceded the incident.
She even started doing this in public, like whispering something in my ear such as “I saw this _____ while I was out the other day shopping. It was very pink and effeminate just like my pussy of a husband.” She was hoping I’d explode and hit her. She was particularly mad because I felt there needed to be more accountability for her actions. I’d tried very unsuccessfully to resolve these issues over the years, which only led to D martyring herself – until I begged and pleaded for her to stop by giving in and allowing her to continue with her actions unabated.
This all came to a head when I got hurt about a year after my final reconstructive surgery. I had gotten severely injured in a sports competition, and needed a lot of time to recover. Meaning that even though I was still working and providing (by using my savings to cover the difference), D had had enough of her “loser husband.”
She escalated her violence, blamed me for ruining her entire life, and refused to help me, even when I could barely get out of bed. In fact, I liken this time to being similar to James Caan’s character from the movie Misery, with D being Kathy Bates. I was becoming a budding writer and had received a book contract on a trip to NYC a few months before I was injured.
So, there I was, injured and barely able to get out of bed, with Kathy Bates, D, abusing the crap out of me. Around this time, D even blamed me for being abusive since I was getting angry at her for not helping. Plus, I was reducing our spending to make ends meet, so I was trying to “keep her trapped.”
It was during this time that my epilepsy started to get worse from the stress, especially as D wanted to know why I was such an abusive monster. She would even make fun of me for being a “retard” while I was having seizures. This was my tipping point. I knew that something was horribly wrong in the State of Denmark.
I was already dealing with so much abuse that it was crazy, like D charging at me, causing me to shout with my hands up, “D, I love you, but not now. I need space. Please back off.” Then she would crash off of my hands onto the floor when I had been backed into a corner with nowhere to go, claiming that I was beating her up. Little did I know at the time that she could see I was nearing the end of my rope, and she was developing her own exit plan, involving a smear campaign and the police.
D claimed that I needed therapy for my horrible upbringing (which is true but not for the reasons that she thought), and if I didn’t change my ways, she was going to leave me and call the cops, particularly if I ever laid my hands on her again and continued to yell. “Putting my hands up” was a defensive move while she crashed off of me. I felt deeply ashamed and broken.
I was never the type to yell at a women, like “would you just shut the eff up”, and even when mad, I rarely hit things, like a pillow against the wall or shadow punch in the air. But I had been abused for so long that I believed that this intense anger originated from inside me and not D, so I was shamed to my core.
I sat D down one night to try to work things out. After spending the night arguing instead, I realized the situation was unsalvageable. And yet, in true white knight fashion, instead of just leaving, I said I would give her six months to turn the situation around where we would both get therapy and try one last time to make things work. Otherwise, “destroying me in the divorce and the threat of me going to jail” wasn’t going to stop me. (D had previously threatened to destroy me if I ever left her. Worse yet, when she claimed that I was an abusive POS, she had run away from home a few times only to come back later and forgive me. Then she’d give me some great makeup sex, but only before telling me that she had called a shelter and gotten some literature. So, if I ever left her, she would call the cops. She would even go so far as to leave pamphlets out about domestic violence for me to see to reinforce her threats.)
After our talk, things seemed to get better. D started to come around and our relationship got better for a few months, but then D began to disappear and wanted to go out by herself and not be around. I started to think that maybe she wasn’t coming around after all. Yet, between D’s continual spending and paying for my medical treatment, I was too focused on trying to pay our bills to have time to create a better escape plan.
I found out that she was having an affair, but I was stuck. This is when it ended: I came home from work one day to my home completely cleared out, bank accounts cleared out, and nothing left but a Dear John letter on the floor telling me how I was an abusive monster who could never change, so D had to flee for her life. Further, I was to never contact her again.
Needless to say, I was in shock. I even played into her game of trying to get her back. Fortunately, I sent Dr. T some emails, and while her responses were terse, they were very blunt. I got the message. I came to my senses and realized, “What am I doing? This is my opportunity to cut Crazy from my life. So, just let her go.” I instituted a strict “no contact” policy with D, and only communicated through text and email, even when she would call at 1 a.m. trying to pick a fight. (So much for her telling me to never contact her again.)
I was able to mitigate some of the damages in the divorce settlement, but it did come at a cost. I got D to admit on tape that I was not abusing her. However, she had already taken most of our assets, and while I wanted revenge so badly, I agreed to let them go in exchange for her not pursuing the abuse charges. I also was able to cut free from alimony because I shamefully (in my opinion) blackmailed her with the affair that she had been having and the sizable amounts of money that she had been hiding that would have come out in court.
