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 got a call back from my therapist this afternoon. She told me that she spoke with our marriage counselor to fill her in on the emotional abuse, her concerns for me and her recommendation that we don't continue marriage counseling without each of us going to individual counseling.
The marriage counselor told my therapist that she is there to preserve the marriage if that is what we want so that is what she is focused on and nothing more including the emotional abuse........
My therapist told me that I needed to make a decision on whether or not I wanted to continue marriage counseling only if we both have individual counseling and that I needed to express that during our session tomorrow so the marriage counselor can support whatever position I take.
Of course me being so freaking weak told my husband that I can't do marriage counseling and he asked why telling me we had to because we both made a committment. I told him everything he said that hurt me and invalidated me and made me feel like an irresponsible parent, wife, etc. (which I posted here) and said more then once that even my couselor said I am not crazy and it is manipulation and controlling behavior.
I don't know what I was expecting him to say (maybe some miracle that he would say yeah, I know I control you and manipulated you & I need help) but of course he said he doesn't see how anything he said is controlling and manipulative that all he was doing was sharing his feelings (all the while not denying anything he said) and that he is just being curious as to how people think about things (such as why I didn't ask him to change the light in one of the can lights in the kitchen when we both talked about it as soon as it went out and because I didn't ask him again it is somehow me not being responsible, but he didn't say that...........).
He proceeded to tell me the therapist is only going based on what I told her and she didn't know the surroundings and tone the comments were said in because he didn't mean them in a negative way.
P.S. My mom is in ICU and will be there likely the rest of the week because they can not controle her diabetes or blood pressure following emergency surgery and she has septsis in her blood which is very bad. I guess my family did a good job at over reacting on that one........ He told me on my way to the hospital yesterday he didn't understand why my mom doesn't take care of herself better and doesn't she realize what this does to everyone else, when stuff like this happens its then a firedrill for everyone. I could go on with more things just about this topic.
But I am sick to my stomach and he just wants us to be "partners".
The marriage counselor told my therapist that she is there to preserve the marriage if that is what we want so that is what she is focused on and nothing more including the emotional abuse........
My therapist told me that I needed to make a decision on whether or not I wanted to continue marriage counseling only if we both have individual counseling and that I needed to express that during our session tomorrow so the marriage counselor can support whatever position I take.
Of course me being so freaking weak told my husband that I can't do marriage counseling and he asked why telling me we had to because we both made a committment. I told him everything he said that hurt me and invalidated me and made me feel like an irresponsible parent, wife, etc. (which I posted here) and said more then once that even my couselor said I am not crazy and it is manipulation and controlling behavior.
I don't know what I was expecting him to say (maybe some miracle that he would say yeah, I know I control you and manipulated you & I need help) but of course he said he doesn't see how anything he said is controlling and manipulative that all he was doing was sharing his feelings (all the while not denying anything he said) and that he is just being curious as to how people think about things (such as why I didn't ask him to change the light in one of the can lights in the kitchen when we both talked about it as soon as it went out and because I didn't ask him again it is somehow me not being responsible, but he didn't say that...........).
He proceeded to tell me the therapist is only going based on what I told her and she didn't know the surroundings and tone the comments were said in because he didn't mean them in a negative way.
P.S. My mom is in ICU and will be there likely the rest of the week because they can not controle her diabetes or blood pressure following emergency surgery and she has septsis in her blood which is very bad. I guess my family did a good job at over reacting on that one........ He told me on my way to the hospital yesterday he didn't understand why my mom doesn't take care of herself better and doesn't she realize what this does to everyone else, when stuff like this happens its then a firedrill for everyone. I could go on with more things just about this topic.
But I am sick to my stomach and he just wants us to be "partners".
If you are being abused, I can say one thing is for certain:
***You do not have a relationship problem. You have an abuse problem.***
That is why marriage counseling does not work in cases of abuse. It has nothing to do with bad relationship dynamics. Nothing at all.
don't abuse.
Sending you hugs
and wishes for
your abuse-free life.
Why does it hurt so bad? Why can't I just see this is for what it is? Why do I second guess myself when he tells me he didn't mean things the way I took them even though I quote his words exactly but somehow it is me who took it wrong. What is a healthy relationship? Why is it knowing so many people tell me that he is the wrong one not me), but I still feel so hurt and broken hearted, so empty, so badly to blame for this? Why am I so scared to go to marriage counseling tomorrow for fear of being alone, a failure, etc.? I have never been alone in my entire life, I am scared. =(
I have read Kevinz post on "Its ok if a relationship fails" several times today yet I still feel so awful about all of this.
I know so many people have gone through this and so many have given support, I don't know why I am having such a hard time grasping it.
I'm not sure what the answer is or how to feel better, other than to focus on youself and what makes YOU feel good. If he is unhappy, that's his damned problem - you are not responsible for his happiness. But here is how I have dealt with it lately - I go to the therapist, the therapist reminds me of the challenges of dealing with someone with her personality, reminds me what is healthy and that relationships should be 50/50 and that raised voices and cussing is never acceptable, and reminds me to set boundaries and tells me that I am doing the best I can. And I go home, and she asks how was the therapy, and I respond "fine" and nothing else. It's not her business. And when she becomes enraged or abusive over something, I try to refrain from saying words like "abuse" or that she is a hurtful or bad person, instead I simply tell her that I have too much self respect to listen to her insults and curse words, and that I am leaving and will be back after a period of time for her to cool down. I've learned the hard way that when you tell an abuser that they are being abusive or that their words are hurting you, they tend to abuse more.
