I have found myself doing alot of thinking today about why I went on antidepressents while I was living with Jack. We had been having numerous arguments, in which I was always the one who was wrong, even when I was right. This had led me to become desperate to please Jack, and from that desperation I would lose my cool alot faster and cry or yell. On top of that came all the emotional and mental stuff from the fusion being broken and my having to spend more time off my feet again and in more pain. We had argued for a while, over something that I felt I had every right to be upset with. He and I had discussed playing wiht others and things like that. He had agreed to let me know if something like that were going to take place. Well he started talking with someone who lived only a couple hours from us, and she had expressed an interest in meeting with him and possibly playing in the future. he had expressed the same interest to her. All I asked was that I know if he was going to meet her. We had started arguing because when I had been there for a short while we had discussed play partners and polys and stuff like that and he had insisted he did not want another sub, nor did he wish to play with another. He said that his wife and myself were more than enough for him. I was very satisfied with this. I had told him outright that I could handle his being married, but I didn't think I could handle him taking another sub or playing with another sub due to how my marriage with LK had ended with him literally replacing me wiht another woman. After a while, he started talking about really wanting to play with this girl and all that. I said something along the lines of I had thought he didn't want another sub or things like that. He swore he never said that to me. At the same time he started talking about moving in another woman, a sub who was pregnant beacuse he didn't want her to have an abortion and he wanted to provide her with another option rather than see her go through the pain of an abortion. He even asked if Doe and/or I would be agreeable to adopting the baby once it was born. We talked about it, and I had no trouble saying yes to the baby or the woman living with us until he started talking about collaring her and training her and all that. Again he swore he never said he wouldn't take a third and that I was mistaken. I felt very hurt and betrayed because I remembered what he said. I even looked it up in my jorunals and sure enough it was in there. My thoughts about him saying he didn't want a third. He swore I made it up or remembered wrong. We argued for a couple days, with him saying some pretty mean things, really hurting my feelings and doing it on purpose. I finally lost control and started screaming back at him. Well anyway, we made the agreement that he would let me know before he did anything, and I forced myself to accept the others (be they play partner or live in) because as his slave, I had no choice and if I wanted the relationship to continue I had to accept this arrangement. No problem, I could live with it. THen, he went and met with this woman who lived two hours away, without telling me he was going to do it. I found out because someone msg me on ICQ and asked me why I wasn't going with him to meet her. When he got home, he was very tired. I was not going to bring it up until the next day because he was tired. Instead, he brought it up. He demanded that I tell him how I felt, and I told him that it hurt my feeling to have him break his promise to me about not meeting her without telling me first. He of course heard it as I was completely insanely jealous and was telling him he couldn't meet new people without my permission, which was not at all what I was saying, I had said exactly what I meant, that his not telling me hurt my feelings. He said some really cruel things, and I got very angry. Doe of course came down on his side. I was upset that he broke his word to me, not that he had met with this woman. Neither of them understood this. This argument continued for a while, and I ended up crying for 24 hours straight. That's when I went and got anti depressants, I figured if I was crying like that for that long, that I was depressed. I continued taking them for a while. Eventually Jack accused me of using tears to mainpulate him and as "water works" which I wasn't doing. THis really hurt because the only reason I even allowed myself to cry in front of him was he had initially insisted that to force myself to hold back my tears when I needed/wanted to cry, was unhealthy for me and I should allow myself to release those feelings if I needed to. HIs change of viewpoint on this contributed a great deal to the problems that only got worse as time went on. I re-trained myself not to cry. and the zoloft helped with this by smoothing out my mood. The erosion of my self esteem had begun. Jack would accuse me of being irrational no matter how calm I was when speaking to him. This insult would of course set me off because it hurt me so badly by completely dismissing the efforts i was making and the progress I had already made. Now when I think back on it, I think he would purposely hurt me emotionally in order to make me explode so he could back up his insult that I was irrational. Eventually, I learned to not react to his shit and just keep my mouth shut. Unforunately, I couldn't do this for more than 2 weeks at a time before I literally lost my mind.

Anyway, in April I stopped taking the Zoloft because I no longer believed I was the irrational one. Having been there for over a year, and having seen first hand both his mood swings and Doe's, I felt that I was not the one who needed drugs that badly. That and I no longer was in bed, my pain was in control, and I no longer felt the need for the pills. I went through some withdrawl, where my moods were inconsistent for a couple weeks, but that leveled out. The last few months that I lived there, I did not take the meds, and neither Jack nor Doe noticed any change in my moods with the expection of my PMS weeks when I would get quieter to control my crankiness. THere was no increase in our arguments, nor decreases. There was no change in my crying, it didn't get worse, it didn't get better. I became angry that I had stayed on the medication as long as I had because I was afraid I would lose Jack if I stopped taking them. I became enraged that they both insisted I take the pills when their behavior was 3 times worse than mine ever was. I think for Jack, the zoloft was the easy "out" for him. I think he figured the zoloft would take care of my "moods" and he wouldn't have to put any effort forth to communicate with me or support me in any way. Sort of on the same lines he believed with the roses. Occasionally he would bring me roses. He expected those roses to replace any loving/intimiate interaction between us. For him, by giving me a rose, it wiped the slate clean of every insult, every cold shoulder and all that. I was suppsoed to see the roses as a replacement for him and a physical symbol that he cared about me. I did see them as the symbol, but they never replaced the personal one on one interaction that we had once had before everything got so bad. He could never understand how I was not satisfied with a rose every week and why I still wanted play, intercourse, conversation and things like that. I think part of the reason he could not comprehend how I could not be 100% satisfied with an almost platonic relationship was because his wife could. She did not need, nor even want, to talk to him about how she felt or what she thought. She did not want sex with him or need it. To her, just his insulting her once in a while, and thus showing he noticed her, was enough. It wasn't enough for me. Maybe that makes me selfish, but I don't think so. I don't think any other person would have accepted the stuff that was going on. Three and four day silences for no given reason. sex once a month. conversations almost never unless it was neccessary for the business. no interpersonal interaction and no support for anything. A very cold relationship. Very sad. very very sad.