We also agreed to let an arbitrator handle the discussion on the financial side of things, even though I didn’t realize that D had already picked and primed the arbitrator against me. But I figured that I can be free even if it means being homeless because it’s still better than going to jail and losing everything else, so I acquiesced. Though, based on Dr. T’s advice, I had compiled a long list of things that D had done to try to mitigate the abuse charges to defend myself as best as possible in the event that D changed her mind.
And with lighting speed, we were divorced, mainly because D’s mom works at the Capitol in the state in which I live. Her mom was able to influence the judge to push the divorce through uncontested, which was another reason I deeply feared D’s threats of pressing DV charges against me. (I later found out that it was so she could get remarried less than six months later.)
All in all, I lost about $100,000 between the assets, a lack of remuneration for our remaining communal property, past due bills that I had to pay, and the managing of the debt with which I’m left. This doesn’t even count all of the bills I paid (yep, I paid them all), trips, and gifts that I bought over the years.
However, I’m a hard worker, and without being strapped with years of alimony (we were together for nine years), I’m able to start working myself out of a hole, which is good. Because if our marriage had lasted too much longer, any negotiation wouldn’t have mattered. I would have been stuck paying D alimony the rest of my life. I was at least smart enough to never have a child with D, even though she tried a few times. The toughest part about all of this has been the smear campaign that D has waged against me. Not only did I become isolated from my family again, as I had been working to rebuild my relationship with my parents, but I lost almost all of my friends and business customers in the process, since D went behind my back and told everyone stories about me being an abuser.
I hold myself accountable too. I refused to set boundaries in the beginning of my relationship with D. I should have had more respect for myself and walked away when those warning signs and red flags were popping up early on, most especially before I legally tethered myself to D. And while I’m upset about how things turned out, I’m ultimately responsible for myself and my own actions. So, I must live, learn, and never repeat. If you hear my story and it helps you to the same, then I’m truly grateful for having gone through everything that I did.
Thank you, Kyle.
In His Own Words/In Her Own Words is a joint effort between Shrink4Men and AVoiceForMen to help raise awareness about the invisible victims of domestic violence, men. If you would like to submit your story, please follow the guidelines at the end of this article.
Dr Tara J. Palmatier provides confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. Her practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Shrink4Men Services page for professional inquiries.
Source
I had come from an extremely abusive home, so I was definitely the kind of guy looking for a woman to validate my existence. I told myself that this wasn’t the case after having been through several bad relationships and a previous marriage to a personality-disordered woman before. So, I thought I had “learned” from my mistakes and was ready for the right person to love me in a way that no one else could.
In the beginning, there were very few red flags, or so I thought. Though, to be honest, at that point in my life, I was so ready to find my “one and only” that I was readily willing to ignore what Dr. T calls those “WTF moments.” I thought I was safe, as I had been friends with D for a year previous to us dating.
However, if I knew back then what I know now, I would have run given some of those early warning signs and never looked back. For example, about three weeks into dating D, she showed up at my doorstep with a bag full of laundry, giving the impression that she was: 1) hopeless in managing her own affairs, and 2) ready to move in. As bad as it was having someone whom you’ve only dated for a few weeks wanting to move in, it was worse. She had the expectation that I was responsible for her laundry.
Not only did she passive-aggressively bring more stuff over to my place, but she started to complain that I was not washing her clothes for her while she was moving her stuff in. Being the “nice guy” that I was, I eagerly complied, since I was looking to win her approval. Yet, this wasn’t even the worst part.
After a great night’s sex, she took off early in the morning, and I proceeded to do her laundry. I was also in a hurry to get ready for work, so I didn’t thoroughly check all of the pockets in her jeans before I threw them in the wash; there were about 10 pairs in total. I didn’t realize that she had left her cellphone in one of her pairs of jeans. It wasn’t until I heard a clunking sound coming from the wash machine that I realized what had happened.
A couple of hours later, I got a call from D while she was at work asking about her cellphone, and I promptly explained that I had accidentally washed her phone. I apologized for my mistake, and offered to buy her a new one. This is when the “fit hit the shan.”
D exploded in a verbal tirade about how I had purposely washed her phone in a resentful act to hurt and offend her. I kept repeating that I was sorry for the incident, but I hadn’t done anything on purpose. Further still, I was confused about what the problem was, since I had offered to buy a replacement. This still wasn’t good enough.
Not only did I have to buy her a replacement phone, but I also had to admit that I purposely washed her phone “to hurt and sabotage her.” After going back and forth like this for about 45 minutes to an hour, I was rather worn down and confused. I was also working (I run my own business and was now severely late getting to my next job site), so I simply “confessed” my crime to be done with the conversation.
