HD's Story in several posts (it's long.) HDSquirrel: I received a private message from someone who identified with something I'd said in another post, and she asked for more info. I told her I'd make a public post about it, as I think others might also want to read this...sisters, you're not alone. Here's my story.
I met my ex when I was in college, age 19 or so, and he was 22, I think. I was at that stage in my life where I really had no idea about who *I* was, and was going through some life changes in which I was trying to better myself, and was going to church, etc. Along came RT, and he seemed like the man of my dreams. RT was charming and sociable and had an adorable grin. To this day, when I see Tom Cruise on TV, I'm reminded of RT. RT had plans to become a minister, and after the wild teenager I'd been, that seemed so smart to me. He would regale me with funny stories about things he'd done, and I would laugh with him over comments he'd made to other people. On our first date, we stayed up talking until 6am, and then I called him when I got home so we could talk some more. Any attempts I made at showering him with attention and "mushy stuff" were met with approval. I found myself molding myself to be the girl of HIS dreams, because it gave me so much pleasure to see him happy. Little did I realize at the time, that I was doing all this to my own detriment.
We got married within a year and a half of meeting each other. My father absolutely hated him, but after time he relaxed a little as he saw I wasn't to be deterred from marrying my dream man. Over the next 12 years, RT and I had 2 kids, and also...I grew up.
During the first year of marriage, I was still in school, going for a 2-yr degree at a junior college in another city, which had me away from the house from morning until night. He spent his time immersed in work, and was also assisting his father coach at a local high school, plus was going to school himself. We never saw each other really, except for on weekends. After I graduated, I quickly became pregnant, and started the whole stay at home mom thing. I should have known something was amiss when he complained about going to lamaze classes with me, and he missed all but one of them. I remember sitting there by myself with the pillow in my lap, looking at all the other couples, wondering why my marriage wasn't like theirs. RT and I never fought...we just kind of led our own lives but lived in the same house. He was always out doing things with his friends, and would be too tired to even talk to me when he got home. If I wanted to go do something with one of the other moms from church (as these were the only friends I had at this point), my request was met with drawn out heavy sighs and an "I GUESS...!!!!" from him. If I asked him to do something for me, his response was always, "I'll TRYYY..!!!" as if to say he wasn't going to be able to do it, so why bother him with the request. I became conditioned to believe that everything was MY responsibility, and that if something went wrong, it was my fault.
Re:HD's Story in several posts (it's long.) HDSquirrel: As time went on, I became more and more isolated. My whole life consisted of taking care of the kids and of the house. When he came home and flopped on the couch, I wasn't to disturb him. I couldn't tell him about my day, or ask him to help with the kids, because that was *my* job to do and he was far too busy to be bothered with such things. Yet I was to keep all of his clothes ironed, and keep his favorite foods on hand, and be okay with decorating the house with things from his favorite football team. (Even our wedding was done in the colors of his team....how sad is that?) It seemed that the harder I would try to do things "right", and the harder I would try to please him, the farther apart we'd get. Except....in the bedroom.
RT, as it turned out, was a bit of a porn addict...a fact hidden from me for many years. Yes, occasionally, he'd talk me into renting a video, and at first I found it....(can I talk about porn here?)...well...it had the intended effect on me, let's put it that way...but by the third video or so, I'd start criticizing the movie, as if it was an actual "film", hah...I'd be rolling my eyes and going, "Pfft!! Riiiiight....like she'd still be wearing those heels while she's doing that...." etc. You get the idea. It became laughable to me. So when RT realized that movies weren't the way to go with me, he started bringing in toys. And I mean TOYS. We had a whole big bag of the things. Me, wanting to please him, remember, went along with it all. There had to be SOMEway for me to regain his attention, right? Well, I ended up doing things I NEVER would have done ordinarily, and when you go all day for weeks and months, being ignored for who you are, but being expected to wait on someone hand and foot, and then being basically USED in the bedroom....you can imagine the toll it takes on your mental condition. I was little more than a slave.
