I've been in this relationship with her for over 5 years, going on 6.
The funny thing about being in an abusive relationship is that you don't really know your in one until your in it deep, like years deep. At first when we started going out, I thought she just had problems because she came from an abusive home. Her dad would get drunk and beat her up a lot and her mom was a compulsive horder which rendered about 80% of their house unusable.

Another thing that made me rationalize away the red flags was the fact that she was brutally raped the year before. I think I'm bringing all this up because, just like any other stereotypical abused spouse, I feel stupid for ever continuing it. She was pretty, and when she was nice and not in her bad mood, she was very sensual and I really wanted to make it work. There's that sentence, "I wanted to make it work." I'm such a fucken victim it makes me sick. But instead of me being some little woman with bruises all over her face, I'm a 26 year old guy thats desperately trying to finish his last class in college (just one month to go to graduate and I'm in the middle of a divorce, how disgustingly ironic).

I have so much on my plate its not even funny. Each aspect of my life can turn into a novel easily, so I have to try to stick to the subject, which is hard without explaining the background which affects it.

Anyways, she made me leave tonight in the middle of our move from our duplex to our new 2 bedroom house. I dont have anything but this computer and the clothes on my back. So I'm at school now, 40 miles away, homeless. She told me she'd have the divorce papers ready by tomorrow.

We have a son. He's turning 2 on December 20 2008. Great, I'm going to miss his birthday party. All I think about while I write this is my son, Mateo. She is going to keep me from him. I know her, and this is part of what she does. She punishes me, especially when she is of low self esteem. Actually, let me break down exactly what she does to classify this relationship as "abusive."

Her abuse is about 99% verbal and emotional abuse. I say 99% because there was one incident where she punched me in the face, which I say constitutes 1%. Abusive words dont seem like anything when you tell someone. Actually, its worse than being hit. Yes, I choose to be hit over the type of verbal abuse I've been living with for nearly 6 years. Atleast being punched, kicked, or stabbed leaves marks and becomes apparent what it is you have to live through. Suddenly, when your eye is purple and swollen, you don't have to explain anything. People just know whats going on. I know this first hand. Also, having the scars leaves a lasting impression, whereas the marks of verbal abuse just sours your personality and eventually you forget what exactly was said during your verbal beatdown sessions....which isn't good when someone asks you why you are so angry or why you are homeless at the moment.

Basically it starts when her self esteem diminishes. Suddenly she has the overwhelming urge to direct her negativity towards me. A lot of times its during when she is getting ready for work. She'll say something about how horrible her life is. How ugly and "fat" she is. How her clothes don't fit her. She'll change a dozen times, litterly turning our room into a pile of clothes (I used to put her clothes away but she would get mad at me saying I put it in the wrong places...which may lead to another fight). My therapist told me this is a sign of an over-controlling personality by the way.

Ok I'm getting side tracked. Back to summarizing her abuse towards me.

1. First she beats herself up. This catches my attention and I try to make her feel better. Lately I ignore it.
2. Then she'll turn her attention to me.
3. She'll make a comment or sny remark that warrants a "what's that supposed to mean?" statement from any self respecting person. It can be about anything about me. This remark consists of one or more of the following....
*disrespect towards me
*an insulting comment towards me (words like asshole or motherfucker)
*a diminishing or degrading comment
remarks like this can either continue, turning me into a verbal punching bag, or more recently, it might stop there. Most of the time it continues. I can either absorb it, hoping that it will just go away, or after many weeks of it I'll stand up for myself and talk back. It usually escalates when I show an ounce of self respect. But for the most part, I just take it and absorb her hatred.

4. Threats: A few times it has come to this point without any help from me...but she will get to this point when I've had enough of her abuse. Every major blow up incident that we've had has happened when I didn't put up with her crap. Her Threats can range from divorce to punching me, or even hitting me with a hammer (as she demonstrated once with out words). When I'm unrelenting to her threats, she either makes more threats or escalates to punishment. Sometimes she has threatened to kill herself.

5. Punishment: Punishment consists of her actually carrying out the threat. She has left me many times, she has kicked me out of the house a few times the night some assignment is due. She has hit me one time seriously, and slapped me another time. She'll scream and scream and I'll scream back and she'll scream at me again telling me not to scream.

