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Sexual Assault Hello Friends, A Bit Of My Story Here

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Butterfly

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Hello. Like most of you I am on an ongoing journey trying to heal from painful experiences and move on to a place where I can enjoy life. My first post was on the name your abuser forum and I figured I needed to come over here and see who's here and talk a bit about my story.
I have a wonderful father who would never hurt anyone, and I have a brother, that is my entire family. My mother died of ovarian cancer when I was 14. I did experience sexual abuse as a child. I don't really want to get in detail about that part right now, when I am ready to I will post again in this thread. But I will say that as a teeneager I was troubled, became somewhat promiscuous and turned to drugs and alcohol but all things considered was pretty responsible. I didn't go to regular high school, I had independent study and worked full time from age 14 in a restaurant, became the manager ,etc. Had a long term relationship with the boy who lived around the block. He was a decent guy, a bit verbally abusive but not a scary man, we were just immature I think. I was never afraid he would hurt me or anything. I thought I was strong and independent. If anyone had told me about what I would experience with the man I married I would have hardly believed it.

When I first got together with my ex, he was wonderful. Charming, attentive, interested in me, accommodating. I had really never felt someone loved me that much before. I thought I had found my partner for life. I fell in love with him and his family, who seemed to have so much more fun than mine did. We went camping, there were kids and cousins and fun and laughter. My family didn't take road trips or do much stuff like that growing up but I really love to travel and be in nature and it just seems more fun when there are lots of people.

He had two kids, 6 months (boy) and 3 (girl) that he had custody of, who I fell in love with immediately. He told me their mother (who I already knew and I had introduced her to him in the first place, long story for another time) was unfit, said she yelled at the kids, didn't clean the bottles, etc etc.... He seemed completely the responsible single dad trying to do right, who just needed a good woman to join him raising the kids and having a good life. So I packed my stuff quit my job and moved in with him and the kids. For the first year or so I worked but we found that financially it actually cost more to have me work and send the kids to day care. So, we took the kids out of daycare and I became a full time homemaker.

Things were really good for the first few years. I thought we were happy. Though before I met them I hadn't been sure if I wanted to be a parent, I loved spending time with the children; they started calling me mom, I love them as if they were mine and always will. He went through a lot of jobs and seemed to get in a lot of disagreements with his coworkers and bosses, but jobs were plentiful and he did fairly well anyway. There was a lot of love in those first few years. Well looking back knowing what I do now, I want to believe that his love was real but I have a suspicion the man is a narcissist or a sociopath and so maybe what I think 'love' is and what he does are not even related. Anyway, we lived together for a few years and then we got married.

I look back now and it still amazes me how our relationship could have possibly gotten from where it was to where it ended up. There were a lot of social factors that came into play at varying degrees at varying times, like stints of unemployment, drugs, family members health scares, and so forth. I know it wasn't all his fault but the things that he did he chose to do, it took me a long time to recognize that for what it was because I kept thinking he couldn't know what he was doing and still be doing it, or that I was doing something to make him be how he was, I just couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. There is so much that happened, I cannot possibly put it all in this post. In short he became abusive and as it turned out we fell into a pretty classic textbook case of abusive husband/battered wife.

I feel I should have seen it coming that he came to think he owned me and had rights over my sexuality when I asked him before we got married if we could abstain from sex for a couple of weeks before the wedding. Maybe it was stupid since we'd already done it lots of times but, idk, I wanted to wear the white dress, we were married in a church, and I thought it would make the wedding night speical. But he didn't want to do that. We argued about it til the wedding day in between having sex because I just gave in so he would quit being mad. he said he was afraid that it would be like that after we married, that I wouldnt want to have sex with him, that wasn't it, I liked sex, I just wanted to pretend for a minute that I was pure or something...I thought it would make our union more sacred or something. But it didn't work out like that. The wedding night, not so special. I really didn't feel like having sex but, well it was the wedding night so we did and it was just ok I guess. It had hurt me that he didn't respect my wishes on that, it didn't seem such a huge sacrifice if we were going to be together for the rest of our lives. But I tried to put that out of my mind.

for the next couple of years things went ok as we stepped into quite traditional gendered roles. He'd go to work, I'd take care of the kids, he'd come home and I would pull off his boots. We had some great times, the kids were growing, things moving along. But he had a lot fo anxiety, and we stayed up many nights talking about his feelings. I learned he had been abused as a child and tried to help him work through his feelings about that. I suggested he seek a counselor but he didnt want to, he did get on some meds that helped him for awhile when he took them.

