It Could Never Happen To Me

Some may feel that it will never happen to them. I thought this myself. I had read the paper about abused women and wondered and asked the same questions. Why do they stay? What is wrong with them that they would take this?

Do you think that you are smart enough not to get involved with an abuser? Well, I was. My IQ is two points below genius. Do you think that your background and childhood will protect you? I came from a wealthy family....not old money but my father was financially considered a millionaire many times.

I grew up lacking for nothing financially. I grew up shopping four times a year for clothes and getting whatever I wanted. So there are no social boundaries - there is no sure way you can prepare yourself for this type of life.

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My Story Of Suviving Domestic Violence/Wife Abuse
I dated many wealthy young men as a teenager but I chose to marry an abuser. I should have seen the warning signs but I didn't. I should have heeded my gut feeling but I didn't.

While we were married for almost 10 years, I didn't even feel anything was wrong. If he became abusive, I fought back. We had two children and I had quite my job in the government to stay home with them.

Eventually we divorced because he was fooling around on me, not for the abuse. I still had not recognized any problems.

So, I rushed into the arms of a friend of his who said and did all the right things. He said all the things I longed to hear and before long, "I was again in love".

This gentle caring man who told me that I would never cry again lied.

I did more crying with him than I think any one has cried. He had promised that if I was his wife, he would treat me like a queen and I believed it because I longed to hear it. He told me about his childhood and how his father had beat his mother and how often he had taken a beating rather than let his mom get it. I saw the gentle caring side of him and even when I knew that he came from an abused family, I though how wonderful he was to have protected his mother. He said that he would never strike a woman after what he saw and I believed him.

What I didn't know then was that abuse is a cycle. It continues until someone breaks it. Abusers have almost always been victims themselves of abuse and/or watched their mother being abused. So the first time he struck me - I was in shock. How could he do this? Why would he do this? I was upset and the next day I was angry. He came to me apologizing, stating that he had been drinking and was upset and that he would never harm me if he had been sober. He apologized over and over again. He bought me flowers, a card and pampered me for a few days.

I thought by now that it was just one of those things. He made a mistake, he apologized and it wouldn't happen again.

It seems each beating was like that. The beating, the apologizing and the pampering. A cycle to keep me there.

As well as the physical abuse, verbal, emotional and psychological abuse started. Name calling, put downs - anything to make me feel bad was said. The weird thing about this type of abuse (See Types of Abuse)
you don't really know "that the words are getting through" (an explanation of this is in my recovery letter). There were some times I actually wished he would have hit me rather than scream and name call.
At least one slap would be over but the yelling and name calling hit harder than the slaps.

If that didn't work, then there were the threats to harm my animals, to take the kids and move away where I'd never see them again.

Do you remember that commercial that they used to have on TV about verbal abuse. The one where you hear the husband yelling put downs and you see the woman coming around to a mirror and when she looks into it - you see all the scars that are on her face. It was like that exactly only I didn't know it then. I didn't realize that with every put down or name calling that I was gaining a scar. His beatings left none, although I often wondered why they didn't.

I've been taken to the hospital with a concussion and hemoragging but when asked I said I fell down the stairs. Little did they know that while he was kicking and punching me and when I fell to the floor, he grabbed my hair and started banging my head into the floor that one of his friends stood by and watched.

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Why Didn't I Tell Anyone?
Funny thing about abusers - they can usually find friends who are abusers as well and therefore no one speaks up. I remember one beating where I ended up with no facial features for a month. One of his friends came in and said "Hey, what did you do to deserve that?" and the horrible thing was that I thought I had done something so wrong that I deserved it.

Could I expect understanding from anyone when someone could just stand there and watch while I was being beaten? I didn't think so. I felt that all men must feel that way. Well, by now we had two children - thus totally my children to four.

I was sure that although I endured all of this, that I had protected my kids from this. They would be alseep when he beat me and they never saw anything. I wouldn't let him harm them and I thought I was a great mother for doing a great job in a bad situation. Wrong! (Read the Effects on My Children)



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