Why Doesn’t She Hate Her Abusive Husband?
She’s divorcing her monster of a husband but can’t find the energy to hate him. She just wants him to get on with his life and leave her alone.
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Dear Chump Lady,
I was with a man from the age of 21 to my now age of 39, married 16 years.
Finally, we are divorcing.
And he’s been screaming high and low about how lazy, jealous, fat, ugly and immoral I am. Including on court documents whenever the lawyer sends him requests for discovery and other documents.
I was still in college when we got together and got married. And I had been an extra nerdy person who had never had a boyfriend.
Over the years, he trained me to think of what he would feel about any major to minor decision I ever made. As a result, I don’t even know how to use my brain to think for myself anymore.
As soon as I was done with college, he wanted a baby, which was a traumatic process. I had multiple miscarriages before our kid was born.
From then on, he mocked and humiliated me for not working and having no income.
When I finally started working, it was in a career with a lower payout than my original degree I went to college for and he shamed me repeatedly. I had to work at a job that would fit around our children’s schedule, because one of our children is disabled.
Then, he abandoned us again and again because he can’t see how the children will benefit him as neither of them are academically gifted.
He refused to get a job himself. He blames me for ruining his career because we moved to a place closer to my family for support with our children, but he has to work hard to establish a career here.
And then, when he finally left again, after scaring me with his rage and intensely hateful outbursts, he doesn’t understand why I would file for divorce.
He still maintains I ruined his life and purposely has no job so he won’t be put on child support.
What is wrong with me, because I don’t hate him.
I am just tired and want him to get on with his life.
I am in therapy.
Sam
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Dear Sam,
It’s okay if you don’t hate your husband. I’m sure any number of volunteers here at Chump Nation will hate him for you. Hate isn’t a prerequisite for divorce, (or anything, really) but it helps.
What, Tracy? Now you’re promoting hatred as well as unquestioning affirmation culture?
When you’re trying to unshackle yourself from a fuckwit, hatred gets the job done. At least temporarily. Big picture, it’s still directing your energy to fuckwit and giving them centrality, but in the short-term those stabby feelings are fuel. Anger gets shit done. Depression lays on the sofa and weeps.
Sam, you’re too exhausted to hate your husband.
And how could you be anything but exhausted? You’ve got a career, you’re raising children, one of them disabled, and you’re fighting off a daily barrage of abuse. Yet, in your MIGHTINESS you have found the executive functioning to DIVORCE this motherfucker.
Let’s reframe this, okay?
he’s been screaming high and low about how lazy, jealous, fat, ugly and immoral I am. Including on court documents whenever the lawyer sends him requests for discovery and other documents.
Someone’s got strong feelings about losing their meal ticket. I guess you weren’t too lazy, jealous, fat, ugly and immoral to financially support him. Don’t internalize his bullshit. See it as a weak baby-man attacking you for imposing consequences. He’s projecting.
Over the years, he trained me to think of what he would feel about any major to minor decision I ever made.
Okay, and now you’re divorcing. So you can evict him from your head. He doesn’t get a vote. Beginning with how he feels about the divorce or his opinion of you.
As a result, I don’t even know how to use my brain to think for myself anymore.
Bullshit. This is you putting yourself down. STOP IT. You clearly do know how to think for yourself, unless AI can call lawyers and start divorce proceedings.
From then on, he mocked and humiliated me for not working and having no income.
You were busy gestating and pushing human beings out of your body. What’s his excuse?
When I finally started working, it was in a career with a lower payout than my original degree I went to college for and he shamed me repeatedly. I had to work at a job that would fit around our children’s schedule, because one of our children is disabled.
A loving partner would recognize your beautiful efforts to care for your children and re-enter the workforce. Mothers do not tend to have traditional career trajectories and the workplace can be pretty brutal about that fact. You faced a difficult transition head on and he tried to drag you for it. Fuck him.
Then, he abandoned us again and again because he can’t see how the children will benefit him as neither of them are academically gifted.
Your response: “I’m divorcing you because I cannot see how the children will benefit from your shitty example.” Is he academically gifted? Funny how he expresses it through unemployment.
Sad sausage needs a job.
He refused to get a job himself. He blames me for ruining his career because we moved to a place closer to my family for support with our children, but he has to work hard to establish a career here.
He can go elsewhere. You’re divorcing him. No one is holding him back from greatness. He follow his dreams to Tanzania and send child support.
Sam, he’s not your problem any longer. Who cares what he blames you for? Weather’s nice in Dodoma this time of year.
And then, when he finally left again, after scaring me with his rage and intensely hateful outbursts, he doesn’t understand why I would file for divorce.
His lawyer can explain it to him. They bill in six-minute increments.
He still maintains I ruined his life and purposely has no job so he won’t be put on child support.
He can explain it to a judge. Unemployed people still have to pay child support. It’s calculated on what your earning potential is. Also, you’re very powerful for a lazy, ugly immoral person. You ruined his life? Imagine what you could do with motivation!
What is wrong with me, because I don’t hate him.
