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Old Jan 20, 2018, 11:30 PM
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Big Mama Big Mama is offline
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Location: Virginia
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I am in therapy and have been for quite some time. My H and I are getting a divorce soon. We finally were in agreeance on the matter. As soon as my H found out I was terrified of him and was on the brink of coming unglued when he tried to touch me, he then realized that a normal sexual relationship and normal compassionate touches would not be possible for me. He immediately went out and had an affair. Granted I know the man has needs, but he has emotionally terrorized and abused me for many years. I developed Stockholm Syndrome, PTSD, Anxiety, and depression from being in a relationship with this man. He is definitely the crazy one. Any way he had an affair because "he has needs." So now our marriage is over. (finally)

Because we have a child who is getting ready to graduate from high school this year and a younger child, we are going to stay in the same house for the next 4 months until school is out. I have not worked in 20+ years, I stayed "in my place" as he puts it and stayed at home, out of the work force. (plus money would mean financial freedom and who knows what that could lead to) I have just recently began working a few hours a day. Twenty years of being at home alone or alone with kids does a number on your mind.

Staying in our house a few more months until I can save some money is going to help me. Staying for our kids, I think, is wise? Keeping the peace is also important. My H is continuing to see his girl friend. The marriage is "over" after all. I am less then thrilled about this, but if I told him no he could not see her, he would any way and he would be behind my back running around and living a lie. At least this way I know where he is and kinda what he is doing. He does tell me when he is going to see her. I told him once a week but not on weekends would be manageable for me. I mean he is gonna see her any way.
Set what boundaries you can.

After a month and a half it is less and less manageable. I want to stay for the kids. My son who is graduating soon is on the Autism spectrum. He is high functioning but still, I kinda need to be here. It takes a lot to manage him.

In order to cope a little better the T gave me an assignment. For homework, when I felt like my mind could handle it, she wanted me to write a "letter" to the other woman warning her of what she is in store for. I am not going to give it to her, it is more to help me deal with the my feelings. If I can recognize what he has done to me and see what he is going to do to someone else, then it may be easier to let him go. Stockholm Syndrome is a horrible disease. This man has abused me, demeaned me, left me a shell of a person and cheated on me. But he is being so nice right now. I could easily forgive his poor judgement, but I know what he is doing and him being nice is temporary.

So I am to write a letter to this other woman. If I could tell her anything I would have to tell her:

Mistress,

I would like to let you know that what you are seeing from my husband right now is not what he is really about. Sure my H is being nice, friendly, thoughtful, caring, and encouraging at the moment but like many psychopaths this is how they start. They make you feel good, they pray on your need to have a void in your life filled. They tell you what you want and need to hear. They lavish you with gifts and trips, but it is all a lie. I know he has given you things, taken you on trips, tells you all these great things. He has even made statements about God that lead you to believe he is a godly individual.

But beware, this is just the beginning. He is a neat freak, he is so OCD, and he is so hard to read. He will F with your mind in ways you could never imagine. He will slowly drain the life out of you. He will make you think you are the crazy one. He will make you think you are the one who f*****d it all up. You are the "B" for not giving him the attention he deserves. Then he will tell you that your communication skills suck, that is why yall never get along. It's not him, it's you. You didn't make it clear, so what if his body language is strong and frightening, that doesn't mean he he said anything out of line. HE will draw you in, lead you down a beautiful path and then desert you, hurt you, treat you like crap, and after a few days of that he will be so sweet and helpful and nice. It is a crazy game. One where you will always be the one to lose.

He is narcissistic. He is not capable of thinking of others. You are not allowed to have feelings. Disappointment is not allowed, anger is not allowed, frustration, being mad, even being hurt, those are not allowed and recognized by him. You better be ready and able to smile threw it and pretend nothing is wrong because you are not going to get any recognition for any of that by him. None of these things are allowed to affect your happiness and pleasantness. If you are not happy and cheery then you are in the wrong. You may not be less then helpful because you have had a bad day, because you are frustrated and god forbid you have a headache or be ill. Tough cookies, get up and clean, cook for me, bring me this and bring me that. You absolutely MUST be happy. If you are not then it is a reflection on him, and that makes him GUILTY. And that is something he simply cannot be.

