I spent a ton of money on therapists to deal with my anger issues when my abusive husband of 17 years decided to leave me & take everything with him. I was what they once referred to as the "dumpee" & he was the "dumper", according to all of the self help books I was reading back in the 1980's. As bad as our relationship was, I was still not ready to break a vow & put my child in a single mother world like I grew up in. I realized that the man I married was a replacement for the Mother who abused me. I thought it was normal to get smacked around.
I never said, "when I grow up I want to find a man who will beat me & yell at me like my rage-a-holic Mother did". It was a process that took place & I never connected those dots until YEARS after we were apart & I was left to raise a child in poverty while he spent lavishly & taunted us with "his" expensive toys. I lost a business, income, house, car, bank account was drained & he tried to take child! How I kept myself from killing the SOB is still a mystery to me. I kept thinking of the child & how I needed to protect her from his rages & possible future sexual abuse.
The strange thing is that, he once confided in me that, as a young boy, he made a wish to marry a girl who was just like his Mommy!
I guess I gave him what he wanted because he never has found another woman who can compare to me & all the things I left him with, he now is with a woman who has almost the same birthday as mine. The same birthday as his own Mother. The previous woman had almost the same name as me & he married her @ the same location! So glad I moved far away from that town & don't have to hear or see what goes on with their lives. The child is an adult now & she tells me more than I want to know on occasion.
I never planned for this to be so lengthy, but my point was that by realizing where my abuse started, I was able to pinpoint areas of my life that needed improvement & education to retrain by fractured view of the world. I know love is not for me. I think, I was being held hostage, in a way, for my own protection or possibly for the protection of someone else. I will never know why. I refuse to waste time on the past. When I hear that old voice inside telling me I'm stupid, I sometimes yell out, "Go F**k yourself & get outta my head!".