You’re human and you bond. Most people divorce feeling some vestiges of love for the person they once considered family and bred with. You don’t have to hate him. You have to recognize your self-worth and realize you deserve better than this. And so do your kids. You did that with a divorce summons. There’s nothing wrong with you. Hate takes energy. That’s more bandwidth than you’ve got. Maybe you can take up hate in retirement. Shelf it for now.
I am just tired and want him to get on with his life.
Well, he’ll have to. Divorce gives him no choice. Keep enforcing those boundaries. There’s nothing in a divorce decree that says you have to listen to his abusive bleating. Enjoy the peace and tranquility of your new life ahead.
He can explain it to a judge. Unemployed people still have to pay child support. It’s calculated on what your earning potential is.
Very, very important point. Many cheaters think they can get out of child support and/or alimony by not working temporarily. The court can issue an order of child support based on imputed income–what they calculate the income would be. This can be based on past income, education, or even minimum wage. You/your attorney can also ask the court to do an income evaluation by an outside source to look at cheater’s education and experience and determine what cheater COULD be earning, if they applied themselves and applied for jobs. You may have to pay for it, but consider that it determines what they would owe your child/you over multiple years.
Also remember that even if they don’t/can’t/won’t pay NOW, once court ordered, that debt does not disappear and you can collect in future years if they go back to work, sell property, etc. States have departments/agencies that collect the support for you. They can garnish cheater’s earnings and tax returns, and put liens on property so that when it’s sold, the back support legally goes to you. You don’t even have to know abut the sale. They file everything needed.
My attorney once observed that some people will use every possible tool to destroy what they once loved because they are truly sick, evil individuals. He recommended that I stop analyzing my STBX’s motives, let my attorney fight for a good settlement, and work towards closing that chapter of my life.
Yes, he was right. I will never understand how you can marry someone, bring children into the world, and then try to destroy them. I don’t have it in me, and never will, thankfully.
I have worked/campaigned in the domestic violence field on and off for decades. What people do to their partners and the parents of their children can be fucking unreal. All the way to murder. One perp killed his wife, their baby and both her parents. I still remember visiting her at her parents’ house a month or so before this happened. Police picked him up trying to leave the country. Hopefully he is still in prison. I have never, ever forgotten this.
How excruciating that must have been for you. Family annihilators are the lowest form of life.
Wow: “some people will use every possible tool to destroy what they once loved because they are truly sick, evil individuals.” My ex came after me in this way when I insisted we separate after I discovered his affair of six years. I kept thinking “it’s like he’s trying to annihilate me.” My best friend (as I had thought of him) of 23 years! It’s hard to encompass mentally the fact that this happened to me.
Agreed. Tracy has also talked about how cheaters tear down chumps to justify their cheating, and of course, to keep chumps from leaving.
During the divorce process, I realized that by refusing to reconcile with him, I made my STBX look very, very bad. I shattered his carefully crafted image. He was more in love with that than with me and the kids. Deep down, though, he wanted to live life his way. We were accessories.
The way he handled that with his very religious family was to say that he had to divorce me because I was a wayward wife. Then he played victim, saying that it was me who drove the divorce into a legal mess and alienated him from the kids that he effectively abandoned. The attorneys knew differently. That was my closure.
Figure it out yourself, dude. I’m not playing anymore.
“I realized that by refusing to reconcile with him, I made my STBX look very, very bad. I shattered his carefully crafted image.” Yup. Elsie, I really love your comments in this thread! I hope you’re living a fine life now, with some good, honorable people in it!
P.S. Elsie, rereading your comments, I see that you are still in the midst of divorce proceedings, but anyway I hope that as this all moves into the past, you do come to find yourself in a fine, peaceful new life.
Actually, I’ve been divorced for awhile and am several years past the last threat of legal action. He finally gave up trying to get at me.
“his carefully crafted image. He was more in love with that than with me and the kids. Deep down, though, he wanted to live life his way. We were accessories.”
He was very much about that. He told his friends & coworkers that I was a horrible wife to justify his cheating but he wanted his parents to see him as a very successful married person so he told them how fabulous a wife I was. It was all image.
What on earth is a wayward wife? Did he accuse YOU of cheating, or of failing to obey his decrees?
So glad you found a way away from him, especially after his attempts to destroy you. It’s so devastating when they go beyond cheating to seeking to annihilate us, as yours and mine did.
Both. I was cheating and disobedient. I had cut off contact with his family before he kicked off the divorce because I was sick of the lies and having to justify myself. And I was done with the patriarchy by then, completely done.
At one point during the divorce, when it looked like it was going to trial, my attorney asked me if his family might show up. Most definitely.
My attorney let out a full belly laugh and said, “FUN!” He was a very religious man himself and said he loved putting religious cheaters in their place.
But we settled, and I was happy about that. I was ready to move on.
He tried to gaslight me into believing that I had kissed a guy at a party. I was terribly gullible to his lies, but I knew if I kissed some dude, to that attempt fell flat.