He is unable to recognize feelings. He is unable to recognize others needs. Need for food and water, need for quiet, need for time alone, need for sleep, need to get out and do things. You will be his, and you will only be allowed to feel what he says you may feel. You will eat what he says you can eat, you will drink what he says you may, which will be water, so get used to it. You will have to watch him have what he wants to eat and drink while you get minimal food and water. Do not ask for a drink of his either. He may have a drink of your water, or a soda you buy if you find the money to buy it, you must give him a drink if he asks because you are a selfish B if you don't share. But you not have any of his. Those rules only apply to others not him.

You will have to be prepared to live your life 100% a lie. Go to church and pretend he is the greatest christian man. Go to gatherings and cater to him and show others you are perfect because otherwise it would make you look bad which would make him look even worse then you do. Be prepared to be told "You will tell NO ONE about this." Because of your fear YOU WILL TELL NO ONE!!! You will live like a happily married in love couple for all to see while you are being held mental prisoner on the inside.

You can talk to others about YOUR problems, as long as they do not include the truth about him. You will be very fortunate if you can be let out and trusted long enough to go see a counselor. Eventually he will start to dislike your family and the things they stand for. Eventually you will be crazy like them, alcoholics like them, losers like them, lazy like them, because you choose to be with the only family you have ever known. OR you can be like him, and be perfect, and right, an godly, and intelligent by staying away from "those" people. So you are stupid for visiting and calling your family or you can be smart and be like him and have very little to do with them. Same things with your friends. You can go out during the day time without him, but you will be drilled and questioned about your conversation. If you didn't discuss anything "wrong" then he will make up something wrong and accuse you of it in order to drive you insane and make you determine it is just not worth it to mingle with others and hang out with friends.

Eventually you will have contact or conversation with friends of family, and you will be living a lie to those around you. If you try to connect with others threw the computer you can guarantee he will stand over your shoulder and read everything thing you write and anything someone else writes back to you. That to will be a source of disagreement and you will learn not to piss him off, so you will forgo the internet. You are his and his alone. You will not talk to any one else, you will not call anyone else, you will not text or email anyone else while in his presence. When he gets home you will be a different person. You will cater to him, you will make sure he is happy, you will only talk to him. You may not watch TV unless it is a show he likes, you may not listen to music unless it is the kind he likes. NOTHING will take your attention from him. In return he will be nice to you. That eventually becomes your everything. That niceness is what you will live for. And then he has you. You are under his control. Your life's goal is to make him happy so he will be nice to you. To have him angry at you is just a horrible place to be. He is not someone you want to cross. He will deny you money he will deny you health care, dental care, gas money, transportation. It is just better to do what he says and do everything with in your power to keep him happy.

He loved you for who you were in the beginning, but he loves you more for being what he can make you be. You have to be what he likes, you have to like what he likes, you have to sleep when he sleeps, get up when he gets up. You have to like to eat what he eats and what he allows you to eat, and you sure as hell better eat it all even if you do not like it.

So in short, be prepared to give up everything about you, everything that made you who you are. You are no longer who you are, you will be who he says you can be. Once you think you have that figured out and you think you are who he wants you to be he will change it again. You will not be the person you used to be and you will not the be the person you have become programmed to be, you will be someone completely different. Eventually you will lose who you ever were. You will lose who you were that attracted him to you in the first place. You will lose who you were trained to become. You will lose the next person he wants you to become. You will be left a shell of a person and totally lost and not knowing who you are.

So good luck to you. I hope you are ready to endure what hell is to come. I hope it has all been worth it. I fear in the end it will not. Enjoy, he is now yours.

________________________________

Thank you guys for listening. I just needed to share my personal hell.
Hugs from:
Anonymous59898, avlady, divine1966, eskielover, healingme4me, MickeyCheeky, Middlemarcher, Open Eyes, unaluna
Thanks for this!
Crazy Hitch, Middlemarcher, Trippin2.0

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  #2  
Old Jan 20, 2018, 11:48 PM
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seesaw seesaw is offline
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Geez, Big Mama. Do you know that you have been tortured? I do not know how you are managing to remain with him for a few more months. I know why, but I can't believe you have the strength to.

I am so sorry you have been through this. I am so proud of you for standing up for yourself though and finally walking away. Reclaim your life and happiness.

Seesaw
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What if I fall? Oh, my dear, but what if you fly?

Primary Dx: C-PTSD and Severe Chronic Treatment Resistant Major Depressive Disorder
Secondary Dx: Generalized Anxiety Disorder with mild Agoraphobia.

