ur not stupid darling,but thank God uv finally realized that u cant change anybody else.stupid would be knowing it and staying there anyway,thats just dumb!if it took u 28 years an 2 great kids then so be it,at least u know now so fly my pretty and breath as uv yet to discover the beautiful artwork that is u.xx

Good for you! Really, don't feel stupid at all... I am in this 12 years and I still haven't had AHA moment. Stuck, stuck, stuck because of myself, stubbornness or something. If you have had your epiphany moment, go with it and make every day more beautiful than the last.

Hey, I was with mine for much longer than that! But you know, it's my journey, it's ok, and now I'm free, and life is amazing. All that matters is now.

I didn't have an aha moment, about him. I had one about me. I realized that I was mistaking the absence of anger and pain for joy when I lived with him. I was just so happy that he wasn't mad about something. One day it just clicked, this was not what I wanted my life or my son's life to be.

I had always hoped he would mellow...that he would have the aha moment and realize how much I loved him, how hard I tried, etc. but over the years, I realized he would never ever get that.

In the meantime, my spirit rose, and I began to lay plans to create a life full of joy. Which I have now....

I didn't have one AHA moment...I guess it just came over time. Like others have mentioned, I thought he would "wake up" and see how much I loved him and how hard I tried. I thought he would eventually think "man, I have a really great girl that loves me to death," but it never came....and it never will. But my abuser left ME. The days following were the worse of my life....but I am starting to feel so much better and I even feel pretty now!!:-)

I wrote about it in my journal a few weeks ago, but I will repost here:

I painted the image in my avatar about ten years ago. Yes, they are my own feet :) When I met my ex-girlfriend, she remarked how much she liked my hands and feet, so one night I gave her this painting. She marveled at it, her son was amazed, and times were good.
She wound up hanging my painting in her school classroom, and I was flattered (I've later decided this was probably because she was very particular about the items she would allow in her house, and my painting did not meet her standard decor). A month later, she was fired from that job, and left my painting in her classroom. She said she would retrieve her personal items and classroom decorations after the school year was over because she did not want to disrupt the students.
After the school year was over, I reminded her to retrieve her items from the school. She gave excuse after excuse, about not wanting to see the administration, or that she was having a freud with them over money and wanted to settle that issue first. After she moved out of town, I told her I would go by the school and retrieve her things. Initially, she thought this was a good idea, then later told me that was a bad idea because she was still feuding with the administration. Later I would learn these were all lies.
Not that I cared so much about the painting, but I gave it to her and not to the school. The school had no idea who painted it, and it would likely get shoved in a closet and eventually trashed. I give paintings to people I know who I know will keep them and appreciate them. I've had long-lost friends contact me after years, and the first thing they tell me is that they still have my painting on their wall. Having her not care about the fate of my painting became a huge hurt.
A month after we broke up, I finally decided to walk down the road to the school and ask for my painting back. I entered the teachers lounge, explained to the four teachers that were there who I was and why I was there. I didn't even need to finish my story before one woman spoke up and told me that my ex had told them to give her belongings to Goodwill a few months prior. My face sank. Sorrow crept over the faces of the teachers in the classroom, as if they were sorry I ever had to deal with that woman. One apologized, asked me if I was okay and if there was anything they could do, but I said "no", walked out, and walked home.
That instant my feelings changed. Before, I thought I had broken up with a fascinating woman who had issues with depression and an unsettled direction in life. That instant I realized I had been dating an addict, who was emotionally abusive to me, and I witnessed her abuse her son. That instant I realized the first woman that had ever told me she loved me probably didn't love me in the way that I understand love. Repressed memories of her weird and hurtful behaviors suddenly returned to me, and they suddenly made sense. The rush of repressed emotions crushed me.

Hockeymom, what you said goes along the lines of my first aha moment. I was in a dr.'s office, and there was a poster about wellness. It showed 100% as "outstanding health - feeling great." Then it went down from there, and next to, I think, 70%, it said, "absence of symptoms - most people define this is as optimal health." For whatever reason, I automatically applied the words to my marriage. I thought, wow, not only is it NOT well or happy, I'm just hanging onto the times we seem to be "symptom free" and that was really sad and eye-opening. I mean, since when is symptom-free synonymous with happy and healthy?!
Then, after this rattled around and then settled in my brain and I knew what needed to be done, my second aha moment came, from the person I am in love with now. This is an old love from way back, and yes, we reconnected via FB. Anyway, we messaged each other for a few days, and I had feeling for him immediately, and vice versa. So we spoke on the phone after about a week. In that first talk, he said to me, "You need to rediscover your awesome self and just BE that, no matter what." These are, so far, the most profound words I have heard regarding my situation. I knew immediately that I could not be my "awesome self" and remain in the marriage. It would never work. So, now I'm getting out, I am much more awesome than I was a year and a half ago (and the ex says I've "gone downhill as a person" - surprise! He doesn't like the "real me" just as I thought), and I am in love with someone who loves me back to my very core.
Whatever your aha moment is, whenever it comes, follow it. God, the universe, whatever you believe in, is telling you something. And it's for your own good.

And this reminds of the modified serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serentity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the one person I can
And the wisdom to not choke the living daylights out of those that desperately deserve it.

Sorry if I offend anyone's religious beliefs. It is not intentional. I sometimes say this to myself when I get into the mood to argue my perspective in an attempt to change someone else's behavior. It reminds me that I can't change them at all. The only person I can change is me.

Yes. I think the big AHA moment was when I realized that he DID NOT love me.

Then I realized that the reason for that was because he wouldn't ever really love anyone, and that indeed, he HURT people who did nothing more than love him...and he continued to do it his whole life.

This showed me that he was a different kind of animal and shouldn't be given the same level of trust or faith that another could be.

