Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Members' Stories

I feel like such a doormat.

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sea storm:
I realize that each man that I "fell in love with" was someone that I felt I had to constantly try to please.  Looking back I realize that they were very narcissistic  and would qualify using Dr. Hare's checklist.  I was set up for this pattern because my mother was narcissistic.  She was a wounded soul, I am sure, but my sympathy for her has stood in the way of my healing. For most of my remembered childhood, I wanted to make my mom happy and tried to something that would help her to feel happy with me. This did not work. In my relationships with men ( and often with women) I would fall into a passive role and try to be helpful, wise and kind.  Of course, I could not keep this up and realized that I was carrying the load in these relationships.
It is hard to explain.  Often the person was charismatic, very intelligent, controlling and bossy.  I was a good "right hand man" or power behind the thrown.  This left me feeling frustrated and depressed.
My first marriage was at age 19. My husband and I went to live on a remote island where we worked on a tug, logsalvaging.  He was very charismatic and verbally quite brilliant.  People would say," Oh, he is the most christlike person I have ever met", or " He is the most laudable man I have ever known". These guys weren't living with him as his wife. At home, he was sneering, sarcastic and cruel. He often hit me and would come home drunk. He would leave for weeks at a time while I stayed behind in a little house with no electricity or running water.  The perfect set up for isolation and dominance.  I was dependent on him to run the boat and chop the wood and for bottomline survival. 
We later got a fishboat and that was better because I got to interact with other people( mostly other fishermen but they were kind to me and felt respected for the first time in a long time.)
Basically, I felt like a slave and I was treated like one.  It got worse and worse.  Always, I thought that if I tried harder it would get better.  Unfortuneately, my husband started to drink heavily and got into using cocaine.  This developed into dealing cocaine.  I had no idea and no frame of reference to compare my life to.  At that time and in that culture, cocaine was a groovy recreational drug and people who did not use it were considered the deviant ones.  My husband was involved with lots of women on the island and this was a nightmare.
This legend of him being such a great man continued. He is a very good sea captain, good problem solver, does not react to stress by overreacting.   This is true.  I admired that side of him too. However, he had no empathy for my little girl or me.  I was stuck with him for life due to his being my daughter's father and the fortune he made doing illegal things. Because he bought houses for relatives and did other magnamous things he continued to be put on a pedastal. This really sounds irrational but it is very true.
He paid for our daughter's wedding and it was huge.  I have little money.  I was like Banquo's ghost at the wedding and was not included in anything. 
I have very bitter memories of my time with him. For instance, he knocked me out cold when I went to breastfeed the baby while we were on the fishboat.  The contrast between who he was in public and who he was as a husband was very confusing and aweful for me.  I shrank away to almost nothing.
The hoops for pleasing him were beyond my reach. I worked on the boat, was a gourmet cook, He never washed a dish, we had a pretty great sex life,I was a good mom. I do remember the neverending denigration and contempt.  I realize now that he had no empathy and he had the cool, unflappable , steely calm of a psychopath.  He could charm people  with this act of brilliance and humility that was saved for the unintiated.  Along the way, friends who worked with him or got involved in the abuse of drugs fell by the wayside. Some went to prison and some commited suicide.  This did not faze him.

When I left him I was lucky to get away. I just had enough of a sense of self to know that something was terrible wrong. That night he had been out with someones wife. He came home and told me something really obscene and I left.  He probably did not remember the next day.  He had a couple of women lined up and soon went off with one of his best friends wife.

This last relationship lasted seven years.  I had that same exhillerated feeling of having met my soul mate and transcending to a place of love and ecstacy. ( This must be a warning sign). Looking back, he was meeting my needs and intuiting just what I wanted.   I knew his past. He had two ex-wives and an ex mistress that was involved with him for many years.  However, I thought this was just because he had not found the right one ( Another warning sign).  He was a very adept liar.  His mother warned me that everything that came out of his mouth was a lie.  I thought she was beastly. ( another sign).  Turns out she was right. So was his ex wife. But there was no way I was going to believe them.  My hormones and every part of me wanted him. Even desperately wanted him.
maybe it will help to write this.  I will write more later

sea storm:
I felt inadequate when I was telling my story.  Maybe I need to hear my own voice and not worry about what other people think.  So I will continue.

