by Band Back Together | Sep 5, 2014 | Abuse, Anger, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Forgiveness, Happiness, Help With Relationships, Marriage Problems, Murder, Psychological Manipulation, Uncategorized |
All the shattered hearts and broken promises that I thought I was angry about all seem so irrelevant now. I know that separating is probably the best thing for both of us, but it’s killing me. I no longer care about whether I pass or fail in school. I no longer care about graphic design. None of that matters without him.
How could I have been so blind? So stupid? I got so lost in the things that he had done to me that I forgot about the girl he brought to life. I may not be able to prevent the pain he causes me now and again, but I am in control of MY actions, and my actions have been deplorable.
This isn’t me. I don’t retaliate. I forgive, and I move on. When did I lose sight of that girl? His mistakes should have never been repeated no matter how much I wanted him to understand. He’s a man. He will never understand the emotions of a woman. I sure don’t understand the emotions of a man.
It’s probably too late for us. I simply hope someone else can learn from our mistakes. Forgiveness is a wonderful thing, and by forgiving your spouse you can make a stand. You can say that you will not allow the darkness to destroy what you both have built, even if you have to build the walls on your own.
The happiness in our eyes has been gone for quite a while. Once they told the world a story of a love that few would ever experience. Somewhere along the way, we forgot how lucky we were to have found each other. I wish I had been better at showing him how truly grateful I was to have him here. And while many might say that I should use these lessons for the next guy, I know, without a single doubt, that there will be no other for me. The attention that I was seeking from others never managed to replace what I was desperately in need of from him. And because of my foolishness, there will always be a break in his heart that won’t heal, and that I am responsible for. No matter how many times I assure him that I never followed through, he will always believe I did. Maybe that’s even worse. He will spend the rest of his life hoping that my words are true but never truly believing.
Dear God, what have I done? I ruined the only thing that was truly pure and beautiful in my life out of pure spite. My life has never had any light in it until he came along. The day I met him, everything sprang to life. The grass was greener; the sky was bluer. Exactly when did I lose sight of that? Was it the first time he slapped me? Was it the day he broke my tailbone? I seem to recall a spark up until the moment that I felt that a single promise from him had become necessary – that no matter how our fights ended, if something ever happened to me that he would not panic and kill our children as well. Anything that was left after that died the moment I pleaded for my own life.
I know this relationship isn’t healthy. I’m fully capable of taking a step back and screaming to the girl before me, “For God’s sake, run!” But I stand by a decision I made one night in our Blessing home: if I intended to love him, then I was going to love him to the end, whether it be tragic or happily ever after. It looks like tragedy is the theme of this play, but at least the heroes in question have lost only their souls and not their lives.
by Band Back Together | Sep 2, 2014 | Abuse, Anger, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Loneliness, Love |
I’m the strong one in our relationship, just admit it.
No matter the hateful, violent words you say, I’m right here with “I love you no matter what,” and “you are an amazing boyfriend.”
The minute that you catch a hint of me being upset, you run the other way.
I don’t yell or say nasty things like you, yet you don’t know how to handle me? Am I so terrible? You don’t have to deal with my anger almost every day, yet I’m the bad person?
You just get to yell and scream whenever and to whoever that you want.
Who am I supposed to go to when I’m angry?
Oh that’s right.
No one.
Because you want me completely alone.
You want a fight? Well, good luck trying to break me bitch.
by Band Back Together | Aug 12, 2014 | Abuse, Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents, Depression, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Boundaries, Guilt, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder |
Thanks to Band Back Together posts, I’ve found many links about other adult children of narcissistic parents (ACONs). I’m learning a lot about who I am and what I need to do heal from the emotional abuse I lived through.
I now understand that through emotional abuse as a child, a person develops many challenges in his or her adult relationships. ACONs are unable to judge people (especially when it comes to protecting oneself), lack understanding what is bad and wrong, instead believing everyone is good. This is what emotional abuse does – it makes us magnets for abusers in our adult relationships.
Lacking the ability to act assertively and set healthy emotional boundaries is big deal of for ACONs. Since I’ve been to the clinic, I read about narcissistic personality disorder. I now understand that I need to put myself first, to respect myself, and set emotional boundaries. This is new for me: I couldn’t tell when it was too much until was too late. I still struggle but I believe that a part of me is learning to respect myself.
I made a huge step: a friend of mine was celebrating her birthday and was pushing me to go to a disco to party with her. It was far too much for me. I have panic disorder,depression, and struggle interacting in social situations.
I explained to her how I felt, but she continued insisting – she told me she wouldn’t come to my birthday party if I didn’t go to hers. I was about to go. I’d picked out an outfit when it hit me: I knew I’d feel distressed and exhausted. I decided to call her and tell her I wasn’t coming. This was incredibly difficult for me but I did it.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel guilty or fear punishment – I felt I needed to respect myself. If she is my friend, she needs to respect my feelings. She doesn’t need to understand them, but she needs to respect them. I’m so proud of myself.
