I received the following post from Amy. I thought my response to her questions would greatly benefits others that are in her situation so I wanted to place it as a new post. I encourage you to add other advice and let us know if this has helped you too.
Love & Peace,
Rebecca
Initial Email 5/14/10
I love my husband very much. He comes from a wonderful family and treats me like gold. The only time things are bad is when I disagree with him. If we get in a fight I usually walk away but he will grab my arm and try to hurt me without punching or kicking. He will try and pinch me hard or grab my arm to get me to stay in the same room with him so he can argue with me. I have tried telling him that when we fight I need to sometimes walk away, but he won’t listen. He is an accountant and has total control over our finances. I feel so bad when I spend more than 5 dollars on anything! I just feel like always giving up fights just to avoid an argument and getting my arm hurt. I do not want to leave him I just want him to stop. I have tried telling him that I think he is showing signs of becoming abusive, because he was abused by his older brother. He calls me crazy and then tells me it’s my fault for getting him so mad. Please tell me what I can do? How do I make him realize this is serious and he does have a problem.
Dear Amy,
You were on my mind since I read this yesterday. Your marriage can be saved and you have the ability to stop the issues you are having now. Remember, we show others how to treat us by what we tolerate from them. You sound like other than this issue you have a great marriage and a great man. Take my suggestions and work them in to something that will work for you.
I would suggest that you take out a pad of paper or a journal and write a list of toleration’s. Toleration’s are things that you tolerate, do, accept, even though in your gut you don’t want to. You do it to make peace or because like me, we don’t want to rock the boat.
That stops today. After making this list write a letter to yourself explaining that you will never tolerate these things again. This stops today. This letter is to remain private, your eyes only.
Then I want you to draft out a very sincere letter to your husband/mate. Write the letter only coming from a place of love so he will hear and feel that. Don’t vent your anger at other issues, deal with this. I created a sample for you, you it or write a fresh one on your own, that would be best. This will just give you an idea of what should help.
Dear Husband,
I am writing this letter to you because I love you more than anything and want to spend my life loving you completely. I want a marriage based on respect and unconditional love for each other. I wanted to talk about something that really hurts me in my gut and stays with me for days. I do not want this to grow between us because if it continues it will put a wall up between us that we may never be able to tear down. I must ask you this, how you do you feel when you pinch my arm or hold it, preventing me from leaving a room when I have asked to or how upset you are if I spend more than a few dollars. I wanted to share with you from a place of love how it makes me feel.
I feel scared, held against my will, anxious and disrespected by you and not valued in this home. I wish and want for you to accept that I am not you. Sometimes I need 5-10 minutes to walk away and clear my head before discussing something with you. If you asked to do this I would understand and let you leave. I am a part of this family and need to know that I can spend what is needed for me too without the guilt of taking care of me and our home.
Please understand I am writing my feelings to you out of love for both of us. I would love to hug you and start fresh in this area and talk openly without fear of what may be said. I want a relationship of love and most of all, respect for each other.
Amy, again, this is just an idea to get you thinking. I often suggest that you write the letter and edit it until when you read it again, you feel the love back that you have for this man. That is what you want to have him feel too. Maybe give him the card with a tiny present that you know reminds him how much you love him.
No matter what the outcome is, remember the toleration list you wrote just for you. Respect is important but you must insist that others treat you with respect at all times, if not, you need to decide if you wish to be with this person. Don’t allow anyone to ever disrespect you. By standing up for yourself now, while things are mostly good with your husband you will set the stage for a better life with him. If he is not verbally abusing you and physically or emotionally hurting you, this may just be a habit from him that can stop.
I wish you all the best and really want to know the outcome as this will greatly help others here.
Love & Peace,
Rebecca
Dear Solange,
I am so sorry for all that you are going through. Are you being abused? If someone makes you stay against your will, if someone belittles you, doesn’t’ respect you and treats you less than human, that is abusive. More passive abuse at times but still abusive. Focus on getting out of this marriage, it doesn’t sound healthy at all, he knows that he has control over you and how you are living. It can be easy to say leave but that is not always something you can do safely of financially. Seek what support you can where you are, find resources online, some are linked here. There are places out there to support you. sometimes just having someone to listen helps.
You are in my thoughts.
Love & Peace,
Rebecca
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hi Rebecca
i been 6 months married im not from usa so is very hard to writte this, i have no idea how to get into my husbands heart to explain him how hurtfull can he be. when i try to talk to him he told mme he treath me very good and im overreacting, so im confused cuse im not sure if i am overreacting or not, but he has make fun of my poor english, my clothes, hates my friends ans family, he ingnores me and starts singing when i try to talk to him, he had even push me or let me with out food, basiccly my life is clean and cook and nothing else. He recentlñy told me he was gonna get a vasectomy cuse he dont wanna have kids, he go out with hes friends i never go he says im jelaous and i have to stop, and when we talk he only says- i dont know what to tell u, but ima chosse to ingnore you,.- and he had ask me if i am mentally challenge or just stupid. I am very hurt and i have think on suicide cuse i have no familiy or anyopne in this world. he had never hit me and he said good luck if i ever try to tell anyone hes abusing me emotinally and when i confront him over the food he starts giving me 25 dlls a week to feed myself and also for buy basic things like tampons. then he said ima bad wife and im abussing him psicologicly, i dont know what to do, is hard cuse im not form usa. im very sick and when i ask him to help me with laundry and dishes while i heal he got upset and start yell and push me to the floor.
thnx for listening to me
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Dear April,
It really made me sad to read your post. You sound like a hard love women and you are being pushed under. He has forced you to question everything that you do. You need to turn off his record already and start playing a new one. This can be hard if you are still with him.