Meds I've tried: Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Effexor, Remeron, Elavil, Wellbutrin, Risperidone, Abilify, Prazosin, Paxil, Trazadone, Tramadol, Topomax, Xanax, Propranolol, Valium, Visteril, Vraylar, Selinor, Clonopin, Ambien

Treatments I've done: CBT, DBT, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), Talk therapy, psychotherapy, exercise, diet, sleeping more, sleeping less...
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avlady
Thanks for this!
Big Mama, unaluna
  #3  
Old Jan 20, 2018, 11:56 PM
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divine1966 divine1966 is offline
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Member Since: Dec 2014
Location: US
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I applaud you for putting an end to this marriage. He sounds horrid. Your life will be a bliss when it’s over. Make sure you fight for spousal support and have a good lawyer.
Hugs from:
avlady
Thanks for this!
Big Mama
  #4  
Old Jan 21, 2018, 03:40 AM
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Trippin2.0 Trippin2.0 is offline
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I am so so sooooo proud of you BM ((((((((hugs))))))
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DXD BP1, BPD & OCPD

"The best way to make it through with hearts and wrists in tact, is to realise, two out of three aint bad" FOB...
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avlady
Thanks for this!
Big Mama
  #5  
Old Jan 21, 2018, 05:24 AM
avlady avlady is offline
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I haved lived with a person like this and this letter resounds with me. I am happy you wrote it, i never could sit down and express my feeling as well as you have. I've lived this kind of life too and am even embarrassed to tell others i have.
Hugs from:
Big Mama, Middlemarcher
Thanks for this!
Big Mama
  #6  
Old Jan 21, 2018, 11:44 AM
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healingme4me healingme4me is offline
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Well written!

I just had a brief memory of my own life experience of, "you want him so badly-he's all yours" is what went through my own mind.
As years have passed, the notion of me as the bad guy in a societal sense has been passing/dwindling/disappaiting.

Hugs from:
Big Mama
Thanks for this!
Big Mama
  #7  
Old Jan 21, 2018, 04:25 PM
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Crazy Hitch Crazy Hitch is offline
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Member Since: Nov 2013
Location: Australia
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(((Big Mama)))

I'm really sorry for what you're going through. My ex husband had an affair and left me for his mistress ........

I can't read the letter that you've written to her, it would just be far too triggering for me.

But just wanted to let you know you're in my thoughts!
Hugs from:
Big Mama
Thanks for this!
Big Mama
  #8  
Old Jan 21, 2018, 10:01 PM
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Big Mama Big Mama is offline
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Member Since: Jun 2012
Location: Virginia
Posts: 2,191
Thanks so much you guys. Yall are like family to me. What would I do with out you? How did I ever make it this far in life with out yall.

Seesaw - thank you, just knowing that I have been heard and understood almost brings me to tears. Someone, all of yall, actually gets it. I have been heard.

Divine - I will be getting a very hefty amount for child support and spousal support. He is paying me an extra hefty amount to keep quiet. I have no money, and I am stupid and do not want to ruin him, so I am taking the money.

Trippin - Thank you, I know you have been there and you get it to. (((Hugs)))

Avlady - the truth will set you free dear. You just admitted what happened to you and you will be a stronger person for it, and the healing can begin. (((Hugs)))

Healing - It gives me hope to hear that those feelings have been dwindling for you over time, give me hope that they can do the same for me.

CrazyHitch - Don't read it. Please do not. It will be triggering, and I am truly sorry for that. I am sorry for the unfair hand life has dealt you to. Being cheated on sucks. (((Hugs)))

I love yall, thank you for hearing me, I mean really hearing me.
Hugs from:
Crazy Hitch, healingme4me, seesaw
Thanks for this!
Crazy Hitch, seesaw
  #9  
Old Jan 22, 2018, 11:45 AM
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Open Eyes Open Eyes is offline
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Posts: 23,288
When it comes to love and marriage, most get so they grow to idealize the idea itself and they grow to believe this is what is suppose to happen and that's what makes someone complete. When we are little we watch all the Disney Movies and we see how a young girl suddenly comes across her "true love" and this man basically "saves her" in some way and she learns she can feel "safe" and that with him she can live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, this "ideal" can set a young girl up to fall for the love bombing a toxic man can do with her not realizing this guy has another side to him that is so toxic. The desire to want to believe if one is patient and caring that the imperfect toxic side can be fixed with time begins to take shape once the more toxic side of this man appears. Before the girl realizes it, she gets used to living in the toxic loop and she finds a way to endure it when the toxic side happens.