I’m starting to understand what being emotionally abused by a very manipulative malignant narcissistic mother has done to me. I’ve had to learn that it’s okay to say no when one feels like it. I can do that without feeling guilty. This is self-respect, not failing with someone else’s expectations. I’m not hurting anyone by saying I’m sorry, I can’t – I don’t want to do that.
I know it’s a long road I’m facing to learn to say, “No! Don’t touch me!” To put a really angry face when I feel disrespected, and to develop positive aggression to protect myself from abuse. For that, I need to be able to understand my emotional boundaries.
Still can’t. But I’m learning every day.
I now feel comfortable about cutting ties with my ex-boyfriend. I can see that he’s a crazy narcissistic abuser and that the best thing to do was to cut him off. I’d been feeling very insecure about dealing with him as he keeps sending me kind messages. I ignored them, but I was very insecure that cutting him off. Now I know that’s the right thing to do.
I’m loving this new found freedom. I can easily cut out all the abusers in my life. It’s been tough, though. I now see how many narcissistic people I’ve had around me my whole life. How I’ve been abused by friends and that all my ex-boyfriends – without exception – are narcissists. How I let them abuse me without realizing it. I’d get hurt and try to tell them, but they would never hear, I couldn’t see why they’d hurt me. I’d used to think it was because they didn’t realize it. I struggled, trying to make sense of their abuse. So naïve.
Of course they knew it! They just didn’t care.
I’ve got to protect myself.
by Band Back Together | Aug 4, 2014 | Abuse, Anger, Child Protective Services, Domestic Abuse, Fear, Help With Relationships, Romantic Relationships |
Last June, I left my husband with the children at the request of social services. As time went by, I began to go through the different stages of grief. First of all, I didn’t feel anything about the abuse that my husband had given me. Secondly, I felt grief, then I felt angry and blamed him for the fact that the children had been removed from my care and put in the care of my parents.
Then I felt unsure. Had what he’d done to me actually been abuse? Was the way I had reacted at times a case of domestic violence? After all, I did throw a cup of tea at him in the middle of an argument. Did that constitute abuse?
When I first left my husband, he telephoned me often to beg me to go back. He would cry about how sorry he was. Every time I saw him at meetings with social services, he would cling to me like a child who was petrified that his mother was going to abandon him. Later, he finally began to accept that we were separate and that I really didn’t want to go back. Then, social services told us that neither of us had any hope of getting our children back because they said that the volatility of our relationship had emotionally abused them. This is untrue. We cared for our children to the best of our ability, and loved them so much that it hurt.
The children’s social worker is beligerent and only wants to tear families apart rather than putting them together. My husband suggested that if we couldn’t have the children, we should at least have each other. I told him that I had to think about it before I decided what to do. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Maybe we should try again. He had changed a lot in the space of nine months. Maybe things could be better this time. We’d both learned so much about ourselves and each other.
At the end of March, I moved back in with my husband, much to the chagrin of social services. They made a point of mentioning it in their reports that it was a sign that we put our relationship before our children. But how can we care for our children if our relationship is fractured and broken? Surely, if we fix our relationship, we’ll be able to better care for the children. After all, one of the reasons they took the children away from us was because of our relationship problems.
I’ve been back now for two months, six weeks of which I spent on the sofa with a broken ankle. When I went to the emergency room with my broken leg, someone commented to me that my husband treated me like a princess. And do you know what? He has. He has spent the last six weeks waiting on me hand and foot, while also redecorating our new bedroom. He went out to buy me wine, gum, and chocolate whenever I asked him to. But …part of me is still thinking maybe he’ll change back. I know that my family is scared of that. When I broke my leg, my father asked me if I’d really fallen down stairs or if I’d been pushed by my husband.
I’m scared to have sex with my husband because I’m scared of being raped again. Maybe my husband has really changed this time, but maybe he hasn’t. I’m so scared that he will go back to the way he was. Maybe my fears are the consequence of our volatile relationship. I don’t know. What do you think?
by Band Back Together | Jul 8, 2014 | Anxiety, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Fear, Guilt, Helping Someone In An Abusive Relationship, Stress, Trauma |
Hi, I’m 22. I’ve been looking for something that might help the healing. I just found this site, and am glad there is something like this. It’s hard writing what happened. So here it goes. I was mentally/emotionally abused.
I don’t feel like a victim. It’s nothing like you see on TV where someone is bawling their eyes out with sudden realization. I’m just numb. Okay, I’m numb with random fits of bawling my eyes out for no reason, but still numb. Reading the other stories on here, I feel like mine was barely anything.