You need one on one counseling for yourself. I understand that you want group counseling, but in the end you need to heal from what he has done or things will never work. One on one therapy for you will help you to realize if you really want to try and make things work or if you want to leave. What you want matters at this point, not what he wants. He has done the damage, not you.
Do what is best for you. From the bottom of my heart I wish you all the best. Let me know how you are doing or what we can do to help you
Love & Peace,
Rebecca
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Dear Celeste,
The letters will only work when there is still a chance of the marriage working. If the abuse is bad he will only use it back on you. I has suggested this letter to a women that was not being abused but worried about potential abuse.
You asked why abusers turn the truth and make everything our fault, because they can never take responsbility for anything that happens in their life. The wife or girlfriend is always the root to all of their evils. We are to blame for it all.
Love & Peace,
Rebecca
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Rebecca,
I have written several of these letters to my fiance during the 2 years of our relationship. I had no other option to communicate to him my fears and hurt as a direct conversation will send him off into a rage, which always ends up with him accuisng me of staring a fight and making him angry. Then all the hurt words from him will be coming none stop.
He would read the letters. I am not sure if the content sunk in because he would committ the same ‘crime’ again, 10 days later. Today I gave him a letter, to ask him to be respectful and to finally call it quits.
He folded the letter and said he would show his counsellor what sort of bad person I am, to abandon him…
So in the end whatever i say , verbally or through a letter would be turned against me.
Why do abusers have this amazing ability to turn the truth around and put all the blame and wrong on the victims ?
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Hi,
I just happened upon your site and I’m glad that I did! I have a few questions regarding the aftermath of emotional abuse, but first I’ll give a little bit of background.
My husband and I have been married for almost 17 years. We have two children (ages 12, and 9). I can’t really pinpoint when the emotional abuse started, but I can tell you when it started to become a problem – to the point of me wanting to end my marriage.
Three years ago my husband decided that we should home school our children due to a bad experience our oldest child had in public school. I was not excited about homeschooling the kids for a number of reasons. #1 I did not feel qualified to teach. #2 I worried about not giving them “enough” instruction. #3 I worried about the social aspect of home schooling. #4 I worried about all of the administrative stuff that I had to do on top of all of the other things that I did in a given day….You get the idea.
For every reason, I gave NOT to home school, my husband gave 2 reasons why we SHOULD. He made me feel guilty that I had so many reservations. But, I also felt that he didn’t listen to me regarding my feelings of reluctance. To me, it felt as if he pushed to have his way. If I would have stood my ground, he would have complained incessantly until he got his way.
So we home schooled the kids for a year – which didn’t work out well. Not because I didn’t try, I certainly did! I felt that the kids were successful – yet it was at the expense of my health. I started developing anxiety induced vertigo episodes which were crippling.
To try to cope with the stress of having a husband at work 12-14 hours a day and children with me 24/7, I started taking a karate class for myself to try to relieve my stress. It was wonderful for me! I really needed this. What I found was that I was met with consternation. Why on Earth would I want to do THAT? There was no understanding, no support, NOTHING. It got to the point that my my interests were minimized to the point of being downright mean. If it was karate related it was “bad”. The more he bad-mouthed me, the more determined I became not to quit. That was, after all, what he wanted me to do. I stood my ground.
Things got really bad. Everything I did was in question. The friends I’d made, the music I listened to, the television shows I watched, the money I spent, who I spoke with on the phone, whether or not I could send text messages on my cell phone, where I went…I felt controlled and couldn’t stand it any longer. It all started because I was trying to do something positive, healthy and constructive for myself.
In October of last year, I’d had enough! I told him that I wanted a divorce. I didn’t have a job or a place to live, so I existed at home until I could find work. In the meantime he started seeing a counselor, which was our saving grace. 🙂
In January, we went on a couples retreat called “Retrouvaille” which helped to turn things around for us. It gave me a forum to be heard in a non-threatening, finger pointing way.
Now, we are going to be undergoing marital counseling, which I’m anxious (in a good way) to start. However, I have been dealing with the aftermath of all of the emotional and psychological abuse. It hurts! I still have issues of trust and anger that well up inside of me. I feel broken to the core of my being. I also feel resentful a lot of the time. Hopefully the marital counseling will help these issues. I just want to stop the angry feelings I have towards my husband and “love” him again. It’s hard after being hurt so badly.
Thanks for listening,
April
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