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'd like to suggest financial abuse as a topic for your blog - many of us could give you enough on that topic to write a book.
Oh I have a million others too.
Nothin ever came back on ole Teflon.
Another time, he maxed out the credit card (my name again) and emptied the bank account. When I asked how we were now supposed to find money for food, the response was "you'll figure it out". I was earning 6 figures at this point and had never before struggled to find money to eat.
how is it for you....slow escalation? or do they squirm their way into your life paying their way and then suddenly go belly up? for those of you with shared credit card, was that something you could have seen ahead of time?
In the beginning, we were pretty much always together, he wasn't spending what I didn't see - it wasn't that he asked for or needed my approval as such, it was just I knew where the money was going because I was there. Once we both started work though and we weren't together all the time, that's when money started to disappear.
Overall he cost me something in the order of $300K over the 6 years we were together. And to this day will say that the reason we split up was because I was too fixated on money. I lost my retirement savings and my home by being so fixated on money. Sigh, clearly I was not NEARLY fixated enough.
it's the absolute on/off nature of this abuse that scares me now.....you were not making delusional decisions, you played by the rules, you did everything i would do in the same situation. and yet, for some reason he pulls the pin on the grenade just to see what it's like to blow it up. if i were to write a fictionalized version of this and post it i would really have to reach because the narrative needs to be believable. and this just isn't.
how do you recover from this? what does it feel like to call a credit card company and plead with them that you were not aware of the charges your spouse was making and shouldn't be held responsible? how do you find out about gambling losses? how is the evidence hidden?
The gambling losses I found out about because huge sums of money were just leaving the joint account. He finished work around 3 or 4pm, I didn't finish till about 6. He would spend 2 or 3 hours in the pub gambling on slot machines. He could lose up to around $1800 a week. Some weeks he won big, but most of the time he was losing at least $800 - $1000 a week. He kept promising to stop, of course. And one time when I had a go at him he went ape at me because he wasn't gambling but had bought me a gift with the money he took out of the account. Of course, because I was so horrible as to accuse him unfairly of gambling, he refused to show me the gift and said he'd return it instead because clearly I didn't want or deserve a gift (mind you, we really couldn't afford an $800 gift anyway). Funnily enough, though, the money never did make it back into the account. Because there never was a gift, my accusation was correct all along - the $800 was gambling losses.
And yes, the whole thing was so surreal, all of it. I just kept lurching from one unbelievable inconceivable utterly confusing act of betrayal to another, with no clue what I had done to deserve any of it (because, plainly, I simply did NOT deserve any of it - but that wasn't my mindset at the time) and even less idea how to make it stop (which I eventually did by kicking him out and going NC). Because the joint account was also my mortgage account, I couldn't close it down, but I talked to the bank and they were awesome about letting me open another account and paying the mortgage one day late each month, so that there was never any available cash in the mortgage account for him to steal. But then the debts just got too much for me and I had to sell the house. Solved that problem. :D
i will definitely dedicate a post to this topic as soon as i stop wanting to punch walls. thank you so much for being such an inspiration.
Thankfully, when I turned off the money tap, he had none with which to pursue that particular insanity.
Best part though, is that he is no longer in my life or my son's life. He has no more access to and no more right to what little I have left. Of course he never pays child support either, but that's a small price to pay for peace of mind.
compare to Livn's,
but here it is:
He was a mid-level executive.
His overall "package" was certainly
in six figures.
We lived modestly in a
small house (which had
been his grandmother's).
We didn't travel, seldom
ate out. No fancy purchases.
I worked, but earned
a fraction of what he
did. We shared an
account and I put
everything I earned
into the marital account,
from which I paid the
bills.
He'd grown up as a
"grease monkey,"
fixing the cars he
owned. He never
bought new cars
because they were
a waste of money
(and, as they became
increasingly computerized,
he wasn't so able to
do the repairs).
He was driving a
company car, and
I was driving a used
older car, which was
getting older and older.
My jobs (I had two,
at the time), required
me to drive many
miles every day.
At some point, the
repairs he was able
to do on the car I drove
were increasingly ineffective.
Finally one week, I
found myself broken
down on the side of
a busy highway, for
the second time in
four days. . . . missing
work and putting myself
at risk in serious traffic.
(This was the nineties.
He had a car phone
in his company car.
I had no cell phone.)
On that day, a nice
gentleman (lucky for
me), picked me up
and drove me to a
garage, so I could
get the car towed
home.
The night after the
second break-down,
after dinner, I said to
him that it seemed
like it was time to
spill for a "new"
used car, so I
could get back
and forth to work
reliably.
He splattered all over
the ceiling, barking
that the house needed
a new roof and a new
furnace and we needed
to save for property taxes. . . .
and how dare I suggest we
waste our savings on such
a frivolous, unnecessary
purchase!!!!!!!!
From the next day till I
finally left him, the money
I earned went into a
separate account.
When I filed for divorce,
he did everything he could,
including sending tens of
thousands of dollars out
of the marriage to his
girlfriend, in an attempt
to hide his assets.
But he didn't do such a
great job hiding the records
of his money-funnelling.
I took the records to court
with me, and he (and his
girl-friend), ended up
having to write years
of alimony checks. How
can I describe the warm
satisfaction of seeing
not just his, but HER
name on the checks
I deposited, that enabled
me to begin doing the
work that followed from
surviving his nearly
seventeen years of abuse.
One last "break down"
story: (This one was
years after the previous
tale.)
It was a dark, rainy night.
I'm driving to an evening
job on that same highway,
other direction. Car breaks
down. I walked in the rain
on the side of the highway
in the dark and the messy
dampness for a mile and
a half to the nearest shopping
plaza. Hours later, the car got
towed home.
I say to Mr. Wonderful:
I want a new car or
a cell phone.
That's how I ended
up with my very first
cellphone.
to put you in danger and claim "frivolous!" to your reasonable requests for a decent car is the crux of emotional abuse: devalue, disrespect, reduce to worthless by any means necessary, with any tools available. disgusting.
and then you TOTALLY KICK ASS!
great story, wish it were a movie because i would watch it over and over, especially the part where you open an envelope containing money from his girlfriend!! delicious!!
i am going to try and pull elements from these posts into one cohesive, unbelievable essay, if that's even possible.
thank you, honestly you rule.