Breaking Bonds, page 3
If he is a narcissist, in the clinical sense, one or more of the following personality characteristics may apply to your husband.
A grandiose self-image
A sense of entitlement
A lack of empathy
Self-centeredness
If he has the antisocial personality of a psychopath, your husband’s personality may be characterized by the following behaviors.
Impulsive thrill-seeking
Selfishness
Callousness
Lack of personal affect
Superficial charm
Remorselessness1
A very good fictional example of a man who displays narcissistic and psychopathic traits is James Bond. Disagreeable, erratic, highly deceitful, selfish, callous, and exploitative, his personality makes for good spy movies, but not for good husbands. I believe that the reason some women are attracted to this type of man in the first place is that they do not feel they have permission to take care of their own needs; initially, they are attracted to him because he knows how to take care of himself very well. They live vicariously through their mates until they realize that their husbands’ self-centered behavior is destructive and hurtful to them. Sadly, they are often in the thrall of this bad boy behavior until after they become pregnant or have had children with these men, which makes it more difficult to disengage from the relationships.
PHYSICAL ABUSE
Although emotional and psychological abuse can be just as damaging, physical abuse is much harder to excuse. If you have been slapped, kicked, punched, pushed, or choked, then your husband is a very dangerous man, and you must get out of the house and the marriage as soon as possible. Others may be aware of your situation because they have seen bruises or wounds on your body, or your husband may be deliberately hurting you in ways that enable him to avoid detection. He may be physically intimidating, shoving you or grabbing things out of your hand, or standing too close to you in a threatening manner while screaming and spitting in your face.
My ex-husband frequently invaded my space and followed me from room to room, not giving me any personal time or a moment’s peace. He would pound on the bathroom door to make me unlock it, even if I was in the middle of using the toilet, while there were other bathrooms in the house that he could have easily used instead. He would insist that he needed to talk to me while I was using the bathroom or that he needed something that was in there. He wasn’t ever willing to wait, even when I told him that I would be right out.
Those kinds of behaviors and boundary violations are degrading. It requires considerable time to heal the emotional wounds of this sort of treatment. After I had moved to a different house by myself, it took several months for me to stop being jumpy and hyper vigilant if I heard an unexpected noise at home. My startle response was very high, even in a public place such as a movie theater. It was embarrassing. I had been in such severe agitation and distress that I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
In retrospect, I should have let my husband break down the bathroom door and then called the police with the physical evidence, which would have been the proof of abuse that I needed. I just didn’t want to escalate a volatile situation while our children were present in the house. I also didn’t value myself enough yet to refuse to be treated in such a barbaric manner. I chose to accept unacceptable behavior to avoid conflict, and that is on me.
HE IS DEEPLY WOUNDED AND THEREFORE VERY DANGEROUS
In The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists, social worker Eleanor D. Payson explains the personality of narcissists and why change is so difficult for them. If your husband is a wounded narcissist, he treats you the way he does because he has low self-esteem that he covers up by putting you down to make himself feel better. He is projecting on you what he unconsciously feels about himself: that he is either worthless or inadequate and unlovable.2 A man who is comfortable in his skin knows that he is going to make mistakes from time to time, and owns them. He makes amends and moves on to something else. A narcissist, by comparison, is unable to admit that he makes mistakes because admitting that he made a mistake means acknowledging that he is flawed. He is not able to see his problems, much less take responsibility for them.3
There is nothing you can do for your abusive husband or change about yourself that can make him happy. It is not possible. Also, it is not your responsibility to make anyone else happy. Each of us is responsible for our happiness and our feelings.
It is not necessary for you to understand this man or to even empathize with him. He does not have the capability reciprocally to empathize with you. Yours is what Payson terms a one-way relationship. Stop making excuses for his behavior. It’s time to realize that there is only one thing that you can do: Get out of this marriage and save your life. He is inflicting insidious damage on you.
There is at least a four times higher rate of personality disorders among abusive men than among the general population, around 80 percent vs. 15–20 percent. So, if your husband is abusive, this is a sign that he is likely to be mentally ill and out of control.
Leaving him is a compassionate thing to do for him as well because it will prevent him from continuing his abuse of you and your children, which he would never want to do if he were well mentally. If you don’t get out now, the abuse could escalate, and it is unlikely to get any better.
Here are some dreadful statistics of which you need to be aware.
