My husband and I have been together for almost seven years and married for 4 years. We both have been married before and have children from those marriages and one together, a 14 month old baby.We met from a dating service. I moved from Canada to the US for a job promotion but shortly after being here I had to return home because I was having difficulty walking. I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Right before I went back home because is when my husband and I met not face to face, just over the phone.We exchanged phone numbers and from then on we spoke everyday or wrote to each other all of the time until I returned to the states 5 months later. Then we were inseparable. We had a lot in common. We both had young children and going through a divorce.But in the beginning of our relationship I had noticed he was becoming very jealous. . . I thought it was because he was insecure because of his marriage breaking up & for me I liked it because I wasn’t used to all of the attention. But I later found out that he is very possessive, chauvinistic, controlling and overbearing all of which has become unbearable.His mother had told me his father was the same but he grew out of it, with her persistence. But my husband and his father are two different people.One of the main reasons we argue or at least when the arguments begin is when he ‘needs’ to go to the bar (aka strip club) or ‘has to’ have a drink and go to his ‘cave’. You see the strip clubs, bars and just drinking in general is where he goes to think (Cave; Men are from Mars Women are from Venus) I’d tell him that I don’t think John Gray was referring to the bar as a cave.Anyhow, it never was a big problem until he started coming home really early in the mornings and smelling of perfume and drunk as a skunk. He’d say nasty insulting things to me and blame me for everything. His reasoning for drinking is because that is when the truth comes out and he can think clearly.I hate that he drinks and worse yet when he drives drunk. He puts his life, the kids, mine and strangers lives at jeopardy. He claims that he isn’t a drunk he is a social drinker and at least he would never physically abuse me like my ex-husband, so I have nothing to worry about.Things were really getting out of hand at this point. When I would bring up the issue of the clubs and bars he’d compare it to me going to the grocery store. If I mention that to him now and he says ‘that was so long ago when I said that, you can go shopping all you want’ but heaven forbid if I went to a club or even have a friend.The drinking, name calling, and the jealousy are horrible. I can’t even wave politely to my 70 year old male neighbor. He has this idea that I am going to cheat on him. Everything is about me leaving him or people turning me against him.He thinks our parents are out to break us up. He hates me talking with his parents because he feels they’ll turn me against him like they did his first wife. Making friends is virtually impossible he always has something bad to say about them; any reason not to have people around me.One time I befriended a neighbor across the street. We met because her daughter rides the same school bus as ours. What a mistake, he said that I was bringing the devil into the house. There is always some reference to the devil and evil. Either I’m the devil or I’m evil.But stupid me I would always end up consoling him and assuring him I wouldn’t leave. Just recently he said I was the worst thing that has ever happened to him.My husband is a great provider. But when my company laid me off it became difficult financially. My background is Graphic Design and my husband was completing medical school at the time we met, but we had an agreement that we work together to support him till he gets his own practice and then he’ll support me in going back to school to complete my degree.Needless to say, he has his practice and all has come tumbling down. I thought things would be better once he achieved his dream but there I was being n
You have been so terribly violated by your husband, I’m still reeling from your letter. You must resume therapy and discover why you would even consider going back home to him. I can give you some clues as to why.You were abused by your first husband and then again by your current husband. There is only one reason why you would keep choosing abusive partners and why you would tolerate such treatment: You were a battered child.If you reread your letter to me you will see that your life is a vivid example of what I call the repetition compulsion; that is, the unconscious craving to find an abusive life partner who will recreate your childhood and hopefully give you a happier ending this time around.Of course the happy ending hasn’t occurred for you (and never will), precisely because your unconscious has chosen a life partner who is a carbon copy of the parent or parents who injured you. So instead of healing, you just keep getting brutalized.But the urge to heal is so powerful it fuels you to keep on hoping and trying. The secret wish is: Maybe this time, if I’m really really good, he’ll finally love me the way I want to be loved. The wish to heal keeps is part of the reason you keep coming back for more.But there’s another reason why you do. All abused children think that the abuse they’re suffering is their own fault; in fact, whatever t happens in the world happens because of them (this is called the narcissism of childhood). So the child reasons that the abuse he/she suffers is his/her own fault.Along these same lines, you figure if you are the cause of the abuse, you have the power to stop it by being better and trying harder. Your entire marriage has been one effort after another on your part to lick the boot of the person who’s kicking you in the teeth.If your being a good and tolerant wife hasn’t caused him to treat you better by now, it never will. On the contrary, your tolerance has actually reinforced his abusive behavior. I see a man who is extremely sadistic and who wants his punching bag back. Without you–the willing recipient of his crap–in his life he has no way to discharge the poison, the hate, and the rage inside himself.To go back to him would be suicide. You have no reason to trust your husband, no reason to think he’s changed. I see no evidence of his willingness to accept responsibility for his abusive behavior, let alone change it.Your marriage counseling sessions unfortunately focused on your both making behavioral accommodations, like taking time alone, all of which was a complete waste of time, since the real issue here is the fact that he gives himself license to behave like a monster (and you allow yourself to be mistreated).You need to go back into therapy and work through your own history of abuse. This work will free you from the wish to return to him and liberate you from the need to replay your history in your marriages.