Emotional and Verbal Abuse via Email

Emotional abuse via email.

We complain about how the abuser continues to berate us post-divorce.  Despite the passage of time and reduced contact, we still receive his hate via email.  We can't escape reading the incessant and pointless arguments, because we had the grave misfortune of having their children.  But, we can and do choose to not respond to the bait. 

Even though I am many years separated and divorced from the NSP (Narcissist/Sociopath/Psychopath), he routinely sends emotional assaults my way via email and by way of my children.  I have reduced face-to-face contact to nearly zero, so he doesn't come at me that way anymore.

Come at me.  Assault.  Abuse.  I use this language purposely.

The psychopath wants to kick you in the mouth precisely to keep you down.

He wants to knock the wind out of your sails, using all that intimate knowledge of your heart and history, gathered when he was your intimate partner.  If it is special to you, it will be used against you.  Hopefully you held some secrets back.  I did.  He'll use everything and anything to hurt you.   He’ll take achievements that you feel proud of, and twist them into shameful experiences.   And you’ll be left wondering, WTF? 

This is why no contact is the best way to go.  Except, in our case, with dependent children in tow, we must maintain some contact.  In my situation, I currently dance between extreme low contact and controlled contact.  I control the contact.  My terms.  My show.

Recently I attended an event with my children. My exhusband appeared.  Oh, by the way, I looked fabulous (and confident and happy and strong).  Even though the sight of him was so much less-than-pleasant for me, I played it cool.  No biggie.  Yes, yes, yes, much time has passed.  And yes, of course, my cool wore thin as the night wore on - I can only take so much. (He spoke to me after all.  Vomit.)  Compared to years past when a mere glimpse of him would send me into a post-traumatic state --- this is major improvement and cause for celebration.

I try to avoid the face-to-face enounters also, because I believe that it flares the psychopath.  He sees me, and then some bad behavior follows.  He viciously attacks my children with hateful slanderous words about their mother.  (This is child abuse.)  He sends me hateful and slanderous emails accusing me of all manner of nonsense.  His swirl of hate spilling forth, while me and my kids are trying to live our lives.  And we’re like: WTF?  We mustn't be too happy or too comfortable, or daddy will come to destroy our calm, and knock us off center. 

Remember all those years when you were at his whim?  When you had to live in the same house?  They call it ‘walking on eggshells’ but that never resonated with me.  It was more like dodging bullets.  It was more like waiting for the bomb to go off.   Bombs detonating all weekend, and nearly every holiday.  What a life.  

I believe one of the best responses to such a (stupid and spineless) attack is no response at all.  Silence for him.  Oh Look, Daddy throwing a little hissy fit over there! Daddy is a drama queen. Next.

The latest attack on my self comes predictably.   After all, HE SAW ME.  He knows that I am doing great.   I look great.  Happy and calm.   

The shitty things he writes are annoying, but really, they are just stupid lies, and I'm not going to fight with him.  The part that hurts (and makes me feel small) is that I made such a mistake in CHOOSING HIM to be my intimate partner in life, and he turned out to be such a horror.  The sinking feeling of regret that I didn't know how to get away from him sooner.  The pain of wasted time - that it took me as long as it took to escape and untangle.   He got so far into my heart and mind that I am still recovering from his whittling away at my self esteem all these years later.  That sucks!    I didn't jump ship at 6 months, or one year.  I wish I had!  I was still strong back then!   I didn't know the signs, or what those signs meant.  If I had, I would have fled.  I didn’t trust my gut. 

But I didn't know!  Couldn't know!  Unfortunate me.  (This is one of the reasons that I write and share online, to shed some light on the abuse so many of us face.)

In response to the endless hate emotional abuse emails it is super tempting to "set him straight" and "tell him like it is".    No. No no no no no no.  He knows what the facts are.  I don't get it, but clearly he enjoys twisting the truth.  He delights in it.  

Think about that.   Years later.  He is still trying to engage his ex-wife.  Writing hate mail to her.  Seriously?  That is who he IS.   He is so sick and small and deranged that he writes hate mail to a woman who DUMPED HIM.  Who said: See ya, wouldn't want to be ya!    Who said: Later tater.   

He has a NEW WIFE and he is still focused on ME.  SERIOUSLY?????  Are you kidding me?  GET A LIFE man. 

