I Married A Wife Beater
For those who have just one horseman to contend with in a relationship, you know how debilitating this can be. I had all four horsemen on the go at one and the same time: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling.
First, I want to make it clear that the man I make reference to throughout this rendition of real life events is not the beautiful human being I am now married to.
Anyone who has ever been at the receiving end of CRITICISM knows that this is a manipulative and calculated attack on the very core of your character. It hurts every fiber of your being; you feel rejected, hurt and assaulted. And the irony of this is that with every attack, my abuser assumed more power whilst I fell deeper and further into an emotional and psychological abyss.
I had all the CONTEMPT possible shoveled like shit at me. From the worst of the worst name calling that I cannot publicly express, to sneering, to mocking, to eye-rolling — all intended to psychologically abuse and destroy my sense of self.
DEFENSIVENESS became my inappropriate go-to. I actually found myself trying to unreasonably justify myself when under attack, bizarrely as if I was the aggressor and he the victim. I was making excuses for things I was not guilty of. I was so afraid of the potential escalation of events and the unleashing of the monster within that it was the only way I knew to protect myself.
To shut me out and make me feel so alone in the world, I got constantly STONEWALLED. I dared not try and question his moods, his behavior, his actions, as what I got in return was stony silence, monosyllabic answers, changing the subject……or a beating.
When growing up, my parents had an idyllic marriage, marred by a single indiscretion on the part of my otherwise perfect and protective father. Violence was never something I had ever experienced. It didn’t happen in respectable homes, or so I naively believed. Oh, how gullible I was!
What I learnt later on in life was that domestic abuse does not discriminate and it comes in many shapes and forms.
For 12 long years, I was the victim of psychological, physical, and financial abuse. I didn’t realize it was happening at first; I was blinded by an obsession that I misguidedly thought to be true love.
He was the ultimate chameleon, and no one, absolutely no one, knew what was going on behind closed doors. On the surface, we were the picture-perfect couple; I was the ex beauty queen, whilst he was the transformed playboy. We were the envy of our friends, and the life and soul of every party.
Underneath the veneer of perfection, I was broken. I was isolated. I was defeated. I was the master of disguise and I had perfected the art of masking my living hell.
And just as I thought I had hit rock bottom and things could not get any worse in my world, just as night turns to day and day to night, the emotional abuse turned to physical abuse. Actually, they went hand in hand, almost as if his intention was to balance the scales. It started out slow; having my clothes ripped to shreds because they were just that little bit too revealing, being deprived of use of the car as punishment for daring to retort, being locked in a room to prevent me from honoring a modeling contract, not being allowed to see family or friends in his sick efforts to alienate me from the world.
Soon enough I started to avoid family and friends, I started to make excuses and concoct reasons to not leave the house. It was easier than having to wear a face full of pancake make-up one inch thick to camouflage the swelling and hide the bruising on my face. It was becoming more and more difficult to pretend I had walked into doors or fallen down stairs to justify my open wounds, bloody nose, and fractured teeth.
Here’s the other thing, I couldn’t have anyone come visit anyway, as he had broken every chair and table in the house. The chairs had been used as his weapon of choice when his hands began to hurt with the pummeling and punching they were put through. I was the punching bag. The chairs broke on my back as they landed on me in my pathetic attempts to escape his unreasonable wrath. The tables were broken in his efforts to reach me as I crawled under them in a feeble and desperate attempt to escape his fists and feet.
My only trips outside the four walls of our house (I cannot with good conscience refer to it as “home”) were to the doctor to get a burst ear drum investigated, or to have my wounds dressed and a mandatory tetanus injection after being dragged down a gravel path half naked in the middle of the night, or when I caught a chill after being locked outside the house all night. There was this one time when he threw me down the stairs, when I was pregnant might I add. That was another visit to yet another doctor — to cover his tracks and not arouse too much suspicion as to the real reason why I was making such frequent trips. Of course, needless to say, I lost the unborn baby I was carrying as the force and trauma of the fall resulted in a miscarriage. There was another time when he threatened me at knife point and forced me almost to the point of contemplating jumping off the 8th floor balcony of our high rise apartment rather than be stabbed to death by the man who was supposed to love, honor, and protect me. I recall another time when I almost lost consciousness while he smothered me with a pillow until I could barely breathe, and then there were the countless times where I felt the very life ebb out of me whilst his grip around my neck grew tighter and tighter………I have lost count of how many times I feared for my safety and my life.
My mother’s unconditional love for a daughter made her in tune with my feelings and she began to suspect that things were not as they seemed. Research has confirmed that the bond between a mother and her daughter remains stronger than any other intergenerational relationship. Not a word had to leave my lips; she just knew.
She begged me to leave him and return “home”. She said she feared that the next time she saw me I would be in a body bag. This broke my heart — but I still did not leave.
His goal was to make me fear him, and accept the scraps of “love” that he sparingly dished out on as a reward for my passive submission to being his prisoner.
There it was; the ultimate Stockholm Syndrome situation.
My spirit was broken. I was beyond despair. I was living the ultimate lie. I became the master of masking my living hell. I became an artifice at creating a double life.
“Why did you not leave?” I hear you asking…….it’s a vicious, vicious, vicious cycle. I already felt like a failure. I thought if I left I would be an even bigger failure; the ultimate of all life’s failures.
And, so I stayed for those 12 long years. Violence became my norm and my expectation. Just as I knew the sun to rise and the sun to set.
It was a blessing when finally he had an affair and literally got caught with his pants down. This was not part of the norm I was used to (or perhaps it was my self obsession with the abuse that blinded me to any other reality) and there it was, my excuse to leave.
And so, finally, after 12 long years, I left!
To any of you experiencing abuse in any form or fashion, my words of wisdom, through my own personal experience, is run, run, run for your life — right here and right now. RUN!
I know leaving is not easy, but I also know that YOU deserve to live your life free of fear.