He also accused me of “defiance”…I was so compliant it was absurd. I asked him to give me one example of being defiant and he said “you use bleach in the laundry when I told you not to”…yes, with 3 kids I needed bleach in the hot water white loads. Crazy
Defiant, eh? Sounds like you were married to Captain Bligh!
I have been there Sam.
Chump Lady is right, sometimes your brain simply doesn’t feel safe enough to process the hate, anger or anything else.
When I moved out from my Ex, I had to stay in contact because my name was still on the house and we were in the legal untangling. I still was trying to be as civil as possible even when he was digging in his heels at every opportunity. I couldn’t do that and process the enormity of harm he had done to me, I was in survival mode using every tool I had to cajole him along. That didn’t help, but I made it through safely so I did something right.
The feelings were still there of course, they just hit me light a freight train months later. It was tough because I was sick to death of thinking about him and I just wanted to get to Tuesday, but it is often part of the process. It turned out to be a raging river I had to ride out that, in the end, took me to a peaceful shore. I am glad my therapist warned me, so I recognized it when it started to happen.
Catching up on feeling your true feelings is part of finding yourself again. Sometimes anger is a part of yourself that loves you. So often in toxic relationships we get good at stuffing it down and putting it aside. If it comes, accept it, feel it, write angry letters and rip them to shreds, burn them in the backyard and kick the ashes, go to a safe place and howl.
It may feel like still engaging with him, but it’s a part of you that you will need in your mighty new life just catching up on the lessons it has to teach you. Take up running, or a physical hobby to feel it and use it. Let it rage through you and subside, as many times as you need. Just don’t let it take you to jail or set you back in legal proceedings. Keep it at your hearth like a guard dog, and as your new life moves forward, listen when it barks.
Very powerfully stated, relatable, and great advice.
As I have healed from divorce, I have looked back at things I ignored, or just didn’t have the energy or willingness to look at (hello spackle), and gotten VERY, VERY ANGRY about it years after the fact. I regretted not calling him out on the bullshit he was trying to pull at the time. The anger and the roller coaster that goes with it will come. This is when having a therapist is so helpful, when you have a lot of anger over what happened in the past, and need help directing it / exorcising it.
Sounds like this man has emotionally bullied you as long as you’ve been together. Give yourself grace to feel or not feel whatever you’re feeling. There’s nothing wrong with where you are at.
You have put that so well. For me it took a while.to be angry and to be honest as he was such an abusive arsehole not cooperating in the divorce, all that anger did get me down and I needed the support of a women’s group to get through all that anger and hate. Anger and hate take up a lot of mind space and I needed to be divorced so I could lance the abscess fully and heal
But if someone finds that hate and anger people them through the process, that’s what’s best for them
The beauty within the horror and truth uncovered during the divorce process is this: you will have years and years to recover from the assaults on your Spirit your mind and your body. All thr years of brain damage and mental machinations of a very sick and unstable mind that have been inflicted on you for close to 20 years. If you’d been drinking a slow poison, you cannot expect to feel the effects until you detox. Take it from me, a two time flattened by a truck driven by two disturbed men..YOU WILL PROCESS THIS injury and start to FEEL everything you have pushed under the rug, swept under the porch and buried under your mattress. Get all the hel] you need because you have had FROZEN SOLID EMOTIONS and once you are alone and you can see feel and think again, you will get better at HEALTHY Emotions and heal. I know the God that some folks like to blame has truly healed me slowly …and used a million points of light( like Tracy and CN) to heal my broken life and restore my soul…and that will happen to you too. Do what you must do step by step now, FEEL later when you are free. It will happen on Tuesday. Keep Tracy close to you and our nation. Your mind will recover but it will take awhile. Hold tight to our love in the absence of a very sick man’s. We are here For you and we won’t leave you.
Healing doesn’t begin until a divorce is finalized. And hate is not necessary, but self-respect is.
In the meantime, evaluate each action (and each thought) based on whether it moves you and your children forward. Tough conversation with lawyer? Progress! Free on-line yoga class for yourself? Progress! Visit to playground or library or park with kids? Progress!
Little to no contact with FW will leave room for your opinions/values to emerge.
I had squashed my emotions for so long that I couldn’t hate him at first. My adult kids have talked about the same struggle. It seemed so contrary.
Even my attorney said, “I need you to show some emotion here because I can’t be the only one mad about this!” A very passionate individual, he was not above swearing and pounding the conference table with outrage. But he was also a kindly soul who made me feel completely comfortable with him over time.
But yes, I was angry by the end of the messy divorce proceedings. My ex blew up our lives and damaged us. We got to the next chapter and are doing fine, but no decent human does that, ever.
My ex could have said, “I’ve decided that I want to spend my retirement without you and the kids.” He could have been decent in the divorce. Nope. He had to play victim and blame-and-game until I was utterly sick of him and frankly hoped that he just dropped off the planet somehow. Both attorneys were frustrated and tired of him, too.
Thankfully, he finally went his own way, and any shred of positive feelings for him are gone. If he showed up anywhere I was, I would call the police. So would my adult kids. At this point, I feel a certain level of pity for him. He is a truly messed-up, evil person. But hey, he’s on his own.
