Yes, you’re right; she put up with the torture for far too long. She - she did something that she later felt ashamed of doing and I used that shame, you see. Shame is a gift to the torturer. If one feels shame they can be eternally reluctant to admit the behavior that caused the shame to family and friends.


I think, too, that she loved me and that she didn’t want to admit that she had made a mistake in marrying me.


She still hates me, twenty years later. We don’t communicate but she maintains a popular blog and with every other post, it seems, she writes of her ‘psychopathic’ or ‘sociopathic’ ex-husband.


I am neither. I am something else.


One thing that confuses me, now, is that she contrives tales of examples of my cruelty that are not true. I would think that she would have plenty of true tales to tell but those true tales would expose her shameful behavior and, so, she avoids the truth, I suppose, for whole-cloth-tales.


She is now a neoliberal suburban wife and mother whose idea of activism is writing a monthly check to the DNC. An Anne Taylor professional. Not what I expected, but maybe I pushed her into that lifestyle. I don’t know. I will never know.


As for myself, I have made peace with myself. When I write that she ‘won,’ I’m not writing metaphorically. She won our son. I won the grief of losing my son. I only began to bury him a couple of years back.


So, I was punished for both my diabolical behavior and aberrant lifestyle. I punished myself for - hmm - 16-17-years? - after punishing her for 6.


Curtailing my behavior is still a struggle. Since I’ve been smoking cannabis on a regular basis, though, I am calmer and less likely to attack.


To the OP: have you considered that you might be trying to punish your boyfriend?