The "Supposed to be" formula that is laid out when we are children tends to have a lot more power then it should have. However, nature also plays an important role in that nature's formula has one main mission, "procreation". There is a lot more involved then just the psychological "love bombing" that makes one so vulnerable. Truth is that when you find someone that is compatible your body senses it and one can get wrapped up in an addiction they are really not consciously aware of. With this powerful aspect that involves a lot of chemicals, a person can actually go through withdrawals when the source of this chemical addition is absent.

I am pointing this out to you BigMama because while this exercise or homework your therapist has asked you to do is important, what you wrote out is NOT telling the whole story. My concern for you is that in your effort to lay out how toxic your husband really is, that you don't fall into "self blame" where you start to consider yourself "stupid" or you see yourself as a "failure". Truth is, according to NATURE, you are not a failure because you procreated. When you use the term Stockholm Syndrome, well, truth is NATURE plays a very strong part in that, more than we consciously realize. To not recognize that would be a huge mistake.

If you were to spend time and make it a point to watch the series "Planet Earth" narrated by David Attenborouh you would get to watch a lot of footage that has been captured about how significant a role NATURE really plays when it comes to all kinds of living things on our planet. How, when it comes to "life" the major role Nature plays in creating "life", all kinds of "life" is driven by "procreation". Nature really puts on quite the production when it comes to all kinds of creatures and how they procreate. Actually, birds, who have such small brains often go to great lengths when it comes to putting on an exhibition just to attract a mate to procreate.

I sat and watched this bird go through a huge ordeal where this male built a grass mound and he had a circle around this mound and when he was finished building this mound that really was his "stage", knowing there were females nearby, he began leaping up into the air. Turns out there were several of these males doing this very same thing and many of these males began leaping up in the air. The female is small and plain, it is the male that is fancy. They show all these males jumping up in the air and I sat there wondering who the female would pick, there were so many of them. Well, it turned out that the male that ended up winning was the male that could jump up and down the longest. YET, that was not the end, that was just to get the female to pick the one that jumped up and down the longest. After he got her close he did a dance and his feathers all puffed up. The actual mating only lasted a second. This is a reflection of how intelligent NATURE can be BigMama.

As human beings, we intellectualize a lot and we can unknowingly talk ourselves into a lot of "emotional confusion" and duress. We tend to design "formulas" about how we should live our lives and what one should "think" is living the "perfect" life. Yet, we forget about how NATURE is also always right there with a power we fail to recognize. When we are young we can fall into Nature's trap and most of us, when we are past the trap when Nature drives us the most, can sit and say, "how could I have been so stupid?". That is something I have seen you do, and I have done that myself as well, and the truth is a lot of people do it. So, with that in mind ((BigMama)), that is when you can consider what I described that bird doing, a bird that only has a brain that is maybe about the size of a pea and doesn't have ANY of the intellectual capacity you have. Yet, that bird had the most amazing way of practicing this very sophisticated way of procreating that was driven by this incredible thing we call NATURE, the very strong influence you struggled with that played a big role in the choices you made and many of us make where what we end up engaging in that might not be all that "healthy" for us.

This forum tends to be the most active forum in this site. It's literally full of all kinds of questions and situations that so many struggle with and are asking advice about. It's so important that you realize that your challenge is not "all your fault" or that you deserve to carry guilt and suffer so much emotionally. I was "love bombed" too BigMama, and I lived my life according to my husband's cycles of having two different personalities where he could be a kind Dr. Jeckle, and then he would become this Mr. Hyde and his Mr. Hyde emotionally abused me over and over again. Like you, I can look back and see all the red flags I had missed, I can think of myself as STUPID, a dummy and it's very easy for me to "self blame" too. I thought I was going to be "safe and happy" with him and I failed to see the red flags that was going to mean that I was NOT as safe as I had thought. You know that saying, "Love is blind"? Well, it's true.

Last edited by Open Eyes; Jan 22, 2018 at 12:11 PM.
  #10  
Old Jan 22, 2018, 11:58 AM
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unaluna unaluna is offline
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Member Since: Jun 2011
Location: Milan/Michigan
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I just remember how happy you and your boys were, away in your own little place. Im so thankful that will soon be your permanent reality.
Thanks for this!
Big Mama, Trippin2.0
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