I was totally responsible for everything too. My mother’s comment on the career thing – “he had the career he was capable of”. This man seems to be capable of mastering unemployment.
I was also a Chump who was so deeply indoctrinated into making every decision based on what he wanted even if he wasn’t nearby to tell me. His preferences aced nearly everything for years. Once he told me he was divorcing me and he forgot he had children, I began to prioritize what was best for me and kids.
This was shocking for a person who got his way with everything for years. He chose the town we lived in, our house, our cars, any major purchases, the church we went to…
After I learned about his Cheating, he insisted me and the kids move 3000 miles to suit him (and uncomplicated his wife by gettin this wife and Schmoops in the same time zone) and I said “No”.
He flipped out repeatedly and threatened this and that but I was sure that giving up our home/schools/my job for a person who couldn’t keep his own crap straight for 10 minutes was surely not a good ides.
At the time, I didnt hate him either. This weird awkward stage lasted for years during which I thought we were in wreckonsillyation, but he was likely planning again to leave. I got so tired of fighting him, I told God that if there was a place that would make him happy, then he should go there. I expected he would move to California but instead, he died. I guess that is the only place he might happy and no one was more surprised than me.
When it came time to go from making few decisions to making all the decisions, I was pretty good at it. (With the exception of the appliances I bought for my kitchen but that is another story).
Im with CL, hate takes energy and you need yours to get yourself divorced and raise your kids. It will come and be goof fuel for you but I hope it also wanes. You will still need your energy for life.
He will panic when he realizes he has overplayed his cards. Ignore the bluster but stay safe.
Put one foot in front of the other.
You are mighty.
The stories are so similar.
Mine took off to another state while we were supposedly working on things. I knew he was living like a single man and had no intention of working on things. He conveniently blamed everything on me and said I had to fix it. In time, he said the answer was for me and college kids to drop everything here and move where he was.
I refused. I was done with the years of chaos leading to that situation and done with him. The kids refused to quit their specialized college programs. My ex kicked off a messy, long divorce and closeout that should have been simple. He confirmed many times over that the marriage had to end.
Supposedly, he’s still alive because I’m still getting deposits, but thankfully, he leaves us alone.
wow, our stories do have a lot of similarities…Im embarrassed to admit that I actually thought he was being faithful when he moved for the job. He was dead before I found stuff in his papers that caused me to question everything he had ever said.
If I was honest with myself, I knew that my ex wasn’t going to be faithful and was gone-gone-gone. At church and elsewhere, I put up a brave front. He was newly retired. His car died, and he got quite ill in the first month. I bravely decided that it was not my job to rescue him.
At this point, if he kicked the bucket, I’m not sure if someone would call me or not. Feels strange.
So the captain of the SS Abusive intentionally ran the ship into a reef? And you are busy putting life preservers on you and your kids and getting into the rescue boats. Your brain and heart have rightly decided that you should focus on that and do what you need to save yourself and your children. That is life affirming and healthy, for now. You can hate him later: he’s worthy of hate for his abuse of the children alone. In the meantime, happy to do it for you.
Dear Sam, I am so glad you’re here, that you are divorcing the sorry excuse of man who has been masquerading as a husband, father.
I am so glad to hear you have a therapist. I have every confidence that as you continue on a path of healing and recovery feelings will surface. My guess is that it hasn’t been safe for you to express them for a very very long time.
Keep coming back and stay in the life boat. You made it off the Titanic!
Sending a big huge hug.
Dear Sam,
hang in there. It gets better. Of course you’re exhausted. I’m exhausted just from reading this. He sounds like a terrible person and you have nothing to work with. Just focus on yourself and your children. And yes, we lose ourselves in these relationships. I think it’s called a trauma bond. For a long time after we separated I could hear his voice in my head about things I was doing. Even just random, everyday things. His judgement. But it quiets down and one day it disappears and you become your own person again. Good luck. You’re strong!
Sam, let me congratulate you for escaping your captor. Because that’s what people like your STBX are – captors, and their victims are hostages surviving abuse and destruction of their humanity and future potential. You’re not putting up with his shit anymore and you’re rescuing your kids from it. That takes courage, sheer will, hope, optimism, and hard work. Your husband sounds like a truly awful person and he has to live with his awfulness the rest of his life. You don’t. You are providing your kids with the best role model they will ever personally see and they will remember this all their lives and maybe even pass it on to your grand kids. I know I talk about my grandparents and what they went through even though I didn’t know them all, I know many of their stories. People like you rebuild the world after people like your husband tear it down.
I’ve been served a lot of helpings of shit pie in life and I’ve often been surprised at how unemotional I’ve been when evil shit was happening, either on a family, relationship, or work level, but when a crisis hits, and it sounds like your normal life of abuse has hit the crisis point, the only way to get things done is to FOCUS. It’s not really a conscious decision for me as I guess I’ve been doing it all my life – sometimes you just have to focus and cut out all the emotions to get things done and get them done right and as quickly as possible. It’s like being in a war – if you spend time emoting on all the traps and exploding bombs and treachery instead of dodging them, you’ll get stuck and you won’t be as effective as I’m sure you are.
