Thank you for hearing me. He tells me all the time, I LOVE YOU. But love is an action and I am not seeing it. What makes it so hard is the days he is nice. When he is nice he is so likable and friendly and funny. I guess when he is nice he is really really nice, when he is not nice he is REALLY REALLY not nice. It is the nice days that give me false hope.

I know that is the Stockholm Syndrome pattern. Abuse, then be nice: The little gifts of kindness then swooping in like a hungry wolf to tare you apart emotionally. Making you rely on them for everything: He makes the money so he controls the money. I don't work. The desire to appease: All my waking hours are spent trying to make sure he will not get mad, not be mad, not be disappointed. The worst of all........ Having the opportunity to leave and not doing so: I have left a couple of times, short term. I left for a year and returned. Glorifying your abuser: I think about divorce and am kinda planning that out at the moment. To get away from him definitely takes a well laid plan. But I feel guilty for how lonely he will be, I feel guilty for taking his money, I feel guilty for the things in his life that it would ruin. That's part of what keeps me here, the guilt.

It is crazy making that is for sure. I know when you are trapped in a brain pattern, such as Stockholm Syndrome, it is hard to fight against. It rewires your brain, it causes you to do irrational things. It takes over your life. All you can do, or all you feel like you can do, is live with it, and feel the pain and the fear of your own suffering and emotions and deal with them as they take over your life.