I knew this man for many years.  We had worked together in the past and I thought he was kind and attentive.  I moved to a remote part of the island to get a really good job.  There had been major cutbacks in the field I was working in and I needed to go where the work was.  I thought that the job would be easier in a small place but it wasnt because there is such a huge need in the Aboriginal Community.  My caseload was bigger than ever and they were very hostile at first.  As I gained their trust more people came for service.  Almost every day there were disclosures of horrendous abuse.  i was vulnerable and once again isolated.  This is when my N showed up. He dropped by my place of work. I was so glad to see him because I liked him and because I was so depleted of self esteem and there was zero support for me in my work.  At that time I was building a dream bed and breakfast too. I was living in the middle of a forest clearing in a little trailer.   I felt good about myself for working hard and making my dream happen. The builders were good guys and I was involved in creating the place.

sea storm:
He visited me and stayed overnight. He lied about being separated from his wife.  In reality they were going to couples counselling.  We got drunk the first night but I thought nothing of it.  When I found out he was not separated I told him I did not want to see him anymore.  I did not see him for a few months.  He contacted me and said they were separated. This was a lie.  I had no way of knowing because he lived five hours away by car.
He was such a dear sweet guy. He had darling pet names for me  and would say " I love you darling" often. He was attentive and such a gentle, receptive, funny guy and still mach enough to be a perfect guy.  he could listen and he could talk about his life.  He was such a poor waif in the love department. His mom sent him to a brutal private school, his wives were each aweful but in different ways.  He could never explain what they did specifically. He was losing his hearing and his heart would skip beats.  He was accident prone in a big way.  I would laugh uproariously when he would pretend he was a wouned puppy.  This was so close to what was becoming a very powerful bonding process in our relationship. I was the Nurse from the Crimea who would loyally and devotedly mend his wounds.  At first he responded by doing whatever I asked.  He seemed kind of malleable.  I did not take advantage of this. Now I see that he was just making sure the hook was sunk.

Gradually, I realized that his flu symptoms were really withdrawl symptoms.  He was drinking very heavily, still seeing his wife and exwife and who know who else.   He saw me on weekends and would arrive  drunk but functioning. He did not wobble but he was severely impaired.  I saw him hide his bottle in his car from the upstairs window. So there was all that alcoholic behaviour happening. He explained his cordial and affectionate relationships with his old girlfriends and wives as gentlemanly behaviour. Graduallly I would catch things like an email from his ex calling him sweet names and saying what peak experiences they had shared. The greatest in her life.  Hmmm That sounded pretty friendly indeed.  I would believe him when he said that she was delusional, or just trying to cause trouble.  He was amazingly convincing. Not just vaguely but truly and even a bit outraged at having his integrity challenged. I learned to  back off.  I should have hired a private detective.   he had told me that his ex's were all nuts or whatever and I did not contact them. One wife said that he was a pathological liar.  She tried to convince me.  At the same time she was envious of our relationship and so I thought it was sour grapes. Big mistake.  So I was in a fog of denial and so hooked that I could not bear to see the truth.

He was struggling so hard and seemed so beautifully noble and stoic about his difficulties.  He could not get a job after his partner asked him to leave their business. For years after this he was looking for an executive consulting position where he could work from home.  He would apply for a couple of jobs a year and do zero follow up or research.  I began to support him.  He kept saying we would be together forever.  WHen his mom died he would pay me back. I bought him into a business and remortgaged my house.  This business did not thrive.  He could have done other things but appeared pained when it was not up to his lofty standards.  Somehow his idea about himself and his abilities did not match up with his performance. ( Understatement).  Later I found out that when he did make money he squirrelled it away for himself. I was paying the mortgage on the house and all the rest of it. Food, car insurance, business expenses, utilities everything.