Take good care.
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
It helps me to see that emotions go through a cycle before acceptance; it helps me to gain some clarity. Perhaps it will help you too. (Please note the cycle is not rigid, and all people do not experience all emotions, or in any particular order.)
It's ok to be sad! It IS sad!
I wish I knew the answer about what to tell you to make you understand what he is doing to you.
Everything you are feeling now is the way he is making you feel.
Everything, yes, everything.
He is making you feel CONFUSED
He is making you feel GUILTY
He is making you feel CRITICIZED
He is manipulating you in every way
There are so many more.
What you are NOT Feeling is loved,
supported, as when a member of your family is sick and needs you. ( Instead he makes you into feeling guilty for wanting to be with them. You truly can't be more selfish than that.)
You are not happy.
I do hope you will decide for a happy peaceful life and not have to be on high alert every second of your life because you are living with an abuser.
I am so sorry about your Mom and am happy that despite him you are going to see her. You never know what can happen.
Please take care of yourself.
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((HUGS))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
I have to agree with pretty much everything everyone else has said so far. All I know to add is to say it's tough to have to deal w/an abusive relationship AND the illness of a parent. Please take especially good care of yourself at this time. Maybe you can limit your contact w/him while you are with your family. Eat well & try to get as much rest as you can. Allow yourself to feel & honor whatever feelings you have in whatever time frame they come. It takes time to grieve and heal. Be kind and gentle with yourself & most of all LOVE yourself.
Big hugs!!!
Please don't beat yourself up. I see a lot of self-criticism here, some of it contradictory - beating yourself up for being a failure in not fixing your marriage and at the same time beating yourself up for not being able (yet) to internalise the idea that he is abusive, manipulative, controlling - and not loving. I understand the self-criticism, I've done it myself. Pretty much all of us here have. It's a classic hallmark of abuse. But it's one of the first things to try to change.
You are a good person. You are not perfect, nor should you be expected to be perfect. The world isn't on your shoulders, nor is the marriage. You are entitled to your feelings, including those feelings of being hurt, confused, invalidated by him. He doesn't get to say that he (time and again) "didn't mean it that way". If you put a drink down on a wobbly surface and it spilled all over him, you could legitimately say you were sorry, you didn't realise the surface was wobbly. If you then got a refill and put it on the very same wobbly surface and it again spilled all over him, it would be hard to say you didn't mean it. By the time you've put the drink on that same wobbly surface many times a day for 20 years, would you really expect him to believe you didn't mean to have the drink spill all over him?
That's what he's doing to you. Doing all the things you have said hurt you and invalidate you and make you feel bad, over and over and over again. And then tries "oh I didn't mean it". And you believe it (at least a bit) because you are a good person, a loving wife, and you so very badly WANT to believe it. You are a good person who would not deliberately hurt someone else, so it's hard to accept that someone else, someone who has claimed to love you no less, would deliberate hurt you (or at the very least, not care that his words and actions will hurt you).
I know I'm being repetitive, because I really want you to see that you are a good person. You are trying. But it takes two. It takes two people to make a relationship work - it only takes one to destroy it. And with his belittling, invalidation, criticism and so on, he is destroying it.
Just one more, another of my analogies. I wrote this one a while ago, but it feels very apt for your situation. Some years ago, I was at the beach with my then 2 year old and an adult friend. My friend built a sandcastle for my son, who then stomped it. So my friend built another, which also got stomped. So then he started playing a game with my son where he would build sandcastles as quickly as possible (with quality diminishing each time, until all he was building were quick mounds) while my son ran around laughing and stomping.
My friend and my son were having fun and it was just a game to them both (it's actually one of my very happy memories). But as an analogy, that's what we do in abusive relationships. We start out trying to build something beautiful, complex, good. And they stomp on it. So we try to rebuild, believing that it was an accident, that they couldn't have meant to destroy what we built, that they will help us rebuild. So we build again, but before we are even finished, they stomp it again. And so it goes on and on, until we are left just building whatever we can manage, hating ourselves for the fact that what we are building doesn't come near to the perfect castle we were hoping for, hating our own failure to meet our expectations from the relationship, and we start to believe that the reason they keep stomping is because what we are building is so crap - we deserve to have it stomped, and will continue to deserve to have it stomped until we can manage to build that perfect dream.
It's not your failure to create the dream, it's his insistence on stomping everything you try to create.
Confused, I agree with everyone else. It is the nature of the abuser to keep us unbalanced. They are master manipulators and know that we are good people who honestly want to believe they are as well. The sad, sorry truth is that they never did want the same things we did. They wanted control and total world domination (or at least total domination over us and our children). Keeping you off balance and making you believe that you are the one who is failing to see his point of view, or mistaking his words and actions as innocent is just one more means to win. I've come to the conclusion that this is war not love, and we need to put on our battle armor to survive it intact. Hugs to you and try to stay positive!!
Livndadream, you always have such beautiful ways to make people feel better. Thank you!