StarCat

...the book isn't about what makes abusive men tick so much as what an abused woman can do about it, and walking me through how "I allowed it to happen in the first place" so that I don't feel guilty and stupid for falling for it.
Now I know I'm not a moron, and I'm not crazy, and it really is what I was suspecting it is.
Now I know that I don't have to feel guilty for not wanting to go back at all, even though he is taking his first steps to recovering from alcohol. The problems in our relationship have been made worse by the alcohol, but the abuse will be there whether he drinks whiskey or iced tea.

I am working on me.
I am working on rebuilding my self-confidence after all the verbal and emotional abuse he has heaped on me, that started "innocently" enough and escalated to the point that he started throwing furniture when I stopped apologizing for things that weren't my fault.
I am working on building up enough courage to stick to my guns and never go back, and I am working on learning the warning signs so that it never happens again..

This book was written for women like me, and it is helping a lot.

I'm too angry at him and hurt by him to care about him in any way, shape, or form right now. I couldn't care less what he's going through, because everything he has shown me, even while in inpatient rehab, is all about himself and keeping me under his thumb, and I am going to use all the tools I can to ensure that will never happen again. I need to, because he's getting out Sunday morning, as the insurance runs out then.

I need to understand what he might do, so that I can be prepared (already have the local police on speed dial but that won't be enough), and so that the next thing he breaks isn't me. He has not been "physically abusive" the way you see in the movies, but he has already crossed that line (grabbing my arm so hard it leaves white outlines of his hand long after he lets go, hitting me hard on the arm when he's on the phone with someone else and wants to be sure I'm still listening, grabbing my hair and pulling it to make me look at something), and I never want to experience it again.

I want to live my life, not be humiliated and scared to death of what he might do next (and heaven forbid the whole "He's being so nice, he can't be abusive, I must have done something bad" thought cycle). I need to back myself up, so I have marked this book up to the extreme to that any page I open I can see all my thoughts and how G follows the pattern. I need to unmask who he really is so that I will never believe in the mask he wears.
Otherwise I'll end up giving him yet another chance, because he is so charming and apologetic when it will get him what he wants.




G is always sitting there, reading the paper, and demanding that I do everything. The couple times he decides to help usually involves him re-sorting the DVD stack yet again, and complaining that he can't help me with anything because of his lungs. Even when he did decide to do things to help out, it was always superfluous things (like hanging up the 87th painting in my one-bedroom apartment) and he always expected me to do most of the work - he'd stand on the chair, constantly pulling up those baggy pants of his that keep falling off, demanding I run and get the hammer and the nails and this and that and what's taking so long and please hold the chair steady and hold his pants up and by the way why isn't the laundry put away yet since he "asked" me to do it 20 minutes ago (right before he stepped up onto the chair)?
Even now, I mentioned he has no relationship with his grown children, so his plan is that he's going to stop drinking and I'm going to invite over and babysit the grandchildren so he can watch a cartoon with them until he gets bored and I can chase them around and do everything else, too.

His wants are more important than my needs. My shoes are falling apart, the sole on the right shoe is almost completely separated, the tongue on the left one is the only thing holding it onto my foot, the heels are worn through on both until the empty hollow spaces are showing inside the shoe, and he spends our last $10 on alcohol and charges another $200 on amazon.com for about 30 horror movies he read about in a magazine. (Did I mention he's already got 317 movies/dvds/tv series still wrapped in cellophane, not including those at his mother's house?)

A relationship is all about giving of yourself to the other at the expense of yourself, until he's the one who needs to give. And he has the guts to label himself as codependent - maybe with other people, but never his own family.

*HUGS*