This wasn’t the end of D’s tirades. D comes from an extremely religious family, so her wanting to move in with me before we got married was considered a big deal, or at least it was to them, not so much with D. D’s family blamed me for corrupting their daughter and turning her into “a whore and a prostitute,” as well as literally calling me Satan. Despite all of this, D sided with her family’s actions and blamed me for causing her emotional pain and distress, even though she had no problem living with me or having sex with me outside of marriage.
Even worse, D’s family blamed me for causing her to break up with her previous fiancé shortly before we got together, although they repeatedly told me how much they hated him. Of course, they also refused to pay for the wedding as a way of further showing their disapproval of me, as well as threatening to hit me at more than one family function.
This didn’t bother me because I was “in love” with D. She told me in those first few weeks, while she was moving in, how she had never felt this way about anyone else before in her life, and how much she loved me/was falling for me. I was pretty hooked on what Dr. T calls the BPD crack pipe.
I offered to pay for the wedding myself: big mistake. D tried to plan the most elaborate wedding she could think of, totaling about $15,000.00. Although I wasn’t going to pay for something that expensive, I wanted D to be happy, since this was to be her first and “only marriage.”
Planning for the ceremony was awful too. Anytime I would make a suggestion, D would scream and yell and point her finger (trying to shame me), or she would break down crying, leaving my head spinning about what was going on. Fortunately, I was able to calm her down by “agreeing to the alternative plans” that she was willing to agree upon. But in doing so, I realize now that I was being primed for years of emotional and psychological abuse – as well as physical abuse, although that didn’t start until later.
Finally, after a year of dating and planning our wedding, we got married. Things seemed to die down. Yep, I was so naïve that I let a girl I had just started dating convince me that she was in love with me enough to get married right away. Worse yet, I was convinced – mainly through oral pleasures – that we didn’t need a prenuptial agreement, since that wouldn’t have been “romantic.” I rationalized all of this away.
I had known and been friends with D for a year before dating, so I thought I knew what she was like, which made it easier to explain away the crazy. Plus, anytime I didn’t rationalize things away or I was upset about something, D would either blow me off, blame me for everything, or give me so much sex that I couldn’t think straight.
Soon enough things started to get worse, a lot worse. About a year into our marriage, I was continuing to have health problems from growing up in an abusive household. My health was getting worse, and I needed to see more specialists about what could be done. I was losing my ability to work, which of course bothered D. (The long story short on this part, I was left to freeze as an infant by my parents, and although I was resuscitated that evening, it caused permanent injury to my body from frostbite. Further, I was not taken away by Child Services, and in the process of surviving my household, I was taught that pleasing my parents and anticipating their needs was my only way of receiving love, priming me for an abuser like D.)
So, as my health deteriorated, D escalated her abusive behavior, especially when I had a cancerous tumor develop. She actually blamed me for getting sick because it took the focus off of her and the money away from the gifts and trips that she was receiving. Even worse, she yelled at me and emotionally terrorized me whenever I pointed this out, going so far as to point and laugh in my face for wanting emotional support. She still expected me to do all of the cooking and cleaning, like I had been doing up to this point. Anytime I was having issues, she would conveniently be gone with her friends or give me the silent treatment for days or weeks on end.
While I was recovering, I was still expected to bring home the bacon, which I did because I felt it was my duty as a man to be the provider, regardless of the circumstances with which I was faced. No amount of pleading with D helped. It was around this time that she started to take her frustrations out on me while I was sleeping. That is, I would wake up to D punching or kicking me in my sleep.
For example, I remember waking up to my head being slammed against the wall, causing me to have a goose egg on my forehead for about two weeks. When I looked over, D acted like she was sleeping. I again rationalized D’s behaviors away by saying it was me being exhausted from surgery and working so much.
The craziness began to die down again as I started to get better and bring home more money. I thought that D was finally coming around. I was trying my best to set boundaries, explain why her actions were inappropriate, and not be such a pushover. After getting things back on track and paying down our bills, not only from my medical expenses but also D’s refusal to limit her spending, I was blindsided. During this time, she kept gaslighting me, engaging in double standards and no-win situations, and being physically confrontational like charging and flailing at me (similar to Janay Rice).
I noticed my personality was beginning to change. I was developing severe anxiety, having problems leaving the house, losing work contracts, and was no longer as outgoing as I used to be. In fact, I was even diagnosed with depression and loss of self-esteem at the time from a counselor that D forced me to go see. He said, “[I] was having relationship problems,” which were causing my issues. Though, I explained this away – once again – as having relationship problems with my friends, not D, since my social circle was also starting to contract, leaving me rather isolated.
