I KNOW I'm in an Emotionally Abusive Relationship. So, Why Do I Stay?

(Me, Happy but Not)

This is what emotional abuse looks like....see, you'd never know I was experiencing it.

If you knew me growing up, or even looked at my history and background, you wouldn't think I would end up in a relationship like this, much less stay in it for years. After all, take a look at some of the things I brought to the table in the dating pool, and the world in general:

ME

1. Born into a good family, well-known in the community, and with deep roots in it, going back to the founding of the city
2. Always treated nicely and with respect, even as a child. There was no yelling or name-calling in my house growing up. We were treated as small adults with feelings, opinions, and unique gifts to the world that all mattered.
3. Lots of good friends in my social group from early elementary school through college.
4. College educated, with a Master's degree.
5. Ambitious. Interested in writing and politics. Got a scholarship in one, and jobs in the other. Worked for politicians, and had a job with a pretty well-known one lined up before deciding to move in with the man who would become my husband. I gave up that job to be with him.
6. Well taken care of financially by my family. Never wanted for anything, and always had someone willing to fund whatever I wanted to do, or give me what I needed (like a car for high school graduation).

HIM
My husband, on the other hand, came from a completely opposite background. These are the things he brought to the table in our relationship, and every one he was in before me:

1. Unstable family background. Lost his dad at a young age. Was abused in all kinds of horrific ways by his mother and one of his older brothers.
2. Family history of mental illness. Schizophrenic grandmother, mother who was self-centered and couldn't feel empathy, alcoholic brothers, sister with a variety of mental health issues. He himself has been in counseling almost ever since I've known him.
3. No real community roots. While some family stayed in one place for generations, his immediate family moved around....a lot. So much, he can't even tell you what schools he attended some years.
4. Lots of yelling and belittling of others in his house. Stepping all over someone's self-esteem seemed to be a popular sport among his mother, her parade of husbands (and, ultimately, an alcoholic girlfriend/life partner), and his siblings.
5. High school dropout. Got his girlfriend pregnant their senior year. Got his GED six years later.
6. Stable job history. He always rose to the top wherever he worked, because he has an excellent work ethic. But, his relationship history is awful. I'm his third wife....he's my first husband.

What Drew Me to Someone So Different from Me?
To be blunt, being young, raging hormones, and a naive desire to date passionate artists. You see, in addition to his day job working behind the scenes in the entertainment industry, he was (and is) also a musician. With long hair. And, he talked about deep subjects like spirituality and philosophy, which were things no other guy I knew discussed.

I wrote a short story in a college class about a girl who was drawn to a musician who was so passionate about his work, he bordered on the insane. The character was inspired by Jim Morrison's character in the movie, "The Doors." When I met my husband, it was like I'd written that character to life, and I was intrigued.

He was older than me, by a lot, in fact. He already had four kids, the eldest of whom was only five years younger than me. That someone so artistic and passionate and older would be interested in me, a bookish college senior, was intensely heady. I was drawn to him with a passion I'd never known with anyone else.

We declared our love for each other after only dating for two weeks. We moved in together after dating for four months. And, a year after we first spoke to each other at an open mic night in a little dive across from the university I attended, we got married. I was in my second semester of grad school at the time.

When Did Things Start to Go Wrong With Our Relationship?

I've got to say, he warned me. When we were dating, he told me he was crazy, and discussed his lengthy mental health history with me, which included an involuntary stay in a facility (it was only for a week, and his ex-girlfriend put him there, so I discounted it as meaningless).

After he asked me to marry him, he warned me he would think he owned me if I said yes, and that I really shouldn't say yes. I said yes, anyway. Nothing I'd seen about him thus far was anything but wonderful in my eyes.

You know how you can be blinded to obvious warning signs when you're madly in love. Even to clearly vocalized warnings from the very person who should know what you needed to be warned against.

One of his exes, who he maintained friendly relations with because of their two kids, told me he made a great friend, and an excellent dad, but a terrible roommate. At the time, I thought she didn't know him like I did. I now know she knew him all too well. She was trying to warn me, too.

It was only shortly after we moved in together that I started noticing little differences in his personality that didn't match up with what he showed me when we were merely dating.

