You know what? I am mad. I am fuming mad. I feel like I have lost 35 years of my life with a man who claimed he loved me.
How can you say you love me?
One can’t love someone if they don’t love themselves. In this case, my monster has been self-loathing all of his life. How on earth could he love me if he didn’t love himself?
What is love? According to my monster’s actions, this is love:
- Being unfaithful to me – multiple times
- Lying to me about his infidelities
- Manipulating and gaslighting me to hide the truth about his infidelities for decades
- Accusing me of cheating on him
- Being abused and terrified by his anger
- Being abused by his demeaning and devaluing of me
- Being made to feel I’m not good enough
- Being abused by his sarcastic comments
- Being poked fun of, and his use of put-downs masked as compliments
- Having him on the hunt for other women throughout our marriage – whether he was conscious of it or not
(To be clear, these abuses didn’t occur every day. That’s why I stayed. It was all cyclical, depending on how he was feeling or if he was deployed. All of these actions were covert and insidious. Yet, the cumulative affect of it over decades has been devastating to me on all levels: mental, spiritual, emotional and physical.)
When I challenge him on the above list, he claims he “loved me, he just didn’t love me right.”
And to admit that I am an abused wife – by a monster who says he loves me – is some days, just more than I can bear. #NPD #Abuse Share on XI don’t buy it. While I gave my heart, soul and body to him, he gave me nothing but pain and grief. He made me feel like I wasn’t trying enough.
I will never understand how someone who had been looking for unconditional love and stability all their life would sabotage it when they finally found it.
Why?
Well, because a narcissist projects their issues on those closest to them, my guess is… they aren’t good enough.
The pain I feel from this treatment is palpable. I often wonder, even though I am in therapy, if I will ever recover.
And I wonder – will my monster ever know how to love?
My anger is a deep rage somedays. I feel duped. I feel cheated out of a normal life. I am so angry that while I listened to my instincts that something was wrong, he’d turn those tables and make me think everything was fine.
Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to share what is happening in my life with my friends? My monster projected that he was a loving, devoted husband and father, and a God-fearing man. Who would believe me?
My monster wore a mask that he was the perfect man. And he wasn’t. He was a monster, deeply wounding the one person who loved him more than anyone ever could.
One book I read said it’s okay to be angry, and that I had a right to be enraged at the treatment I’ve endured. That it is part of the healing process. I agree. I have no idea how many opportunities I may have missed out on due to his demeaning of my self-esteem.
In future posts, I will share some of his hurtful comments, so that you will understand what verbal and emotional abuse looks and sounds like. And keep in mind, the longer it happens, the more you lose yourself. But – you WILL find your voice again.
The hardest question I had to answer in therapy so far was this: “Who are you?” I cried and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know who I am.”
I am finding myself now. And she is brave, and strong, and will NOT tolerate any abuse – verbal, physical, emotional or spiritual. Because he did it all. Even physical. Though he never hit me, the violent outbursts that broke items or put holes in a wall scared me. That, in fact, was physical.
And to admit that I am an abused wife – by a monster who says he loves me – is some days, just more than I can bear.
But – I am brave and strong. I am getting stronger every day – and so will you.
© Married2aMonster.com – 2019
Note: All comments on the blog will be closely monitored. This is a place for healing and sharing, not a place to be rude, abusive, and, for lack of a better word – narcissistic. We will all play nice, or you are bounced out. It’s that simple. Boundary setting is a must when dealing with narcissists. And those are the rules on my site.
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