Apparently this whole chain of events was part of a subconscious need for RT to have complete control over me, and I was there only to satisfy his every wish, basically. I was isolated, and the only people I could talk to were other moms from my church, and my GOD, what would THEY say if I told them any of this, right? RT was going to be a PASTOR, and we were the perfect couple! Because, outwardly, we were. RT would still smile and turn on the charm to anyone on the outside. He had a good job, and I was a cute little mom for the kids. Even to his family, he would make nice comments about me, which really just served to confuse me and make me keep on "obeying" him at home. It was a horrible cycle.
In the spring of 1998, we got a computer. I bet some of you are nodding now....these wonderful computers can be blamed for so many breakups, can't they? Well, for me...looking back...the computer was the door to my freedom.
Re:HD's Story in several posts (it's long.) HDSquirrel: Initially, I would visit message boards. Then I got into some church-related or parenting-related chat rooms. RT, on the other hand, was quick to jump into the sex rooms, and he encouraged me to do the same. He would stay up all night chatting with people, cybering, whatever. It finally progressed into him having phone sex. (Can I say "sex" here?) Okay, anyway...in an effort for HIM to feel right about having phone sex, he encouraged me to do the same thing. So, again, to please him, I did it. And just like the movies, at first, it was fun. The very first time, I was incredibly weirded out, and hated it, but thought that since RT liked it so much, I should try again. And as luck would have it, I found someone who was actually pretty cool, and who would TALK to me as well. Whoa. Someone on the outside will talk to me? What's up with that??? It was like a whole new world had opened up for me.
As I wasn't comfortable in the sex rooms, I ended up finding my niche in a help desk area of one of the chat places, and became a regular, and wound up bonding with a few people...one of whom was a guy. This guy and I would talk for hours on end...he was always on when I was on, and he'd never seen a picture of me, but he wanted to talk to me, for ME! He didn't care how I ironed clothes or how I cleaned or how I shopped or what I wore...he saw the inside of me only, and he LIKED it!! I was SPECIAL again!!!
So then began my secret life. I would continue doing all the things for RT that I'd always done, but my mind was elsewhere. Thinking about other things made doing MORE things in the bedroom easier. At this point, RT figured anything was fair game, I think. I shudder when I think about those days. And if I didn't give the porn star moaning response to whatever object he put inside me, there was something wrong with me, because how DARE I not appreciate the effort he's making to spend time with me!! *sighs* Ladies, if any of you are seeing yourself in these words, GET OUT NOW. I would spend my days talking to my online friend...the first real friend I'd had in years, and spend my nights in a mental zone, wishing I was still with my online friend. The thought of leaving RT and the kids never crossed my mind. I think I believed that leaving was never even an option, but the happiness I found online carried me through with wishful thinking that my life was somehow different.
In 2000, RT and I moved to another state, so he could work on his Masters degree. It was time for me to get another job, as we couldn't afford for me to stay home anymore with so much of his time devoted to school. Me getting a job meant I was back out in the real world again, being with real people, getting to know people in person. Crazy, crazy, for a girl who'd been stuck at home for so long. My online friend and I kept up our friendship, until one day, RT figured out how to check the temp files. From there, it was all downhill. I was broken. I was forced to give up the only friend I had, and was pushed back into isolation. I tried making friends in my job, but it seemed pointless when I could never do anything with them outside of work. The bedroom antics continued, to the point where RT even advertised online for people to either have phone sex with me or to have sex with me in person....WTF??? Yes, it's true. I never knew about any of that until way after the fact, when I did a search on his username in Google, and saw the message he'd placed. I then remembered coming home one day to find RT chatting with a guy online and he said he'd told the guy I'd have phone sex with him. I think now that it was a result of that ad. To be honest, I don't remember if I did it or not, as I tend to block out so much of the bad stuff in my life so it doesn't get me down. But knowing how I was conditioned to just do what he told me to do, it's likely that I did it. *shudders*
Re:HD's Story in several posts (it's long.) HDSquirrel: After some time, I developed more online friends, different ones, but ones that also liked me for ME. RT and I went through a long cycle of me making friends, and then him spying on my actions, and even truly innocent friendships were broken up by him, because he feared losing me. Of course he would. I was the only one who cared about him. If I left, who would take care of him? If I left, his ministry would be ruined. He would never be able to work in a church again! (yeah, yeah, yeah, that's SO not true, and with the twisted brain he's got, he probably shouldn't work in a church anyway, but I digress.)
