During the marriage, the NSP was unrelenting in his tearing down of me. Every contentious story was skewed to paint me in a bad light. He was fully invested in me being a broken, helpless, sick and damaged person.
I was no more damaged and broken than any other average person on the planet.
During the divorce process, his attempts to paint me in the worst possible light continued. I was surprised, but should not have been. Now the carrot was gone, and it was only the stick. He made outrageous claims about me, that I was a drunk (in spite of the fact that I almost never drank). On and on, tear down after tear down. Details don't matter.
Now, he has so little access to me. I have him in a little box. And I don't respond.
The only tool he has to hurt me, is our children.
It isn't new. He started on them right away. They would come home so distraught. The stories he would tell them. Lies. Twisted truths.
Time passes. And our children get older. And his emotional abuse continues.
He abuses them emotionally in all sorts of ways. But tearing down their mother seems to be his favorite.
Being abused is traumatic. Emotional abuse is abuse. Bullies ruin other people's lives and careers. Children kill themselves to avoid the bullies wrath. Women kill themselves to avoid the continued abuse from their husbands.
My abuser, my exhusband, reaches out to me and continues his abuse through my children. He successfully plants the seeds of doubt about me into my children's hearts and minds. Bless them. I experience trauma again when I hear his stories from my children's lips.
My children have no context for the awful things he tells them. They should never hear such things from a parent. If I defend or explain, I further the damage he has done to them.
Despite the fact that I do not defend myself or explain the truth, they have lost trust. In me. In their father.
They should not trust their father. And they do not. It has nothing to do with me. They do not trust him because they learn, over time, that he is not worthy of their trust.
Their father tears at the trust they have for me. And breaks it down. And my children grow distant.
Oh yes, it does break my heart. And it does hurt me. And it does cause me pain and worry. Big points for the abuser.
The bigger victim here is our children. Who float aimlessly, rudderless.
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So much time has passed that our children mostly can not remember that we were ever married. The NSP father fills in their memories with lies.
My children know who I am. They know their father.
When I look back, and when I talk to myself back then, I say: You should have left sooner. You should have left right away. There was nothing to stay for. There was no hope.
But I didn't know that then. I didn't know what was happening to me. I had hope. I thought maybe we could fix 'it'.
But I was also terrified of him. Instinctively knowing how vicious he was. Knowing the terrible position I was in.
It took me a long time to leave. Too long.
But I got out as soon as I could.
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If I had it to do all over again. I would have left right away.
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This latest attack of emotional abuse proves again how incredibly right I was about him.
We can not control the NSP. We can not make him stop.
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Please, be well,
AKA Rose Lee Mitchell
Photograph
by Thomas Hawk
"I Will Never Break Your Heart"
Used under Creative Commons license
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