I spent alot of time today thinking about being afraid of Jack even now that I'm not with him. I've wondered why it is still there. Will it ever go away? why do I even give a shit how he feels or what he thinks? It's so confusing sometimes. I wonder if my mind is just trying to drive myself insane. Then I think that for a while there, things went very well. And for quite a while, he was my main focus. Those things are not easy to just erase no matter what occured in the relationship. I had a really weird dream last night, and Jack was in it. We were just talking for some of the time, then we were playing. He had me suspended from the rafter of a garage, though not his garage and was flogging me. I was begging him to stop and he wouldn't. I woke up before it ended, so I don't know what happened or what would have happened. When I woke up I was shaking a bit and very flustered. It took me a few moments to realize where I was and who was touching my leg. When I went back to sleep the dream picked up almost where it left off but it wasn't Jack flogging me anymore, it was my master. Very weird. I wonder if my subcoscious was bringing up the fear I felt while speaking with Jack via ICQ yesterday? It could be. I'm not a dream interpretor so who the hell knows, I'm just guessing.

This afternoon, I found myself remembering when Jack and I took the kids over to Jack's brother's house for a cook out. Jack's brother and his wife had made steaks and salad as stuff. I served Jack his plate, and attended his needs without having to be asked. This was fairly early in the relationship. And Jack, on the way home, told me how proud he was of me, how I had pleased him and how perfectly I had served his needs and desires in front of others without being self conscious about it. I don't know why that memory popped up, but it did. Since it did, I figured I'd pop it in here. I'm guessing that it popped up because I had talked about how it wasn't all bad between him and I when I blogged yesterday. That makes some sense to me.

I found myself having to contact Jack earlier this week, which all in all isn't a big deal. However, I got an email response in which he stated that he had seen what I wrote on "abuse" on my web site, I am assuming he saw this blog. I know he doesn't see anything wrong with the way he behaves, and I guess that's his perogative. I also no longer care what he thinks about the relationship. I know that for me, it was indeed very abusive. This blog, is for me to vent about my feelings and thoughts which crop up from the memories of that relationship. I changed the names to prevent "black listing" anyone directly, and to protect him, though I know i owe him nothing. I'm just not the kind of person to seek revenge, never have been. I placed the blog here on the web site for the sole hope that maybe, by sharing my thoughts and emotions as I heal this crap, it might help someone else. I am unsure as to why my knowing he has read these things has made me feel I have to defend them. I think it might be because I had to defend myself and most of the things I did with him most of the time. Yet, I still feel the fear. Fear of his displeasure, fear of his reaction. Which is technically a stupid feeling since I am no longer within any reasonable distance of him so he can't possibly hurt me physically. I don't understand why I even bother responding to him politely, when I know that I don't have to. And that makes me wonder just how much of a weenie I am, and is it a good thing or a bad thing. That weenie part of me has existed my whole life, and is not a direct result from my relationship with Jack, though it was certainly used during that relationship and brought more to the forefront. Using the weenie part of me is what allowed me to act like the little door mat he wanted so badly for a few weeks at a time before i would explode. It was a very vicious cycle.

However, I've also thought of the times that weren't bad. I read a line in a Stephen King book called Insomnia where a woman had been beaten up by her husband and was receiving therapy when she finally left him. She said that she still thought about the good stuff, but had to remind herself that those times were the exception, not the rule, and they were a distraction to the truth that her husband had become a very dangerous and violent man for the last few years of the marriage. I think that sometimes remembering the good things that occured is a distraction, but overall it is a good thing to think about them. It is sort of a balancing act. It doesn't take away the impact that the bad things had on me, but it does help me to see a few things. Like why I stayed as long as I did, and why I got involved in the first place, and why I continue to actually care about this man and his family, and why I still hurt a little about everything that occured. It wasn't all bad, and it is those good times that I hurt for. I do remember them. The times when we got along very well, and the d/s was strong, but so too was our communication and all the trappings that went with it. At first, the good stuff far outweighed the bad, but eventually it shifted to the bad stuff occuring far more frequently than the good stuff. When that shift occured is when the relationship went from healthy, to abusive. I remember the times when he would rub my back because I was hurting so badly and sometimes rubbing the sore areas helped relax the muscles and thus decrease the pain. I remember the times where we were able to talk for a long time, without arguing with one another. Those were the times that I thought we had finally managed to work out the problems that had occured, and this believe allowed me to continue trying again and again, only to have the same problems crop up. I remember the times he cooked out, and we would all have like a little party, basically a family dinner with laughter and such. The day we went to the county fair was a good day as well. The times we went to meetings for the business and actually enjoyed the trip. The times we cuddled on the couch, or slept in each other's arms. There were good things there. Remembering them hurts a little bit still, but I expect that. It is, to me anyway, a very normal reaction to such a situation. But I also think my mind purposely tries to remind me of why I left because for every good thing I remember, it brings up at least 2 bad things. The fights he started in the middle of the night because someone else pissed him off and I made the mistake of coming out of the bedroom at that moment, and thus I got blamed and he picked a fight. The times that he misunderstood something I said, then held onto that misunderstanding as the gospel truth no matter what I said to explain it. The times he would get so upset with me for staying off my feet like the doctor wanted me to, and then get upset with me for not following doctor's orders. The confusion, the inconsistency and all the rest far outweigh any of the good stuff.