Since I already listed a lot of the particular abuses in my name your abuser post I am not going to do it again here. Suffice to say that he dominated me and became violent emotionally, verbally, physically and sexually. He was fixated around oral sex, which I didnt mind doing for him when he was nice, I was not going to be a wife who deprived her husband. When in came to a point where he seemed to just expect me to do it any second he wanted it, and sometimes when the kids needed tending to, things like that... it seemed like he had no boundaries around it to keep things appropriate and it was more important to him than, as I said taking care of the kids needs and stuff.

His would tell me about his sexual fantasies about women and men. He wanted us to bring other people into the bedroom. I wasn't really comfortable but agreed to try it anyway and we tried it out with a woman we knew but as it turned out I didn't want him to have sex with another woman and told him that, and he got very angry, started calling me a dyke, whore, etc etc.. It seemed he just couldn't get over it- for a week or two he just basically chewed me out day in day out, morning till night. Not exaggerating. I wonder why if he wanted her so bad he didn't just go do it and leave me out of it... but I think maybe she didnt want to without me being ok with it so he needed me to get to her. She was actually a nice lady, we got along fine as friends and if I saw her today I would give her a hug.

One morning I was awakened by his head looming over my pillow with him saying all these insults and telling me I manipulated him, and I was a whore, etc... the week's ass chewings had beat me down a lot and my mind couldn't take much more.... I begged him to stop, he kept on, I said to him that one of us needed to leave until we calmed down. I tried to but he blocked my way. He was getting scary and I ran to the back end of the house, he chased me. I begged him again, whos going to leave me or you?

He just kept screaming and he backed me into a corner, by then his face was bright red and he was screaming right in my face. I tried to go around him; he blocked me. He put his hands to my throat, I think I slapped him, he choked me, I kicked him in the groin to get out of the chokehold but I dont think I made contact, he grabbed the leg I had used and twisted it almost all the way around, dropping me to the floor. Then he picked me up and tried to throw me over his shoulder and I struggled. As I struggled, My wedding ring scratched him on the head. He dropped me and I ran out the front door..... then something happened to me....I cannot fully explain.... I was headed to the neighbor but something made me turn around and head back to the door. e met me on the porch and shoved me down, leaping on top of me with me on my back and my hands at my sides under his thighs so that I could not move. That's when he hocked a looige in his mouth and let the loogie come out in a string over my head then sucked it back in his mouth, he did that a couple times then hocked it on me. I spit at him too and he shook me up some more. I was able to twist out from under him somehow and turned to run again, and suddenly there was a gun in my face. The neighbors had heard me screaming and called the police.

A couple of cops had him on the ground face down very quickly with his hands behind his head. They asked if I was ok and I think I said I was. I saw him there on the ground and something in me... I can't explain it... that was my husband, I think I told the cop I love him (husband).... And then I told him it was all my fault. Meanwhile they had stood him up and started talking to him. He looked a fright, his hed was bleeding from where my ring had scratched him and his knees were all scraped up from when he's jumped me on the porch. He seemed pretty calm, I on the other hand was a mess, shaking, stuttering, just a real wreck. Anyway he told the cops that I spit on him, one came over and said Did you spit on him, and I said yeah... I was never allowed to see the report he made but he says he tried to tell them it wasn;t all my fault but that he had antagonized me. Anyway I was arrested for domestic violence that day, pled no contest and had to take 52 weeks of anger managerment classes. I believe it was my failure this day to tell the police the truth that set our course for the next two years.

I got out of jail that night and we made love and all that and he said how sorry he was and I was resigned that, well, he's family and gotta be loyal to family and this time I took the rap and I accept it, but we both knew what really happened right? Maybe I did deserve to be criminalized? My DV counslor entreated me to go back to court, she said if it happened like I said it did I was acting in self defense. But I didnt do that. Anyway, now I had been labeled "The Primary Aggressor" and he was "The Victim". He had a protection order from the court stating I was not to harass him, which he interpreted to mean that I was not to disagree or bother him in any way. But even tilting my head the wrong way could bother him and it was very hard to decode exactly what his rules around how I was supposed to act were.