He began withholding affection. At first, it was because he claimed an aversion to physical contact because of his history of abuse. Yet, he gave me plenty of physical contact before we moved in together.

He yelled at me, called me a horrible name, and kicked a microphone across the room when he was playing a new song for me, and I told him I couldn't listen to it a third time because I had to get to class (remember, at the beginning, I was still in grad school). No one had ever yelled at me or called me the name he called me, ever.

He chased off friends from college who stopped by to visit me, using a hammer in his hand as intimidation to be sure they didn't come back.

I was not permitted to have male friends anymore, I discovered, even though they were totally platonic. He, on the other hand, was allowed to have platonic female friends. They came over to our house often.

He even objected to some of my girlfriends if he thought they were "slutty." He'd say they weren't a good influence on me, that we become like the company we keep, and he didn't want me going out with them because he was concerned they would encourage me to "whore around." He acted like he didn't know I had eyes only for him.

By our third year of marriage, I understood he was telling the truth about having severe mental issues. He could pull it together for his kids nicely, but I bore the brunt of his tantrums and controlling nature.

And, because I still loved him, and because I was young and meek, I put up with it, telling myself the man I fell in love with was still in there, somewhere. Maybe, if I loved him enough, I could bring him back out again.

It Took Me Years to Realize What Emotional Abuse is, and That He's Been Inflicting it on Me
Really, I hate the word "victim." It implies a lack of power. I always had power. I just didn't know it for a long time. I could have walked away at any time. A few times, I almost did.

Like the time he threw a pillow at me and screamed he hated me, just because he was tired after mowing the lawn (something we agreed was his responsibility).

Or, the two times he splashed water in my face when he got mad at me about some little thing. He nearly got violent on a step-dad who did that to his daughter, but saw nothing wrong with doing it to me. When I objected, he said I was overreacting.

After all, he never hit me. To this day, after more than a decade of marriage, he has never, ever hit me. He says he doesn't believe in it. None of his exes have complained of physical violence from him, either. I didn't know until recently that it doesn't have to be physical to be abuse.

When I discovered I'd been being emotionally abused all these years, I was horrified. How could I let myself be one of those women in an abusive relationship? That wasn't me. It wasn't how I saw myself, or what I was raised to be. I thought of all of my older relatives who are now gone, and how sad they would be to see me in this situation.

1. I'm with a man who doesn't work anymore, and expects me to earn all the money to support us, despite me having a disability myself (juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and two knee replacements).
2. I'm with a man who constantly tells me how lucky I am to have HIM, rather than how lucky he is to have ME.
3. I'm with a man who calls and texts at least two or three times to "check in" whenever I'm out with an approved girlfriend, or even with family. He doesn't trust me, and never will.
4. I'm with a man who takes every opportunity to tell me no one will ever "put up with my crap" like he does, and I'll never find as good of a man as him if I were to leave him.
5. I'm with a man I have to walk on eggshells around. If I'm not stroking his ego, if I dare tell him the truth and it's something he doesn't want to hear, if I describe him as anything less than wonderful, if he asks my opinion on a song he wrote and I give actual constructive criticism on how it could be better, or sometimes if I just say the wrong thing without knowing it's wrong, I get yelled at, my intelligence and compassion questioned, accused of talking down to him, and told I'm worse than all of his exes AND his abusive mom.
6. I'm with a man where I often have to lie and sneak around to do things I want to do and see people I want to see. I refuse to friend him on any social media, or even tell him what sites I'm on, because that's worked out very badly in the past. I can't take the chance of him objecting to the wording of one of my posts, or of someone on my friends list. I often use visiting relatives in town as an excuse to do other things.
7. I'm with a man who constantly accuses me of having an affair, when I haven't even kissed anyone but him since we got married.
8. Worst of all, I'm with a man who is so obviously emotionally abusive, my friends and family have been asking me for years why I put up with it. It's embarrassing.

Why DO I Put Up With It? Why Do I Stay?

I actually don't want to stay. I've toyed around with the idea of divorce since the third year of our marriage, but he always "came around" and started acting nicely again, making me want to stay.