Re-reading my old journals so clearly shows a roller coaster of emotional instability that worsened as the situation intensified itself. I found myself constantly defending everything I thought or said. One day I'd write about how things seemed to be working out and we were getting along again and even talking to each other, the next day's entry was venting because we had another fight. Either caused by his mistaken beliefs about something I said or some thing I did that he did not like, but the arguments all eventually turned to basically ending the relationship. I was not perfect, and there were things I did wrong. Such as I could never keep to the curfew he set for me. At first it was because I felt uncomfortable telling Doe to stop talking and I had to go to bed. I felt it was rude to tell his wife to basically be quiet. However, I did eventually get over that. But sometimes the only time I ever had alone was after midnight when everyone was finally in bed, and I needed that half an hour to relax in silence. People need alone time once in a while. I made mistakes when I was learning to run the office the way he wanted. I picked a few fights, and there were times i was in a bad mood or cranky or whatever. I was not perfect. But I also know that what his behavior showed he wanted from me, was something I could not achieve, and I told him that. He would insist he did not want someone who just obeyed without question and who did only exactly what he told them to do, and nothing more. I can't be that way, and he knew it. He would say he wanted someone who he could say "go ahead, you handle this and this is what I want done". Like when it came time to get quotes for insurance for hte business. I called three companies. In order to get quotes I had to fill out an "application" which gave them the information they needed to provide the quote. Doe told me not to fill the papers out because Jack had not told me to do. I went ahead and did itanyway because I knew all the information they wanted, and he had asked for 3 quotes. Sometimes, my ability to handle snags that arose during the carrying out of his orders was fine, other times I was "wrong" because I had done something he had not told me directly to do. Sometimes he would say I did the right thing, other times he would ridicule me, or completely ignore me for days because I handled a snag that he had not forseen and thus givne me directions on how to handle it. I never knew which was the right way to handle things with him. He said he wanted me to handle things, but when I did he acted like I had killed his best friend or something. Finally I began fighting back. Using the insurance thing as an example, a little later he asked me to get a quote from another company to see if it might save the business some money. I did so, but did not fill out the application. Instead, I got it by fax and left it for him to fill out. Which two weeks later, he had not done, and was upset with me for not getting the quote. I told him basically that I couldnt' get the quote because I didn't have his permission to fill out the form, which was sitting in his "in box" waiting for his attention, along with a bunchof other things like letters he wanted sent that hadn't been because he never signed them. He would of course, tell me he knew I could handle this stuff and expected me to do so to complete his order. I responded with "true. but everytime I do that, you get pissed at me for doing things you did not specifically tell me to do" This, was the truth, however he refused to see it as such and the fight was on. So in those instances, I instigated a fight. I didn't want to fight with him that was not my goal. My goal was to tell him why I had not just handled the applications myself when I knew I could.

Another misunderstanding came up when he sat at the living room coffee table and started running off a verbal list of things he wanted me to do that day. He was listing alot of things. I started losing track and told him to wait a second that's a lot of stuff. I got up to get some paper so I could start writing it all down. I meant that the list was alot for me to just simply remember. He took it to mean that I hated my job and didn't want to do it. He started yelling and a fight was on. No matter how I explained to him what I had meant, he insisted that i hated my job and every time he got pissed at me for something in the business he threw it at me. My defense of if I hated it so much then why am I busting my ass so hard to do the job right, fell on deaf ears. All my behaviors that proved his words to be false, and his belief to be wrong, were ignored as if they did not exist. Yet I continued literally working myself so hard that I was on more medication to control the pain and thus continue working in an attempt to please him. To make him happy and to hear those words that I craved but so very rarely ever heard, the "you did a good job" or "thank you" or "I'm proud of you". I craved those words and did everything I could to hear them, but I always fell short somehow. If I had a list of 20 things to do in a day, and I got 19 done, he would see only the last one I had not finished yet and get pissed at me. Or if I finished all 20 and Doe had not done the things he told her to do, my success was used to belittle her. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't. I was so terrified of his cold shoulder treatments, and he would give them so often with no reason for them. He would tell me that it wasn't me he was mad at, yet I was the only one in the house he refused to talk to during his "silence". What was I supposed to believe? I'd watch him talk to Doe, the kids, and ayli when she was there, yet if I asked him a question, he wouldn't answer me, no matter what it was a bout. If I tried to start a conversation with him, he ignored me, or got up and walked away from me. So, yes, I thought it was me he was pissed at. Though most of the time, I never even found out what I had done wrong. eventualy I reached a point of desperation to always be right, because I felt that in his eyes I was always completely wrong, and I had started to believe wholely that I was a complete fuck up. I wanted redemption from that. I wanted to know he finally thought I did something right, so I could have some little nugget to hold on to and fight off the "complete failure" feelings. When I tried to explain this to him, he accused me of manipulation and all kinds of crap. Eventually I stopped trying to explain things to him and took to behaving like Doe. Taking his emotional temperature when he came home, not saying anything to him until I had guaged his mood, making very few decisions without his direct input and all the stuff like that. This drove him nuts from time to time, but most of the time he was happy with this behavior from me. When I acted like that I got the "good job"s and the play, sex, interaction, cuddling and such. When I followed his verbal statements of what he wanted, I got the cold shoulder treatment, anger, insults and irrational mood swings. He never saw this pattern no matter what I said to him. Doe simply put it down to "That's Jack", like his standing over her for 30 minutes yelling at her saying she was stupid and shut was a perfectly ok thing for him to do to her. Like his getting pissed and breaking his glasses, or getting pissed and beating up the truck with a wrench of some sort, like his being cranky and belittling thier son, like all of these things were perfectly acceptable ways to handle anger. But considering she was allowed to be extremely irrational and cranky for a week out of every month because she had PMS, I can see how she thought this was ok. However, when I would get cranky from excess pain or PMS, I was told i needed medication because I was irrational. Eventually, I gave in and got an antidepressant beacuse I had reached a point where I cried for 24 hours non stop. Doe's PMS consisted of behaviors such as cutting the shirt off my daughter, screaming at the kids for hours, picking fights with my daughter, belittling her son, slapping my son so hard he had a handprint on his back for 2 hours, or slapping his wet butt for splashing in the tub (something he could normally do) very hard resulting in the kid being terrified to take baths anymore. These behaviors from her were OK. If I complained she responded "I'm pms'ng" like that made it ok. One day I lost my temper and told her what my mother had always told me "PMS is not an excuse to be a bitch!" and that she needed to learn to control her PMS better, or maybe she needed some pills to regulate her moods. needless to say that didn't go over well, and Jack blamed me for those arguments too. I eventually reached a point where I said nothing, and did my absolute best to just let everything go and keep my mouth shut because no matter whatI said,it was wrong. Like when I told Doe I did not agree with her cutting the shirt off my daughter, and that I thought it was wrong and she should apologize to my daughter, she immediately started jumping up and down and screaming she was not an abusive mother. I had not called her abusive or anything like that. But anytime I spoke about not liking the way she was handling my kids (especially since she didn't do the same shit to her son like slap him for backtalking her) she immediately started yelling that she wasn't abusive. One of these arguments ended in a fist fight when she slapped my son for not eating his dinner after I had told her repeatedly that he does not eat when he is sick, and he was sick. I lost my temper on that one and jumped the couch, stood right in front of her and told her not to hit my son ever again. She immediately responded with she is not abusive. and I went all over her, and basically told her that she is. She responded by trying to hit me, she landed one punch on my shoulder, so I punched back and got her breast. She said it still hurt the next day. I couldn't believe how quickly it went from me defending my son from being slapped for something he shouldn't have been slapped for, to her and I hitting each other. It was ridiculous.