After 6 years, I realized that her threats and punishment are really a way of controlling me, much like you would a child or a dog. Treating me like a child is what I mean by "diminishing". The dynamics between us becomes very unequal. During the 3rd stage, she'll remind me who is boss by making me feel like nothing, while boasting herself, making her issues and her efforts somehow more important. At this point, I'm no longer her respectable husband, let alone a free thinking adult or the father of her child... She is the "boss", more like an overcontrolling mother, and everything she says goes...if not then I get punished. Simple as that, even if what she wants is no way in my control. Actually, she even sets me up for failure half the time, which gives her a reason to go from making disrespectful remarks/insults to full blown punishement. What i mean is, she'll put me under a microscope so to speak. She'll ask me what we should do about some horrible problem of hers, and forces me to answer. That answer is then ripped apart, proving how stupid it is. This will never end, because she has the ultimate punishment against me now. My son. She has threatened that she would "make sure" that I never saw him again during one of her punishments of kicking me out. I don't have a doubt in my mind that she will do this to me because everything that she has threatened against me she has done.

I'm not happy with what I wrote...because it is merely the tip of an iceberg and its not clear enough. Many things she does to me I just can't explain. This is why its easier if she just hit instead of constant put downs. When I stand up for myself, I get loud. She doesnt hesitate to point out that I'm loud, and she'll even say "Know I'm mad", almost like...I deserve whats coming to me.

After things blow up, she comes back and tells me I'm sorry. When she started doing this, it surprised me and gave me hope. But then she started demanding apologies from me. Her apologies are brief, but she really squeezes every ounce of self respect from me by making me apologize for things that I don't feel I should. Ok....lets just imagine a little beat up wife and a big hairy wife-beater of a husband. Husband comes home from work and calls his wife all sorts of names, accuses her of all sorts of cheating, then beats her up for not making dinner or something. She has a fat lip and a black eye...and when he's all worn out and done he says "I'm sorry baby." Then just when she thinks its over, he demands her to apologize for not making dinner. How absurd! Thats what its like for me. There have been only a few no-strings-attached apologies from her to me, but its extremely rare. Me on the other hand...I always have to be sorry. I'm just one sorry person aren't I?

If you don't think that kicking me out and divorcing me is not punishment, i beg to differ. That is one of the worst things you can do to me because I'm now being deprived of my family. I love my family, mostly now my son... I will not see his everymoments like I used to. I take care of my son more than my wife. When he was first born, my wife went into a postpartum swing and disowned him. This is something she is ashamed of now, but on the second day of his existence, she was so upset that he would not stop crying that she said "I'm NOT a good mom, we need to give him away. who are we going to give him to." I held him in my arms so tight. I didnt care that we were sleep deprived, he was so precious and so little. I could hear his little voice coming through his little mouth, crying his heart out. Several times during the first few months of his life, she has brought me to tears regarding that he was horrible child, and the she wasnt cut out to be a mom. I had to call my wife's OBGYN at one point because the postpartum thing just got out of control. My wife was in a corner, shaking and freaking out, and I had her doctor on the phone. The doctor said she needed psychiatric treatment asap because it could be life threatening otherwise....my wife went on antidepressants. The antidepressants leads to a completely separate issue I'll get into later (god my life is so fucked up). One time during one of her episodes, I retreated to my son's room, holding him in my arms like it was the last time I to get to hold him...and I started sobbing. I'll never forget the way my son looked at me. He was crying too, but stopped and just stared at me. That made me cry more.

Oh about crying. Yeah I'm a grown man. But you'd cry too if you had the person you supposedly loved doing all of the above and even more horrible things I wont get into now. One time we were talking about crying, and she looked at me and said with a straight face "I've never seen you cry." I nearly choked on my own spit. Are you kidding me? Never seen my cry? She is the only person I know that can bring someone to tears with her words. You hear stories of drill sergeants at boot camps doing that to soldiers....yeah, she is worse. I asked her if she was kidding, and I brought up the first time she nearly followed through with divorcing me...you know what she said?

"Oh but you were just faking it".


I could not believe my ears. I felt like a piece of shit.