This is when my true nightmare began. I was going through several legal issues with a few different contractors at work. While I was attempting to correct the problem, D was going behind my back, sabotaging my clients and business. Then, in true borderline fashion, she complained that I was not supporting her enough financially. I got good at alternative means of making money, like selling my prized vehicle and downgrading to an older car to use the difference to support D.
No matter what I did, it was never enough. D would even secretly open credit cards, then throw them in my face when she got tired of paying the minimum balance. D even hid the title for my new/old car for several months, claiming that it had never shown up in the mail. Then, one day, she conveniently pulled the title out of her purse while we were at a doctor’s appointment (more on that later), claiming, “Look what I forgot in my purse for the last three months.” Now, her purse was not one of those dufflebag-style purses either, more the kind that you could barely fit your driver’s license and a pack of gum into, so I knew she was lying.
Thank you, Kyle.
Nice guy meets abusive borderline personality disordered woman, Part II
By It’s day 23 of Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2014 for Men and Boys, the invisible victims of domestic violence. Today’s In His Own Words is the second part to Kyle’s story.
Yet, despite all of this, like a good lapdog, I held on due to my beliefs about correcting my past mistakes and not letting God down. But the constant fighting was starting to wear on me. In fact, I was developing grey hairs from the abuse and never knowing what was going to set D off. Even on days like my birthday, there was no reprieve, as she would use days like this to emasculate me or make it about her.
She would want to have a party for her “special man,” then complain about how much of a loser I was for not planning my own birthday party or making enough money to support her ever-growing list of demands. It got so bad that I started to snap. I became very angry and would yell a lot during these times, which of course then became about my “gross” anger issues instead of whatever preceded the incident.
She even started doing this in public, like whispering something in my ear such as “I saw this _____ while I was out the other day shopping. It was very pink and effeminate just like my pussy of a husband.” She was hoping I’d explode and hit her. She was particularly mad because I felt there needed to be more accountability for her actions. I’d tried very unsuccessfully to resolve these issues over the years, which only led to D martyring herself – until I begged and pleaded for her to stop by giving in and allowing her to continue with her actions unabated.
This all came to a head when I got hurt about a year after my final reconstructive surgery. I had gotten severely injured in a sports competition, and needed a lot of time to recover. Meaning that even though I was still working and providing (by using my savings to cover the difference), D had had enough of her “loser husband.”
She escalated her violence, blamed me for ruining her entire life, and refused to help me, even when I could barely get out of bed. In fact, I liken this time to being similar to James Caan’s character from the movie Misery, with D being Kathy Bates. I was becoming a budding writer and had received a book contract on a trip to NYC a few months before I was injured.
So, there I was, injured and barely able to get out of bed, with Kathy Bates, D, abusing the crap out of me. Around this time, D even blamed me for being abusive since I was getting angry at her for not helping. Plus, I was reducing our spending to make ends meet, so I was trying to “keep her trapped.”
It was during this time that my epilepsy started to get worse from the stress, especially as D wanted to know why I was such an abusive monster. She would even make fun of me for being a “retard” while I was having seizures. This was my tipping point. I knew that something was horribly wrong in the State of Denmark.
I was already dealing with so much abuse that it was crazy, like D charging at me, causing me to shout with my hands up, “D, I love you, but not now. I need space. Please back off.” Then she would crash off of my hands onto the floor when I had been backed into a corner with nowhere to go, claiming that I was beating her up. Little did I know at the time that she could see I was nearing the end of my rope, and she was developing her own exit plan, involving a smear campaign and the police.
D claimed that I needed therapy for my horrible upbringing (which is true but not for the reasons that she thought), and if I didn’t change my ways, she was going to leave me and call the cops, particularly if I ever laid my hands on her again and continued to yell. “Putting my hands up” was a defensive move while she crashed off of me. I felt deeply ashamed and broken.
I was never the type to yell at a women, like “would you just shut the eff up”, and even when mad, I rarely hit things, like a pillow against the wall or shadow punch in the air. But I had been abused for so long that I believed that this intense anger originated from inside me and not D, so I was shamed to my core.
I broke down. I couldn’t even look myself in the eye anymore. I truly believed that D was right. I was a monster. “A monster who was so horribly scarred that it could never be loved or be healed,” as D put it. So, I pursued therapy through a local referral to a psychiatrist, AVfM, Shrink4Men, and I read every book on subjects such as anger, co-dependency (like Melody Bettie’s work), narcissism, and setting boundaries.