I think it’s good you don’t hate your husband at this point. As long as you’re not wasting other emotions on him like “love” or “regret” or “nostalgia” but it doesn’t sound like you are (or will). You sound VERY clear headed. That’s what you need, you’re focusing your ENERGY on freeing yourself and your kids from a really bad person (and he is, let’s not sugar coat it), an abuser, an oppressor. Energy is limited which is why it becomes so expensive in the world, it needs to be focused on getting somewhere instead of spinning wheels. Once you are safely past this point and have accomplished at least some of your objectives…..you’ll start to hate this fucker. Not in some crazy I want to take a chain saw to him kind of way, but just the kind of anger and resentment people naturally feel at being abused, seeing others especially kids mistreated and ignored, and the incredible waste of time – and energy – selfish people like your STBX create. It’s like a frozen lake of potential right now, it probably will thaw out but you’re so used to repressing how you really feel about things that it might take a while not only to feel these things but to recognize what they ARE, where they come from, and how to process them. That’s in the future and your kids may experience this too, and that is all normal and healthy. Anger is our reaction to our life force being threatened, it helps to keep us safe. Sometimes we need it to handle an immediate threat but sometimes it comes later. Individual therapy can help. I don’t think I need to say this but….don’t bother with marriage counseling. It sounds like you’re well past that bullshit but it’s almost always a waste of time, money and….energy.
Give yourself time to get through this process stage by stage….right now you have a lot of mechanics to resolve in terms of getting a divorce done, financial stuff for you and your kids, re-making a home life and sense of family. A lot of this is sheer mechanics and that takes time, energy and resolve. Just get rid of this bastard as efficiently and effectively as possible right now and use whatever resources you can, both legally and in places like this (and this site is one of the BEST) to accomplish this. I know you’re going to come out of this so much better, you’ll be amazed at how much sweeter life can be without an oppressive weight bearing down on you and the kids constantly, wearing you all away. He gets his strength and energy from abusing all of you – let’s focus on taking that away.
Don’t worry about anger or hate at this point. We’ll do that for you now.
Hate isn’t required to disentangle yourself from a fuckwit. Courage is, and you’ve already demonstrated that by getting the divorce in motion. Anger helps. Anger, like hate gets a bad rap from the pearl clutching, judgmental matrons who cannot imagine doing what you’re doing. But anger is what propelled me into motion getting myself, my dog and my bank accounts out of the clutches of the Cheating Abusive Douche (CAD in my phone). Anger is what got me going and kept me going until I was a thousand miles away from the CAD and he could abuse me only in phone calls and emails until I realized I could block him. Anger helped me deal with the profound hurt over the abuse, what he had done to me and what he was planning to do. Anger is a friend! But hate will probably come later, when you’ve had time to process after the paperwork is all taken care of.
We don’t grieve “in order.” When I was in nursing school nearly a half century ago, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s DABDA theory of grieving was popular. It describes the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We’ve since discovered that we don’t go through denial, and then anger and then bargaining and so forth. We experience the stages out of order, and sometimes flip back and forth from one stage to another. You might think you’re all done with anger, and then it will all come rushing back and engulf you when you run across one of his socks in your drawer where you weren’t expecting it. Or whatever. You’re grieving your marriage — the one you thought you were getting when you married him, the one you dreamed of, although probably not the one you actually had. You’ll get through this. Time and distance helps. Perhaps you are a better person than most of us and will never actually hate him. I hope you are because hate is not a fun experience for you. (The fuckwit won’t care.) Or maybe, six months after the divorce is final and you and your kids are safely away, THEN you’ll hate him. That’s OK, too.
You’re doing the hard work of getting yourself out of the orbit of this disaster of a humanoid. Give yourself credit for that. You’re protecting yourself and your children. Once you’re free of the fuckwit, your life will only get better.
I just said something in my longer post to Sam I just want to highlight as I think it might help to answer a question we so often have: WHY ARE THEY SO MEAN AND ROTTEN AND CRUEL? Why do they act like this, often so brutal. As I just said to Sam, I think it might be that this is what they derive strength and energy from, and we have to take that away from them and watch them wither like the weeds they are.
I spent many years in therapy asking myself this question and have come to the conclusion that some people are just evil. We want a deeper answer, but I don’t think there is one.
Evil exists, and it does what it does.
I don’t get people who are that way. I had a tough time mustering up the courage and determination in my divorce to demand a fair settlement. Thankfully, I picked the attorney I did because he would not let go and got it done for me.
But some people ARE like that. The best way is to GET AWAY, literally FLEE THEIR EVIL.
Ya know, Elsie, this might be something that people could consider that might help them to heal – that the cheaters and controllers and manipulators and abusers – truly are NOT like us. That they ARE a different species….perhaps not literally (although I wonder) but in a practical way. They are not like us so we can’t expect them to do or say things like we would. Maybe once people realize that and get rid of all expectations of normality they would find it easier to give up on these aholes and move on.