It does suck knowing that you can't change that person. I've wasted 3 years on someone who was totally wrong from it. But you live and learn and when you find someone totally better, you will forget all about this guy.

When I realized he didn't care if he hurt me or our baby inside of me as he tried to suffocate me, then threw me on the ground and bounced my head off the floor. That was last week. My family helped move me out about a week ago.

Oh... No one is stupid here, or naive. These people are master manipulators. It takes time to recognize, rebuild, and get out. When you are ready, you go.

It took umpteen verbal assaults and over eight physical assaults for me, and the last one... I still stayed and hid (cowered) behind a locked door while he stabbed it repeatedly with a knife because he "needed something from the room" and couldn't tell me what it was so I could just hand it to him and go to sleep. Did I leave then? No. Did I call the police? No. I stayed through the night, barely sleeping, barely thinking and I woke up and opened the door and I stayed through the morning. I made breakfast. I cleaned. I made a cake for a party we'd agreed to go to that night. We went to this birthday party at a bar, and I ran into old friends, a couple, whom I hadn't seen in 4 years and they took one look at me and said "What the hell is going on?" The woman had been severely abused before. And they knew from my stature... they knew from my weight loss, they knew from my missing happy face, they knew from seeing me as this shell of a person... they asked the right questions, and I told them the real answers. They acted nonchalant, and kept me out his way and charmed him until he agreed to go home and let me stay at the bar with these harmless people from my old life who only wanted to talk up the old days... and then they essentially had to get me drunk enough and honest enough to agree that I couldn't go home to my house.

They took me home, let me sleep, fed me, and helped me find a different route out. They knew that if I went home with him that night that he was going to kill me. I went home with them.

And that was my AHA. I woke up on the couch of people who hadn't seen me in years, but KNEW without me having to say a thing. If my friends had to do this, people who still knew the real me, if my friends can see this despite how long I've been isolated... and my friends new better than to let me go home..... Yeah. It was time for me to go. I was lucky. I was lucky to have such love and support and care at that moment. It was messy from there on, and it's still messy now.

Messy is still better than that was. I hope for you what I found.

I haven't had the official end it "aha" moment. I had the aha moment where I knew I couldn't stay in the situation any longer. I was never abused but I got so tired of being the grown-up. I was always the responsible one, while he liked to drink and play his games. I know now that this was his way of "dealing" with the problems, to just ignore them. House needing work? I paid for it and I was usually the one working on it. Example: the open basement of our 3200 sq ft home needed repainted so I worked on that on a Saturday. Started in the morning, about the same time he was on his game on the computer. Never did he bother to offer assistance even after me being down there for 6+ hours. About the time I started to clean up and was already frustrated that he didn't bother to get off his butt to help he jumped my butt for not spending any "quality time" with him because he wanted me to sit and watch him play his game. He was offended that I didn't want to do that over working on the house, wth? Stuff like that just wore me out and after awhile I decided I couldn't keep covering and doing things for him. Since starting the LDR tho it's not been as productive as I would hope since he's not one to really communicate with me.

AHA came to me in a period of about 3 months....during this time:
1) My mother passed away
2) We went on a birthday trip for my youngest son. My STBX was drunk the whole time, making a scene and just being a horrible person.
3) He told me I was fired from the family business.
4) I began communicating though Facebook with a stable person from my WAY past, 20 years ago...who could see clearly what was going on
5) A doctor and a therapist told me the only thing that was going to improve my health was to improve my situation.

The "clue phone" had been ringing for a long time, I just finally got the nerve to answer it..and AHA!

I said earlier I didn't have a single aha moment. But I did have a moment that laid out in blatant fashion, the depth of his depravity, and thus, propelled me out the door. I already knew I had to go, but after this, I was gone....

Our house had suffered a basement fire the summer of 2006. There was no structural damage but there was extensive smoke damage. (a dozen rubber hockey pucks burned up, you can't imagine how much ugly black smoke they make....) The entire house needed repainting, some of the walls were black, even after cleaning. I kept waiting and waiting for the insurance check so I could begin painting, since he wanted us to do it, not pay someone to do it. He kept saying we didn't have the money. In addition to this, our oven had been broken for about 3 years, the dishwasher didn't work, the stove was only working on 2 burners. It was bad, really bad....

About November of that year, he came home one day, and said his father's estate had been settled, and he didn't get anything. I knew that was a lie, but had no proof....so just let it go until I did. In the meantime, he had me putting my son's ice fees on my credit card (only in my name, because only me had a job, he ran his own busienss and refused to take any income from it), as well as 2 hockey tournaments to Canada, fuel oil.....

so about the end of January or early February, I was looking for a pen on what he called his desk, to write a check for the electric bill. His desk was our kitchen table, covered with layers of crap...he refused to clean it and I was forbidden to touch it. It had been a couple years since we'd eaten at the table. So I began moving stuff around to find a pen (he was in bed, so I broke his "don't touch" rule, LOL).

I found a bank statement for an account to which I had no access, buried among all the crap. It was for the November....and he'd deposited almost $100,000 the day he came home and told us he'd gotten nothing.

I realized that moment, that he was sicker than I'd ever believed, and that we'd never ever get better, that he would never allow us to have any kind of life. Except one of pain, misery, doing without....

3 weeks later, I had found a condo to move into. I got my butt to Ikea and got my son a bed, got a kitchen table, a few other things...

And March 10, 2007....was my independence day.

I realized that everything I said to my husband was just wanted he wanted to hear, not the truth. Or I would say "I love you" knowing that he would take it as meaning "in love" when what I really meant was "love as in a friend that I care lot about".

I also started seeing some selfish behaviors and some angry outbursts in my 5-year-old son. I said that it was time to get out.

We're separated, but still seeing each other on the weekends. I'm trying to find the courage to end it completely.