It's only been in the past six years or so that he has mostly stopped bothering "coming around," and I've really consistently wanted a divorce. He KNOWS I want one, too. I've made that clear.

So, why am I still in this relationship, putting up with him? Maybe some of my answers are the reasons other women in emotionally abusive relationships continue to stay.

1. Finances
He gets disability income now, for his mental illness, and hasn't worked since the second year of our marriage. He used to have a really high paying job. Now, I'm the one making more money, at first as a teacher, and now as a freelance writer and novelist.

The thing is, I still need his disability income to make ends meet in our household. And, if I were to divorce him, he would likely be awarded some kind of alimony from me. I've actually talked to a lawyer about this, and the possibility of me having to pay him is high, even if it's just a small amount.

I could support myself on my own with my income, but not the two of us together, and not myself AND an alimony payment to him. Finances is the big thing keeping me with him right now. If I can raise my income, I can escape.

2. Children
Being a mother means the world to me, and is something I dream of doing. I helped raise his three sons, so I wasn't in a hurry to have kids. By the time I wanted to, I found out my autoimmune issues from the arthritis were keeping me from getting and staying pregnant.

I need surrogacy be a biological mother, and not only is it expensive, I'm also old enough now that I don't know if I'd have time to find someone else to be a dad, or at least donate sperm, before my eggs are no longer usable. We've been approved to adopt together, and if I divorce him now, I'll have to wait another year to be approved to adopt a child on my own.

My intense desire to be a mother ASAP is also keeping me with him. He's the only sperm readily available to me, and we can adopt now. He's EXCELLENT with children....his kids LOVE him. It's just with wives and girlfriends that he has serious emotionally abusive issues.

3. Concern and Lingering Love for Him
As badly as he's treated me, he's not evil. There is good in him, and I understand where a lot of his issues originate. I know it doesn't make it okay for him to treat me the way he does, but I understand it. A lot of it has nothing to do with me....it's just him lashing out at the nearest person (me) because of some childhood issue that got brought up through a means I may not even know.

Also, I know one thing he's really concerned about is being alone when he's old, and not having someone nearby to help him when his health issues act up now (he's got physical as well as mental issues these days). I want to be there for him. The memories of the good times we've had together, the love we once shared, and the knowledge of the good person inside of him keep me in his sphere, though I'm floating closer to the edge of it.

I don't want to "let him down," as he says all the other women in his life have done. I don't want him to live in misery. I don't want him to think no one loves him. I want him to be okay.

So, What am I Going to Do About All This?
Honestly, I don't know. After being married so long, it's not an easy question, especially considering the three points I mentioned above. There are financial and emotional considerations that I'm not sure how to work around.

I guess, ideally, we would get divorced, I'd wait another year to adopt a kid, and he'd live somewhere near me, maybe even in a different house on the same property, or in a duplex with one of us on each side, so I could be there if he needed me. But, there would need to be boundaries, and the understanding that I'm free to do as I like would need to be there.

He needn't be concerned about me dating anyone else....which he is. The fact is, being with him has turned me off of the idea of relationships and marriage in general. I know it would be a long time, if ever, before I became interested in being romantically involved with a guy again. To me, I associate it with nothing but trouble.

In the meantime, I've taken some of my power back.

Being a bit older makes one wiser, one would hope, and it certainly has with me when it comes to this relationship. He knows he can't afford to live on his own, and any alimony I might be ordered to pay him wouldn't be enough to enjoy the lifestyle we do together. He doesn't want to give that up.

Knowing that, I've told him we now do things my way, and do what I want, and if he doesn't like it, we get divorced right now. So far, he's playing along. We'll see how long it lasts.

Ultimately, I do want to get divorced. I long for my freedom from this toxic relationship, and to be part of the world on my own terms again. I loved being single in college. I will love being single again. Now that I know I've been emotionally abused all these years, and am fed up with it, I say, "No more!"

As long as circumstances keep us together, we will do things my way, and I won't abide any complaining, not after what he's put me through. And, when circumstances change, which I know they will, I will get that divorce, and claim the freedom that is rightfully, blissfully mine.

It may not be today or even soon, but I WILL be single again.

I'll be the girl I once was, and the woman I was meant to be.

Without him.