So much of it was ridiculous and I still can't believe that they both think their relationship is a close, healthy and loving one. It is far from it in my opinion, and it completely fits the profile of a very abusive relationship. Isolation, insults, low self estemm, physical reprecussions for displeasing Jack and on and on. OH well. At least i'm not there anymore.

ok..lets see if this fixes the dang thing

hmmmmmmmmmm

testing

Current Issues Affected By Past Abuse

So many things from that year have affected me, and still affect me. I do not like knowing this, but today was a major example of it. A simple joke, that I should have taken as a joke, instead hurt my feelings and made me cry. All because I felt I was being told that I was irresponsible and useless, which my logical mind knows to be untrue. But so many times I sat there and was yelled at, told i was stupid, didn't pay attention to what I was doing and couldn't get things right, especially when it came to money. Those insults far outwieghed the occasional compliments. What really sucks is I know I'm good with money, and accounts, and budgets and all that. I know this for a fact. Yet, whenever someone happens to make me feel even a small bit like I suck at it, those feelings overwhelm what I already know to be true. And I know what that is from. It's from reaching a point where I totally believed I was as bad as Jack kept telling me I was, and kept punishing me for trying to correct it, but never being able to.

Why do people find it so neccessary to destroy the security and self esteem of others? I realize that it makes them easier to control. Flat out, someone who views themselves in a bad way are easier to control, they're more apt to do whatever they are told to do. More apt to take verbal and physical abuse above and beyond what someone with a secure self esteem will accept. So removing self esteem is the way to go to keep people in control. But it leaves such painful results behind. I do not understand why someone would want to hurt people this badly. But then I never have totally understood the mind or intentions behind a person who is abusive. That's probably because I personally can't conceive of deliberately hurting someone that I care about this way.

I hate knowing that my past, and those wounds which are still fresh, will affect my present. I hate knowing that the people around me must pay for the wounds I am carrying within me. It just isn't fair to them. Though, they keep telling me it isn't a matter of fairness. That they understood what they were getting in to when they agreed to be with me. But, I can't help feeling guilty every time something triggers an irrational emotional response within me like that joke did this morning. And I sit and end up thinking about Jack and all the emotional turmoil he put me through. And the physical danger he put me in. Especially in the mornings when my back hurts so much and my legs won't move. I know that all that physical labor I did while with Jack contributed to the increased rate of degeneration in that disk. And I know that even though I did those things freely, that the decision was made under extreme duress. I knew that if I did not do the work he watned me to, I would have to listen to him insult me, and deal with his complete withdrawl, stony cold silences, and fuming anger. HIs irrational mood swings deeply affected how I did things and why I did them. Had I been completely myself, and made the choice of whether or not to work in that mindset, I would not have pushed myself anywhere near the level that I did.

On the days that I refused to work, because I was in so much pain, the hell everyone in the house had to put up with was horrible. And I felt guilty. Jack would play on that guilt and tell me how difficult the day was for him without me helping him, and how he missed me being in the truck with him. Or he'd get angry and withdrawn, sitting on the couch and glaring at everyone. Not speaking a single word to me, and not telling me why. Or he'd tell me I was just being lazy and loafing around in bed all day. Such hurtful things that I began to feel taht if i did not work all the time, the way he did, I would have to pay a very high price. A couple times, on the days I could nto physically work, he would make up reasons to bust my ass. and THat was even worse. I knew I was being punished for not working because many of the things he came up with were things I did not actually do, nor did anyone in the house do them. So he got what he wanted, and I am paying the price for it now.
I do not like knowing how easily I was duped by him. Nor how easily I was subjugated. Knowing just how easily I fell back into the abusive mindset of a battered woman, is a very scary realization. It means that I can very easily be put back in that mindset in the future. This knowledge sometimes makes it difficult for me to be as submissive as I want to be, out of pure fear of being hurt. This bothers me. It is getting better, but it is also still there. Hopefully, with time, things will start to even out, and the wounds willl heal.

