Damn, SP, I could have said the same thing about what my STBX said, did, accused me of, etc...
Quote:
And look -- I've been disrespected, shouted at, slapped; I've had a car door slammed on me (physically "on" me); I've had a full bottle of water thrown at my head; I've had holes smashed in my walls; I've been cursed, called every name in the book -- and some I had to look up; I've been told I'm repulsive, disgusting, and the scion of a family of "pure trash;" I've been told I ought to have been dumped 10 years ago; I've been told my actions are tantamount to rape; I've literally been spat upon.
I was hit, yelled at, insulted, kicked, had things thrown at me, insulted in front of my children, called repulsive, disgusting...and on and on...I kept a list for a while, because I thought some of the stuff was actually pretty original and impressive...and through it all, at least for me, I still kept trying to figure out a way to "win" her back - to convince her that I had changed enough for her to want to come home...only after we separated - after she was out of the home - and then I moved into an apartment - did I start to see what was going on...and how the fact that I loved this person said something profound about me...and stuff I needed to work on in a deep and urgent way.
I'm not saying this is the case for you - that's up to you to find out - but it does strike me, again and again on this board, that just as much as our relationships brought the WAS to a point of crisis - it also presented us with that same crisis by proxy...and there was something in that person/process/crisis (which we sometimes call marriage) that compelled us to give ourselves up to that person enough - to make ourselves vulnerable to that person enough - that we knew, deep down inside, on some visceral level, that if we entangled ourselves enough in this person, it would expose our unfinished business.
...which...is exactly what annoyed me most about the Sandra Tsing Loh article...it was entirely devoid of any introspection - of any awareness (or at least admission) of the fact that her actions had their own historicity. Her article made it sound like divorce happens in a happy little vacuum - in which the conflicts between a couple merely indicate that they're incompatible - and she seems unable to fathom the idea that when people fall in love they are lured by something that attracts them to one another - and that this attraction has a history - and so - when that love falters - that history merits some re-inspection - not just revision.
There's a reason we love and marry people that harm us...for me...it was a misdirected attempt to try to understand why I had been abused as a child - by finding an abusive partner who (I see now) is almost identical to my father in her forms of abuse. I think it's also why this was the hardest relationship of my life to leave - even though it was by far the most unhealthy and the only emotionally abusive one I have ever had to endure.
Everything about my marriage was familiar to me in some way - in particular the behavior that I quoted from your post - and that stuff didn't happen to me just after she dropped the bomb...it was part of our years together from the beginning...but I never understood her actions as abusive because I am bigger, stronger, have a deep voice, and people have described me as intense...and she took full advantage of that disposition in me to turn everything onto me and try to make me crumble under the burden of her own, perfectly transferred insecurities. Which is to say...nothing she says or does is about you at all...despite the fact that it affects you so deeply.
I hope you don't mind my going on like this...it happens sometimes...and your post just brought up a lot of stuff that I have been working through for the last 14 months...
And...in the interest of full disclosure...I am in a new relationship now...even though my STBX flat out refuses to discuss the divorce with me...for me, my marriage is over.