Over the next two years he became more violent more often. I became obsessed with the cycle of violence that I had been learning about both at my dv classes and in my house- I started keeping a record, and it was between every 6 to 9 weeks that his anger would explode into a physical assault on me. In between we rolled around the power wheel, sometimes things were good and fun when he would be trying to 'make up' for how he'd acted, sometimes he would engage in machine gun verbal abuse stringing like 15 insults into one shot, he really would just go on and on, yelling insults and telling me he doesn't matter and was I happy now and why was I such a C word.... Alot of what he was angry about involved sex in some way. Like, he never got over the thing with the other woman and blamed me that he didnt get ot have sex with her. over a year later he was still chewing me out for that. And he was mad that I wasn't wanting to have sex with him and give him oral sex, but he was being an ass and I didn't want to be intimate with him when he was insulting me and hitting me and then telling me over and over that I was the "Abuser". So he would emotionally abuse me till I gave in, which I would do just to have some peace and not be yelled at. I was really unhappy with this becasue I thought sex between a man and wife was supposed to be expression of our love, not this way....

I tried different things to deal with it. I tried being apologetic, this only further cemented in his mind that I was to blame. I tried being quiet and listen, being quiet and stare at a spot on the wall, but then I was ignoring him. I shot back verbal abuse bombs, trying to give him a taste of his own medicine. I tried leaving a few times; he would find me at the hotel, blow up my phone, use the children to manipulate me to come home (either I hadn't been able to take them with me and he'd have them call and ask me to come home, or I took them with me and be threatened with kidnapping charges if i didnt bring them back. Also if i left I had 'abandoned the children' and 'didn't love' them and all that. I had no legal rights as step stepparent, primary caregiver or not).

There is a lot that happened I can't talk about but suffice to say the man became increasingly abusive, and the more abusive he got the more he blamed me. I couldn't figure out if he really actually thought he was The Victim or if he was mentally ill, what I didn't want to believe, what was too awful to be true, was that he actually knew exactly what he was doing and did it on purpose. I couldn't fathom anyone much less my own husband could be that way intentionally to hurt me. I wanted to do right by my wedding vows.

So this is a sexual abuse forum and I was certainly sexually abused by my husband. In my case the sexual abuse was one component in a pattern of abuse that ran the gamut. Those power and control wheels? EVERY SINGLE ITEM on there applies. People ask why doesnt the battered wife leave; the answer is complex, there is no ONE reason. I was financially dependent. In my case, not being a bio parent, the threat of never getting to see the kids was very real and I love them more than anyone in the world. I thought I was in love, I had made vows, a promise to God to be there for better and for worse. We lived in a home owned my my father that had been my moms house growing up so it was my family home, I wanst going to give it up although he threatened to have me arrested and restrained so he could have the house and was pressuring me to talk to my dad about a sale contract on the house... he was really dastardly and I was really naive as to just how bad willed he really was toward me. I was blinded by thinking he loved me but was having issues.... even when it unfolded in front of me I didnt want to believe his treachery.

The thing about how he would twist me into the perpetrator was the awfullest thing, worse than being called names or pressured into sex... he accused me of unmentionable things in regards to the children which was chilling considering that most of what he was accusing me of was things that he was doing himself.... he wanted me to do stuff for him, sex stuff with his butt... and I didn't want to but he would pout, and get mad at me, and finally i did it, and it was awful, I was disgusted and REALY didnt want to do it... and then later we were arguing about something, probably me complaining about his being verbally abusive, or being abusive over wanting oral sex, and he looked at me and said 'you raped me, I'm going to report it'. :/ Then he called me by the name of a man who he'd said molested him as a child. the last day we were together, he was trying to get me to do that to him again and I was refusing, no way in hell am I doing that again, I didn't want to do it at all but to have him make me do it just to vilify me and act like I made him do it!!!! This is the kind of insanity I was dealing with and it had to stop! I really really was going to go insane, its one thing to be beaten, to be kicked around, to be assaulted in the bedroom.. but to then be told I was the victimizer! And by selling myself out to take the blame for a beating I had pretty much given him an engraved invitation to make me the scapegoat for everything he did... if he had taken the anger management, had to take responsibility, who know maybe he never would have gotten so bad, maybe we'd still be together even...

