This is my first time writing about my marriage and experiences and I’m not going to lie, I’m a little afraid. This background is my first step in taking back my life (They won’t all be this long). I have realized that I am in an emotionally abusive marriage and that he has extreme narcissism no doubt resulting from emotionally distant childhood. At first I felt like he was amazing and I finally found someone who would take care of me and love me for me. Not to long afterwards I started realizing that something was off about him. He would get mad when I would talk about going away to grad school, and he would make me stay out late or go see his ex on the days before my GRE. He would constantly make me late for work and would try to ‘calm me down’ when I was stressed about my homework by making me focus on him. I had a 3.9 GPA when I met him, I graduated with a 3.6….He knew that I was smart enough to get into a good grad program and would tell me often, but would never help me with my efforts. My last year of undergrad, I went to Belize on a school trip. I had so much fun, still to this day I think it was the best time of my whole life. They day I got back, he was drunk. I’m not saying that he’s lying about this because I honestly don’t know as I never, ever met them.
He had a group of girls that he used to hang out with before I knew him that were strippers- he was apparently the one who took care of them. My last year of undergrad, they gradually died, one by one. Either by overdose or suicide. He never went to a funeral or anything just seemed really screwed up by it. The weird thing is that I never knew them, never saw pictures, never met anyone who also knew them.
We weren’t exactly dating when this all happened as he was still dating his girlfriend, who he would bring over when she came into town and talk to her on the phone. All while we were messing around (I’m not proud of it). He never told anyone at school and even led some people to believe that I was gay which is why he hung out with me when he had a girlfriend. We lived together, spent all of our time together, slept together and he played it off by saying he was trying to teach me how to be in a good relationship after I went to grad school. Anyways, back to the Belize trip: I came home that morning and he was drunk. That night, after hanging out with our friends for the evening, we came home and he had a complete breakdown. He told me he was leaving and put his necklace around me neck and said I’ll never see him again. He was tired and couldn’t do it anymore and I deserved better. I knew that he was going to kill himself so I told him that I loved him and I couldn’t do it without him. I lied to him so that he wouldn’t kill himself and from that moment forward, I was terrified of ending the relationship in fear he would kill himself.
I ended up going to a Grad program that he got accepted into even though I really had no interest in forensics. He finally broke up with his girlfriend and we got another house together. At this time, he was still very loving and supportive for the most part although I was gradually feeling more and more trapped. I was still scared of ending the relationship. The grad program was interesting but I didn’t care for it. I was working as a file clerk at the prosecutors office part time. I thought that I could still make a career out of forensics though. I could work in a DNA lab or as a CSI tech. My boss hated me though, and her father was the head of the grad program. As I started to feel more and more restless, I started drinking a lot and going to class drunk. I would intentionally argue points with the professors and I started hating every single second of classes and my job. My boyfriend enjoyed the content but hated his job also (working with the dad). He would tell me that they called him their slave and made him do dumb labor. Which I don’t exactly doubt, they were users. He would come home miserable every day. His blood pressure was extremely high so I learned how to cook, thinking that would make him feel better and he would at least be happy to come home and eat something that wasn’t making the BP worse. His misery turned into pure and extreme rage. I had never seen him this way nor had I ever felt such anger in another person before. That loving and supportive person was gone and in his place was something I had never seen. No one saw the rage except for me, he wasn’t the kind to slam doors and scream. He would boil in his anger, completely shutting me out. All I ever felt from him was rage and ice cold emotions. We didn’t talk, we didn’t leave the house, we didn’t hang out with other people, my car was broken down so I was walking everywhere and couldn’t even leave. I cried every night and I was even more terrified to leave. I felt so completely lost and I didn’t have anywhere to go. He had ostracized me from my family. He would patronize me when I talked to them. If I talked to him about my emotions he would toss them aside and say at least I didn’t have to deal with what he was dealing with.
Eventually he quit his job and I thought it would get better, I always think it will get better. I was then left to cover all of the bills while comforting him because he felt inadequate about not having a job. I couldn’t do it anymore, I went from thinking I would have to kill him just to get away (obviously I never really thought about acting on it but I was that far gone). I talked to my aunt and I made a plan, I was going to break up with him, she was going to send me money and I was going to start a new life in Washington. For the first time I felt a glimmer of hope.
He had a habit of reading my text messages so I was pretty careful about deleting them. On the day he was finishing his thesis, I was of course drunk. He found my non deleted text to my aunt that said I didn’t love him. I can’t even say I remember what happened the rest of that day, I was not sober enough. All I know was that he left, I had no functioning car, I was living in a house owned by his parents and I still felt finally free. For the first time, I stayed sober for a day and walked around town, made plans to get out, I didn’t have to clean or cook for him and I felt real peace. I am an incredibility empathetic person, almost to a fault. I can really feel peoples emotions and I had been soaking in his rage and depression for a long time.
Well I hadn’t been around friends in a while, so a friend invited me to a college party…. I got extremely drunk with a ton of very very attractive baseball players. Luckily I did not sleep with any of them. However, I woke up in my own bed, not dressed in my own clothes and my boyfriend sitting on the edge of my bed. My ‘friend’ had called him. I was still drunk but he insisted on talking about everything. We had a relatively good talk, I thought. But it was all excuses, he was extremely depressed, he was just waiting to get done with grad school so we could move on in our lives. He had told me that he was an angry person before and I should have known, I was the only person in this life that made him happy, when he was mad it wasn’t at me, I need to stop taking everything personally etc… My dumb ass believed him, that after he graduated, it would get back to the way it used to be, I just had to give him a chance.
I told myself I would wait until he found a job in his field and give him the chance he deserved. I had quit the forensics program when we broke up for the two days so now all I could do was work. I got a full time job at the prosecutors office as the evidence clerk. He was still not working but was looking for jobs. An entire year went by and he was still jobless, nothing had changed except now he was constantly mocking me about baseball boys and cheating on him even though I never cheated. When I would get frustrated he would say “aww why don’t you call your mother about it?”. He was adamant about reading all the texts on my phone. During the time he wasn’t working, he never helped around the house, he would make lunch but wouldn’t clean it up, he would sit on his computer and play games. Finally, I had enough again and told him that I was going to start looking for jobs because I couldn’t do it anymore. I wanted him to be the one to get one so he could feel like he was supporting me and that would make him happy. Two weeks later, we were moving back to our home town for a job that I was offered. I felt this sense of massive relief, we were finally getting out of this toxic town and putting that behind us.
…..Read more on part 2
The Tired Wife 