Women account for 85 percent of the victims of domestic violence in the United States.4
More than one in three American women experience domestic violence in their lifetimes.5
Their domestic partners killed 30 percent of female homicide victims in 2000.6
Domestic violence affects women regardless of race or level of income, although black women and women with lower annual incomes are at greater risk of violence.7
Many women, including me, project good qualities onto their spouses that their spouses just don’t have. This is wishful thinking, just a fantasy. We don’t want to admit to ourselves that the person we thought we married has nothing to do with the man we are being abused by now. Even if you once loved your husband or still do, if he bullies and demeans you it is a sign that he does not love you. This is not your fault—he is incapable of love. He can’t love you because he does not love himself. If he did love you, he wouldn’t treat you as he does.
PSEUDO SORRY: WORKS NOT WORDS
“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
―JOHN LOCKE
Your husband is not sorry for the things he does if he convinces you to stay with him and then continues to abuse you. He is not sorry if he makes excuses for what he does, if he fails to admit that what he is doing is abusive, and if he fails to accept responsibility for the abuse. He is not sorry if he blames you for his actions. He must agree to admit all the details of the abuse to a professional counselor if he is serious about saving your marriage and making real change in himself. If he is not willing to get ongoing counseling with a psychotherapist or even to admit to his abuse of you, he is never going to change.
And he won’t need to change if you stay with him, either. There will be no motivation for him to do so. Unless he takes responsibility for the nature of his actions and their effect on you and your family, and unless he is willing to do whatever is necessary to change and make amends, he is not genuinely repentant for what he has done. Any apology he gives you is false and intended to fool you into maintaining the status quo unless it is backed up by a change in his behavior. Your husband is not genuinely sorry unless he makes an effort to be completely and consistently honest with you and treats you with respect as an equal partner in your marriage from now on.
If your husband acts as though he has remorse for a brief time and then reverts to his same old destructive patterns of behavior, it is time for you to acknowledge the fact that he is not sorry. It is not what he says that counts; it is what he does. Through his actions, he is showing you exactly who he is. This evidence is what you need to believe, not his words.
As difficult as acknowledging who he is may be, recognition of this is a positive step. Although he may be incapable of change, you are! You can change your life starting today.
ENOUGH ABOUT HIM
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act,
the rest is merely tenacity.”
―AMEILIA EARHART
Now that you are clear on who and what you are dealing with, it is time to concentrate on you and what you deserve and want for your own life. If based on the preceding descriptions you have identified that you are in an abusive marriage, you must get a divorce. The abuse will not stop until you leave him for good. You will have to overcome any fears you have of what might happen when you leave so that you and your children can begin to live in peace and be happy. You can only build a better future by taking action. This is important to you and them.
Now is not the time for you to worry about what your husband wants or needs, or to wonder if he can survive without you. He is a born survivor, and he can take care of himself very well, thank you. My ex-husband was quick to find a replacement for me so that his needs would be taken care of. Love had nothing to do with it. He didn’t skip a beat.
Let go of hope for what could have been and acknowledge the sad reality of what was. A good marriage with this man just wasn’t ever going to happen with you or anyone else, either. Staying with him is dangerous. It’s time for you to move on.
The power of love is not about power at all.
CHAPTER TWO
THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU
MIRROR, MIRROR
“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.”
―BRÉNE BROWN
We are good daughters, sisters, friends, and mothers. We are good colleagues, homemakers, leaders, teachers, and neighbors. People may admire us or be envious of our apparently perfect lives. Even so, we are deeply ashamed of our failure at home to provide a stable, happy family for our children, our failure to make our husbands happy, and our failure to get them to stop abusing us. If only we could be perfect, to get things right, we think, he would stop. We dream of having someone appreciate us for who we are, of being appreciated by those who are supposed to love us the most.
It takes a while for us to realize that we can’t change our husbands or make them happy no matter what we do. Once we’ve had this realization, we arrive at a fork in the road. We can turn left and give up and become numb. Or we can turn right and decide to fight for our very lives. Fighting is what I finally did when I realized that either I would have to get out or I would end up in an early grave. Until then, I was sleepwalking through life. When it got bad enough, it was a wake-up call.
My therapist called my ex-husband a joy killer. The energy vampire I married sucked me dry like one of the Dementors in the Harry Potter novels, foul creatures who drain peace, hope, and happiness from anyone near them.
Is that what your partner is like, too?
If you don’t think you deserve better, please look at your children and then ask yourself: Does the mother of my children deserve to be treated like this? Does anyone? As I was, someone may have brainwashed you into thinking that you don’t deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, or love. You must no longer be willing to accept the big, fat lie that your needs, wishes, and desires aren’t important.
Many women who are married to abusive men, if not most, were either abused or neglected in their families of origin. But this is not always the case, as many abusive men are simply clever and charming; often they do not reveal their true colors until after their weddings. Psychologically speaking, women tend to be attracted to men who they think will enable them to revisit and possibly heal the unfinished emotional business of their childhoods.
