Sitting in traffic behind a van for a battered, homeless women’s shelter, I remember thinking to myself “Well at least I am not beaten or homeless!” My mom had been a battered wife in the days before there were shelters. At night when the fighting would start (which was every night) she would put us into the car and with nowhere to go we drove around all night.
That was many years ago and the sight of that van should have been my wake-up call, I wasn’t battered, but my husband was a verbal abuser. I was already a product of the “Divorce Revolution” and didn’t want my children to live through the experience of divorce.
When I met my ex, he seemed like such a nice guy. I never thought there would be a time we wouldn’t be friends, but I guess people change. I know there are many reasons I could think of for not being friends with my ex and I’m sure if you made a list we would probably share some of the same principles, but here are my top three.
1. First and most important to me: He broke my son’s heart when he left and after two years, my son still hasn’t recovered. It may be ok to destroy my life, but why couldn’t he wait until our son was in college?
He left at the worst possible time, when our son was in the middle of high school, when grades are so important. His grades and his health have suffered. My son now feels like he has already destroyed his future before it even had a chance to begin. He missed school again today because he was too depressed to go. I took him to breakfast to try and cheer him up and our conversation must have been so unhappy that the man behind us paid for our meal. Such kindness from a stranger, I only wish his dad had been half as kind.
2. He was and still is a control freak! During our marriage, he took charge of every aspect of our lives. Where we lived, where our kids went to school, what we had for dinner and so much more. He never let me have a voice in decisions.
If I tried to speak up he would order me to stop talking and just do what he wanted. He is still trying to micro-manage everything, that is why this divorce is taking so long. I let him destroy my life, my personality, and my health. I am still recovering due to the shock of being allowed to be myself again.
I can’t believe I let him control me like that but after 30 years you can forget who you once were. Can you believe he would even tell me how I should vote too? I never followed his instructions, but I didn’t fight with him about it like I stopped fighting about a lot of things that were important to me
3. He turned me into my mom. I may not have been a battered wife, but verbal abuse is just as bad as physical abuse, the difference is no one sees the mental bruises that are left long after the person who put them there is gone. He told me he never liked or respected my mom.
Maybe he never respected me either. He never appreciated my sacrificed career or how hard I worked. During our marriage, he never had my back. Everything that was wrong was my fault and everything that was right was all due to him. He even started making fun of me in front of our kids trying to show them that I wasn’t worth being respected. How can I be friends with someone that disrespected me?
Did he change over time or was he just misleading me? I have learned my lesson and I will never give up control of my life again! I only hope my children can be the ones to break this pattern of divorce.
After surviving 30 years of this bad relationship, I am still nice to him whenever I see him. Like my saying goes, “Keep your friends close and your frenemies closer.”
More from DivorcedMoms
I love how someone so unattractive feels confident enough to denegrate others. Has nobody told him that the women in his life put up with him because of his wallet? Oh well, “The Donald” will be “The Donald”, and Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina should both hope that “The Donald” hangs in there long enough to ensure that we have our first female president.
Hear, hear!
We are almost socially bullied into feeling ashamed because we don’t get along great with our exes as though somehow all divorces must be amicable. She can love her father, and she can love me — and our lives can be separate. This works for me, and therefore, it is good for my daughter as well. That’s right. What’s good for me is good for my child.
I can completey understand your reluctance to being friends with your ex. I feel pretty much the same way, but I can’t help feel that your reasoning is a bit one sided and biased. You say that your husband leaving you when he did was the worst possible timing, but is there ever a good time for divorce that does not create emotional stress and damage to everybody? How much better or different would it have been if your ex had waited, as you say, until your son went off to college? If the marriage was as broken as it appears then who’s to say that your son wouldn’t have been as emotionally affected as he did anyways? Also, you seem to disavow any responsiblity on your part. Before you hate on your ex for all the emotional pain that he may have caused your son you should take a hard look on your contribution to his hardship as well.
Further, your ex did not turn you into your mother — you did. You’re a grown adult and as such you have the full capacity to make the choices you make. You can’t blame your ex for you becoming the person you are, only you can do that and you need to own those choices.
I thought I was reading my own story. With a few differences. But all to close to same
I find some things about this article disturbing enough to make mention of the following:
No one “turns” you into any one. How you process and perceive your self is determined not by with other people “think” as much as this arthor would like to have us believe…but by how YOU have determined to process and proceive your self.
2. This story is from one point of view…HERS. Why did HE leave? We will never know. But if she was MY wife blaming ME for every BS problem she couldn’t account for because she was too insecure with her self to admit guilt to a marrital problem….YEA I would probably need a vacation too.
If you can’t admit your own portion of the problems in your life and you need to “blame” the world….you don’t deserve a man…you deserve a dog.
Go out and get one. Marriage is about looking at milestones and saying where can we go from here with what we have learned.
She never writes about learning ANYTHING. I guess she’s perfect. Or this article is a typical male bashing validation of failed marriage based on a lack of willingness to seek proper help and coming to terms with the BASIC problems EVERY marriage can face.
Jeremy, until you do some research and learn how covert marital abuse impacts a spouse, you really shouldn’t be sharing your opinion about this woman or anyone else.
Emotional abuse is the worst form of abuse. It can and does change who you are as a person. Other people do have the ability to impact who we are, how we respond to stressors and how we perceive ourselves and our value. Become more informed about domestic abuse before commenting and dismissing the feelings of another victim. Whether that victim is a man or woman.
Secondly If this article was written by a man I have a feeling you wouldn’t be all that concerned with his wife’s side of the story. You’ve belittled the author because she is a woman and that says a lot about you as a man.
This isn’t an article about what she learned or what role she played, it is an article about why she wouldn’t want to be friend with her ex-husband. For you to insult this author, someone you know nothing about by telling her she only deserves a dog once again says a lot about you as a man.
This article bashes her ex-husband, not all men but one man. It is her right to feel anyway she feels about her ex. It is not your right to belittle and demean her because her feelings differ from yours.
I have a feeling you’re pissed because you got left and, based on your comments on some articles here, I think I can understand why she chose to leave. There are men out there that women just aren’t all that interested in “marking milestones” with, Jeremy. Angry men like you for example.
It’s a blog where the writer gets to share things from her perspective. Of course there’s another side. There always is. If I take anything from her story, it is that her story is not finished. This is the end of her marriage and there’s a ton of stuff, but she’s working her way through it and moving toward who she is going to be. It will all workout. For both of them, actually. It’s just going to take some time.
My exhusband and I get along great. We share custody. He’s becoming a surrogate father figure to the daughter I had after we divorced, and you can invite us to the same party and expet that we will both behave and have a good time. It’s a nice goal to aspire to, but don’t spend a minute feeling bad if it’s not working out that way for you. It’s hard and sometimes there is just too much to rise above. The only advise I have is just make sure that you don’t stand between him and his son, especially if he’s old enough to plan things together. All of the other stuff will work itself out.
My kids found out my now ex was cheating before me. Heck the IRS knew before me. His employer who fired both he and she for malfeasance knew before me. His family knew before me and even some of my family and apparently my gyno suspected my infections were the result of my ex having extra marital sex but didn’t tell me. Screw him…nope never will be friendly or friends.