It’s the empathy deficit. It’s utterly chilling and allows those who lack this essential human (possibly mammalian) trait to do the most appalling things, from the Holocaust through to pulling the legs off an insect.
Yes, that’s what helped me. He didn’t think like me, and I couldn’t expect anything from him that wasn’t motivated by a desire to control and destroy. And you can’t have a relationship with someone who wants to control and destroy, even on a very surface level.
Eventually, he gave up, which was exactly what I wanted. I was a hard target and no longer of interest to him.
I don’t get them either. I don’t think “normal” people – and most chumps are normal people despite the abuse, if you could lift the shadow abuse has thrown on so many of us, you’d find a basically normal human being – I don’t think we act like this. I don’t get my jollies being cruel and nasty to other people, certainly not planning it. Nor do I want to control other people or run their lives. I think most people in the world everywhere are like this and politicians – who tend to be cheaters – are sociopath/psychopaths who have this need to dominate, abuse, control others. They get power and validation from it. It’s a completely different psychology from us but very effective because MOST PEOPLE ARE GOOD EVERYWHERE and we can’t imagine people who are this fucking twisted, evil, different. I have a temper and could see myself slapping the shit out of someone – an adult anyway, not a child or animal – but I couldn’t see plotting this kind of stuff, or lying constantly, or having a double life. Why do this? Why not just have a straightforward, fairly simple life trying to do constructive things? We’re like different species and I think that’s a good way to view them.
Yes, I am done with these types. Give me reality and decent behavior!
A book that examines this “they don’t think like us” framing is, “The Verbally Abusive Relationship,” by Patricia Evans. She defines it as Reality I and Reality II. Reality II involves Personal Power. Reality I involves Power Over. (Chumps = Reality II. FW’s = Reality I.)
Some quotes:
“In Reality I, if you don’t have someone to have power over, then you don’t have any power at all.”
“A significant fact I discovered was that many [partners] living in Reality II [previously, misguidedly] accepted and responded to communications from Reality I as if the communications were valid.”
“The [chump] may realize that [FW] can say anything [FW] wants, however, [chump] may also realize that there is nothing heroic about staying around to hear it.”
I will add: One part of today’s post did sting when I read it: The snarky phrase “your lawyer can explain this to you” was written to me very condescendingly by both a FW and his lawyer when I was formerly trying to resolve issues in my naive little Reality II Golden-Rule, good-faith way, and was instead met with their Reality I intimidation and scorn. Upside is I got a lawyer as they advised, and he put a tidy stop to their “power over.”
Yes, that’s a really good way of explaining it. When you remove yourself (and your children) from the power-over, it makes them angry and crazy because that is their dynamic of choice and how they keep things in “order.” Facing that reality is tough but necessary.
My attorney wrote a perfectly reasonable settlement agreement for me, had me sign/initial, and sent it to my STBX with a letter that my husband should sign it or deal only with my attorney in negotiations. He called it a “new sheriff is in town” letter. I went no-contact and told my college kids what was going on in case their father complained to them. Well, they talked at length one day when I was at work, and decided to join me in no-contact.
That completely changed the dynamic and gave me the space to get my head together. By the time we finally settled (way longer than I had hoped), I was clear and even did some closeout tasks with my ex via email. He was still all about power-over, but I ignored it. Eventually, he gave up.
dear Sam,
you’re a smart woman who is raising kids on your own, you’ve always been raising kids on your own. you work outside the home and pay the bills. you made a good decision when you moved your nuclear family closer to your relatives for additional support.
you are a CEO of your household. but, let me tell you, fuckwit in accounting is of no assistance to your organization. he doesn’t have the correct software to run the system, and, as a result, you’re years behind in filing taxes.
rightly, you’ve fired fuckwit and now your household will flourish. your kids will flourish. you will flourish.
in the meantime, get a little angry. you’ll find it. i burned things in the firepit and found it helpful: letters, photos, copies of important documents. whatever you wish. in fact, i could do with a little burning right now–thanks for reminding me of the importance of letting things go into the smoky.
but i can hate that guy for you. fuck that guy. he had no business sabotaging your well-being and the lives of your kids. say ‘fuck that guy’ whenever you need to. i wrote FTG (fuck that guy) on the bottom of the dining room table that i had to hand over to my fuckwit when we split belongings. because, fuck that guy.
your comrade,
damnitfeelsbadtobeachumpster
Sam,
My answer to you is two ply.
The first part is the easiest-you’re exhausted. In my explorations of what “hate” is-hate is itself very, very exhausting due to how all-consuming it is. It’s one of those emotions/feelings/convictions that you have to actively spend your soul on and requires far more input than there is tangible output(not unlike managing relations with a fuckwit.) You have a career, two children(one of which is disabled-which is effectively a whole separate kid worth of maintenance from my time working with disabled children), and by extrapolation I am going to guess that you also run the household(might I add: YOU GO!) You simply do not have the resources with which to hate even if you were capable of it(see below.) You have already paid with your soul being cheated on and abused.