Shutting My Mouth

Learning to keep my mouth shut and not argue with Jack was one of the first things he really pressured into me. There are constant remarks in my journals about keeping my mouth shut, fearing to defend myself even when he was obviously wrong, and things like that. It's scary to realize just how quickly I backed off from him. It didn't take long. Within the first few weeks of my being there, I learned that disagreeing with Jack was a bad idea, both for me mentally/emotionally and physically.

Exerpts from my journals
Jan. 19, 1999 Tues. 11:59 PM
I already learned that if I try to defend myself or correct him when he is assuming something I get told I'm worked up and need to calm down. Or I get the look which tells me to just shut up. So I make fewer attempts to speak my side and just keep my mouth shut because it's safer for my ass. Though I suppose dumping it out on these pages is opening my mouth. I've been censoring what I write beacuse I don't want to argue with Jack. I almost died when he admitted he was wrong about something today. I think it was forgiveness or something like that. yeah. he said he doesn't forgive people and I corrected him. He said I was right. I watch the way he talks to Doe sometimes. I wonder what the hell he is doing. Today he gave us a list of 10 things to do. We did 8 of them. Doe busted her ass cleaning this damn house and doing the things Jack said he wanted done but didn't write on the list. If he told Doe she did good, I didn't hear it. I did hear him remark about the bills not being tacked up. I offered to do the bill thing but Doe said no, she had done everything else and the bill thing could wait until tomorrow. Doe physically hurt herself, was in pain and limping from doing all the things he wanted done. Jack did not say thank you, least not that I heard. After dinner, the kids had forgotten a few dishs. It was obvious Doe was hurting and rather than tell her to sit down and relax Jack told her to shut up and clean it. I got very angry at that but managed to keep my mouth shut.
END Of Journal Entry Exerpt

By January 23, Jack was demanding full control of my money. He wanted me to have it deposited into his checking account.At first I fought him on this, but eventually I gave in. Mostly because he used guilt against me.By this same date, I was wearing his collar. No real discussion of it, he ordered me to wear it at night. He said it was to remind me that I am sub, since I was having trouble feeling sub since the fusion had broken. But once I started wearing it, he began acting as if he were my Master, and I stupidly responded that way. By the end of February I was peirced and totally owned. I can't believe how quickly it all moved. I mean, I arrived in December and by February, it was all basically a done deal. Re-reading my journals, I can see where I felt overwhelmed and scared by all of it. I mentioned feeling that way more than once. But Jack just kept pushing things, said it was in response to the blatant need in my eyes to submit. I don't know for sure anymore. We argued pretty much from the get go, but it got worse and worse. Whenever he was angry, he would pull away and go silent. Most of the time he didn't even tell me why he was pissed at me, or what I had done wrong. He would start saying things in a sarcastic manner, cracking jokes and stuff, but as soon as I did the same in return, he got pissed and I got punished. I remember one day where he literally punished me every time I moved. By the afternoon I was hiding from him, afraid to even breathe, terrified he would say "bedroom!" and I'd find myself getting my ass busted yet again. Things were just such a mess.

Well I'm not really in the mood to be blogging about this, and my thoughts are rather confused, so I'll stop here.

Escalating Isolation and Erosion of Self-esteem

Isolation

Isolation is often the first step an abusive person takes with their victim. What this means is they cut off the victim's support system by removing them from their friends, family and other possible sources of support. In this way the victim has only the abuser's point of view to go off of. Sometimes, isolation ends when the abuser feels they have perfect and complete control of their victim, though usually the abuser still demands that the victim keep their encounters with others to a minimum. Isolating the victim causes them to feel alone, helpless, vulnerable and completely powerless. These feelings work in the favor of the abuser to keep their victim under control. How an abuser goes about isolating their victim tends to vary with each person, though the results are usually the same. Some people will outright forbid their victim from talking with others. Using such things as verbal harassment and physical abuse to aide in getting obedience from their victim. Some skip straight to physical abuse saying things like "If you hadn't talked to Joanne today, you wouldn't have given me such trouble and I wouldn't have to do this!" or others in a similar vein.

For me, the isolation did not start right away. I run mailing lists for bdsm, a chat room on IRC, a large web site for BDSM and one for myself and poetry/writings, I love writing letters to my friends and talking to them on the phone. At first, Jack's opinion of all those things was quite positive. He would tell me how proud he was of my web site, my writings and the efforts I put forth. He supported me in my decision to overhaul the web site completley using graphics that I made myself. He would help me do the final drafts on my new articles; looking for typos, grammer mistakes and things like that. He said he would help me make the LnR site a business. Teaching me more in depth web design things, and helping me with the start up costs and setting up shopping carts and things like that. He had me print out every page that was on the site both as they appear when viewed, and the html that created them. He started going over those pages with me, pointing out where the html could be different, easier to use. he gave me many different books on web design and running an online business. he and his wife used to run a lingerie business off the web and coupled with real life lingerie parties and catalogues. I really enjoyed his support, and was grateful for all of his help. He joined my discussion list and helped me keep things on topic, and keep people from flaming or fighting. He would join in on the discussion nights in the channel, helping me run things there, come up with new topics and keep the discussions on topic. He told me again and again how proud he was of me, how my intelligence made him feel proud especially when I accepted his collar because then he owned me. He said I was a great asset to him. I liked that. I liked knowing that he knew how much my web site meant to me. That to me, I viewed it as a job, even though I did not get paid for the work I put into it. I love helping others, and I love writing. With the web site and discussion lists I could do both of those things at the same time. He told me I was very talented and he had never seen anyone who could explain so many things about BDSM in different ways, and adjust the explanation to suit the person I was speaking to in order to make it more readily understood by that person.

