Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group
Abuse is a general term for the treatment of someone that causes some kind of harm (to the abused person, to the abusers themselves, or to someone else) that is unlawful or wrongful. No one deserves abuse, period. Abuse can be emotional, physical, or sexual.
I always knew that my ex had dabbled with synthetic marijuana when we were together, but I thought he was respectful about it. He knew I struggled in the past with an ex that would smoke weed until he was too lazy to get much of anything important done and that aside from alcohol and cigarettes, I don't touch anything else. I'm not against marijuana use, as long as it doesn't affect anything important, and with the lack of solid info on synthetics, it didn't seem to be a big deal at the time a couple years ago, I just didn't participate. So my ex used to make sure it was cool with me on the occasional Saturday night if he smoked, and during the entire time we were together it was only a handful of times, so it wasn't a problem until the relationship was getting messy. He stopped asking, and at the time I hadn't caught him in any lies though I was suspicious, so I just forgot about him using.
When I was moving out of our apartment last year, long after we split, I found a few paperclips bent with resin on the tip, more than I recall him ever saying he smoked. Oh well, whatever, couldn't do anything about it then so I just shook my head and let it be. But today I have been moving furniture around in my office at my parent's, where my ex and I used to stay when we'd visit, and I found about a dozen of these so far! Ugh!
Nothing I can do about it now. It is what it is. But dang it, he was a tricky one. While it is reassuring to realize how much more of a jerk he was, it still ticks me off.
When I was moving out of our apartment last year, long after we split, I found a few paperclips bent with resin on the tip, more than I recall him ever saying he smoked. Oh well, whatever, couldn't do anything about it then so I just shook my head and let it be. But today I have been moving furniture around in my office at my parent's, where my ex and I used to stay when we'd visit, and I found about a dozen of these so far! Ugh!
Nothing I can do about it now. It is what it is. But dang it, he was a tricky one. While it is reassuring to realize how much more of a jerk he was, it still ticks me off.
in a very big way.
In the final eighteen months
of my mostly-emotionally
abusive marriage, I was
finishing the clean-out of
what had been my marital
home.
He was hundreds of miles
away, at his mother's. I was
bringing in his mail and
newspapers, and collecting
the last of my things from
where I'd lived for ten years.
I'll edit down my experience
that weekend to a few essential
points, being that I uncovered
(in various "hiding places"),
a truck-load of material that
illuminated who this abuser
had been throughout our
marriage and of course,
still was being during the
span of (what was supposed
to be amicable) divorce proceedings.
On the emotional end, though
it totally finished up the carving
up of what was left of my heart,
finding the stuff did two other
things. First, it confirmed for
me that he was a complete
and total ____________ (fill
in your own favorite description).
And second, it gave me what
I needed to haul his ass into
court on contempt proceedings,
for filing no less and possibly
more than fifty grand out of
the marital assets, to support
a second family and the woman
he'd been sending flowers to
several times a year, throughout
the entire time we'd been married
(just shy of seventeen years).
Though for a couple days
I felt hollow, and the memory
of that weekend is making
me feel like crying, as I
write these words, the
best thing that came out
of it for me was the ability,
finally, to see him clearly
for what he was. Among
the materials, was an
email she'd sent to him
in which she was laughing
and obviously enjoying a
story he'd shared with her
about being abusive to me.
(That particular story was
actually made up, though
he had, of course, abused
me consistently over the
course of our time together.)
While she was able to
enjoy that particular lie
coming from the lips of
the liar I was divorcing,
(later on), I could enjoy
a story of my own, a
story that he would
never be sharing with
her.
I had, of course, cut him
off sexually years earlier.
But during the course of
our (supposedly amicable)
divorce, I decided I wanted
a farewell souvenir. We
were doing Thanksgiving
together, just the two of us,
and I seduced him.
I did not know, at this moment
in time, that he was actually
deep in the torrid affair he
was carrying on with this
woman. All she knew
(that held any kind of
truth) about me, was
that I'd cut him off and
filed for divorce.
After the pain of my
"Discovery Weekend"
subsided, I took some
serious enjoyment from
knowing that he'd already
been as deceptive in his
relationship with her, as
he'd been throughout
our marriage.
A month after my divorce
was decreed (with a comfortable
settlement, thank you), they married.
For seven years, every two
weeks an alimony check
arrived in the mail. . . . . .
with HER name at the top.
Yes indeed.
Karma's an
actual bitch.
There is NOTHING my ex does that surprises me anymore, or that could surprise me. But I also had that moment of clarity when I went from the fog to knowing exactly what I was really dealing with.
Somehow in the back of my mind I had decided to leave, but I was still so confused, and beaten down, that I had no idea how to do it (and I'd already tried twice and failed). Somehow, even though I didn't know what an abuse fog was, I knew I couldn't think straight around him. My gf in another state was getting married, so I flew out to be there for the wedding, trying to come up with a plan while I was away from him and could think better.
My ex had a habit of keeping tabs on me, so he was checking the phone records and called on he did not recognize, who was a friend of my gf who took me out one day while she was at work. When my ex called this guy and went off, this friend of a friend let the cat out of the bag that I was considering divorce (responded something like, she's divorcing you, you ahole, and she should).
Next thing I know, as I'm on the other side of the country my then H has filed for divorce, asked for emergency temporary custody and petitioning for full custody citing that I had legal abandoned my daughter (so ridiculous-I was on a vacation for God's sakes)-told my daughter this too-that I'd left her and wasn't coming home, cut off my phone, my credit cards, our joint bank account, and I soon found out had dropped off my personal belongings at my parent's house and change the locks.
He was using a legal maneuver to kidnap my daughter (and the ransom was me giving him total control of me back to him). I was in utter shock, as my motherhood was never in question, I was her primary care giver. And to see that he could use our daughter as a pawn, that he could tell her, her mother abandoned her with no care that it was a lie, and what it would do to her, only that it would punish me and get her on his side, I KNEW then exactly what kind of "person" I was dealing with. A person who would callously hurt their own child in the name of revenge. What a piece of total crap.