So I was meditating on something similar during my drive into the office today(I believe the overall topic of the meditation was “a chump’s need for justice” but digressed-traffic was rather merciful for a Monday.) Part of what I came to-I think part of what sets us apart from our abusers is that it turned out after a period of sustained growth that we are their direct opposites.
Where he stopped working(which is what happened-it’s not hard to find work in this day and age-if his career was so specific and granular that it only worked in one place than he probably wasn’t worth the protein he was printed on), you ran a household, endured some pretty horrifying issues to create whole new people(who I have zero doubt in my soul that you show some pretty amazing love to), AND have a CAREER. HOLY SHIT.
He leads with rage, you lead with patience. He leads with entitlement, you lead with generosity. You assert a boundary, he plays the brigand. He runs away, you accept his return(by another name-he cannot accept the reality that he signed up for, you accept with open arms the life you have.)
And ultimately, he leads with fear, and you lead with the opposite of fear: love.
There’s nothing wrong with loving.
And love is poison for hate.
The end sum of my brief meditation this morning? We’re quite simply better than all of those horrors. And we experience fuller love(“what is grief but love persevering?”) And that’s why we lose sleep over how somebody we loved turned out not to. Is that person worth hating and spending more of your soul on? No. At the end of the day, I don’t hate mine, either. But I pity the fool.
Besides, by your own admission-you’re a nerd. We save our venom for concepts and hypothetical constructs, not people 😉
The biggest part that’s wrong with you is the part you are excising from your life-him!. You are doing the right thing. He is going to find himself very sorely mistaken legally coming up-to say nothing of the reckoning he has coming over, you know…running away from a disabled child so many times.
Have a Mighty Monday!
“I think part of what sets us apart from our abusers is that it turned out after a period of sustained growth that we are their direct opposites.” I have often had the same thought! For example, just as you say, FW leads with rage, chump leads with patience. FW leads with entitlement, chump leads with generosity. Your comment reminds me that it’s important to remember, periodically, to feel deeply grateful for the gifts of temperament that distinguish me from my ex!
Man I feel for Sam. It took me months and months to realize that the thoughts I was having, or “my opinions” were echos of FW’s control and manipulation. I had a great therapist point this out to me. She advise that I take each thought captive and ask myself where it came from? Who was speaking? Was it me? Or was it him? That was hard. But it helped me break free.
And Tracy is right, I’ll hate this FW for Sam. Hopefully, Karma takes care of him soon.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s no excuse for Dickhead McCluggage’s behaviour either during our marriage or in this horrible aftermath.
I don’t give a shit about his childhood or whatever fucked up behaviour his parents encouraged or allowed- he KNOWS how to behave- he just chooses not to.
I vacillate between hate and a numbness that tries vainly to rationalise this alternate reality.
His contempt and hatred towards me eclipses any of mine – all because he can’t control me any longer and I am no longer his property to do as he pleases with.
Hate is too small to describe this feeling.
I’ll pull out the usual quote from the director of the advocacy program I worked with:
Emotions are like colors in a paint box. None are good or bad and all that matters is what picture you paint with them.
The program director coined this analogy because victims of abuse are typically shamed out of being able to feel hate and rage, often to their own detriment because, as CL puts it, those things are often critically necessary for mustering the courage to make particularly harrowing escapes and break through victims’ terrorized inertia.
I don’t even consider hate and rage to be emotions in the strictest sense but more like combo anxiety-reducers and rocket fuel to– for better or worse– propel impetuous action which is prompted by compounded emotions like fear or love or even sadistic glee. What defines these things as good or bad is the action that’s propelled. The racist’s or abuser’s gleeful act of hateful violence and their rage when victims fight back: shitty wall art. The victim’s rage-fueled rebellion and hate-fueled escape prompted by love of their children or justice or love of life itself: priceless masterpiece.
Since I was curious about whether the art analogy held up in a literal sense, I just did a search of famous protest paintings to check which used a lot of cadmium red (typical symbol for violence and rage) and mars black (hate, terror) because how does anyone protest a terrible thing without depicting the terrible thing? But the search illustrated more than I bargained for– something which neatly illustrates that the double standards for emotional censorship that abuse survivors are subjected to are still alive and well in the culture. While Goya’s Third of May (red and lots of black) and Picasso’s Guernica (gray and black)– considered two of the most explicit and powerful anti-war paintings in art history– are fully visible in any online search, Frida Kahlo’s gory commentary on domestic abuse (following husband Diego Rivera’s infidelity), A Few Small Nips, gets an “explicit content” filter on top Google image searches including the Amazon image link.
WTF. Guernica and Third of May depict violent death and, also like A Few Small Nips, Guernica contains an image of twisted naked woman, but only the latter gets censored. Things like this make it unsurprising that victims– specifically those who are social underdogs in any standoff– end up being shamed for expressing hate or rage (often to the point of being forced to deny they feel these things or even repress those things) while others who are perceived as social heroes by the dominant paradigm (and FW’s like Jeff Bezos) are admired and respected for moral rage and “hatred of injustice.”