I already explained how we split up, our last fight, in my name your abuser post, basically he literally threw me to the curb and at that point I took steps to protect myself, squashing his attempts to return once more. here is so much more but right now I am tired. More later.
 
I guess we can't edit threads? I was going to add about the things I tried to do to deal, to cope with his abuse.... returning abuse for abuse did not work well for me at all. Say he would be going off on me verbally, and call me like 15 differnet insulting names maybe 100 times in a shot. If I popped back, say, tell him he was an effing something this and that, then he would go off about me abusing him, and I would usually get smacked or shoved too. It would spill over even into the next fights, haunting me, when he would be going off on me and he'd tell me how I was the Abuser because I called him a something this and that. Never mind he had already insulted me a few hundred times since then, that didn't matter all that mattered was that I said or done something abusive to him.

Another time, for example, he was physically abusing me in our bedroom, had shoved me against the wall and was screaming at me when our daughter walked in and started yelling for him to stop. She threw one of those big exercise balls at him and he turned around and roughly grabbed her by the ear. I yelled for him not to touch her and hit him on his back, then he turned around, punched me and smacked my head into the wall. I was extremely careful not to physically attack him or defend myself because he threatened to have me arrested but when it came to him hurting the kid for getting in the middle.... I would rather get his attention back to hit me instead, they didn't deserve his wrath. Not that I did, but I did more than they did. The boy would make himself disappear, hide under the covers or whatever, except for one time when he pulled out a knife anf fork camping utensil and was going to go after his dad till I took it away from him. The girl would walk straight into it and protest, once, and this is a girl of maybe nine years old, she got pots and pans from the kitchen and started banging them around. When her dad told her to stop she quipped, "well you guys are making noise so why can't I?"

The classes I was taking required me to take responsibility for my abuse and so I did, I had to admit that what I'd said or done was abusive and apologize. But he didn't do likewise and admit his own abuse, or if he did admit to any of it, he would minimize his and amplify my abuse in his mind so that I was The Abuser. This is why it is so dangerous when they arrest the wrong person, although maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. What they teach in those classes can be misinterpreted if the person learning it won't take responsibility.

One of the times I left, after I had gotten ice water tossed on me and then picked up and thrown and gotten injured, he coaxed me back by promising to take the same regimen of classes I was taking. He went to a few of them and came back armed with more ammo to abuse me with, all he had to do was ignore what he was doing and pick out the things I did, that I couldn't deny were indeed abusive, and I had once again become The Abuser. And I'm sure when he went to the classes he was giving them the version where I attack him and he's The Victim, so they started teaching him the things they teach abused partners.... but anyway he stopped taking the classes and when I protested, because he had promised to go to all 52, that was the condition for me coming back, he told me I was a bully and had bullied me into taking the classes. :/

I believe he got more abusive as I sought to expose his behavior, that was something he could not abide. If he could make be into the bad guy, if no one listened to my side, he would still appear to be the good guy. My refusing to report him, the cops came probably ten times to our house and I wouldn't report him but I remember one glimmer of hope came when a policeman looked at me, I rmeember his bright blue eyes very clearly, and tells me "you're safe now". But to be safe I had to call it out, I had to report, I didn't want to report for many reasons although I did call them when I had left and his mom called me while I was at the hotel, crying because he was threatening suicide which he denied when the police came of course. That was how I got sucked back in that time.

There is no way to defend against this kind of psychological warfare. I could not win no matter what. It would invariably be turned back on me no matter what I did, what I said, how hard I tried. He also, and I didn't realize it for a long time, engaged in a long term smear campaign against me behind my back to anyone who would listen: his parents, his ex wife, our friends, the police, even my own father. He had them all believing I was some some sort of nut who was constantly going off and beating him and having affairs too.There are still people out there who must think I am a monster based on the things he was saying about me. His other wife included, until she realized that he was also smearing her and if he would lie about her he would lie about me, and now we are friends.