Both of my parents were alcoholics, and I have many unhappy childhood memories. My father had a cruel streak as well as an explosive temper. He would sometimes get violent for no apparent reason when he came home from a stressful day at work, so I was always on edge. His long train commute home from work and excessive drinking didn’t help matters. Like most women in the 1950s and 1960s, my mother didn’t work, so he had money worries. I was a lightning rod for most of the physical abuse in our household, which was unpredictable and mostly unprovoked, although sometimes my sisters also experienced it.
My mother, who did not protect us from the abuse, was a depressed alcoholic who would frequently be sleeping off a bender in her bed when I got home from school, even as a young child. When I did get her attention, it wasn’t safe, so I frequently hid in my room, studying, and stayed out of trouble. I did not realize until I was an adult that my mother wasn’t rejecting me; she just wasn’t able to cope with her depression and was oblivious to my pain and basic needs. It wasn’t personal.
My father had transferred his overwhelming rage from a difficult childhood of his own, his combat experiences as a very young man in World War II, and his stressful job on to me. It was too much for him to manage on his own. He needed a scapegoat who couldn’t fight back.
Neither of my parents had good role models of how to be a good parent, and they could not give me what they had never received themselves. Back in those days therapy was rare. They had no support to heal their pain. Now I can feel compassion for them. I understand they didn’t know how to take care of me or to show me that they loved me while they were still alive.
My wounding as a child made me very vulnerable to a predator. I wanted so badly to have a relationship—to give and to receive love—that I overlooked the warning signs that were there while I was dating the man I married. My father had never noticed me unless it was to criticize or punish me. This treatment resulted in my being susceptible to marrying the kind of man that I did who criticized me mercilessly.
My husband was raised a Catholic, had never been married, and was educated and charming, although self-absorbed. To me, he looked like a good candidate for a husband. I took the chance to marry him. I thought I could make it work and make him love me by being a good and loving wife. That never happened, of course, no matter how hard that I tried.
I am not sure what your circumstances are, but it is quite possible that you did not value yourself enough to think that you had other options than to marry your husband, or that there was a good man out there somewhere you could meet who would want you and treat you with love and respect. There are such men, but you will have to learn to love yourself first before you are ready for a healthy relationship. Please treat yourself with compassion and do what you need to do to heal so that you can make better choices in the future.
In Not Under Bondage, domestic abuse expert Barbara Roberts, an evangelical Christian, does a good job of enumerating the reasons why women don’t leave an abuser, which include trying to save her marriage, her life, and protect her children. She wisely states that submission is not consent. Here are some of the reasons she mentions.1
Lack of identification of the problem
Illness and lack of energy
The children
Belief in commitment to the marriage
The relationship had some good parts
Compassion for the spouse
Traumatic attachment
Shame
Terror
Disbelief or bad advice from others
Lack of support from others
Condemnation from others and self
Fear of being able to cope on one’s own
A housing crisis
Living in hope
For most of us, deciding to divorce is difficult enough without having to deal with our relatives, our friends, our communities, and our churches making us feel guilty about it. I finally came to the point where I decided to stop defending myself to others. I don’t need to defend my life or my existence or my life decisions to anyone. I do the best that I can, praying for guidance from God, and that is enough. If you are going to be happy, you will need to do the same. The fact that you are here, alive right now, is all the proof that you need that you are valued, you are supposed to be here, and you have a divine purpose.
Show yourself some compassion and understanding for why you didn’t leave your husband before now. You are leaving now, and that is enough. Don’t expect support from others, or that they will know what to say even if they do want to be supportive. Many people do not want to take sides, especially if you have acted as if everything was fine before, and your husband presents himself as an upstanding, reasonable, and nice person in public.
Well-meaning friends and relatives may ask you thoughtless and hurtful questions, such as: Why didn’t you leave him sooner? Why did you marry him in the first place? What did you do to make him angry? Why don’t you try harder to make the marriage work? Or, why don’t you just forgive him? Some may blame or judge you. Some may not believe that you are telling the truth about the abuse or your partner.
Other people will make hurtful comments when they are trying to be supportive because they don’t understand what you have been through or how you feel about it. When others judge you to have brought this upon yourself, or expect you to “try harder” or to continue to tolerate the marriage and the abuse, my recommendation is that you not respond at all. Simply state that you are getting a divorce from an abusive spouse. You owe no one any additional explanation. If someone presses you for more details, firmly state that you are getting counseling from a professional. Then change the subject or walk away.
Visit Barbara Roberts’ website, www.notunderbondage.com, if you would like to read more suggested responses to hurtful questions or comments.
