IT's good to vent. Makes you feel somewhat better. I've been away from my abuser for about a month now. He is in his angry stage after being sooo sad and sooo sorry. Blah blah. He still calls, but now he's being mean. Just remember, history doesn't rewrite, it just repeats. Hang in there.

DeeDee, you hang in there. It will happen. It seems like I waited forever, but now it is finally over. I will keep you in my prayers.

Hugs!

Your abuser might be a pathological liar like mine is.

I caught him in SO many lies, big ones, small ones, inconsequential ones.

So we had had this long discussion once, very calm, because ,my flipping out didnt change anything, it just always became another situation he could use to his advantage to abuse me and try to annihilater me.

So after this calm conversation, I would calmly say things like "I find that hard tyo believe." "I dont think youre telling me the truth." "Are you sure this isnt a lie?"

So what was I doing? Holding up a "sign" of sorts that said, "we both know youre a liar, lets not be in denial about it".

And the result was, no matter how calm I was in saying those things, I still ended up being abused as punishment for daring to call him what he is.

In calm discussions he could admit he lies to me, gave me the short end of the stick in the relationship, didnt have me anywhere near the top of the priority list, and wasnt meeting his part of the relationship obligations, blah blah blah... but considering how horribly punished I was for ever bringing up what he himself admitted in those talks, I was not allowed to remind him, or express how painful it was, or how undermining it was, or how it made trust impossible...I would always end up being the one in the wrong.

what a f***ing basterd. When I look back on that now, thats the bottom line for me in the abuse. He treated me like shit, and then punished/abused me for daring to be upset or even just HONEST about it.

(sorry, had a moment there, I'm OK now)

Abusers are professional in rewriting history, & they are BIG liars.

my abusers claim that they were the great angels treating me in the best way, & all the abuse & events i talk about is just from my immaginations & never happenned.

Oh yes, I just love the rewriting of history! Apparently I called my H all kinds of horrible names and yelled at him constantly and emasculated him in public. When I asked him to give me concrete examples of when these alleged events took place, he was unable to do so. Hmmm??? The minimizing is also fun..... He didn't abuse me, he just "overreacts" when he feels like he's being "pushed". My "pushing" was saying "Let's just drop this and not argue. I'm really tired and want to go to bed."

You're right, trying to make them see the light does no good. I guess they are incapable of understanding.

HUGS and good luck Dee

Dearest All.............thank you so much for the support. and Tame thank you for the prayers. It is so nice to know that all of you are here for me and that is just such a blessing.

Umm, Joy - did you marry my ex by any chance? Or perhaps it was Kayley. That one of agreeing how horribly he was treating me, then making it my fault for reacting to how horribly he was treating me. Or even for mentioning it. And the lies! Extraordinary lies. Things I supposedly said or did. And the tims he had "proof" that he was going to show me. Except he never did.

Fortunately, I long ago gave up on trying to make him see, or understand, or take responsibility. That was the first thing I found incredibly liberating - to be able to read or hear his lies, his rewriting of history, and just laugh it off. Not to his face of course (too dangerous), but i began to take some of it to my close friends and we would have a great laugh. Much more fun than trying to make him see.

Oh I can't wait to get that point where I can laugh about it. Right now it still upsets me so much. How do you get to that point?

Mine was so so sorry, too, when I said "enough". For about half a day. He told me that he would "always regret" this that and the other thing that I had been complaining about for years. Then after that, there were no sorries and he kept on blaming me for everything.

He always rewrote history telling me he had told me something important when he had actually not and denying that I had told him things ahead of time when I KNEW that I had. Arg.

Hang in there. Make a plan and get out. You'll never regret it.

Sigh, Far, another one who married my ex!

Kayley, you asked how I got to the point of being able to laugh at it. I guess for me the process started when I first started to confide in one of my best friends. I started to tell her what was going on, some of the things he did and said. And they hurt, they hurt so much. I sure wasn't laughing. Nor was she. She kept saying how much she hated what he was doing to me - that helped. Made me feel less nuts, less wrong, less at fault ... more validated.

Then I started to listen to myself as I told her things that were going on. And I started to hear how crazy HE sounded, instead of trying to work out how I got so crazy. With the help of friends, particularly that one friend, and also by looking at and focussing on my then baby boy, I started also to disengage from what he was saying and doing. I also kept a diary of all the horrible things he did - I did it for the eventual court case if he brings one for custody or access (boy is HE in for a shock, since he has no idea I kept a detailed daily diary ... snigger). Once you start that process, it gets a lot easier and a lot less painful because little by little you stop caring what he thinks. Listening to myself tell the story (both to a friend and in my diary) fed the process of disengaging. And disengaging made it easier to tell the story. Suddenly, instead of a downward spiral of fear, pain and feelings of guilt and craziness, I was in an upward spiral of validation and disengagement.

And then I really did start to see what he was saying and doing for what it was - insanity. It helped that he also had some very odd delusional behaviour which became quite funny really. And that some of the lies he expected me to believe were just ludicrous. A simple example is that he got a "secret" cell phone and phone number so his gf could call. To this day, he maintains that he never did, even though I saw him use it, I heard it ring one time when he didn't have "my" phone (the one I paid for) with him, I watched him make a phone call that never showed on the bill, and I even had the phone number (I got it from a document he needed me to sign - he was stupid enough to write it on there and expect me not to look). Crazy stuff - but by the time that one happened, I had had enough validation and enough disengagement to realise I was not going crazy, he was just lying to me. And really thought I was stupid enough to swallow it.

I hope some of that helps.

Thank you. I guess it is a process that just takes time. My H lies a lot too, mostly about stupid crap. It's so frustrating. I can't trust him, yet he doesn't understand why i don't want to be with him.