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.