I was in a relationship with an abuser for two and a half years. It started out like any good relationship does, laughing and smiling. Then, his family disowned him for dating a white girl. After that, he would throw that at me to shut me up, if he perceived the smallest slight. That I was the reason for everything going bad, the fact that his family would never accept me. But it never stopped there. Daily, he called me fat, and ugly, and useless. There came a point when I believed all of that. I tried to weigh as little as I could so that maybe he would give me a small compliment. I tried to do everything perfect, even though it wasn’t enough. He would insult me in front of our friends (his friends, since all of my friends liked him better). I could never tell him no or go against his word without incurring his explosive anger. He would never show his anger in public though. He would wait until we were alone to let loose. He took all but two my friends. He’s a charismatic guy, and everyone likes him. How can people stay friends with an abuser when they KNOW? There came a point when I felt so alone and unwanted that I thought about suicide. The thing that kept me from it, the only thing, was the thought of my mom.
I almost left probably five times. Why didn’t I just leave the first time?
My mom saved me from this “relationship.” She’s a psychiatric nurse and recognized the signs. In her words, she told me that I didn’t laugh or sing anymore. In August, after he threatened me more than usual, she told me her suspicions. I told him that she didn’t like our relationship. (When his family disowned him, he made me promise that if my mom ever didn’t like our relationship then we would break up.) I used my mom as a scapegoat to get out – I wasn’t the one who ended it. Not really.
Now, months later, I still feel lost. I’m still afraid to make decisions. I still close up and try to fix everything whenever someone’s moody. I laugh again, but that’s all I’ve gained back of myself. I’m going to start therapy in a week, and I hope that helps. Does it take this long to heal? I just want to be myself again.
One thing that one of those two friends told me has really stuck. “How can you prove that someone hurt you when they left no visible mark?”
by Band Back Together | Jul 2, 2014 | Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Economic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Helping Someone In An Abusive Relationship, Psychological Manipulation |
My story starts when I met my son’s father. We first met online, and he seemed like a great guy. After a few days, we met in person to hang out. He took me to go see a movie and have a burger. Then, we went to hang out at his house.
Everything was good, until he did something I didn’t approve of. After that, he took me home and left. I was really upset about what he had done, but because he was a nice guy, I decided to forgive him.
That was my first mistake.
Days and weeks went by, and then somehow, we were dating, and I was living with him. At first, everything was good. We were happy, and I was doing whatever I could around the house to help while he worked. One day he came home all mad, and told me that the neighbor saw some guy leave our apartment. That wasn’t true. I was alone all day, cleaning the house.
He didn’t believe me. He hit me in the back and then punched me a few times. I should have left then, and never come back, but I still forgave him. I thought that it wouldn’t happen again.
Over the next couple of years, the beatings got worse. One day when I got home from work, he accused me of flirting with a coworker. When I turned my back, he hit me in the back of the head with a 2×4. I bled a lot that day. When I got pregnant, we were both happy, so I figured he wouldn’t hit me anymore.
I was wrong.
When I was three months pregnant, he went to the room to take a nap while I stayed in the living room watching tv. After a few minutes, he came back into the living room, grabbed me by my hair, and pulled me into the bedroom where he forced me to have sex with him. I just laid there crying afterwards. He continued to force me to have sex with him almost every day for the rest of my pregnancy. Sometimes he would threaten me and tell me that if I ever told the cops what he did to me, or if I tried to take the baby and get him for child support, he would put me in the hospital where I would bleed to death.
After my son was born, he wouldn’t let me raise him the way I wanted. Once, he nearly suffocated my baby and tried to blame it on me. Luckily my son, was fine and is healthy. He still continued to hit me. I missed work because of it and lost my job. I got another job after my son’s first birthday. He would still hit me sometimes, but I was able to hide the bruises.
We eventually had a fight about whether I still wanted to be with him. I told him no, I didn’t care for him anymore. He said he was okay with it, but he informed me that we would still be living together until he had money to get his own place. He would also continue to have sex with me, continue to hit me, and he was going to take my son. He also told me I wasn’t allowed to date for a year.
We only had one truck, so he still drove me to work. One day, he saw a male coworker of mine say hi to me. He asked me if I liked him, Since we were no longer a couple, I thought it was safe to say that I did. I was wrong again. He drove into a nearby parking lot, grabbed me by my hair and swung me around in the truck, My son watched this happen, screaming the whole time.
He then started to drive me back home and told me I couldn’t go to work. I told him I couldn’t afford to lose my job and I was going. He eventually calmed down and took me to work. I had a huge black eye that he told me to hide with my hair. It didn’t work. My supervisor called me into his office to talk to me and had me call the police to file a report.
It took time for my ex to be served with the order. Then, it took more time until I was able to get my son back. Eventually, he was served and I got my son back. On the day of the court hearing, the judge gave me the best news ever: I was my son’s sole parent because his father and I were never married.
I am happy now. I have a new boyfriend who I’ve known I’ve known since before I met my ex-boyfriend. He accepts my son as his own. Everything in my life is great now. The only problem I have is that I don’t know how to cope with my past. So far, counseling doesn’t seem to be helping me very much.