Eventually he pulled back from these activities. I put a post on my discussion list. One that went into some detail about an incident between him and I. It wasn't even a negative incident, just something that was on topic for the discussion at that time. Someone had asked if any subs had ever done this and I said I had and gave my example, how I felt and all that. He jumped all over me. Telling me that I was airing his private life on the list. That he didn't like that. He didn't want me to post anything personal at all and on and on and on. At first he would say those things calmly and quietly. So, to please him, I would censor my posts and not put anything real personal up there. Which made posting to the list almost useless for me, and in some ways curtailed the person I am. But I could understand what he was saying. Eventually though, it reached a point where anything I put on the list was viewed as airing his private life, in his eyes. He started yelling. Calling me back stabbing and things like that. Arguing with me over every post. Punishing me physically for daring to post at all. Telling me it was a waste of my time. That it was useless. At first, I continued to participate in my lists, struggling to find a middle ground between my goals and his rule of no personal facts on the list. For a while, he stopped yelling at me for posting things and I figured I had found that middle ground. Eventually, he started again. Telling me that I was spending too much time at the computer, I was not contributing to the family, I was ignoring him, I was wasting my time, and I was not serving him properly because I was online. So I cut my online time down dramatically, stopped posting as much, and did everything I could to do more around the house and try to please him. This seemed to work for a while and I settled into a routine. I had 2 hours on line in the evenings, that was it. I started doing other things to fill my extra time, cross stitch, writing, journaling, cleaning the house, and stuff like that. He seemed happy for a while. Then the harassment started again. The same complaints and insults. This time he finally said it outright that he did not want me online at all. He did not want me running lists, or discussions, or working on the web site. To him, it was a complete waste of my time. At first I refused to give it up completely. My friends were online and because so many of them were living so far away from me, online was really the only way I had of speaking to them. He would put my friends down, saying they were only using me as a crying pad, someone to complain to all the time. Eventually I got tired of the circle jerk arguments and stopped going online almost completely. My channel on IRC pretty much died and stayed that way for the next 8 or 9 months. My lists got extremely quiet, though once in a while I would toss out new topics because email was ok for very short periods of time, but IRC was a complete no no. I couldn't spend alot of time composing the same long well thought out responses that i used to make, but I could at least toss out topics from time to time. Eventually, the time periods between topic tossing grew longer and longer, the list got quieter and quieter. It got to a point about 10 months into the relationship where I was only checking email once or twice a week, instead of at least once a day. I was never on my channel, so the cservice people on undernet purged it from their bot, and a friend of mine (intoit{N}) who is a cservice op made sure it got put back in immediately.

I remember that I used to make phone calls, not alot, but once in a while, to friends of mine. We'd talk and laugh and joke around. After those phone calls, Jack would pick a fight with me. Accusing me of manipulating my friends into hating him, or engaging in a pity party for one, and other equally vicious things. Eventually I stopped calling my friends and they stopped calling me because of that.

The first few times he saw me sit down to write letters to people, he made fun of them. said I was archaic and desperate for attention from anyone. That I was probably writing about how rotten he was and how unhappy I was and stuff like that. I offered to let him read the letters so he could see for himself that this was not what i was doing. He refused, of course. Eventually I got tired of the insults and stopped writing letters as well.

With the exception of the outright order not to get online anymore, the isolation was completed using harrassment, insults, and bullying. It reached a point where I literally had no one to talk to and I was so afraid to try and talk to others because of how he would react. I just got so very tired of his arguments. I completely gave up working on the web stie and I had only completed half of the overhaul, so for a year it looked horrible with different graphics on every page. It lost visitors because it wasn't updated.

Interestingly enough, whenever I got desperate enough, I would sneak online to talk to a friend or two. Or I would sneak a phone call to a friend of mine named David. When I presented the problems and arguments which were occuring, I presented them as I had displeased Jack. That I was the one at fault and sought their opinion on how I could do things better and make him happy. I was already taking the blame for everything and never seriously considered that there was a problem with Jack, moreso than a problem with me. I think these desperate attempts at outside interaction may have played a part in my ability to stay detached enough that when it came down to my life, I could finally leave. None of the few people I was able to talk to from time to time ever called him abusive. Though, they were thinking it. They knew something was wrong because of my complete abandonment of the things that were important to me, and my withdrawl from being online at all.

Being isolated hurt me badly. I was so confused by Jack's sudden turn about on my online activities. he went from supporting them, understanding their importance to me, and helping me set and achieve goals, to hating everything and everyone I talked to. Any Dom that spoke to me was "out to take me from him". Any sub I spoke to was trying to talk me into just leaving. I tried many times to discuss this with Jack, but no matter what I said or how I approached the subject, it always ended in a fight. The fight always ended in my apologizing for getting online at all, and for displeasing him. Taking all the blame and saying he was right, that I had let him down, that I had broken his rules, and then I would accept whatever physical punishment he chose to give me. Though many of those times, instead of hitting me, he would just go sleep on the couch. Denying me his presence, something he knew hurt me to no end, until I admitted that I was wrong to talk to my friends.

