Do not read if you are sensitive to the topic of abuse. This goes in detail but also is vague enough that it doesn’t have exact details.
I spent six years married to a man who had changed the day we had gotten married.
I had my first child. Within three weeks of having my son, he forced me to get a job. I could no longer stay home with my child. I was still recovering from a c-section.
We moved across the country to be closer to his mother. His father had reportedly had a lapse in his schizophrenia and was calling my son by my husband’s name. His mother lied about me, saying I couldn’t take care of my child who constantly cried due to colic. He yelled at me over it. I went into a dissociative auto-pilot state for several years.
Husband got a job, worked for a month, and was “injured”. He was on worker’s compensation for 6 months due to carpal tunnel he had reportedly acquired on the job. Worker’s compensation ended shortly after I started working another job. During this time he had no problems playing guitar for hours a day. I made sure to tell his worker’s compensation company that. He just didn’t want to go back to work.
Fast foward, we’re finally living in our own apartment. I’m working my butt off at minimum wage in mental healthcare. We can barely afford the bills we had, let alone anything extra. He insists we need to use all the extra money I have to purchase him marijuana. I insist that I need gas to be able to go to work to pay our bills.
I’m told that money isn’t everything and I shouldn’t be working as much.
I go from doctor to doctor trying to fix myself because my husband said I was crazy. I tried all the medication. I tried counseling. Nothing seemed to be helping and everything I told him my doctor’s said would help me cope, he would not allow for me to do.
I get pregnant with a second child. This is still during the time that I was in a dissociative state.
I come out of dissociative state. Things are worse, since he was now trying to get me diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. My counselor gives me the diagnosis of Complex PTSD with dissociative disorder instead. He’s irate.
My husband keeps asking me constantly over women he could date in addition to being married to me. I tell him I don’t want someone else involved. I tell him we shouldn’t bring anyone else into our relationship until we fix our current failing relationship. He won’t hear a word of it. He says that the only thing that can fix our relationship is sex. I was suffering from sexual dysfunction at the time. I know now that I wasn’t attracted to my husband anymore. Sex wasn’t the answer for fixing a failing relationship. He didn’t spark my interest anymore. I just wanted to make sure my kids were provided for.
I keep working. I keep trying to make more money at different jobs. I follow the dollar. I land a management position. He complains I’m working too much still. He complains I don’t help around the house more. He complains that he never gets a day off. He’s not worked for 5 years at this point. He’s smoking $200 worth of marijuana a week at this point. He says his newfound heart problems are because of me stressing him out. I point out that he’s had cholesterol problems since he was a teen. I offer to help with meal planning that would be more heart healthy. He scoffs at the idea, saying that he won’t ever be a scrawny man because he’s a real man. (He weighed over 300 lbs at this point)
His heart problems were discovered after I took him to the ER one day. They had to stop his heart and restart it. That day, part of me wanted him to die. The other part of me called out to him when he wasn’t coming back. He finally wakes up. Things only get worse from there.
He became physically abusive, threatening me with knives, threatening me with my life, my kids, anything that he could use to make me scared to leave him.
He approaches me about a female who he says was a domestic violence victim and that we should help her and her kids from being homeless. I begrudgingly agree.
I end up being alienated in my own home. The woman is taking all of my husband’s attention. The woman tells me I’m just being jealous. The woman tells him I need to be gotten rid of. The two were a match made in heaven- narcissistic, manipulative, and abusive toward me and each other.
I decided to go through messages before I had decided I needed to leave. My reasoning: They seemed a lot closer than he had been letting on. They had been talking for two years and had let each other know they loved the other. Within the week, he was asking me if he could date her. Within the month, he had gone beyond anything I had agreed to when it came to them dating. By the time Christmas rolled around, I was no longer in the house after they manipulated me leaving into a physical altercation and they had their story set straight with each other about what they would say happened. I found out later she was pregnant. I never consented to my ex having sex with another woman, let alone getting her pregnant. I know you’re going to say, “You really think that wouldn’t have happened?” Well, when an agreement is made and that is something that was agreed upon, then yes I expect someone to keep their word.
I found out later that she was very pregnant and that she ended up pregnant June of the prior year- the first time he went to go meet with her to give her a phone so she could contact people she needed to stay in touch with.
I was arrested by police. I was investigated by DHHS. I was scrutinized for everything I did. I was homeless, starving, and got lucky with help from a few people along the way. I lost my kids in the process.
I find out about a year later that my husband’s now ex girlfriend molested my children. I report to DHHS. I report to his school the new information. I talk to my attorney for divorce about it. Nothing happened despite a child saying in front of two adults unprompted that their sibling and their self had been sexualized.
I am back in my children’s lives now. I advocate for them when it calls for it. I advocate for myself to be involved in their life. They have their problems. What they went through was just as traumatic as I did. I have a two year protection from abuse against my husband. I’m going through the divorce process and while I still have a husband, it doesn’t make him any less of an ex-husband at this time.
I’ve moved on. I found man who treats me as an equal, with dignity, with respect, and I’m all they need. They treat my children as their own. They don’t bitch about sex all of the time. They work. They are very trustworthy. I’m glad things happened the way they did at this point. I might not have ever been able to find a man who actually is a decent person and who cares deeply.