Anyway, both because numbness can be a natural stage of PTSD and because victims’ emotions tend to be heavily socially censored and this can carry serious consequences (like bystanders or even police refusing to shield or help victims or even reversing the onus for wrongdoing to victims who seem “too angry”), I don’t think survivors always know what they really feel in the direct aftermath of traumatic abuse. There’s also the fact that victims who’ve been terrorized and punished for years for showing any tiny hint of resistance can end up even more conditioned to repress rebellious emotions as a sheer survival strategy until they escape and eventually (it can take time) start to feel safe from reprisal.
All these emotional stages have to run their course as I learned back when I prosecuted two violent workplace stalkers in a row. At least in my experience, the period of eerie numbness following a traumatic event can later give way to a backlog of anger for awhile like the way a wound starts to itch when it’s healing. But, when I genuinely felt safe again, eventually even that faded to the point that I viewed former perpetrators really impersonally and abstractly– like they were sewage disasters or landslides.
How do you personally “hate” sewage and rubble? To me, abusers dehumanize themselves with their inhumane actions and, once they no longer pose any danger or have any power to terrorize, that’s all they seem like– shit and mud. For instance, some years after the criminal prosecution, I remember running into one of those perps in an underground parking lot once and being surprised that I felt NOTHING. While the perp tried to skulk down and hide behind the steering wheel, my heart rate didn’t even go up and I even forgot to mention the incident to friends I saw later in the day.
I think that’s the ultimate “meh.” But I don’t think it’s really possible to skip steps and stages in recovery and jump ahead to “meh.” Anyone not feeling the anger following trauma at the hands of another person is probably just in the numb stage and this may be partly due to feeling like they’re still in danger.
In the DV partner support class I was in back in the 80’s, the facilitator gave us the following exercise to teach us about anger and rage:
1) Imagine someone is standing on your foot. It really hurts and you say, “Excuse me, you’re standing on my foot.” They say, “Oh! I’m so sorry!” and they get off your foot.
That’s anger.
2) Imagine someone standing on your foot. It really hurts and you tell them they are standing on your foot. They lean in closer, shift all their weight onto your foot, and say, “I know.”
That’s rage.
I’ve never forgotten it.
Interesting that people who work in that field end up with these razor sharp analogies because they’re always having to crack through people’s grossly biased assumptions about victims.
This is so interesting, and rings true: “Things like this make it unsurprising that victims– specifically those who are social underdogs in any standoff– end up being shamed for expressing hate or rage (often to the point of being forced to deny they feel these things or even repress those things) while others who are perceived as social heroes by the dominant paradigm (and FW’s like Jeff Bezos) are admired and respected for moral rage and ‘hatred of injustice.'”
I think it’s partly expectations of women. I wasn’t raised religious but knew a Catholic theologian from Chile from the Liberation theology tradition who reputedly hid dissidents from the former military dictatorship. He explained that the mother of Christ in early scripture was very passionate and had agency but, over time, was whitewashed into a nearly mute, passive, sweetly grieving “absolution vending machine” because the church preferred this as the model for female conduct, not the firebrand image of Mary raging at Roman soldiers to take her son off the cross.
In Mary’s lifetime, it seems women weren’t allowed to read but boredom was a mortal enemy so women were apparently great story tellers and Aramaic is known as an especially poetic language for narrative. In other words, Mary was probably a talker, not to mention the fact she was a Jewish mother and likely didn’t take guff lying down.
I think because women’s equality only happens in more generally equitable societies and Vatican II, by making the word of Christ the central guide for theology, started– as critics often point out– veering towards socialism, liberation theology might tend to be more open to feminist interpretations of scripture and biblical history. Basically, like Christ, liberation theology is more “underdog-oriented” so it might follow that “underdogs”– what the hell, even women– are allowed to have passion, agency, moral rage and hatred for injustice while the dominant paradigm only allows this for its designated representatives but sees the same MO as anarchy and sowing the seeds of rebellion when it comes from designated underclasses– or women of any class.
“not the firebrand image of Mary raging at Roman soldiers to take her son off the cross’–such an eloquent image! I didn’t know the Mary described in early scripture had these qualities.
I’m generalizing what I understood from a conversation that happened when I was a kid. What I remember is that it was something about Mary’s rage, passion and rebellion though I’m honestly not sure if it was supposed to take place at the cross, on the road to Calvary, etc.
I wish I’d kept touch with this priest over the years so I could ask what the source was. I remember he spoke perfect English and had attended Harvard Divinity so I don’t think anything was lost in translation.
Very interesting!
I volunteer to do Sam’s hating for her. If anyone is worthy of hate, this shitbird is.
Sam, just give me his number and I’ll go to town on him. I figure three of my patented poison pen texts should do the job on this epic loser. He doesn’t sound like a tough nut to crack.
A little hate goes a long way on a fuckwit. They are so shocked that you would dare to insult them that it does their empty heads in.