Please forgive me for this very long post. I have never done this before, and I am so lost… I don’t know what to do. After 15 years of marriage, I have put up with a lot of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse. I was away for 4 months attending intense courses in another city. I spoke with my wife, and something sparked an argument. Long story short, she ended up saying that she no longer wanted to have anything to do with me, and that I should move on in my life, as she already was. She asked for a separation. We have been separated since February – although when I returned from my courses, I simply moved into our basement, as we cannot afford to set up a new household at the moment. Last week was my birthday – and instead of a happy birthday (except from my 10 year old daughter), I got a “let’s talk” – where my wife brought out a list – yes a list of all my faults and failings spanning the last 15 years. She said that she knew it was my birthday, but she frankly did not care.
This prompted me to dash off a few lines of my own… but I don’t have the heart to read it to her…. Perhaps a few pairs of fresh eyes could give me some insight. Here goes:
I want to start this off, by admitting my role in the challenges we have had in our marriage. Obviously I have been inattentive, distant, detached and self absorbed. I have not expressed my happiness, joy, or my displeasure or sorrow. I have not shared my feelings positive or negative much. I tend to bottle up all my emotions. I have essentially shut down – perhaps in an effort to avoid further pain. I regret resorting to this. I really do want to be happy – not withdrawn and distant.
You presented your feelings clearly. Much of it I understand, some of I it I sorrowfully agree with, while most of it is simply false.
Now it is my turn to share my feelings:
We fight constantly. A day doesn’t go by without you screaming about something. I can’t stand arguing, confrontation, yelling, or fighting. When confronted with a fight, I withdraw – my mind freezes up, I simply can’t think under the pressure of confrontation. When I was young, my Dad would corner me, and yell at me, berating and belittling – in his eyes, I was pathetic, lazy, useless and an a**hole. – He would get more and more furious when I couldn’t answer his questions, and he sometimes resorted to violence. The only thing I could do, short of running away, was to sit there, take the abuse, and look like an idiot. This is a simple biological response – the “flight or fight” response hard wired into our biological makeup. Unfortunately, my genes lean strongly towards the “flight” aspect of adrenaline fueled conflicts. You, on the other hand seem to be hardwired for fighting. You appear thrive on arguments and revel in anger. You (just like my Dad) view my withdrawal from conflict as extreme weakness (you say “get some balls” or “get a spine”) when I refuse to argue or “talk” (which in my opinion is code for coercing me into an argument) – demanding that I talk or give you an answer to a question invariably has disastrous results. Often I say something sarcastic, which you take as gospel truth – which I can never seem to take back. In turn, this gives fuel to your anger – since I can’t refute your mean spirited or plain wrong arguments – it obviously means that you must be correct – and that any anger you display is completely justified, and excusable.
Early in our marriage, I made the mistake of allowing you vent your anger. Venting does nothing except make you feel good about yourself at the expense of others. Venting serves the purpose of justifying your anger towards someone – giving you an excuse to berate, belittle and blame. Venting anger on someone does not help any situation – it only fuels anger further, until you feel that you are justified in any action you might take – including verbal, mental and physical abuse.
I feel ruined. I feel empty. I feel crushed. Every time you fight with me, my heart breaks a little more. You say horrible soul crushing things in the heat of your angry ranting “vents”, and expect me to brush it off without consequence. You hurt people without thought or care. Your words cut deeply, and you are oblivious to the harm you inflict. You never acknowledge your unacceptable behavior – quite the opposite – when you are confronted with it, you instantly justify your actions. You always have a perfectly valid excuse for doing or saying whatever you please. The phrase “This is how I am – if you don’t like it then you can leave! “ is one of your favorites. A person can only be pushed away and given ultimatums or threats of divorce so many times before they snap. I refuse to live this way anymore – I will not live in constant fear of sparking an argument for breathing wrong.
You are violent and abusive. Not content to simply rant, vent, berate and belittle with verbal abuse.... you frequently lash out with your fists. I have had things thrown at me. I have had my face smacked with a shoe. I have been punched and slapped multiple times. You punched me in the face and gave me a black eye, and I had to call the police on you. You have pulled knives on me... held a blade up to my throat in front of our daughter. – there is simply no excuse or justification for this. This is assault. Yet you simply brush it off, and even manage to convince yourself that it was somehow my fault.
You threaten harm. You threaten to kill yourself, me, and our children. This last week alone, I heard you say twice – “you better get these girls away from me, or I’ll kill them”. You have told me how you considered killing our daughters, and then committing suicide. I don’t even know where to begin with this.
You spoke with Social services regarding these harmful and suicidal feelings – and they responded by giving you FREE anti depression medication. Your doctor has determined that you have a definable, diagnosable chemical imbalance, which is treated by your pills. Every time you go off your pills, your behavior and anger escalates until you realize you have crossed a boundary. Then you take your medication, and suddenly you realize you need them – until you justify not taking them again. You are caught in a self – perpetuating cycle of destruction. And everyone around you suffers. When you are well, you ask me to remind you to take your pills... but when you are not on them, and I ask you if you have taken them recently, you accuse me of using the mention of pills as some sort of attack on you, and that I can’t let you “express your feelings” -even if your concept of “expressing feelings” is to lay into me with a profanity laced rant, topped off with a threat of divorce. When you are off your medication, you seem to be emboldened by your anger, your justification, and refuse to entertain any suggestion to take your pills. You think that I use mention your pills as an excuse or a weapon. This statement alone gives credibility and reveals the truth of the situation.... your pills make a positive difference in your mental health... and reduce your anger. When you are off your pills – your anger gives you a false sense of outrage – almost like there is a demon inside of you who wants to preserve itself by angrily rejecting the very thing that could destroy it. You need your medication. I know it, your doctor knows it, social services knows it... and YOU know it.
You have fabricated elaborate lies – pretending to take sleeping pills to “commit suicide” – this resulted in you spending 2 weeks in the psych ward. Then to get out of work, you claimed that you needed a kidney transplant. One of the worst, when you were pregnant with our oldest daughter, was taking off at night, hiding for a couple of hours, until I found you down in the parkade in our car – you then started the car, almost ran me over, and you drove away for an hour. You called me and way to threaten aborting our child - all while laughing about it... as if it was all some sort of game. You seem to make the truth up as you go along. I think that somewhere along the line, you started to believe some of your own lies.
You had a sexual relationship with another man. True, it wasn’t a physical relationship... but a virtual online affair. The only reason I know about it, is because you left your chat window open on your laptop. Would you have ever told me about it? Was this the only time? How long was it going on? Do you understand how I felt? How crushed? How impotent? Emasculated? Utterly betrayed. We have never really discussed it.
How am I supposed to be “plugged in” or attentive to someone who is abusive both verbally and physically? With someone who lies, plays head games, and cheats? You are a bully, a liar and an adulterer. Why should I want you in my life?
I fear for my daughters (10 and 2) - I am starting to see my oldest daughter starting to pick up on my wife's habits.
I am pretty confused here. Even though I know that if one of my friends described this scenario to me, I would tell them to RUN! Pretty easy to say... hard to do.