Cutting to the point of all of this...eventually I had an affair. Well, not just one affair. More like a handful of them. Some were emotional affairs held only online, some were in person. And finally, I got caught. Not in person, but through email evidence. I confessed up to it all, and he actually said he wanted to forgive me. Can you see how twisted this is? Why would he forgive something like that, unless he was somehow tied to me as well?
So, we began counseling. At first, only I was going. He made me go, and I was supposed to find out why it was I had the affairs. Because, of course, something was very wrong with me to have done that. After a couple of sessions of me just talking to the counselor, she threw up her hands, and said, "No WONDER you had the affairs! I'm shocked that it took you as long as it did!!!" I quickly determined that this particular counselor was going to be of no help, so I stopped going. I still believed there was something wrong with ME. I should WANT to be loyal to this "perfect" man, right?
In the meantime, RT started going to a different counselor...one recommended by our pastor. After a few weeks, the counselor wanted to meet with me. I was scared to death. I would be walking into a room to meet the man to whom RT had been telling all these horrible things about me. I felt like I was about to be broadsided with a baseball bat. I went into the room, very tensed up, and the counselor asked me if I felt comfortable talking with RT there. I told him I didn't. So the counselor asked RT to wait in the waiting room. Oooh, boy, that did it. RT was P*SSED. The counselor told me a few things that he'd learned from RT, and asked me about my own feelings. What I had to say of course was totally opposite from what RT'd been feeding the counselor. The counselor knew something was very wrong with that picture. But he listened to me. He really listened to me, and that was key.
Re:HD's Story in several posts (it's long.) HDSquirrel: RT and I went to this counselor for two years. During that time, we took these huge standardized tests that got to the root of our problems. RT was diagnosed as having a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD. (If you see yourself or your spouse in any of what I've written, PLEASE do yourself the favor of looking up NPD online. We are not alone, and no, you are not crazy. You've been brainwashed and mistreated, and you've got to make it stop.) What NPD is, essentially, is the inability for the NPD'er to understand life outside of himself (or herself.) If it doesn't affect him, it doesn't exist. A crying baby? Doesn't exist. A mess on the floor? Doesn't exist. But a wrinkle in his suit pants? OH MY GOD, the world is coming to an end. Nothing is the fault of the NPD'er, as the whole world is working against him. I remember one day, RT was moping around the house, convinced that because he hadn't had time to study, that he would fail a test. And it was somehow my fault. I pointed out that he still had 3 hours before the test, so he might think about studying. Shame on me for having such a stupid idea. My kids have been affected by this as well...if my daughter runs into the edge of a door, it's her brother's fault for leaving the door open, instead of her own fault for not watching where she was going. And then it will cause her to stomp around for hours after that, because her BROTHER didn't shut the door. *cries*
I, on the other hand, really should have been born in the hippie days, as I'm SUCH a free spirit, and all into having (good clean) fun, and as I have also mentioned in another post, the test diagnosed me as Hedonistic to a fault. If it makes me happy and appeals to my senses, I will do anything to get it. I avoid conflict because it doesn't make me happy. I don't learn from my mistakes, because dwelling on my mistakes doesn't make me happy.
So you see the problem with these two personality types being married? We spent so many years with him making demands and me struggling to please him, but me trying to find my own happiness too, which then took away from the time I could spend adoring him, so he'd put a stop to whatever made me happy (another example is theatre...I majored in theatre at one point, and love to act, but that was always denied me because who on earth would make dinner at night??).
The counselor told us from day one, to stop all activity in the bedroom. We went those whole two years without having sex. That wasn't a pleasant experience, let me tell you. With RT SO used to being able to do what he wanted, WHEN he wanted, the bedroom was a place of horrible tension. We would fight and fight until I couldn't mentally take it anymore, and I would cut myself to make the emotional pain go away. I still have a scar on the inside of one of my arms from one of the times. I would dig keys into my chest, would slash at my arms with knives, would in a very detatched way, create designs in my inner arms with an exacto knife. All because of the pain I felt at home...it just helped make it all go away. Note also that during this time RT was posting ads on singles sites and listing himself as Separated.
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