My husband was like this too. When I told him that remembering his verbal abuse was giving me panic attacks, his response was that he has panic attacks all the time. When I told him I was depressed, his response was that he had been depressed for years.


It didn't matter what I was feeling, or that he was causing me pain. It was irrelevant.


If I called his behavior abuse, he would explode on me. Then turn it around and say that I was the one being abusive to him. I believed him. I started to question everything I had ever done.





For me, that feeling was anger. At first, I wasn't even sure why I was angry. With time and therapy, I came to realize I was angry because he'd been abusing me for years.


You can only numb your feelings for so long. Eventually you will have to feel them. It's not pleasant.


Your instinct to run away is a good one. Try to listen to it.





I had reasons for staying too. I'm sure to the outside world they seemed stupid, but they were my reasons. Whatever your reasons are, they are valid. The very few people I tried to open up to, made me feel so ridiculous and small and completely alone because of what he was doing to me and that I was still with him. If anyone in your life has done the same thing, I'm so sorry. It's bad enough having to deal with your abuser, but when outsiders pile on too, it's terrible. I hope you have some outside support.


And remember, he made promises when you got married too. Is he keeping his promises?





I never got around to leaving. He ended up doing something that got him arrested and so he's gone now. If you want out, but feel trapped, build up your support network. I found a support group for DV survivors. They've been there so they don't judge. That's important. It helps to be able to talk about the abuse in a non-judgmental environment. They and my therapist finally talked me into going to a DV agency and making a safety plan once things started escalating rapidly. I did that the week before he got arrested. I'd like to think that I would have been able to actually extricate myself from the marriage, but I honestly don't know.


Feel free to PM me if you ever want to talk.