I wrote of this once. In fiction. It was easier to speak in third person, hiding behind the characters I created. When he choked her to near unconsciousness, I could protect myself with that invisible wall.
But it’s time. To speak out. To use my name in telling my story. For myself. For others. Because I have the words to speak of it when so many others don’t. And then the question inevitably arises…
Why do women stay in abusive marriages? This is what most people think, if they don’t ask it outright. Hell, I STILL ask this question, as I have yet to come up with an adequate answer for myself.
The short answer is I don’t know. But it’s not why you think. How do I know? Because I stayed for almost 10 years. And it wasn’t for any reason that most people imagined.
After all, why does a dying frog stay in a boiling pot of water? Because it takes time for the heat to be a true threat.
By then it’s too late.
The signs were there from the beginning, but to a young girl blind with love (or lust?) they were easy to ignore.
We met at a bar, but it was a fluke, right? I rarely went to bars. No reason to think he was an alcoholic just because he was there that night too.
He promised to cut back, and he did. Our whirlwind courtship left little room for the demon of doubt to wiggle his way into our love.
The first time his arms wrapped around my body, not in love, but in hate and anger, I was unprepared. He was drunk. I was desperate to keep him from driving. I ended up in a heap on the floor, throat sore from choking, the sound of his screeching tires telling me I’d lost him.
I was still there three days later when he finally decided to come home.
It was then that I knew I’d also lost myself. (And everything in our joint bank account!)
Next, the demon of war came to our home. He was on alert to fight in Iraq. To save lives with his medic training. In and out of these threats, we tried to stay strong. Ignoring the heat building around us.
This death of soul crept into me slowly. Stealing away at who I was, while I fought to keep my life from falling apart. Then the demon of fear came to live with us. It was to him I was married for nearly a decade.
If you had asked me 15 years ago what I would do if a man strangled me, threatened to kill me, or hurt me in any way physically, my answer would have involved many expletives and a detailed description of what his key body parts would be doing without him.
I was strong. Beautiful. Independent. Intelligent. Educated. Trained in martial arts. A feminist. I was all the things you would NEVER expect of an abused wife. And then I became an abused wife. And all those other adjectives fell to the wayside as I became a ghost of myself, haunting my own life.
My husband wasn’t an evil man. I wasn’t a spineless, uneducated wimp. These are stereotypes that people like to imagine are true, so they feel immune to the realities of what could be.
Why do women stay in abusive relationships? Because we don’t feel the heat until we are already dying.
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This is the first part of a 10-part series on domestic violence and relationships based on my life that I will be posting every Monday. Please come back next Monday for the next post, The Beginning of The End, or follow my blog or sign up to receive email updates. You can also like my Facebook Page for updates on my blog, my books and more.
You’re right, women stay in abusive relationships because they don’t feel that heat until it’s too late.
I appreciate you sharing your story, however awful it is, because women in similar circumstances need to hear they are not alone and that there is hope–life doesn’t have to be this way. It can get better.
My older cousin who I looked up to tremendously was in an abusive relationship to her second husband. Not to do any racial profiling (because not all men are this way, but it needs to be added to understand the full situation), but her husband was from Jordan. he came here to do some studies at local college where she attended. They met and married a short time later and then she changed completely. She was beautiful and always dressed modern. He made her stop wearing makeup and forced her to wear plain, loose skirts and shirts–covered from neck to ankle. She stopped calling friends and family. He abused her daughter from a previous marriage (both sexually and physically)–the girl was four years old. He broke my cousins arm so severely that she had to have it pinned together in numerous places (though she refused to say it was him, but changed her story of how she broke her arm too many times to count).
They had three more daughters together, but their third daughter (only a few months old) “slipped” from his arms, hit the ground, and ended up in Primary Children’s Hospital for several weeks. Her poor little head was the size of a basketball. When she recovered and came home, a month later, she was dead. Another accidental “slip” in a mall parking lot that left her unconscious and she never woke up.
We all knew he did it, but my cousin stood beside him. Feeling the wrath of family–mostly from my aunt and uncle–he dragged her and their two daughters, plus her daughter from a previous marriage, to Jordan. Once there, she couldn’t get back. He wouldn’t let her and the kids leave. She’d call almost daily and beg my aunt and uncle to help her, and it took my aunt and uncle everything they had to get my cousin and her daughters out of that country and back home.
He stayed there and never came back to America. He told her she was dead to him and that their daughters weren’t his. He had made this same accusation about their 3rd baby, BreAnna, the one that passed away, because she had a lighter skin tone. My aunt thinks that is the reason for all the accidental slips.
It was a mess. I was a young teen when all this happened, but I remember the stress and fear it put into everyone. I could see it in my mother’s face how much she worried for her niece–they were very close.
It’s been many years since then and my cousin and her beautiful girls have moved on to live happy wonderful lives. They live in Florida. The girls are grown and married and my cousin went on to marry a wonderful man who adores her.
Sharing your story is a good thing, Kimberly. A very good thing.
Wow, Angela, that made me cry. What a horribly scary thing to go through for her and her daughters, and for your whole family. I’m so sorry she had to suffer that. It’s so hard when there’s kids involved. You want to protect them, but you also fear leaving. I worried my ex would get partial custody, or have visitations when he was alone with them. He didn’t abuse them in the ways presented here, but he was an alcoholic and unstable. He wasn’t safe and they were very young. Also, at the time, I had no money or income, so leaving was VERY hard.
Thank you for sharing this. I’m so glad she is doing better and is happy and healthy.