And I'm not gonna actually say that to him.  Because, why?  Why engage?  Don't engage.  He lives for the fight.  The psychopath wants attention.  He is the earth and the sun circles round him.  Or rather, he wishes it did.  

Let it go.

So, my response to his latest version of reality, where I am the target of his hate:  

No response at all.   Let him spin. 

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If you have an example of an emotionally abusive email from your ex, and you would like to share it,  you are welcome to.  Please remove all identifying information.  I will review it and post it.

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Be well,

AKA Rose Lee Mitchell

Photograph by Olaf Eichler234/365Used under Creative Commons license

Related Articles: 

How the Emotional Abuse Continues in spite of Extreme Low Contact

Blame versus Personal Responsibility

"blame" by Yuliya Nome


There's a balance to life and to everything.   Blame.   IT WAS HIS FAULT.   It wasn't my fault.   Our culture makes a religion of Personal Responsibility.   I would have been better off if I had blamed my husband more. A lot more.  Instead, I fell victim to the cult of personal responsibility.  The trap.   I would rush off to my feel-good personal responsibility sessions, and get enough juice to make it through another week with an abuser.

I thought I could "think and try" my way into a better relationship with him.  Or pray my way.  Or 12-Step Serenity Prayer my way through my children's childhood, and things would get better.  That's what all the women's magazines say.  You know, those periodicals that we pay for in order to be told what to wear, what to buy, what we should prefer, and generally, How To Live Our Lives.   Really?

General relationship advice mostly doesn't consider the fact that one may be involved with a disordered individual who aims to control, belittle and destroy the Other.   Relationship advice which fails to assess the Goodness of the Other is meaningless.  Worse: it is Harmful.

Because he wasn't the A Streetcar Named Desire, stereotypical, movie-version Obvious Abuser, I didn't know that I was in a hopeless situation.  He was slick.  He looked good in a suit.  He made lots of money in a profession that reeks with authority.  He spoke with excellent grammar.  He had an excellent education.  And when he wanted to, he could talk real nice.

I thought we could work it out.  I thought things would calm down.  Well, he never wanted things to calm down. I can see that so clearly now, outside of the relationship.  There was never a chance in hell that he was going to chill.  Drama is his middle name.  What's funny: I'm the one who looks dramatic.  Emphatic.  Funny.  Colorful.  Artistic.  You know, "out there".  He is the calm, ordered, tempered one.  HA HA HA HA HA.  Whatevs.  Without him, my life can return to its peaceful, former glory.  Of calm, quiet, serenity.

Looks can be so deceiving.

He looked really good, on paper.  He still does, I guess. Unless you know how to read between the lines.  Which I do.  Now.  But, back then, in the marriage, I bought the advice of giving 100% to the relationship.  Maybe that is good advice in a healthy marriage?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I don't know.  After what I've lived through, giving 100% sounds like a really bad idea.  But, I didn't have a healthy marriage.  I didn't have a real relationship with the man I married.  It was false, because he was false.

I don't even consider myself to have been married, and this is a new idea for me.  It was like living with a ghost, or a character.  Is it a marriage if you never really knew your spouse?  If you were never really known?  If he wore a mask every single day of his life?  If, when the mask slipped, you were looking at a monster and you wanted desperately to get away, and never see him again?   That doesn't sound like marriage to me. That sounds like a horror story.

If we live in a world where I am 100% responsible for the outcome of the marriage, where one spouse is 100% responsible for the relationship?  Well, that is just the dumbest advice ever given.  And if I am 100% responsible for my mood, and my happiness?  Really?  If I have a monster screaming in my face and chasing me from room to room?  If I have lived with chronic stress for years, caused by living with an abuser, such that I self-medicate with substances or activities that are not helpful or healthy long-term?  Being subjected to chronic stress is my fault?  Really?  When the abuser isolates me from friends and family and work opportunities, it's my fault?  I should take responsibility for his abuse?   Seriously?

Clearly, blaming My Self does me no good.  Blaming Him, and Sitting In That Space of Muck and Yuck, also does me no good.  Nor does it do any of my relationships any good.   Nor does it do my children any good.   Moving On does us all a world of good.

processing the past,
understanding it,
framing it in some sort of positive light,
and letting it go....
this is the work that I am doing.


By AKA Rose Lee Mitchell


Did taking responsibility for the state of your relationship cause you trouble?  Does it still?
I would love to hear from you.

Please make up an alias when you comment, so that I can address you by a name other than Anonymous.  Thank you.