Emotional Abuse: My Story - Part Two

You know that feeling when you were a child, desperately trying to explain your side to the story. You are being told off and it isn’t your fault but you just can’t get the words out right - that is how emotional abuse feels. Like you are trapped and no matter what you do or say your voice will never be heard

Emotional abuse is subtle. It creeps in and becomes progressively worse. I was married to my husband for three years and over this time I experienced manipulation and control that infiltrated almost every aspect of my life. The following examples are a way to highlight some of the signs of emotional abuse, in the hope that through education the conversation around emotional abuse will begin to change.

Criticism: Every day it felt like I was doing something wrong. I loaded the dishwasher wrong, I parked the car in the wrong place, I drove the wrong way to get somewhere, I used something I shouldn’t have and said things that embarrassed him. I often felt like I was a child, that I was inferior, stupid and incapable. I had a constant underlying fear of doing or saying the wrong thing and felt like I was tiptoeing through life.

Control of Time and People: He was always wanting to know who I was with, where I was and what I was doing and if I didn’t answer the phone or reply to a message quick enough he would get grumpy with me. He would question why I was spending time with certain people, saying things like “why do you even like her?”, accused me of flirting and would question why I acted differently around other people than I did with him. I felt like he was always checking on me, he influenced so many of the choices I made and ultimately lead me to withdraw and lose most of the connections I had with friends.

Control of My Appearance:  He told me I shouldn’t wear certain items of clothing because I was drawing too much attention to myself, specifically saying I couldn’t wear spandex or a bikini as other guys were looking at my bum. He would question who I was wearing makeup for if he wasn’t going to be there and would often say things like “are you going to wear that?” as if he disapproved. At one point he showed me a photo of one of his past female friends and suggested I should dress more feminine like her.  Over time my attire and appearance changed, influenced by the man I so desperately wanted to please.

Control of the Day to Day: He complained my showers were too long and sometimes stood outside the bathroom door timing me and telling me to shut the hot water off when 6 minutes was up. There were times I would use the hairdryer on the lowest setting so that he couldn’t hear it, as he told me I used it too much and was wasting the power.  When we first got married we discussed money and I agreed to us each having $40 of ‘pocket money’ to spend a week. This soon turned into the money I was allocated for everything (coffee, toiletries, presents for friends, movies….everything). Meanwhile ‘our money’ was used to buy big ticket items that he somehow convinced me were for the both of us and that I wanted them too. There were so many weeks I would get a little bit of extra money out when I filled the car up with petrol, just so that I could afford to get myself a coffee.

Sex: He made me feel completely inadequate as a partner and I often felt pressure to have sex with him. He would say things like “most woman have sex with their husbands once a day” and made feel incredibly guilty for not meeting his needs. I felt like something was wrong with me, and in the end we went and saw a sex therapist as I thought that maybe if we fixed this part of our marriage, it would somehow make the other things better. (The interesting thing is – the sex therapist was the first person to ever question him on the way he was treating me – needless to say those appointments didn’t last very long).

Gaslighting: We would have massive arguments where he would call me names and say really hurtful things, yet the next day when I tried to tell him how I felt, he would somehow convince me it never happened or that I had remembered it wrong. He called me a bitch, an F#$&*^% c-word and would tell me he didn’t love me with an awful look in his eyes but would then completely deny it ever happened. In the end I would write what he said down, just so that I could assure myself that I wasn’t going crazy.

There were a couple of incidents that happened right at the end that made me realise how unloved, how uncared for, and how alone I felt. In February 2017, Christchurch had the ‘Port Hills Fires’ where, for a couple of days, flames blazed across the hills as firefighters battled to stop them. One of these nights we decided to get a closer look and drove to a nearby suburb. On the way home he suggested we drive closer and before I knew it we were driving up a road that was clearly marked as closed, closer to the fire. I remember telling him to stop, that I was scared and I didn’t want to go so he told me to get out of the car and as I waited on the side of the road, crying, with my heart beating in fear, he drove off, coming back several minutes later as if nothing was wrong, and told me I was overreacting. I clearly remember telling myself that this wasn’t normal – that it wasn’t okay for a husband to treat their wife this way.

The last incident that happened was on the night before I left. I woke up in the middle of the night needing to go to the toilet and on the way back I stumbled into a suitcase I had previously left lying at the end of the bed, stubbing my toe. Naturally I made a little cry of pain and as I got back in he turned over and told me to get back up and make sure the suitcase was okay. He didn’t ask me if I was okay, or show any sign of sympathy towards me. He made me feel that an inanimate object was more important to him than his own wife.

Emotional abuse changed me into someone I didn’t like. When you are suffocating within your own life, when you have someone who knows how to push your buttons, knows how to provoke and undermine you, you start behaving in a way that isn’t healthy. I remember days when I would lie on the spare bed crying, covering my face to try and block him out and he would stand over me, telling me we had to talk, not leaving until I finally had enough and would push him. It was then that he would leave me alone, telling me I was abusive for hitting him. This is the part of emotional abuse that often stops people from getting the help they need – because you are made to believe that things are your fault, that you are to blame.

My husband and I went to counselling and sought help from mentors and leadership within our church for two years. We could both readily admit that our marriage was not good and that something was wrong but, the thing is, emotional abusers are very good at manipulating situations and conversations and I almost always walked away from these meetings feeling like my words had been twisted and that people weren’t really hearing what I was saying. We were given advice for how to communicate better and told to be kind to one another, ultimately reinforcing to him that we had equal parts to play in what was happening. This kind of language, “there are two sides to every story” and “it takes two" can sometimes be misleading and harmful. The truth is, yes, there are two sides - but one side fights very hard to ensure the other is silenced, unheard, misunderstood and not trusted and so over time we become afraid to raise our voices.

Our society does not talk about emotional abuse well. We are ignorant. Bruises are easy to see – we know and accept that physical abuse is wrong, but it’s emotional abuse that is leaving the lasting damage. Emotional abuse is difficult to understand, to make concrete, to put into easily digestible words but until we learn to have the conversation - we will ignore things, miss things and ultimately will not be able to help the vulnerable. The reality is - women and men are being emotionally abused all around us. This isn’t just a case of bad communication and no amount of kindness will fix it. Education is what changes our future - from education we can make informed decisions.

As of July 2019 The Family Violence Act took effect. This Act replaces the Domestic Violence Act 1995 and helps to give better guidance about the nature and impact of family violence and includes an update on “the definition of family violence to better reflect how controlling behaviour can be used over time to frighten a victim and undermine their autonomy”. When this news came out I cried. As someone who has experienced control and manipulation it means a lot to have your experience validated. As a victim you spend so much time and energy defending yourself - the day I read this I let out a sigh of relief.

My hope is that in time healthy relationships will be talked about within our education systems and until this happens I will fight and I will not let my voice be silenced again.

Part 3 coming soon. All about the aftermath of leaving an emotional abuse - the part of my story which has probably been the most challenging