Meanwhile, as he would tell his story to anyone who would band an ear, I became more and more isolated, and I am actually still somewhat agoraphobic to this day. There was only one person who was always on my side, my best friend since we were 12. he called her once to spin his story and she cut him right off telling him, look I'm always going to be on her side and I'm going to believe her no matter what you tell me so just don't bother. He never called her after that. But most everyone else was under the impression that I was an abusive wife and evil stepmother.

Actually I think the police kind of knew what was going on but couldn't really help me since I wouldn't report him, and even the time he socked me in the face and they came and my face was all swollen, they couldn't arrest him because I wouldn't make a statement. It wasn't until he dumped me at the jail that I finally reported it. But he ended up getting out of it, they dropped the DV charge apparently because he was saying I attacked him (big surprise there right?) and since I was already a convicted abuser my testimony wasn't going to outweigh his. It was his word against mine and it was already set up so I would be at a disadvantage. He also took my car and stalked my home and called me in violation of the restraining order I'd had, but he was not charged for any of it.

Somehow the guy always comes out smelling like a rose... I don't know how he does it! I guess that's why I started on the name your abuser forum- the idea that at least in this tiny piece of cyber space, he is called out, he is named and idetified as what he is. He may have 'gotten away with it' but he still DID the stuff and he won't admit it but that doesn't change the facts.
 
Hi Butterfly and welcome to the forum.

I'm sad to say that I've had two aunts who were in violent and abusive marraiges, but they too, like you, were strong enough to eventually get themselves out and I appalud you for it.
 
I guess we can't edit threads? I was going to add about the things I tried to do to deal, to cope with his abuse....
The edit function is available for 30 minutes after posting. After that, if there is a mistake you want to correct you can use the Report function to report the post and state what mistake there was made.

I would advise you didn't add to a post that is so long, because many people who are on this forum do not have the capacity to read such long posts. Please watch this [DLMURL]http://sexabuse.ptsdforum.org/threads/how-to-understand-why-basic-grammar-rules-exist.600/[/DLMURL] , it will explain why a traumatized brain cannot process that much writing. I would also adive you to try and keep your posts shorter, maybe break them into events? This way you will be sure to get responses.

Leaving the editorial role aside I will tell you, on a personal note, that when I am tired or in a bad state I cannot read this much writing. If I am able I come back to it, but others may not.

Take care.
 
Hi Butterfly.

Welcome to the forum. :thumbsup:

I'm afraid I agree with Nyx regarding lengthy threads. I am fairly 'well' at the moment, but I don't currently have the attention span/ concentration to read your above posts. Like Nyx, I will come back at some point and read your posts, but it certainly won't be for a few days at least, until I have more time on my hands.

In the mean time - based simply on the title of your post, and length - I am moving this thread to the "Your Story" forum, but once read, by either myself or one of the other Moderators, your thread may be moved again.

Regards
CB
 
Thank for the input, I will go watch the video now. I have so much to say, I've thought about writing a book. I might do that. In the meantime I will keep post length in mind for the future :)
 
I'm afraid I too belong to the ranks of just having separated from an abusive partner, a longtime relationship that in the past year went very sour. We had both grown stronger in our issues but instead of that strength bringing us closer as I had hoped, it drove us apart. That is why I am bouncing around from place to place at present, because when I left him I had to leave his house as well, car too. But despite all this, i feel it was the best move I could have made. Life with him had become hell.

My story, very much a work in progress.. I am still feeling and processing issues from my childhood where my sexual abuse occurred. Currently dealing with resentment and anger over my mother's attempts to control me, which apparently I tried to counter by refusing to do.. anything. A sort of passive aggressive response which kept me safe from her wrath at first and then felt like the only way I could 'get back at ' her, but refusing so do things she wanted me to do. Now i need to do things for myself and find these patterns are holding me back in the present.. And currently I am feeling resentful and angry a lot of the time. I need to be doing for myself, especially working towards a new place to live. So all this junk from the past is getting kicked up in me and I hate it !! And so have been doing some screaming into my pillow about how much I hate God and my fate as survivor, saddled with all this junk to deal with. Ugh!! :stomp::mad::(
 
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