The Boiling Frog Who Jumped Away

This post was written a few years ago and never published.  It's more of a cautionary tale than anything.  I talk about this stuff so maybe someone else can take my experiences and help themselves out of a similar situation.

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I'd like to start off by saying that never in my life have I ever been struck in anger.  But abuse doesn't necessarily have to take that form.

Sometimes I wish he had hit me.  From the time I was old enough to be interested in boys, I knew to never put up with anyone hitting me.  If he'd hit me, I would've gotten the hell out of there immediately.  But he never hit me.  Never hurt me... Not with his fists.  

When we first met, he was charming.  He treated me like an equal. He cherished me.  He loved me like I was supposed to be loved.  And then I moved in with him.  

Even then, it didn't happen all at once.  If he had treated me like shit right off the bat, I would've packed my stuff up and left him.  It happened little bit by little bit.  An unkind word here, a quiet dressing-down there.  By the time I realized where I was, it seemed like it was too late to leave.

You've all heard the story of how to boil a frog...  If you put a frog in hot water, it'll jump right out.  But if you put a frog in cold water and bring that water to boiling, you can easily boil it.  It doesn't realize the water is heating up.  It doesn't try to get away.  It just sits there until it dies.

He never came right out and called me ugly or stupid or fat.  He implied it.  He played on my own fears.  Are you sure you really want to wear THAT dress?  I can't believe you embarrassed me like that.  Don't touch that.  Don't do that.  Stay away from that.  

An example...  When we first met, he was almost computer illiterate and I was working a job in computer training and consulting.  I trained him on how to use his computer better and more efficiently.  I spent hours setting up a database for his business and inputting all the data he'd been keeping in a Word document.  But after I was done with that, I was no longer allowed to touch his computer because I might screw something up.

When I tried to read a book, he sulked and made life unbearable, so I stopped reading.  Reading, you see, took my attention away from him.  Even when he didn't need or want my attention.  

If I tried to be with my friends, he sulked and made life unbearable to the point I no longer saw my friends.  Until I had no friends.  Hell, he didn't want me to be around his friends either.  And heaven forbid, I had something to do with my family.  If he went, he was sullen.  If he didn't go, I came home to sullen.  

This was, of course, not the case when we were with his family.  He was so loving and attentive around them.  He morphed back into the man I first met.  I was beautiful and smart and he loved me.  He was that way around strangers, too.  Suddenly, he was the man I fell in love with again.

Except the man I fell in love with was an illusion.  

One night about two and half years in, we had one hell of a fight.  I don't remember what start it.  Maybe I tried to stand up for myself.  Again, he never hit me.  The words and accusations he threw were far worse.  So vile and disgusting, I won't repeat them here.  I was ready to leave him then.  The next day, he came to me on his proverbial knees, apologized with some excuse or other, and suggested we go into couples therapy.  I was all for it.  Maybe I'd get the man I fell in love with back.  Maybe a therapist would finally show him that not everything was my fault all the time.  

Therapy never happened.  It was just another trick of his to make me stay.

Another 6 months down the road, everything was happy on the surface and we talked about buying a house.  He went and looked at houses without me.  He picked the house without me.  He bought the house in his name.  He picked out all the furniture.  And we moved into his house.  He didn't want me to meet the neighbors.  He didn't want me to walk around the neighborhood.  We'd moved into a pretty cage.  I swear if he could've he would've fix it so I didn't work, so I'd never have to leave my cage.

Shortly thereafter, I was away at a sales conference in a dinner meeting and all I could think about was not wanting to go home.  After the meeting, I would have to head for the airport for my red-eye flight back to him.  I prayed for the plane to crash so I wouldn't have to go home.  That's when I finally woke up.  I would rather die than go back to that man.  So, why die?  Why not just get the hell out of that hellacious relationship?

Still, I didn't immediately go.  I'd just been tired that night.  It wasn't really as bad as I was thinking, was it?  A couple days after I got home, I invited my parents over for dinner to see the new house and stuff.  He was working when they came over.  It was always better to see my family when he wasn't home.  Unfortunately, when he got home and heard they'd been over, he blew up.  How dare I invite people over to HIS house when he wasn't home?  

The camel's back finally broke.  I told him I was leaving.  I spent the night in Owl's room and the next morning, before he woke up, I took her out of there.  We went to breakfast and then to my parent's house where I asked if they wouldn't mind watching Owl so I could go move my stuff and whether it would be okay if we stayed with them for a while.

When I got back to his house, he was waiting for me.  He didn't believe me the night before when I said I was leaving.  He still only thought this was some kind of game I was playing, looking for concessions or sympathy or something.  I set him straight, then started packing my stuff and moving it to my car.  After the first trip to the folks', when I got back, all my stuff was in the hall and he was gone.  Whew.  

Then the calls started.  Every night, him trying to get me to come 'home', so nice and so apologetic.  Eventually, I told him if he didn't stop calling, we were getting the phone number changed.  He stopped calling.  Then he happened to see me out and about and decided to follow me.  It was like a lame car chase in a bad movie.  Rushing down the freeway with him yelling out the window and scaring the holy shit out of me.  I drove straight to the state police post and sat in their parking lot until I was sure he was gone.  I never saw him again.

Dad didn't understand why I left him and kept encouraging me to patch things up.  After all, I'd been with him for three years.  The guy's friends and family didn't understand why I would do such a thing.  I was certainly a horrible person for hurting him so bad.  None of them ever knew what went on behind closed doors.  No one ever saw because the marks he left weren't visible and I never told them what was happening to me.  I was ashamed I'd let myself get into that situation.  I always thought of myself as a strong woman.  I was the first person to advocate for abused women to get the hell away from their abusers--to wonder why the hell they stayed.  And there I was in an abusive relationship myself.  For three years.  I felt like a fool. 

And even after I knew I was being abused, it wasn't 'real abuse' because he never physically harmed me.  He rubbed my soul raw, he flayed away at my sense of worth and of self until I lay in tatters. On the inside.  I was his pretty doll to dress up in sexy clothes and show off at parties.  And as long as I kept my mouth shut and toed the line, he was happy.  

Now, after reading all that, one would think I would never let that happen again.  Sorry to disappoint, but I did it again.  Not quite to the same extent, but I got Mental Abuser 2.0 a few years after I ditched the original version.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  Lucky for me, after I got out of that relationship, I spent a year learning how to be alone and like it.  And then I found Hubs.  Twenty years of awesome... you know, once I understood that Hubs was a good man and stopped cringing every time I thought he might be mad at me.  And learning it was okay if he was mad, because he still wouldn't treat me like shit.  

I didn't write this for sympathy or for pats on the back.  It happened.  I survived it.  It's done for me.  I wrote this because there are far too many people out there living through the same situations I lived through.  I want them to know they can get out.  I want them to understand that they don't deserve to be treated poorly by anyone - especially by someone who is supposed to love you.  Being alone is better than being with someone like that.  Really, it is.  

And abuse is abuse - even if you can't see the marks it leaves.  

(I don't mention Owl much in this, not because she wasn't part of it but because we'd be here all day if I included my thoughts and feelings about her in all this.  I tried to hide as much of it from her as I could.  No child should be exposed to that stuff.)