Please do share... would love to include it, and no, the article is not yet at publishing. It can take me 3...
Okay, I'll try to summarize it as best I can.
In my case I had grown up in an abusive home, but not physically violent ( for me, it was for my siblings ) I was assaulted as a teen and then sent to a group home. Eventually I moved away and got into a lot of counseling, I spent the next 10 years having little contact with my family and was in a very stable and hopeful place.
It's at this time that I met my husband, he appeared to be the opposite of everything in my family. Well educated, calm, polite. Everyone thought he was great and people were always impressed with his charm and intelligence. I did see some red flags, but my own friends would talk me out of concern because they liked him so much. He was very pushy about getting married, I had noticed that he was ruthless and without conscience when making business deals, in a Wolf of Wall Street kind of way. That was the thing that stood out the most, he was definitely dishonest in business.
I married and had two babies right away, it's after the children that the emotional abuse started. Criticizing everything and making it clear he felt burdened by the whole situation. The demand was perfection, in the house and with me and when I let him down he would just leave, for hours or days. Before extreme physical abuse starts there's a pattern of behavior that precedes it. To be able to control the reactions of someone youre going to torture, you have to gradually deconstruct their sense of self worth, reality, and confidence in their ability to survive without you. In my case the catastrophic mistake I made was leaving the States and relocating to Europe with him when the kids were infants. Almost immediately the mask came off and there was no pretense on his part of caring. Its difficult to put it in short form here, but I had no bank accounts, no mail came to the house and no passports or birth certificates. It found out later that I had no legal visa to even be in Europe all those years. The intense pressure to have a perfect appearance as the wife of an executive was a full time job, the kids, the house and me had to be perfect at all times or the punishment was contempt and disappearing acts.
It escalated to physical violence and death threats within 2 years. Usually if I pressured to much to get answers to things. I was not entirely sure what he even did for a living at that point, when he disappeared for weeks I didnt know where he was and it was made clear I wasnt allowed to ask. Like most abusers the physical abuse always had a pattern. He would fly into a rage and accuse me of over stepping some kind of boundary of his, he would mostly make sure to leave my face out of it so I didnt look battered, then he would force sex afterwards. He'd disappear for weeks afterwards, I found out later he had other homes I didnt know about all over the place, when he got back he would act like nothing happened. If he stayed, he would cry and act like a lost little boy until I consoled him and apologized for making him angry enough to lose his temper. I would be at the park with my kids the next day, casually having conversions with other moms like my life was great. I used to put dissolving codeine tablets in my coffee every morning because I was in that much pain somewhere on my body almost all of the time. I got so caught up in pulling off my own double life, that it separated me from the truth of why I was doing it.
I was aware of this pattern as its was happening, I understood what I had gotten into and that I needed to get out. I didnt feel conflict the other women do sometimes. I had no feeling for him but fear, I knew my boys were irrelevant to him, like unwanted pets. When they became old enough to be confrontational with him they were going to get hurt , I wanted them out of there by the time they were ten. And thats about how long it took. I'd seen his eyes when he had his hands around my throat, and I wanted him gone. No way was I going to have my kids there forever.
The ptsd from this for me, mainly came from the tactics of control. The endless gaslighting, always speaking about me as if I were unstable, describing me as childlike or simple minded. " She's beautiful, but a lot of work " " too bad all she's good for is shopping, we'll have to go out to dinner, she can't cook"
That doesn't seem that bad, but when you know that I have broken ribs while he's saying it, and that I'm going along with it like I'm a spoiled American princess, its different. He had been subtly undermining my ability to be taken seriously, and I had been participating in my own gaslighting by portraying him as a great guy that traveled a lot because of an important job.
When he could sense that I was going to leave soon, he began making off the cuff remarks about how easy it would be to plan the perfect murder. He made jokes about pushing our children off his yacht, or how cheap it would be to hire a girl in Thailand to raise them. I was often judged by female attorneys and doctors about not knowing what he did for a living or never seeing tax returns in 12 years. I had to be stupid or lying. The injuries I had were all blamed on my rock climbing hobby, of course that was how I explained them to neighbors as they happened. Oh silly me, climbing old ruins while the kids are at school again. I had no where to go, I had lied to new friends there, and old friends at home for years and I didnt know how to undo that. I was questioned by close friends, all of whom said they just couldnt imagine my husband ever behaving that way.
When no one takes the threat seriously, they dont understand how vulnerable you or your children are, then you know you have no protection. This puts you in permanent hypervigilant mode, I was trying gauge worse case scenarios and be prepared for what might happen next every second. Protecting myself and my kids meant I had to feel like I was practically psychic to be safe, and I wasnt psychic. I became paranoid and exhausted. I had not one person helping me with my daily life and childcare, so my brain and nervous system went into overload and has never recovered. I was homeless for a while after coming back to the States, in total poverty, and still harassed by my ex through the court system for years. Eventually, an independent court appointed forensic psychologist evaluated both of us over six months. He lost his parental rights, and was diagnosed with axisII personality disorders in the psychopath category. I'd like to say that was validating, but honestly it was after so much damage was done, it was just mildly rewarding.
This is kind of long, I think maybe it should be in trauma diary category but I'm not sure how to move it there myself. Well, hope something in here was useful for the article.