Though when all was said and done, and I did return to being online, I learned who my true friends were. They were still there, waiting for me, and hoping/praying that I would eventually see what was going on and leave on my own. Knowing full well that I had to realize for myself what I was doing before I could leave. Knowing they couldn't tell me that he was abusive because I wouldn't have believed it. And the few occasions any of them made any implication to something being wrong with Jack, I defended him 100%. I think back to some of the things I said in defense of him and I cringe.

So that's how he managed to isolate me. Once the isolation was pretty much completed, the other insults and abuses increased in frequency and intensity. I can see that clearly now. I hurt so bad over ignoring my friends, but my desire to satisfy jack was so strong. And everytime he told me I let him down, or displeased him, or disobeyed him, I was crushed and in tears.

Background Continues

As time went on, the acknowledgements of the things I was doing disappeared, and were replaced with insults. Nothing I ever did was good enough. He started ridiculing me for my thoughts. My journal, which was supposed to be a free place for me to write anything I thought or felt in, became fuel for him to fight wth me over. If I put in something like he had confused me, or said something which hurt my feelings, I would find myself in a fight over my not being submissive enough, or not accepting him, or being "irrational". I couldn't understand the change because when I first got there, he could read my journal without getting upset, no matter what I said. Instead, he would notate the areas he wished to discuss more verbally, and we'd sit down and have long conversations about what i had written, and why I wrote it. But after a few months, that all stopped. INstead, anything I wrote could be used to berate me, or hurt me.

I started out basically helping out around the house and with the kids. Becuase the fusion had broken in my pelvis, there was little I could do comfortably without landing in bed for a few days. So mostly I just pitched in where i could. He eventually gave me a list of things that I was supposed to do every day. Things like wear my hair in a pony tail every other day, take out something for dinner, dust, fold laundry, and other things like that. At first, he told me how much he appreciated what I was doing, and that his wife Doe really liked having my help. Eventually this turned to "You don't do enough around here!" and "you treat Doe like a maid". This made me do even more in an attempt to please him. The more I did, the more disatisfied he became and the more desperate I became to please him like I used to. It got to the point where I completely ignored the limitations set on me by my doctors, and forced myself to do the things he wanted me to do. Mostly working in his business which put me on my feet a great deal. Between helping him service customers, servicing my own customers, and trying to run the office, I literally worked until 9 or 10 PM just about everyday. With SUnday being my day to catch up on paperwork and things I had not gotten to during the week. But he was never satisfied. EVentually I started believing that I was a failure, and the more time that passed, the more he denounced everything I did, and the harder I tried to please him. What a vicious circle that is. These drastic turn abouts in his personality did not happen overnight. they happened slowly, over a period of about 7 months, getting worse as time went on. So that everytime I ended up butting heads with these new "personality traits", I found it very easy to take the blame for them. It isn't until now, looking back that I can clearly see that the vast majority of the arguments we had were indeed not my fault. Thinking back on them, however, still hurts. Even more than the hurt though is the anger. I am so mad at him for all the insults, all the nights i cried alone because he broke a promise to me and punished me many times by sleeping on the couch instead of with me. (him and his wife have seperate bedrooms and have most of their married life due to him bieng gone so often in the military.) I get so angry that I want to smack him so hard his teeth rattle. All the times he made me feel useless, stupid, scared, worthless, and more. All those times I listened to him berate me and everything I did. And the anger just sits there. It is, I realize, a healthy response at this point in my recovery, but I still don't like feeling angry. Mostly what I am angry about is how he lied to me about the kind of person he was, and how he lied to himself so he wouldn't have to acknowledge what he had done, and thus could lay the blame for everything on me. I just do not understand people that know so little about themselves or who have to create this fantasy image of who/what they are because they can't face the truth. The truth of him is he is an abusive male.
Looking back, I can see all the symptoms of a battered woman in his wife Doe. She is afraid of him. She waits for him to come home, and checks out the window constantly. If she sees him she takes the emotional weather check and depending on what she thinks she sees is how she reacts. If he seems cranky she immediately starts cleaning so he can't accuse her of being lazy. If he doesnt' seem cranky, she will pick up a book and read. But either way, she instantly shuts of the TV so he can't accuse her of watching mindless drivel and doing nothing, or she changes the channel to CNN so he cna watch the news when he gets inside the house. Forget if she was watching a moveie or something. He can stand there and literally tear her apart for hours, and she says nothing. She just takes it. sits there quietly crying while he tells her how stupid she is, how useless she is, what a pain in the ass she is, how dumb and things like that. She constantly puts herself down and admits she is dumb and stupid and useless and lazy. The worst she will do is say "Fuck you Jack!" then go to her bedroom and cry silently for 5 minutes. Then she comes back out and it's as if nothing ever happened. The entire time I was tehre, they never had sex. SHe had originally told me that she was glad I was there and he and I had entered into a relationship "because now he will leave me alone and not pester me for sex". Towards the end, she swore she never said that and blamed their lack of a sex life on me. Forget that I had offered to sleep on the couch so she could sleep with him. Forget that I had insisted on taking my son out of her bed and putting him in a bed of his own, so she could have private time with her husband. She refused to do any of those things. Forget that every time he made a move on her, she turned him down. He would try to arouse her a bit with a hug, kiss or gentle caress and she would literally tell him to leave her alone, stop touching me, and things like that. She turned him down constantly, so he eventually stopped asking. Yet, she blamed it on me, and I took that blame too. Doe has hair down to her ass. SHe has not cut it in years. Why? Because Jack threatened to kill her then divorce her if she ever cut her hair again (that's her version of it). Jack said he told her he would divorce her if she ever cut it again. I don't know exactly whos' version is correct, but my money's on Doe's version because Jack's memory is so bad it isn't even funny. ALso, they both told me of a time where Doe had screwed up the money while Jack was away on assignment from the military, so badly that his car was repossessed. His punishment was to tie her down and rape her anally. She hates anal sex, and refuses to do it. he knew this and chose to do that to her, without lubricant, as a punishment for her mishandling of money. She not only accepted that behavior from him, but justified it with "I deserved it". No, they are not in a d/s relationship. She swears she is not submissive. ANd she's right, she's not. She's a battered woman. She would tell me how when she was growing up she was raped repeatedly by her foster father. I asked her once if she ever had therapy for it. She told me that the one time she had decided to go to therapy for it Jack refused to let her. He said she just had to "forget" it ever happened. somehow, I think he had an ulterior motive, that being she was easier to subjugate so long as she never realized her own worth. Healing that past abuse, would give her self esteem, self esteem would make her realize she does not have to put up with his abuse and thus leave. He cant' have that happening, so keep her "broken". None of these things were known to me before I moved in there. WHen I had talked with her before I moved in, she talked like their marriage was the epitomy of a loving union. But she mistakes being yelled at and called stupid with love. She knows Jack always salts his food, no matter what it is. And she would purposely move the salt just before dinner so he couldn't find it. Then he'd yell at her, call her stupid and things like taht. And I swear, she would smile. It was like his negative attention to her, his yelling at her and being pissed for hours was somehow an affirmation of "love' to her. All her anger at him however, did come out. And it came out in some very nasty ways. She would get very bitchy and purposely pick on the kids. My daughter was afraid of her, and to a certain extent so is her son. Though Billy is more afriad of his father and part of Billly hates his father, but his fear keeps him from telling Doe the truth of how he feels. Though he did tell me, and ayli about his hate and his fear on more than one occasion, and seperately as well.

