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.
Saturday, November 11, 2000
Thursday, November 09, 2000
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 08, 2000
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 07, 2000
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.
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