This is when it hit me. I was still shattered as a man, but it was because I was being abused to the point that D had stolen all of my positive traits. And those she couldn’t steal, she tried to destroy. Further still, she forced all of her negative traits on me, blaming me in the process of her projection. Now was I/am I perfect? Heck no. I was a broken person who needed help for my own issues, but at least I knew that I had to get out of my relationship.I sat D down one night to try to work things out. After spending the night arguing instead, I realized the situation was unsalvageable. And yet, in true white knight fashion, instead of just leaving, I said I would give her six months to turn the situation around where we would both get therapy and try one last time to make things work. Otherwise, “destroying me in the divorce and the threat of me going to jail” wasn’t going to stop me. (D had previously threatened to destroy me if I ever left her. Worse yet, when she claimed that I was an abusive POS, she had run away from home a few times only to come back later and forgive me. Then she’d give me some great makeup sex, but only before telling me that she had called a shelter and gotten some literature. So, if I ever left her, she would call the cops. She would even go so far as to leave pamphlets out about domestic violence for me to see to reinforce her threats.)
After our talk, things seemed to get better. D started to come around and our relationship got better for a few months, but then D began to disappear and wanted to go out by herself and not be around. I started to think that maybe she wasn’t coming around after all. Yet, between D’s continual spending and paying for my medical treatment, I was too focused on trying to pay our bills to have time to create a better escape plan.
I found out that she was having an affair, but I was stuck. This is when it ended: I came home from work one day to my home completely cleared out, bank accounts cleared out, and nothing left but a Dear John letter on the floor telling me how I was an abusive monster who could never change, so D had to flee for her life. Further, I was to never contact her again.
Needless to say, I was in shock. I even played into her game of trying to get her back. Fortunately, I sent Dr. T some emails, and while her responses were terse, they were very blunt. I got the message. I came to my senses and realized, “What am I doing? This is my opportunity to cut Crazy from my life. So, just let her go.” I instituted a strict “no contact” policy with D, and only communicated through text and email, even when she would call at 1 a.m. trying to pick a fight. (So much for her telling me to never contact her again.)
I was able to mitigate some of the damages in the divorce settlement, but it did come at a cost. I got D to admit on tape that I was not abusing her. However, she had already taken most of our assets, and while I wanted revenge so badly, I agreed to let them go in exchange for her not pursuing the abuse charges. I also was able to cut free from alimony because I shamefully (in my opinion) blackmailed her with the affair that she had been having and the sizable amounts of money that she had been hiding that would have come out in court.
We also agreed to let an arbitrator handle the discussion on the financial side of things, even though I didn’t realize that D had already picked and primed the arbitrator against me. But I figured that I can be free even if it means being homeless because it’s still better than going to jail and losing everything else, so I acquiesced. Though, based on Dr. T’s advice, I had compiled a long list of things that D had done to try to mitigate the abuse charges to defend myself as best as possible in the event that D changed her mind.
And with lighting speed, we were divorced, mainly because D’s mom works at the Capitol in the state in which I live. Her mom was able to influence the judge to push the divorce through uncontested, which was another reason I deeply feared D’s threats of pressing DV charges against me. (I later found out that it was so she could get remarried less than six months later.)
All in all, I lost about $100,000 between the assets, a lack of remuneration for our remaining communal property, past due bills that I had to pay, and the managing of the debt with which I’m left. This doesn’t even count all of the bills I paid (yep, I paid them all), trips, and gifts that I bought over the years.
However, I’m a hard worker, and without being strapped with years of alimony (we were together for nine years), I’m able to start working myself out of a hole, which is good. Because if our marriage had lasted too much longer, any negotiation wouldn’t have mattered. I would have been stuck paying D alimony the rest of my life. I was at least smart enough to never have a child with D, even though she tried a few times. The toughest part about all of this has been the smear campaign that D has waged against me. Not only did I become isolated from my family again, as I had been working to rebuild my relationship with my parents, but I lost almost all of my friends and business customers in the process, since D went behind my back and told everyone stories about me being an abuser.
I hold myself accountable too. I refused to set boundaries in the beginning of my relationship with D. I should have had more respect for myself and walked away when those warning signs and red flags were popping up early on, most especially before I legally tethered myself to D. And while I’m upset about how things turned out, I’m ultimately responsible for myself and my own actions. So, I must live, learn, and never repeat. If you hear my story and it helps you to the same, then I’m truly grateful for having gone through everything that I did.
Thank you, Kyle.
In His Own Words/In Her Own Words is a joint effort between Shrink4Men and AVoiceForMen to help raise awareness about the invisible victims of domestic violence, men. If you would like to submit your story, please follow the guidelines at the end of this article.
About Dr. Tara J. Palmatier
Dr Tara J. Palmatier provides confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. Her practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Shrink4Men Services page for professional inquiries.Source
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