I'm going to stop for now. I think this part came out beacuse of my thoughts about acceptance and acknowledgement and how important they sometimes are to people.

Background Information

I have spent a great deal of time in the past few days thinking over everything that occured when I lived out west for a while. For the sake of my protection, I will be using "fake" names of the people involved. That way, I can't be sued for libel or slander or any other stupid thing like that because I sure wouldn't put it past him to do that. So I'll call him "Jack", his wife "Doe" and their child "Billy".

How I ended up involved with Jack is basically a story of "life sucks, deal with it!" I had an operation in 1997. It was a fusion of the sacroiliac joint which is basically part of the pelvis. In Septbember 1998, I found out the fusion was broken. At that time I had military insurance. After exhausting all my medical options where I was living, I discovered that I had to move closer to a military base. I had very few choices, so I chose to go out west and stay with Jack and his wife. I arrived in December of 1998. I had known Jack for a little over a year online and had met him a couple times in real life. We had talked a great deal, online and on the phone. At first he scared me a little, yet excited me to no end. The way he described his preferences for BDSM were the ways I wanted to be submissive. We talked alot about everything, not just bdsm. And from the things he said, and the way we were able to get along, I thought we fit together well. When I arrived at his house, it was not to be his "slave" or even his "sub". Though we could "play" if we chose to. The conversations that had begun online continued in real life. We talked about everything. Running a business, kids, politics, bdsm, and anything else we could think of. He was quite dominant, in that he touched something in me that made me easily submit. It was not until January that we played or even made love. When the decision was made for us to enter into a relationship, I did so without it being based on "love" or even considering love as part of the relationship. At first, things went so well. We talked alot, he would tell me the things he thought I had done right, plus those I had messed up on. He would listen to my thoughts and feelings, no matter the cause. He was compassionate and caring, yet a bit strict. One memory that sticks in my brain is what happened on the night of Christmas 1998. I had a pain crisis, which is when my pain level breaks through all medication and skyrockets out of control. I was in bed, with severe muscle spasms and literally crying from the pain. He stayed with me every minute, massaging my lower back, and doing everything he could to make me feel better. Heating pads, ice bags, cuddles, and soothing words. Eventually he ordered his wife Doe to take me to the ER for medication. When I got back, he helped me into the bed because though the pain was under control again, I couldn't walk very well. The next few days he was very attentive, and seemed genuinely worried about me. This memory, and a few like it, are what made it so hard for me to realize and accept what he soon became. The two were so opposite, I could not reconcile them.

More later..dinner time.

Why a blog on abuse?

I have been having a great deal of trouble dealing with the memories I have of a bdsm relationship that turned quite abusive. The topic of abuse has come up on a few mailing lists that I am on, and I figured "hey no problem! I can deal with this easily" Turned out, I was wrong. I have been walking around for the past few days feeling very angry but at nothing in particular. Least I tried to lie to myself about why I am angry. I am angry because of the relationship and what occured within it. I am angry at myself for allowing such things to occur even though I knew it was abusive, but just couldn't face it for oh so many reasons. Rather than run from my feelings, and the discussions that are so very important about abuse, I decided to use my anger and hurt in a constructive manner. I remembered today that when I was dealing with the sexual abuse my daughter suffered at the hands of her father 7 years ago, I used that anger to try to bring about changes in the laws of the state I was living in at the time hopefully to aid other children of sexual abuse. And by doing something constructive with the anger, I did not deny the anger, nor ignore it. Instead, I worked with it and this helped me alot. So, I've decided to do the same here. But again, not just for myself, but for others as well. However, I have given myself one concession in this, and it is this blog. This blog is for me to use to vent my anger, and my hurt. To talk about the things that I remember and how they affect me now. To release them from my heart and mind. Knowing that this will help me, as written journals did before. I may also type in old journal entries from the journal I kept at that time. My hope is that this section will help others, either recognize their abusive situation (if they are in one) or to help others understand abuse better and how it affects the victims.