Loving Someone Who Abuses You

As a male, it is hard to fathom that I lived in an abusive relationship. What the woman that I love did was emotional and physical abuse. Whenever she would do it, it was instantly blamed on her mental disorder or she would say it was a slip-up. There were times where she would forget that the abuse even occurred but as I saw in the court hearing to have her stop hurting me is a change in the story. She claims now that she is mentally sound, does not have hallucinations, that her doctor had cleared here mentally and that I was lying. If this is true, then she has no remorse for her years of physical and emotional abuse to me. As some can recall and can read, this history goes as far back as last Spring when my wife first learned that she could use the police and courts to hurt me emotionally and sometimes physically. I do blame her for the emotional trauma that I face every time a cop knocks at my door, every time I get a call saying my wife had filed a report or every time I get a phone call saying that my wife is unstable or is acting aggressively while in the hospital. My wife is not well and needs treatment for her illness. I do not want the next call to be that she had taken her own life, as she has tried to do three times in one year.

Another way that someone who abuses you can keep you on a short leash is the fact that they can convince you that you have problems, that you are the one abusing them or try to convince others. My wife has won that battle multiple times, but there is one problem with her backstory; it changes to meet the times. When she went in front of the judge the story was different as before the police. She uses intimidation tactics and only pursues what she wants when she wants. Her latest line of emotional abuse was that I was stealing her money, but I wasn’t. I took time off of my post-college job search to take care of her after the suicide attempt. We had to pay rent, paying rent with her disability income was frustrating her. Not paying rent would have left us homeless. One day before she received her financial aid money from college, she bolted, leaving me facing eviction(yet again) and now bankruptcy because I bought all of her books, school supplies and coloring supplies using our credit cards.

She doesn’t care and is a monster that I loathe, that I dislike fully and that is not the woman I married. I will still always love her, I love that woman who overcame a lot of problems and got her GED the first try, but this new woman that manipulates people to get things she wants is sickening. My wife is right when she says this is a toxic relationship when someone like myself has to put forth all of the relationships, it seems like she was taking advantage. She did not want marriage counseling and only listened to the voices in her head. I am sorry that she had traumas in the past, there is nothing that I would give more than to erase those bad memories for her. Till she learns to cope with her mental illness and physical aggression, I will not have a thing to do with her. If she tries to contact me or come to my apartment, there will be police called, as I cannot and will not be abused again, I will not become one of those statistics. I read about it all the time when a partner or spouse such as her turns the tables and kills the other, mental illness is always blamed for it and I don’t want to become another murder statistic because my wive’s state becomes too much. The scars she has are all self-inflicted wounds of aggression.

Warm regards,

– Tom