Slowly , sort of like a frog getting boiled over a long period of time, I lost the ability to stand up for myself.  The denigration was suble and relentless.  He definitely employed his children in this.  I ended up paying for a trip for him and his son. Only later did I realize I paid for a very big vacation for BOTH of them. I thought his son paid his own way.  My partner convinced me that I was too irresponsible to handle the bills and the bank account.  BIG MISTAKE.  Probably at least two years and maybe four years before he left he was draining the bank account and syphoning money into his own account or RSPs.  I caught him taking ten thousand for his airplane from the building account.  He was so indignant that I backed off. HE said " YOu dont realize how much that plane means to me and I am in our relationship until the day I die".  I was a cooked frog for sure. It got much worse.
 

sea storm:
I try to make order of the huge chaos that came out of that relationship. I try to find out what my part was and what part his was.  I try to understand why someone lies and lies and lies.  Is it just the dying of a relationship?  This goes beyond that.  The lengths he went to destroy every part of my life and to denigrate,humiliate and play with me were bizarre.

For instance, years ago I told him I was assaulted by an old boyfriend. I was held for hours and forced to do humiliating things.  This was very traumatic for me.  We had not talked about it for years.  Then about 6 months after he left I heard from an aquaintance that he had called her and told her that I was delusional and that I made up that story. He knew this because he has super clearance and can access police records.  He said that there was no record of a charge being laid that day.  He did not know what day it was or what year it was.  He did not have that clearance. What an elaborate way to slander me with someone I work with????.

sea storm:
It felt horrible to have that battering experience used against me.  And to be accused of lying about it.  Then I started to realize how incredibly devious and calculating to file that away to use in order to besmirch my reputation with a person I work with.  Obviousely he had developed some kind of relationship with her and he was telling her all this stuff about me.  I wondered what else he told other people that I never heard about.
Who is this monster? 
He would tell me that the only reason he did not help with housework was because the house was such a mess.  If it was not a mess he would do housework.  I was working full time and he was at home unemployed.  When I came home and asked if he was going to make dinner he would wait for hours before starting to cook it.  Or he would say,I was going to make dinner but I could not find anything in the house to make ( the freezer was full and there was lots to cook). The excuses were like an eight year old would make. Or he would say," I resent having to jump up and tidy the house just because you are coming home from work. How dare you expect me to jump to your tune".  Somehow I was the bad person who was returning from a gruelling job and expecting him to do something.  Anything.  Dishes once every three days. Anything.
He would also go Sniff Sniff. Something really stinks. Its the Kitty Litter. Cant you at least change the cat litter ( It was his cat and I changed the litter 99 times out of a 100.

Obviously this stuff was not fair. However, when I would try to work things out, using every method I had learned in conflict resolution it was like hitting a brick wall.  He would talk but it was around, over, under and doing doughnuts around the issue.  He might say. My ex wife keeps such a serene and tidy house.  Sort of threatening me that there were women who would love to have him around.  As I got frustrated he would look at me with contempt and say " Youre having an episode ". Youre psychotic.  This really wore me down.  I got to feel really deranged. My intuitions and observations were called idiotic and wrong.  He looked at me once after not doing a speck of housework for weeks, " Do you honestly think that I would put our relationship in jeopardy by not helping with HOUSEWORK".   How could he sAy that ????????? This is just an example.  Often I cant really explain the manoevers or believe them.

I was so shocked by his bad behaviour because he had been so doting and loving before.  I guess I just could not grasp it.  I could not understand why he would not try to make it work.  The game of doing as little as possible was like living with a bratty twelve year old.  But I was caught and hooked and sucked in like a magnet or something.  I was desperate to make it work.  I did not want to see. I wanted to reinforce the positive.  Except this game was a very different game and those rules did not apply.

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